SPANISH FORT, Ala. — With the city’s Comprehensive Plan formally approved, Chairman Carl Nelson said planning commissioners can now turn their attention to items long placed on the back burner.

To that end, Nelson re-established the commission’s lighting and landscaping advisory committees during Monday’s informal work session and suggested other areas be considered to help move forward implementation of the city’s 15-year blueprint for growth and development more quickly.

Commissioners Maura Dismuke, Fonda Gantt, J.R. Smith, Kevin Diamond and Vice Chairman Bernard Davis will serve on the committees.

Nelson said he would like to see the formation of a panel to undertake subdivision regulations, for which the body has already begun seeking grant funding to implement.

Nelson also encouraged commissioners to pore over the Comprehensive Plan’s myriad short-term goals and “see which ones we can start knocking out and laying down.”

Although the formal notice has not yet been drafted, commissioners agreed that the advisory committees will meet on the second and last Monday of each month at 7 p.m. or immediately following the regular commission meetings already held on those days.

The meetings will be open to the public and will all take place at the same locations as the regular commission meetings immediately prior.

“Once we get these started, let’s not drag it, drag it, drag it, but boom it, boom it, boom it,” Mayor Joe Bonner said.

“It’s important from time to time to get an opportunity to dot some I’s and cross some T’s. We’ve just come off a fast and furious economy, and that gives us the opportunity to step back and see if we’re headed in the direction we need to be,” Bonner said.

To minimize any costs incurred by the city in the name of progress, however, the commission agreed to forego the presence of a city attorney or engineer at the early committee meetings and only bring in the paid experts on an as-needed basis as the panels near the drafting of actual ordinances that require professional consultation.