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Third, following from the first two reasons, it appears that many communities comply with the MLPA requirement prohibiting adoption of official controls which are in conflict with a comprehensive plan. There seems to be fairly serious attention in the Metropolitan Area to maintaining some degree of consistency between the two documents, or to beginning a major effort to reconcile them at some point in the future and then to continue to keep them consistent· Finally, the prohibition of adoption of offioal controls in conflict with a comprehensive plan remains in the MLPA. Technically, at least, municipalities in the Metropolitan Area should not be creating situations where the two conflict and, thus, where the 1985 amendment would apply. Despite these reassurances that the threat of zoning ordinance precedence is not as prominent as originally feared, some patterns emerged from the survey (and from further analysis of the entire consistency issue) which indicate that comprehensive planning and zoning may not function as "neatly" as they should. First of all, inconsistency between local comprehensive plans and zoning ordinances comes out in some surveys, yet those communities do not consider it a problem. Because the design of the survey does not allow a very specific look at the type or extent of the inconsistency (it may range from undeveloped land being zoned Agricultural but designated as High Density Residential in the Land Use Plan, to residential land being designated as Low Density Residential in the Land Use Plan yet zoned for High Density Residential), it is difficult to tell whether it really is a problem. It is likely, however, that there are cases where the differences between the comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance are significant enough to warrant concern. Not only might the attainment of the city's goals and policies be jeopardized, but the protection of regional systems could be threatened. Further, local development could be impacted if regional system allocations (based on the level of development permitted in the comprehensive plan) are not sufficient to service the level of development allowed in the zoning ordinance. Second, there are a few communities that support the new legislation because it gives them an "out" to ignore the comprehensive plan when making land use decisions and allows the plan to become out-of-date and useless. For these communities, the fears mentioned above still exist. Rather than reconcile inconsistencies between the comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance, the communities will simply plan by zoning. Obviously, the effect on community development, infrastructure investments, quality of life and a variety of other factors can be disastrous--these communities will not have the essential longer- range perspective which the comprehensive plan provides. Further, they will not base their official controls on a document which represents the community's vision for the future or which ties the components of a community (housing, transportation, parks and open space, agricultural preservation, land use, etc.) into a coordinated whole. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? Based on the observations noted above, it appears that the focus of action on the consistency issue should be in four areas: Encoura~in~ and/or assisting MetropoliS.an Area communities to update or amend their comprehensive plans so that they are a useful~ functional guide to day-to-day land use decisions.