Future land use for Junction City and Geary County was discussed during Thursdays comprehensive plan update presented by RDG Planning and Design.

Amy Haase, Senior Partner with RDG, explained that on the county side they looked at land use policies specifically to the land use districts developed in the plan.

“What are some of the policies as we would see related to protecting agricultural operations. How do we want to direct any residential growth that would want to happen. How do we address commercial operations and intrests that we would have out in the county area,” Haase said.

There are buffer zones around each of the cities and towns in Geary County. Haase said that they would like to avoid operations in those areas that would create expensive costs to extend city services into those areas.

“That would include say large lot acreage developments, were it would be really expensive to ultimately extend water and sewage into those areas.”

They would also want to avoid intensive agriculture use, such as feed lots and large cattle productions. They idea is to use the land for traditional agriculture uses, farming and ranching.

The next step of the plan is for RDG to put together a final draft and present it back to the MPC for review before presenting it to the public in July. Following the public meetings the hope is to have it ready for final approval later in the fall.