Request By:
Mr. Paul R. Tice
Planning Director
City of Elizabethtown
P.O. Box 550
Elizabethtown, Kentucky 42701
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Walter C. Herdman, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
This is in answer to your letter of April 8, concerning the adoption of a new Comprehensive Plan pursuant to KRS 100.193. You relate that the City of Elizabethtown is preparing to adopt a new Plan and the question is raised as to whether or not the Hardin County Fiscal Court must also adopt this Plan or any part thereof to meet the requirements of KRS 100.193. You also relate that Elizabethtown has an independent planning and zoning commission which has been in operation since 1976. At the same time Hardin County also has a planning commission pursuant to which it has been operating since 1979.
KRS 100.183 provides that the planning commission of each [planning] unit shall prepare a comprehensive plan pursuant to KRS 100.187 to KRS 100.197. The term "planning unit" is defined under KRS 100.111 to mean any city or county, or any combination of cities, counties, or parts of counties engaged in planning operations.
Under the facts presented, the City of Elizabethtown and Hardin County have apparently established and are operating as separate independent planning units, which each can do provided the interrogation procedure under the terms of KRS 100.117 has been followed. Assuming this to be the case, the city and county are presently separate planning units, which means that each adopts its individual comprehensive plan governing its respective jurisdictions. As a consequence, the county does not adopt Elizabethtown's Comprehensive Plan. It is only where the city and county are operating a joint planning commission, that each adopts a joint Comprehensive Plan.