Comprehensive Plan

In 1993, the City Council adopted a Mission Statement for the City of Cortez. This statement represents the motivation that drives our City government:

It is the City’s mission to make Cortez a desirable place for families to live and work.

That same year, Council also adopted a new Comprehensive Plan and three years later, Council adopted a new Land Use Code. Both documents were aimed at guiding future growth and development of the City.

In 2000, the City began an effort to update the Comprehensive Plan, holding several neighborhood meetings to solicit input from the citizens regarding their desires for the City. In 2006 the effort was renewed, and in August 2008 City Council adopted a new Comprehensive Plan which includes a set of Core Values to guide decision-making.

In that same year, City Council also adopted the 2020 Illustrated Vision and the following 2020 Vision Statement for the City of Cortez:

Centrally located in a rural landscape of agriculture and rich public lands, the City of Cortez provides outstanding and innovative public services while demonstrating the values of our thriving community. Taking pride in our history, diversity, and environment, our friendly community is full of opportunity, making housing, goods, and services universally attainable. The City’s safe, efficient, and effective leadership maintains a small-town atmosphere where diversity and a sense of community coexist in integrated livable neighborhoods and a vivacious downtown.

What is the Comprehensive Plan?

The Comprehensive Plan is intended to be a guide that the city government uses in making daily decisions, based on the direction that the community intends to go, in accordance with the adopted Mission and Vision Statements. This plan promotes health, safety, morals, order, convenience, prosperity, general welfare, efficiency, and economy in the process of city wide development. It details the provisions for organized development, growth management, proper and organized transportation routes, promotion of high-quality civic design and arrangement, and adequate public utilities, facilities, and services.

This Comprehensive Plan is intended to create the strategy for reaching our Vision for the City of Cortez. We go beyond the statutory requirements for a Master Plan to plan to make our City into a thriving community. The success of this vision is not just the responsibility of municipal staff and officials, although they are expected to take a leadership role. This vision generally applies to the activities of all individuals within the community.