• West Alley work will begin soon

Afton is taking the town into the coming years with a master plan and the town council has approved the early stages of the planning process.

“The  town council had just passed or approved a proposal, so we can move forward with a consulting firm for our comprehensive master plan. J-U-B Engineers has been contracted for the project and will have Jorgensen Engineering doing “some of the subcontracting with them.”

The work will be coordinated through Afton Planning and Zoning.  “We’re excited to get ready and schedule a kickoff meeting with them with Planning and Zoning members and council members,” Sanderson continued, “We can start planning for work sessions with those, as well as the public facilitation of the meetings.” She called the public meetings “a huge part of this process and what we want to see for the community moving forward. This is a lengthy process.”

The initial meetings are coming at the end of the month. “Our first meeting is going to kick off here at the end of August, with the consultants, town staff, and PNC board members as well as town council members.”

Sanderson advised the first meetings will cover the “scope of the work.” She further emphasized, “This is what the public does need to understand, this is probably about a six to eight  month process in working with these consultants because we want to be very thorough in what we’re looking at in terms of what we want.”

She added, “This gives us time to reach out to the community, to hear back from the community, and then have these consultants who are experts in this field to really look at the kind of infrastructure that we have, with roadway systems, land available, land still yet to be built on, and water and sewer.”

Sanderson noted, “We have done a couple of smaller master planning things in the last few years. I think people might remember in the public that we did our master planning for the parks, and we do kind of have a phasing plan for that, which people were able to see the benefits. One of those first phases we implemented included the pickle-ball courts at Canyon View Park and then at Star View Park, which are very popular.”

Referencing the consultants, she added, “They’ll come in, they’ll take stock of all existing information we have, and then kind of work the process with the public input on what we want to see as growth for our community and planning for our community. I would say we anticipate it being complete about April or May of next year.”

Sanderson said, “as the planning and zoning administrator, I  utilize our comprehensive master plan as a planning document and guideline.”

She said the document helps with the annexation process and “they’ll be identifying where our areas are that should grow.”

She added, “Where should we be annexing in or what sort of annex application should we really be excited about and things like that?”

West Alley

The Town Council has approved the bid for the West Alley Project, at the last council meeting, with pre-construction planned the first week of August.

“We’re excited to be able to relate to the public what that schedule is going to look like. I think we’ve already put some public notices out both on our Facebook page and on our website.”

Additional road maintenance in Afton this summer includes small repairs on Jefferson St, by the Lincoln County School District Offices and a seal coat is planned for Adams Street and Hospital Lane.