By Janine DavisRecord Staff WriterThe city of Marthasville isn’t wasting time implementing its comprehensive plan recommendations“The plan is already showing its worth in the short-term projects we’ve accomplished or have underway,” said Mayor Jason Schantz at the Feb. 18 board of alderman meeting.At the meeting, the board approved the final payment of $13,978 to Boonslick Regional Planning Commission (BRPC) for its work on creating the first-ever comprehensive plan in Marthasville’s 200-year history. The total cost for the work was $27,956, which was paid over two fiscal years.The city has already moved ahead with improvements in some of the priority areas outlined in the plan, including maintaining and improving community facilities and public infrastructure and stepping up city services.Those improvements include new bathrooms along with playground and pavilion upgrades at City Park, formation of a comprehensive City Parks Board for all parks, additional concerts in the park, beefing up police protection and equipment, and hiring additional snowplow and other streets and maintenance crew personnel.“We’ve really got a lot of irons in the fire on short-term projects that our citizens said they want,” said Schantz. “We’re going to be looking at the longer-term projects next.”Among park upgrades are improvements for Rusche Park. Alderwoman Pam Jensen also is on the City Parks Board, which meets monthly.“Our plan is to bring in the conservation department to give us some guidance on clearing the land and tree identification,” Jensen reported. “We want to keep it a natural habitat, but get rid of some of the junk that’s in there in a thoughtful way that considers the slope that’s there,” referring to erosion issues.Jensen said a key goal is to thoughtfully manage the tree population in the park.Another area of work could be sprucing up the area around the basketball court, she said.“There are a lot of kids playing basketball, so we thought we might clean up the area and put some blacktop on it,” Jensen said, noting that this could be done in conjunction with street maintenance in the spring.Schantz said the city is poised to start tackling longer term projects.“The next steps for the board to consider in implementing the plan are updating building design guidelines for water, streets and sewer, and if we want to look at building codes and whatever staffing that would require,” said Schantz. “Another is thinking about whether we want to implement planning and zoning, which would require a new contract with a consultant to work with the plan task force and board.”Schantz said one of the next steps the board could take is to invite BRPC to brief officials on general planning and zoning considerations.The next board meeting is Wednesday, March 18, at 7 p.m.City of Marthasville