Sussex County Council offers updates for its upcoming comprehensive plan revision.
Sussex County began the process of revising for its comp plan early- near the end of 2025. Comprehensive plan updates are required at least once every ten years by state statute.
The county is working with Philadelphia based consultant McCormick Taylor, who are also employing the help of Econsult Solutions, also based in Philadelphia.
John Mullen, director of planning & communications services at McCormick Taylor, says the firm's current work is gathering data on population trends in Sussex.
“Essentially just taking an assessment of what has happened over the last 10 years in the county, collecting information data, mapping information, and reviewing plans and studies. Also looking at certain trends that may be occurring so we can get a good framework for where we are today, and where the county may be going in the future.” he said.
ESI was brought on by McCormick specifically to assist in population data gathering and processing.
Ian Bowen, director at Econsult Solutions, says their work in population metrics typically comes down to three steps.
“First being to go out and produce a current year estimate of the seasonal population. Task two is then to take that current year estimate and project it forward, and then task three is looking backwards and comparing some historical population estimates that have been being produced by the Delaware Population Consortium.”
Council Member Steve McCarron voiced some concerns about using DPC numbers,
"When the last comp plan was done, the Population Consortium estimated that there would 260,000 people by 2045 in Sussex. There's currently 277,000 people, 20 years early." he said.
McCormick leaders say models predicting growth have evolved to be more accurate since then, and noted that figure was taken pre-pandemic, which further complicated population trends.
They note they also reference other data beyond the Consortium to ensure their estimates are accurate.
Mullen says the firm's next step is to take the data they collect and finalize it into something County Council can easily read and digest, as well as using that data to develop projections on future populations.
