Clay County, NC Comprehensive Plan

CLAY COUNTY COMPREHENSIVE PLAN

Community Input Summary

March 4, 2010 www.claycountycomp.wordpress.com

Clay County Comprehensive Plan Committee:

Dr. Gail Criss, ChairJoe Allen DavenportRon GuggisbergFrank LeatherwoodTanya LongHarrell MooreDennis MyersKeith NuckollsEd RoachElizabeth RybickiCommissioner Harry Jarrett, Ex-Officio

Please Direct Questions To:

Kristy Carter, Project CoordinatorNC Department of CommerceDivision of Community AssistanceCommunity Planning ProgramWestern Regional Office31 College Place, Building BAsheville, NC 28801www.nccommerce.com/wro kcarter@nccommerce.com 828.251.6917www.claycountycomp.wordpress.com

About the Cover:

The image on the front cover was developed using a word cloudprogram (www.wordle.net), where each word recordedthroughout community input process was inputted into andcounted by the program. The count of each word is visuallyrepresented in the image. The largest words in the image wererecorded more frequently, whereas the smallest words in theimager were used less.

Clay County Comprehensive Plan Community Input Summary Page | 1

Community Input Process

Community input for the first phase of the Clay County Comprehensive planbegan in August 2009 with small group gatherings and focus groups and endedin December 2009 with the close of the Community Opinion Survey.

Community Opinion Survey:

The Clay County Community Opinion Survey wasavailable to residents of Clay County in electronic and hard copy format. Theelectronic survey link was posted on a variety of Clay County ComprehensivePlan promotional materials and it was advertised on posters distributedthroughout the County. A link to the survey was reported in the Clay CountyProgress, and a link was available on the Clay County Government and theComprehensive Plan websites. All 8,816 Blue Ridge Mountain EMC (BRMEMC)customers who receive a paper power bill received a copy of the survey in theirOctober 2009 bill.

Response Rate:

Five hundred and sixty (560) individuals completed theCommunity Opinion Survey. Sixty-six percent of the survey respondentscompleted the hard copy version while 34% responded to the online survey.Survey respondents were not required to answer each question. Of the sixty-sixanswerable items, there is a median of 538 answers per item

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96% of peopleanswered each question.

Community and Small Group Meetings:

In addition to the Community OpinionSurvey, a series of community meetings and small group gatherings were held tosolicit information from a wide variety of citizens. Community meetings wereheld at the Brasstown Community Center, Hayesville First United MethodistChurch, and the Tusquittee Community Center. The first two meetings atBrasstown and Hayesville Methodist were sparsely attended. The third meetingat Tusquittee had better attendance, but the meeting was held in conjunction

with the Community Center’s regular monthly meeting and the community

input session was cut short. Additionally, Committee members hosted smallgroup gatherings and focus groups were conducted with realtors/developers,ministers, the Hispanic community, school parents and high-school students.

Response Rate:

Combined, 118 people participated in at least one type of meeting.

Structure of This Report:

The information in this report is a summary of allforms of input. The structure of this report follows the structure of the

Community Opinion Survey. The Survey had three sections: Part One--Questions One through Nine: Ranking Importance and Satisfaction; Part Two--Household and Demographic Information; and Part Three: The ConsumerSurvey

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(results from this section are not included in this report). The surveyalso asked respondents to submit unstructured comments.At each small group gathering, focus group, or community meeting, leadersasked participants a similar set of questions. The charts that follow result fromthe Community Opinion Survey and the summary of written comments arecombined from

all

forms of community input (survey comments, small groupgatherings, focus groups, and community meetings, as well as writtencomments submitted through the website or letters).

The Rule of Three:

The Comprehensive Planning Committee is pleased with thelarge amount of written feedback received. However, in order to avoid a sixtypage report, the information contained in this summary report had beencondensed using the Rule of Three. In order for a topic to be included in thesummary report, the topic had to be named by three different people. Allcomments are important and the Committee reviewed and will refer to theentire set of comments as they move forward. Please direct questions aboutthe data and report to Kristy Carter atkcarter@nccommerce.com.

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The Consumer Survey was conducted in conjunction with the Community Opinion Survey in Partnership with theClay County Communities Revitalization Association (CCCRA) and HandMade in America. These two organizationsare working with merchants in the Historic Hayesville area to complete a Historic Hayesville Market Analysis that

will assist with economic development efforts in the Historic Hayesville area. Without CCCRA and HandMade’s

assistance, the wide distribution of the Community Opinion Survey through the power bills would not have beenpossible.