Coconino County's Comprehensive Plan Update

Coconino County, Arizona, one of the largest counties in the continental U.S. by land area, faced the formidable challenge of conducting inclusive public engagement for its 10-year Comprehensive Plan update across vast, remote, and rural territories. Recognizing the need for accessible, scalable, and geographically flexible public participation, the County turned to Konveio to complement in-person outreach and serve as its project website.

Challenge 

The primary challenge for Coconino County was engaging residents spread across 12 million acres, with communities often separated by hours of travel. Additionally, many residents lack reliable internet access, complicating outreach efforts. Compounding these geographic challenges were statutory requirements under Arizona's "Growing Smarter" Act that mandate a formal Public Participation Plan and a 60-day comment period involving municipalities, adjacent counties, and state/federal agencies.

Solution 

Konveio enabled Coconino County to:

• Host its Comprehensive Plan draft and related documents on a public-facing project site.
• Serve as an official platform for the 60-day review period, allowing agencies like BLM and Arizona State Lands to leave detailed, contextual comments.
• A platform that long-range planning staff could directly manage and update.
• Offer the public—especially in remote areas—an asynchronous way to engage with documents and submit feedback.

Staff used Konveio as the primary outreach and engagement site, uploading draft chapters, informational handouts, community assessment reports, and other key documents. The platform supported transparency by allowing all comments to be viewed publicly and enabled thorough comment tracking via pdf and csv report export features.

Public Participation Highlights

• Approximately 200 comments were submitted through Konveio during the required 60-day review period.
• The City of Flagstaff's regional plan, hosted on the same platform and will be adopted as part of the County's Comprehensive Plan, received nearly 1,300 comments.
• Several agencies and jurisdictions provided extensive feedback directly within the documents.
• Minimal use of email submissions suggested user preference for Konveio's convenience.

Hybrid Strategy - Coconino County employed a hybrid engagement approach:

• Conducted in-person workshops, open houses, and focus groups across the County.
• Shared flyers and introduced the Konveio site during live events.
• Enabled remote follow-up for those with internet access to review content and submit feedback online.

This hybrid method proved essential to meet the needs of both internet-connected residents and rural populations more reliant on in-person touchpoints.

Impact

The County's planning team was lean, with one lead long-range planner managing most of the update.

• With limited consulting budget and no external authors for the plan, Konveio became the primary digital engagement tool.
• Staff could export all public comments from Konveio, add offline input, and generate a single, sortable tracker used to inform revisions.
• The County later uploaded a response matrix to show how each comment was addressed, reinforcing transparency.

Reflections & Feedback

"For the Comprehensive Plan, I honestly don’t know what we would have done without Konveio. It gave people from all corners of our 12-million-acre county a way to read the draft and comment directly. BLM and local jurisdictions left incredibly helpful feedback in the platform, and having everything centralized made it manageable for our small team."

Looking Ahead 

With adoption hearings underway and a planned final vote by the end of 2025, Coconino County has effectively demonstrated the value of hybrid public engagement at scale. As the County's population remains largely rural and internet access remains inconsistent, tools like Konveio will continue to play a pivotal role in equitable planning and civic participation.