With the City of Powell’s master plan showing its age, the council is being asked to consider a rewrite. At a meeting last week, the city’s planning and zoning commission formally recommended that the council hire a professional consultant to update the 28-year-old plan.

“[It’s] not that we want to depart from the spirit of the document,” said board member Ronn Smith, “but a lot of the details are outdated.”

The 1997 master plan provides “an outline for the future direction of Powell,” with a stated aim “to help the citizens of Powell maintain and hopefully enhance their sense of place and community character as growth occurs.” It set a number of goals, like maintaining a healthy downtown, protecting the agricultural industry and having an inviting and positive entrance to the city.

The volunteers who serve on the commission started reviewing the 77-page plan last year, with the thought of potentially making some updates on their own. However, “I would say probably halfway through the review of the thing, we realized that there’s a lot to it — and there should be more to it, [or] there could be more to it,” said City Building Official Ben Hubbard.

The discussion was kick-started by Powell Economic Partnership Executive Director Rebekah Burns. Back in January 2024, Burns told the planning commission that the old plan was standing in the way of economic development. 

Without an update, she said Powell is unable to qualify for state or federal grants that could help attract and accommodate businesses. While companies are interested in coming to the city, “I can’t do anything without an updated plan,” Burns said.

However, planning commission members had been reluctant to call for a new master plan. Multiple members indicated they were satisfied with the current document and didn’t think the city had changed enough to justify a potential six-figure update. 

But after spending months digging into the document, the four board members present at a July 28 meeting voted to recommend that the city council find a consultant to craft an update.

Hubbard said the message the board was sending was something like, “It’s been reviewed to death, and you [board members] feel like they should take a look at hiring somebody to update it, because it’s more complicated than something we can do here at this table.”

It took about 18 months to craft the current master plan, with a consultant brought on board in December 1995 and the document adopted by the council in May 1997. Public input was gathered throughout the process, starting with a community-wide survey.

Park County commissioners finalized an update of the county’s land use plan last year. The process took roughly two years and involved hiring an outside consultant at a cost of $336,445.83, the county said.

Park County’s 246-page document replaced a plan that had been in place since 1998.

The Powell City Council is expected to consider the planning commission’s recommendation to hire a consultant at a later meeting.