Comprehensive Plan

Background

The City of Key West's Adopted Comprehensive Plan is the overarching policy document guiding the City's approach to growth management.  Until the March 2013 adoption of the new Comprehensive Plan, the last major rewrite of the Plan was in 1993.  Since then, the Plan has been amended six times.  However, not until April 2008 were the text amendments incorporated into a single document called the 2008 Conformed Version of the Comprehensive Plan.  The Comprehensive Plan is available online at Municipal Code.

Amendments to Policy

The Plan is intended to be amended to reflect evolving community issues, acknowledge accomplishments and shortcomings, and future structure efforts.  However, under state law, the City was obligated to evaluate the status of the Plan and amend it based on what is known as Evaluation and Appraisal Reports (EARs).  These reports were completed by city staff and found sufficient by the state in 2005, and the second EAR was found in compliance by the state in 2007.  Although the evaluation and appraisal processes were complete, the identified changes were never made to the Comprehensive Plan document.  Because the amendments were past due, the first set was due in November 2006-the Comprehensive Plan was not allowed to be amended for any other purpose.  As a result, the Plan became stagnant without being able to respond to community needs.

Major Update in 2011

To bring the Plan into compliance, in 2011, the Planning Department began the first major update since 1993.  The process took approximately two years, including draft revisions, meetings with the public, transmittal, and adoption timelines.  This effort occurred as part of a lively, meaningful dialog with the community and our appointed and elected leaders.

In addition to adopting the 2005 and 2007 EAR amendments into the Plan, the proposed Goals, Objectives, and Policies that make up the Plan were also significantly revised based on new City studies and plans, such as the 2011 Strategic Plan, the 2012 Historic Structures Survey Report, the 2010 Climate Action Plan and the 2012 Storm-water Master Plan.  The amendments also rely on 2012 Statewide Hurricane Evacuation Modeling workshop data and the military installation coordination and compatibility amendments recently approved by the City Commission at first reading on March 20, 2012, and incorporated into the amended Plan documents.