Polk County has received an award for its 20/20 Vision comprehensive plan.

Commissioners announced the award during a meeting held Monday and thanked the county’s planning department, Dale Holland of Holland and Associates and the visioning committee for their efforts.

The county is receiving the award from the North Carolina Chapter of the American Planning Association. The county was chosen as the recipient of the 2010 North Carolina Marvin Collins Planning Award in the Outstanding Planning Award-Comprehensive Planning (small community) category.

Commissioner Rene McDermott made the announcement this week and said the county should be very proud of its planning department, Holland and its visioning committee because not many of these awards are given.

The North Carolina Chapter of the American Planning Association plans to present the award to Polk County during the countys Nov. 1 meeting.

The award recognizes plans, projects or processes of unusually high merit adopted or enacted in the current or past two calendar years, said Karen Smith, AICP, NCAPA Awards Committee co-chair.

The award will also be presented during the North Carolina Annual Planning Conference Awards Luncheon on Sept. 30 at the New Bern Riverfront Convention Center. Polk County officials are entitled to two complimentary meals at the luncheon.

Polk County adopted its 20/20 Vision Plan last year as the countys long-range comprehensive plan. The plan included community meetings to give feedback for what residents want to see in the county over the next several years as well as a survey distributed to all households.

The visioning committee was formed of residents from all townships in the county.

The county is now working to implement the plan by creating a unified development ordinance (UDO), which will combine all the countys ordinances into one document as well as make needed changes to ordinances and add new ones if needed to follow the plan.

The county recently appointed the UDO committee, and meetings began recently.