FAQs

A Comprehensive Plan (Plan) establishes a community’s long-term vision, goals, strategies, and policies for guiding future decisions, changes, and investments. The Plan serves as a policy document to guide the County in future growth, revitalization, preservation, and resilience over the next 10-20 years. While it primarily provides guidance within the County’s boundary, it also address key community issues that require collaboration with other state, county, and local agencies.

The Plan is the guiding document that the County’s elected and appointed officials, departments, residents, employers, developers, and other stakeholders use to ensure that the County evolves in line with the community’s collective vision for the future.

The County’s 2017 Plan helped guide County decisions and policies during the planning horizon. Maryland’s Land Use Article requires the County to review, and if necessary, update its comprehensive plan at least once every ten years to address changing conditions, new socio-economic circumstances, or other changes in policy. Furthermore, following the Plan’s 2027 adoption, the County will be informed by the Plan when developing and adopting changes to local public law, which by State law must be ‘consistent with, and not contrary to’ the Plan.

The Plan will address the following topics as mandated by the State: Goals and Objectives, Land Use, Housing, Community Facilities, Transportation, Water Resources, Sensitive Areas, Areas of Critical State Concern, and Development Regulations.

Major components of the Plan will include a community vision and implementation plan, community profile, existing conditions studies, and land use analysis. Based on the community’s input and updated data being collected and analyzed, a future land use map will be generated to help guide future growth, development, and preservation.

Anyone and everyone! The County encourages the Wicomico County community to join in and let their voice be heard. If you live, work, own property, visit, or utilize services in Wicomico County, we want your feedback!

It is important to be involved in the public outreach activities, from data collection to community visioning and outreach events. The “Get Involved” page of this website describes all current opportunities available to give your input, as well as summaries of events that have already occurred. This section will also list all public meeting dates and times throughout the process as they are scheduled. Use the Contact/Feedback page to ask questions and provide feedback regarding the engagement plan.

Existing plans and strategies are an important part of the comprehensive planning process. These plans will inform the planning process and, in some cases, may be incorporated into the Comprehensive Plan if the goals and vision are still consistent with the community’s aspirations.

Keep visiting this project website or sign up for updates on the Get Involved Page!