Via Town of Gilbert
By Tom Blodgett | YourValley
Robert Carmona has an ambitious goal for Gilbert’s upcoming Parks and Recreation Master Plan.
“Our goal — I’ve been very open about it — is to have the most engagement a master plan has ever seen,” the town’s Parks and Recreation director said. “And the goal of that really is because the Gilbert community deserves it. They’re at a point where there’s a lot of development, a lot of opportunity, and we need to make sure we get it right and we get the community what they truly need.”
By the most engagement a master plan has ever seen, Carmona does not mean a Gilbert master plan. He means any community anywhere. The aim is to top the more than 30,000 engagements for Pflugerville, Texas, a suburb of Austin.
Gilbert is well on its way with an aggressive engagement campaign that will last through July 4. But cataloging all the responses and figuring out just how many people provided feedback will take time. Carmona said it may be September before they know a final number.
The parks master plan will guide the town’s planning for parks and trails expansion and refurbishment over the next decade or more, as well as the department’s programming for residents.
“The thing I’ll say is there’s a lot of needs in Gilbert over the next 10 years-plus,” Carmona said. “And hopefully the master plan will be able to help provide the data and the community feedback to help guide those decisions as we have to decide what comes online.”
