Dan Glotz, Warren county planner, is on the right track when he says the next county comprehensive plan should identify recommendations from past plans that haven’t been carried out yet.

But we hope Mackin Engineeering doesn’t just stop at including those uncompleted steps in its new plan. The important question is why those steps weren’t taken even though they were recommended by both outside consultants and, we’d assume, by community members who took part in the planning process.

We don’t make that suggestion to throw a wet blanket on upcoming comprehensive planning process. In our view, however, understanding why previous community goals weren’t achievable is an important part of coming up with a new comprehensive plan that isn’t a series of pipe dream recommendations that get people excited at first and then leave them disappointed when the Warren County featured in the comprehensive plan never becomes the Warren County we all inhabit in real life.

Creating a realistic plan must include a realistic evaluation of the resources that are likely to come to Warren County to implement the plan’s recommendations. Any plan that doesn’t have at least some discussion of how much things are likely to cost, the likelihood of Warren County being able to pay for the project makes the comprehensive plan the very definition of pie in the sky. And, any project should have realistic projections of visitors and economic impact.

Glotz wants this plan to be implemented instead of being a pipe dream. We couldn’t agree more.