About The SRPP

The How Do We Grow From Here? – Strategic Regional Policy Plan contains a vision for regional vitality, sustainability, and competitiveness, focusing on the land use–transportation connection. Conceptually, the strategic planning process addresses four questions:

Where are we as a region?
Where are we going given current trends?
Where do we want to go?
How do we get there?

Six strategic subject areas guide and focus planning efforts to achieve the overall regional vision. These strategic subject areas are housing, transportation, land use, public facilities and services, natural systems, and economic development. Each subject area of the SRPP contains an overview, a goal, the trends and conditions associated with each strategic regional issue in that subject, and objectives and policy recommendations that address each of the issues.

On this website, you will find the adopted Strategic Regional Issues, Goals, Objectives and Policy Recommendations. These core plan elements only update with action by the Land Use Commission. In addition to these core elements, you will also find data and trend information about the Strategic Regional Issues, as well as information about what’s being done to implement the plan. These elements of the website are updated as new information becomes available and as progress is made toward plan implementation.

Background & History on the Strategic Regional Policy Plan

The plan’s original version, the Where Do We Grow From Here? – Strategic Regional Policy Plan (SRPP) was adopted by the OKI Land Use Commission in 2005. This plan was the result of a seven year-long planning and visioning process that involved hundreds of organizations and thousands of citizens.
In response to the chronic gap between transportation needs and dollars available, and to federal directives to consider land use in transportation planning, the OKI board agreed that existing processes needed updating, and that the blueprint for change would be a strategic policy plan. This policy plan is implemented through voluntary cooperation among local governments, OKI, and other organizations.

While OKI has no authority – and seeks no authority – over local land use decisions, OKI’s Board created, and sat as, a land use commission to study the complex connection between transportation and how we use land for homes, businesses, parks, and factories. The primary goal of the OKI Land Use Commission is to bring about more consistency between local land use planning and regional transportation planning, so that scarce taxpayer dollars can be used for maximum benefit.

Group of people stanging in front of an easel board and talking

The process of developing the strategic regional policy plan has made evident that residents of the OKI region live their lives at the scale of the region – moving through multiple jurisdictions several times a day to work, shop, play, or seek entertainment. For that reason, the fate of any individual community is inherently connected to the fate of the region. OKI is committed to working with local governments, the private and nonprofit sectors, and citizens so that the region is an exceptional place to live.

The SRPP was updated in 2014 and was renamed How Do We Grow From Here? This update became OKI’s first web-based plan, increasing access to the plan. Also, the planning process made extensive use of online surveys to gather public input – garnering thousands of responses.

In 2018, OKI launched a feedback campaign to understand how opinions surrounding aspects of the SRPP might have changed since it was adopted in 2014. This was done via an online survey and social media engagement. Again, the process yielded thousands of responses and confirmed that the broad recommendations of the 2014 plan still rang true.

The process for this current plan update began in 2022 with a series of focus group sessions centered on each topic area: Transportation, Public Facilities, Natural Systems, Housing, Economic Development, and Land Use. These sessions focused on evaluating the region’s status regarding the specific topic, and charting opportunities for the region to grow in that area. This input was formulated into new draft Goals, Opportunity Areas, and Policy Recommendations for the plan update. We then held a Focus Group Stakeholder Event in November 2022 to unveil and gather comments on the draft.

After updating the OKI Land Use Commission Steering Committee in January, we launched a public survey and social media campaign to gather further input on significant aspects of the plan. This campaign reached over 70,000 people, over 4,000 engagements, and nearly 2,000 completed surveys. In addition, we received 564 written comments.

The draft plan was presented to the OKI Board on June 8, 2023.

Land Use Commission

A Steering Committee of the Land Use Commission has convened since the 2005 adoption of the Strategic Regional Policy Plan (SRPP). The Steering Committee works to advance activities related to the implementation and maintenance of the SRPP. The Steering Committee includes representation from each county of the OKI region as well as individuals with expertise in all six topical areas of the SRPP.

The OKI Land Use Commission Steering Committee convenes annually, or as needed, to review SRPP Strategic Regional Issues, Goals, Objectives and Policy Recommendations, review progress of SRPP implementation, and to discuss updates that may be warranted based on changing trends, regional conditions, and emerging issues.

OKI Land Use Commission Steering Committee Members:

Ken Reed, Chair
Kevin Costello
Donald Dixon
Shannon Hartkemeyer
Larry Maxey
Pete Metz
Pamela Mullins
David Okum
Jack Sutton
Bruce Whitteberry
Stan Williams