Chignik Bay Tribal Council’s approach to this project will be unconventional. First and foremost, we are interested in developing systems that will enable each community to successfully implement projects. Our frustration with traditional community plans is 1) they are typically almost entirely written by outsiders, 2) the final planning document’s action plan often becomes outdated the minute it is committed to print because staff change, and 3) in order to update the plan, communities are totally reliant on outsiders to reissue the report, which is cumbersome and expensive.

In response to this, Northern Management, Chignik Bay Tribal Council’s planning consultant, will fully engage planning staff in each community to assist in the writing of their respective community plans using local planning coordinators. To facilitate this process, each community plan will be written entirely online, using a unique web-based collaborative document-building application developed by Bizware Online Systems and adapted to this application by Northern Management.

Utilizing the online document-assembler, individuals and agencies can simultaneously work on the same document from any location.

Our goal is to not only get an acceptable Community Plan draft completed, but to teach each community’s staff how to go online and update the narrative as often as necessary. We understand that priorities change, and don’t believe that progress should be forestalled because a community’s plan can’t grow with them!

ONLINE PROJECT MANAGEMENT: 

How many times have you thumbed through a community plan to the Implementation pages, only to note that they are hopelessly outdated? Staff change. Priorities change. Reality changes. Community plans should have the ability to change as well! Our solution to that is to transfer the Implementation Plan over to an online project management system we have been jointly developing and using successfully to manage a myriad of projects throughout rural Alaska. Our overriding goal was to implement a project management system that is simple to learn, and simple to use. And Task Meister was born!

Northern Management will be using Task Meister to develop the community plans.

In addition to managing the community planning process using Task Meister, each community’s action plan will be mapped to Task Meister and implementation tasks assigned.

ONLINE COMMUNITY PLANNING RESOURCES KNOWLEDGE BASE: 

An additional deliverable for this project will be development of an Alaska Community Planning Knowledge Base. Using Bizware Online Applications online Knowledge Base Manager as the platform, we will amalgamate any and all community planning related websites, resource materials, statistics, etc. that other communities can utilize in the development of their community plans. Visitors to the site can then utilize the hierarchical tree and categories to locate resources, or do a search using the search function. We will maintain public access to this site


PROJECT WORKPLAN: 

All project related tasks will be input into Northern Management’s Task Meister company and sub-company accounts for tracking purposes.

Finalize Community Plan Outline 

In conjunction with the communities and our project engineer, we will finalize the community plan outline.

Task Programming & Assignments 

Once the community plan outline is finalized, all sections will be assigned to the appropriate individuals, entities, and agencies with due dates, and all tasks will be entered into Task Meister for monitoring.

Online Community Plan System Enhancements 

Bizware Online Applications Inc. will be enhancing the online community plan system by streamlining the application, adding question/comment buttons for the general public, and adding multi-user capability. A detailed description of the enhancements (a functional description) is included in the appendices.

Online Community Plan Set-Up  

Additional accounts will be created for Northern Management’s online community plans for each of the participating communities, and users added as appropriate. While the public can access these plans with no username and password, restricted user accounts will be created for those tasked with plan narrative development and editing. Informational flyers will go out to the community with the website location of each community’s respective plan so that the community can monitor and participate in the plan development online in addition to participating in public work sessions.

Planning Coordinator Orientation & Training 

Northern Management will orient the planning coordinators on the project timelines, planning systems, project assignments, project deadlines, planning resources, contact numbers, etc.

Base Map / Land Use Map Development / Planning Props Development 

In preparation for the planning work sessions with each community and the eventual development of color-coded land use maps, Northern Management and its subcontractors will acquire base maps and/or community profile maps for each community. We will also be developing basic planning props, including scale-sized facility and lot-cutouts to aide community leaders with master-planning development in their community. DOT recently utilized this approach in Tuluksak, where they gave the community a map and a scale cutout of the future airport extension, and asked the community to site the airport based on some basic parameters identified by DOT.


Research Phase 
The planning coordinators will be tasked with researching and acquiring all current planning studies for each community in order to incorporate this information into the community plan and avoid duplication of effort where possible. In addition, a significant amount of time will be spent contacting regional entities and state and federal development agencies to document currently planned development in each community. The overarching goal will be to have community leaders consider not just the project at hand, but other planned projects as well, as they develop their land use plans.

Planning Work Sessions 

Northern Management anticipates holding 2-3 planning sessions with community leaders and the public. Part of these work sessions will be devoted to some basic land use planning “training” covering basic planning guidelines for subdivision development, land use zones, etc. It is not our intent to dictate how the community shall plan, but provide them with some engineering advice based on previous lessons learned. Northern Management will utilize its staff engineer, or the community may opt to utilize its existing engineer as necessary.

Plan Narrative 

Development of the plan narrative will be an ongoing process. Portions of the narrative, particularly the community profile, services and facilities inventory, etc. can be initiated immediately, whereas the future needs sections will develop after those needs have been documented during the research phase and as a result of the planning work sessions.

Final Land Use Plan Development 

A color-coded land use plan will be developed for each community to document where future residential, public, and commercial/industrial development can occur.

Action Plan Set-Up: Task Meister 

Once community projects and priorities have been identified, actionable items will be developed and logged into Task Meister for subsequent monitoring and implementation. This will ensure that a living, functioning method of following up on identified priorities is instituted that will outlive the initial “hardcopy” printing of the community plan.