Comprehensive Plan Review Committee
Overview
A Comprehensive Plan is a strategic document that establishes a community's vision for its future and outlines specific goals, policies, and implementation strategies to achieve that vision. The Plan is the foundation for local land use decisions, zoning regulations, and community development initiatives.
Where is our current Plan and what does it say?
Adopted July 17, 2007, Amenia’s Comprehensive Plan prioritizes preserving Amenia's rural character and natural beauty while guiding the town’s growth in specific areas. The Plan envisions Amenia as a diverse, vibrant, and business-friendly community, emphasizing agriculture, small businesses, and appropriately sized and scaled residential development. Key objectives included promoting affordable and workforce housing, enhancing infrastructure such as sewer systems to support hamlet development, and implementing land use policies that protect open spaces and natural resources. The Plan also recommended zoning reform to manage development and ensure that growth was aligned with the town's vision and environmental considerations.
Other Special Area Plans
Why are we updating our Plan?
The Comprehensive Plan is a living document that requires periodic updates to ensure local planning policies remain relevant, legally defensible, and aligned with the community’s evolving needs, values, and priorities. In New York, Town Law §272-a authorizes municipalities to adopt and update Comprehensive Plans to guide land use, development, and conservation decisions. Comprehensive Plans are the foundation for zoning regulations, capital improvement planning, environmental protection, and economic development strategies. While the law does not mandate a specific update interval, best practice recommends updating the plan every 5 to 10 years to reflect changes in demographics, infrastructure needs, housing trends, climate resilience strategies, and state or regional policy shifts.
Regular updates ensure compliance with state and federal initiatives, such as climate action requirements under New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), and can enhance eligibility for grant funding. An outdated plan may hinder a municipality's ability to secure funding, enforce land use decisions, or proactively address challenges like housing affordability, transportation, and environmental sustainability.
Keeping the Comprehensive Plan current helps communities stay forward-thinking, legally prepared, and better equipped to strategically manage change.
Our Community Engagement Process
The Comprehensive Plan Committee is partnering with Nexus Creative and the Pace Land Use Law Center to conduct a four-month listening and learning initiative. This public outreach and engagement process includes a dedicated website, two community visioning sessions, pop-up events and interactive tools to gather community input. At the conclusion of the community engagement process, we will compile our findings into a comprehensive report with recommendations for next steps. The Committee's future work will focus on setting goals and objectives, creating strategies to achieve these goals, and developing an implementation plan to guide ongoing planning efforts.
Stay in Touch
We invite all community members to participate in shaping our town's future.