Oro Valley’s next 10-year plan is no longer a draft. In November, it’s a vote.
Over the past three years, thousands of residents filled out surveys, covered easels in sticky notes, and discussed their ideas and priorities through Zoom calls to help shape Oro Valley’s next General Plan. On May 6, Town Council voted unanimously to send that plan, known as OV’s Path Forward, to the November ballot. We sat down with Milini Simms, the town’s lead on the project, to talk through what changed, what didn’t, and what happens next.
Simms said the May 6 vote closed a loop that started with residents, not staff. A working group reconvened in December to hash out a handful of areas that needed further refinement, and by the time it reached Council, it reflected the consensus the group had built over months of give-and-take.
“That was my feeling taking away from that,” Simms said. “I really appreciated Council for acknowledging all the effort that went into it and respecting all the residents’ hard work to get the plan to where it was.”
One thing residents should know: the plan Council approved in May is the exact plan on the ballot. State law requires a general plan to go before Council at least 120 days before an election, which means no last-minute edits and no opening for the incoming Council, seated in November, to weigh in before you vote.
Council’s May edits weren’t substantive rewrites. Simms pointed to language changes like swapping “maintain a safe community” for “ensure a safe community,” a small wording shift meant to give the plan more enforcement teeth. Other edits clarified overlapping actions, like distinguishing a housing plan from a housing inventory, so that if every staff member on the project left tomorrow, someone new could pick up the plan and know exactly what residents intended.
The current 2016 General Plan reached 100% completion by its final progress report this past January. But Simms said four or five bigger-ticket actions got there by being folded into OV’s Path Forward rather than checked off outright. The clearest example is community gathering space. Residents asked for it in 2016 and are still asking for it now, but the concept has sharpened considerably: walkable, shaded, connected to the Loop, with public art or architecture that makes a location a destination rather than just a plaza.
OV’s Path Forward runs about 286 action items, and Simms said the numbering isn’t a ranked priority list. Actions are sorted by timeframe instead. Some are ongoing commitments, such as roadway and pavement preservation, meant to protect what residents already value. Others are one- to two-year items that the town already has the staff and resources to tackle. The three-to-six-year and seven-to-ten-year buckets hold the larger projects that need more community input, funding, or other resources before they can move forward.
More than half of the 286 actions are considered ongoing. The rest get revisited every two years through a Strategic Plan process that re-ranks what’s left based on what’s changed, then feeds into department work plans and budgets. That two-year check-in, Simms said, is how the town can implement a 10-year plan without pretending it knew everything on day one.
Not every action carries a price tag. Many are code amendments the town’s own planning staff can absorb into existing workloads. Others, especially anything involving new infrastructure, do require funding through the town’s capital improvement program, and transportation-related actions tend to call for studies (traffic patterns, signal timing) rather than naming a specific road project outright.
All can agree that building heights is a very important issue in Oro Valley and conserving mountain views is a top priority. Some residents, she said, favor lower heights across the board, while others acknowledge that terrain can hide a taller structure entirely from view. The plan aims to balance both perspectives by reflecting the preference for lower heights while providing flexibility on a case-by-case basis.
This is the one area, Simms said, where the resident working group had majority agreement but never reached full consensus by everyone. The plan includes a guiding principle to protect scenic views, with policies that express a preference for one- to two-story buildings and specifically limit height for new apartment developments. But it also preserves a case-by-case exception: a taller building can still be considered if it’s a use the town specifically wants, such as a major employer bringing jobs and revenue, and it would likely require public hearings to get there. Nothing taller gets approved automatically.
Simms pointed to the biotech campus in Innovation Park as the model example. It was allowed extra height initially because the town wanted that employer, though building heights there have since evened out with the rest of the park.
Both properties appear on the plan’s land use map within what’s called a “planning area,” a boundary that encompasses land around Oro Valley that could influence the town (traffic, environment, growth), even though it isn’t an annexation policy. It stretches out to Marana’s boundary and includes pockets of Pima County and State Trust land.
Arroyo Grande has been part of Oro Valley’s general plan since the 1990s. It’s roughly 9,600 acres of vacant, state-owned land stretching north of town toward the Pinal County line. A 2008 general plan amendment, undertaken jointly with the State Land Department, Pima County, and area residents, produced the land-use framework still in place today, including a wildlife corridor connecting the Catalina and Tortolita mountains near the wildlife bridge. OV’s Path Forward carried those special area policies forward largely as-is. The one minor change is for compliance with state law, which prohibits a town from designating land as open space without the landowner’s written approval. So that designation stays provisional, with an understanding that any density tied to the open space area could shift to the parcels planned for development.
Tangerine 880, also state-owned, is notable for a dense concentration of heritage saguaros and ironwoods. Council held a study session on it last October and gave staff direction; staff expects to bring updated guidance back to Council this fall. The general plan requires new development, including future annexations, to protect heritage saguaros and ironwoods. Simms cited two existing subdivisions near Naranja and La Cañada, across from Ironwood Ridge High School, where developers walked the entire site with town staff, hand-marking grading limits around individual heritage plants before construction began.
Should the plan fail in November, the current 2016 General Plan simply stays in effect until a new plan is approved, and the process would return in a future election cycle. Oro Valley has been here before: it was the first Arizona jurisdiction to have a general plan rejected by voters, back in 2003. That plan featured multiple land-use scenarios that Simms said confused voters and relied heavily on an outside consultant rather than on resident engagement. It passed on a second try in 2005, and Simms said the experience reshaped how the town ran this effort, including the resident-driven approach behind OV’s Path Forward.
On turnout: state law requires only a simple majority of votes cast, with no minimum turnout threshold. Whatever share of Oro Valley shows up to vote, a simple 50%-plus-one approval is enough to pass it.
Asked to sum it up, Simms kept it simple: this is the residents’ plan. Built by people who stopped at a booth, filled out a survey, or discussed during a working session, not by staff working in isolation. She’s encouraging everyone to review the plan before voting and to expect to see it as a distinct item on their November ballot.
One clarification she wanted to make sure landed: Council’s May vote didn’t finalize anything. It only referred the plan to voters. The plan isn’t done, and residents are the ones who finish it.
Look for signs, postcards, and social media content on OV’s Path Forward to ramp back up as the election nears, along with a new round of Community Academy sessions starting September 15, including a session on annexations. OV Path Forward’s resident-made and consultant-produced videos will also be available for viewing ahead of the vote.
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