Land Use Public Forum: Parks and Natural Resources Outcomes

Johnston County conducted a Comprehensive Land Use Public Forum on October 21st, 2021 at the Johnston County Agricultural Building from 4-7 PM. During the public forum, Johnston County Parks and Open Space held a booth to gather information regarding the public priorities for future parks and open space properties. The results were mixed, with the two charts occurring from the voluntary visual survey set up at the table.

The two categories were: Parks & Facilities Types and Open Space Priorities. For the first category, the number one request was "Greenways & Trails" at 18 out of 52 total counts (34.6%), with nature parks coming in second with 11 out of 52 total counts (21.2%); the rest is displayed below. For the second category, the number one priority was a tie between"Mature, Native Forests" and "Streams, Wetlands, Floodplains, and Water Quality", both with 10 out of 52 total counts (19.2%), with the second priority being "Areas for River Access" with 9 out of 52 total counts (17.3%). 

Overall, the public forum gave our program more evidence to back the 2021 Recreation Master Plan results, with the number one priority from the public survey being "Greenways and Trails". Though the public forum isn't a true population consensus, the results represent enough of a demand for parks and recreation facilities to be expanded in Johnston County. The next course of action will be to use these results as an update and conduct another public survey to gather a larger population size in order to acquire more evidence for future decision-making. Refer to the photos below to check out the results and view some of the data we presented to the public regarding parks and natural resources.