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The Coon Rapids approach is to first create zoning districts directly consistent with comprehensive plan land use designations. According to the city's planning director, this has been accomplished. The city then defined and initiated a process to rezone to achieve consistency with the plan. Since the local interpretation in Coon Rapids, prior to the new legislation, had been that the comprehensive plan superoedes zoning where the two conflict, the city will now accelerate the process of proposing zoning changes consistent with the plan. This process will involve either a reaffirmation of the comprehensive plan through the decision to rezone consistent with the plan, or a rejection of the comprehensive plan and adoption of plan amendments consistent with either existing zoning or other appropriate plan and rezoning actions. Plymouth approached the consistency issue by promptly reconciling the city's zoning ordinance and Land Use Guide Plan after the adoption of an updated comprehensive plan in 1980. The city "methodically" identified every case of inconsistency between the Guide Plan and the zoning ordinance and, over a six- month period, initiated approximately 24 public hearings to reconcile identified inconsistencies. Minnetonka recently revised the entire zoning ordinance text to conform to its comprehensive plan.. In the future, zoning map changes will be made as development occurs, but they will be made in accordance with the comprehensive plan. IMPLICATIONS OF RECENT LEGISLATION AND SURVEY FINDINGS FOR COMPREHENSIVE PLANNING IN THE METRO AREA Very soon after adoption of the 1985 amendment to the MLPA giving the zoning ordinance precedence over the comprehensive plan where the two conflict, there seemed to be a fear that the need for comprehensive planning would be diminished. Early interpretations of the amendment seemed to require local communities to look no further than their zoning ordinances to accomplish local planning. By taking comprehensive planning out of a more policy, goals and objectives context and putting it into a context which seemed to encourage only politically-expedient land use decisions, the practice of truly comprehensive planning and the effective use of a comprehensive plan to guide individual land use decisions would seemingly disappear. After studying the issue, potential consequences of the amendment and the approaches Metropolitan Area communities appear to be taking towards planning and zoning, there seems to be much less need for alarm than originally supposed. The reasons are four-fold. First, the 1985 legislation giving precedence to the zoning ordinance appears merely to validate and confirm local perception of. the zoning ordinance. For most survey respondents, the zoning ordinance has usually been given precedence where the ordinance and comprehensive plan conflict because it is a legally enforceable document. Second, despite their giving precedence to the zoning ordinance,, most Metropolitan Area communities still appear to use the comprehensive plan to provide a longer-range framework and context for day-to-day zoning decisions. Reading through the lines of survey responses reveals an underlying dependence on the comprehensive plan as a community's statement of the overall direction it should take in terms of land use and development. 10