HYDE PARK—A plan nearly three years in the making may finally see daylight at the start of 2012.

A survey that would be available to every Hyde Park resident assessing their wants and needs for the city is in the works. Discussed by the Planning and Zoning Commission at their meeting Wednesday night, the survey would act as a guide to City Council making changes to the Hyde Park’s general plan, which hasn’t been updated since it was first written in 2000.

“We have talked about this for a long, long time,” said Brent Kelly, who represented the city council at the meeting.

The idea of initiating a city-wide survey to identify major issues like density, open space and property tax concerns first came about three years ago. Since then, the project has come to a standstill, forcing the council to examine what went wrong. Kelly said though the initial plan was good, it was undertaken and forgotten.

“In theory it’s fluid, in practice it is very unfluid,” he said.

Commission member Gene Reck, who was on the citizen council for the initial survey, said the plan never worked and brought forth concerns that the city is simply trying to “reinvent the wheel.” He said the city is still dealing with the backlash of the last survey, which simply “didn’t fly.”

“Are we trying to hear the people’s voice or are we trying to influence them?” he asked the commission.

The general plan the city follows has no specific ordinances, but is a basic layout of where Hyde Park has been, where they currently are, and their plan for the future, according to commission member Bret Randall.

The council hopes that the survey will be completed by January and sent out shortly thereafter. Randall said one of the biggest hurdles for the city will be educating residents about the survey. The city is looking into providing a workshop that would help to voice concerns and make the reasoning behind the survey more clear.

Later in the night, the commission voted to suspend the three of the four items on the agenda until their next meeting in two weeks. The item addressed was the noise ordinance, which failed to be passed by the city council last week because they determined that “noise” couldn’t be defined. The commission unanimously voted to overhaul the current definition of noise, and adopt North Logan’s more specific definition. The change will be voted on by the city council next week.

Published in cooperation with the Hard News Cafe. Original story is here.