Chapel Hill 2020 - Successfully Encouraging Stakeholder Participation

Elliott Bennett-Guerrero

Chapel Hill 2020 - Successfully Encouraging Stakeholder

Participation

• Dr. Elliott Bennett-Guerrero earned a doctor of medicine from Harvard Medical School and completed his anesthesiology residency at the Duke University Medical Center. He holds board certifications in anesthesiology and critical care medicine, and serves as a tenured professor at Duke University. Dr. Elliott Bennett-Guerrero also participates actively in community affairs; he served 3 two year terms as President of the Oaks 2 Homeowners Association and was a member of the Initiating Committee for Chapel Hill, North Carolina’s comprehensive plan.

Chapel Hill 2020 - Successfully Encouraging Stakeholder

Participation

• Like countless communities nationwide, Chapel Hill maintains a comprehensive plan that gives a broad outline of how its citizens would like to see the town develop over the coming decades. Such plans are valuable guidelines for both community policymakers and people considering moving into the town. Chapel Hill drafted a plan in 2000 which, along with various additional documents mostly covering development of small areas, formed the basis of the town’s vision for the future.

Chapel Hill 2020 - Successfully Encouraging Stakeholder

Participation

• In early 2011, the town council appointed an initiating committee to craft a new comprehensive plan, dubbed Chapel Hill 2020, that consolidated the documents and updated the community’s development strategy. This committee held several meetings and presented its report to the council in June 2011. The report identified residents to co-chair the process and set forth a process that included three months of well-publicized outreach activities that encouraged stakeholder participation. This was followed by eight months of the stakeholder planning process, which included introductory meetings, numerous working and reporting meetings , and community open houses. The chairs of the process also met regularly with the council to keep them abreast of the plan’s progress.

Chapel Hill 2020 - Successfully Encouraging Stakeholder

Participation

• The plan’s final documentation and approval process took place from April until June of 2012, and the council officially adopted Chapel Hill 2020 on June 25, 2012. The document can be reviewed in its entirety on the town’s website at www.townofchapelhill.org.