Town of Lyons Recovery Action Plan
The Takeaways
Recovery is resident-driven.
Recovery is sustainable and developed in a maintainable way through the use of low-impact development and the integration of local and regional materials.
Recovery is resilient.
The Case Study
The Town of Lyons experienced significant damages during the 2013 floods when stream flows within the town limits crested above all previous records. The town, which operates on an annual budget of approximately $1 million, sustained almost $50 million in damages to public facilities (not including insured losses), much of which occurred on town parkland. Over 200 homes were damaged or destroyed. The business community was also heavily impacted both directly and as a result of lost revenue when the town was evacuated. Schools were closed for three months.
Through the planning process, the Town’s recovery organization sought to develop a recovery vision and establish guiding recovery principles by holding several meetings that collected input from hundreds of citizens. The planning community used the existing master plan and other planning efforts as a guide for the community participatory process. As a result of these meetings, the Town established the vision of recovery as “recovering stronger, more sustainably, and more resilient than before.”
The goals identified in multiple topical areas included:
Create opportunities for arts & artists to thrive.
Promote retention & the creation of new businesses.
Improve Lyons’ fiscal, regulatory, & physical environment.
Increase local business’ share of the regional market.
Make Lyons a retail, recreational, artistic, & heritage tourism destination.
Create partnerships with existing health and human services (HHS) providers.
Ensure Lyons residents have access to an entire range of social services.
Engage and support youth and children.
Provide resources for mental health and wellness.
Provide and foster services for the older adult community.
Promote safe, stable, diverse neighborhoods and increase affordable housing.
Establish a long-term plan for infrastructure resiliency.
Update and maintain Lyons’ street and sidewalk system and increase mobility.
Restore and enhance multiple parks.
Ensure public services can be provided in adequate, safe, and secure facilities.
Identify financial and physical resources for recovery.
Maximize opportunities to restore and conserve riverine natural resources.
Reinforce hazard mitigation.
Objectives were guided by and grew out of these goals throughout the ongoing planning process.
Below is language included in the Plan describing the critical role public engagement played in the development of the Plan.
“The Lyons Recovery Action Plan reflects who we are as a community. Three principles guided the process and are the foundation of our recovery action plan:
Resident Driven
The Lyons Recovery Action Plan is the result of a resident-driven process that involved hundreds of our neighbors, friends and colleagues. The process created multiple opportunities for engagement, including weekly working groups, community-wide meetings, public hearings, online discussions, social media, an interactive recovery website, among others. The recovery continues to be resident-driven as action items are taken up by boards, commissions, non-profits, and project champions.
The process was also transparent. All meetings were held in public and were widely advertised through multiple media channels. All materials were uploaded to the Town’s recovery website, and community-wide meetings were videotaped and posted online. Working groups, board meetings, and workshops were advertised and public.
Plan Process
In late 2013, the Town of Lyons launched an ambitious citizen-driven recovery planning process, resulting in the Lyons Recovery Action Plan. This plan is intended to complement the 2010 Comprehensive Plan by taking into account new challenges and realities since the September floods. The Lyons Recovery Action Plan is the tool that records the actions determined in the planning process and that charts implementation moving forward. This inclusive, resident-driven process is the first step to recovery and has been proven indispensable to the recovery of other disaster- affected communities around the United States.
On December 18, 2013, the Town of Lyons officially moved from post-disaster response to long-term recovery. Lyons marked this transition with a public meeting at LifeBridge Church, attended by hundreds of town residents. The Town leadership thanked the volunteers who worked tirelessly during the disaster response and presented examples of recovery plans and processes from other disaster-stricken communities. During the kickoff, participants broke into seven topic sub- groups, generally reflective of the topic areas within the Lyons Comprehensive Plan: 1) Housing 2) Stream Recovery 3) Public Facilities & Infrastructure 4) Parks & Recreation 5) Arts, Culture & Historic Preservation 6) Business & Economic Development and 7) Health & Human Services. These topic sub-groups became the Town’s eight Recovery Working Groups (RWGs) when Public Facilities and Infrastructure were separated.
The Recovery Working Group (RWG) is an all-inclusive, temporary, community-based group tasked with issue identification, idea generation and recovery project formulation. The RWGs were the workhorses of the recovery planning process. They met once per week for six weeks, from January 13 to February 24. Besides town residents, the RWGs also included town staff, Board of Trustee members, representatives of the Sustainable Future Commission, members of the Planning and Community Development Commission and members of the Town’s other boards and commissions working in related areas.
The final deliverables from each RWG included a variety of projects for the Town to consider and adopt. A recovery planning Steering Committee also met four times during the planning process to coordinate RWG outputs, provide direction and prioritize projects based on their impact on flood recovery. After the six-week recovery planning process, the RWGs submitted 57 project ideas for review. The resulting Project Development Guides (PDGs) consist of a detailed questionnaire that facilitates collection and evaluation of information about goals, strategies and expected outcomes of proposed projects and programs.
The Sustainable Futures Commission (SFC) and Planning and Community Development Commission (PCDC) held a joint-public meeting on March 24, 2014 to receive public feedback regarding the Recovery Action Plan and Implementation Table. On March 25, 2014, the PCDC developed recommendations for the Board of Trustees, and on March 27, 2014, the SFC held a similar meeting. On March 31, 2014 the Board of Trustees voted to adopt the Recovery Action Plan and Implementation Table.
After the Board of Trustees revised and adopted the documents, students and faculty from the University of Colorado Denver’s Department of Planning and Design finalized the recovery plan document. The Town and State will continue to move forward with funding requests, grants, and project management. The recovery effort will be a multi-year engagement to rebuild Lyons safer and more resilient, and this Recovery Action Plan will be updated on a semi-annual basis.”
Want more information?
Check out the Lyons Recovery Action Plan