SAN MARCOS -- A small but insistent group of residents told the City Council on Wednesday that the city needs to involve as many ordinary citizens as possible in a proposed update of a document that has guided San Marcos' growth for more than 20 years.

That includes skipping a suggestion to put a citizens advisory committee in charge of the project, the residents said.

The residents urged the council to instead use the same neighborhood-meetings approach it used when parts of the document known as the San Marcos General Plan was revised in 1984 and 1987. The meetings gave residents in each of the city's seven unique residential communities a chance to weigh in on the document.

"This is what we asked for, and this is what we got," longtime Twin Oaks Valley resident Elaine Coleman said about the heavy level of resident participation. "And 29 years later, knock on wood, the plan has held up."

The input came during a workshop the council convened to discuss the best way to go about updating the general plan. About a dozen residents attended the session.

The general plan lays out guidelines for several aspects of the city's growth, including land use, housing, traffic circulation, public safety, noise, open space and conservation. The document has never been completely updated.

The council included a general plan update on a list of its goals and objectives last year. A consultant has estimated the project will cost $1.1 million to $1.8 million and take one to two years to complete.

Planning Director Jerry Backoff said Wednesday that state law does not require cities to update their general plans.

However, they typically are revised every 10 to 20 years, he said. And cities that go more than 10 years without an update are put on a list maintained by the state attorney general, said Backoff.

Some council members have questioned whether the city could get by with another partial update or whether the project could be done in phases.

Backoff said Wednesday that the document's segments are so intertwined that they all affect one another, making a partial update impractical.

New issues that surfaced in recent years and changes in state law -- including one that requires cities to start reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 --- also make a complete update imperative, he said.

Backoff said the city has several choices when it comes to the way the update is carried out. Forming an advisory committee that would include one representative from each of the city's neighborhoods was one idea he offered.

Community "visioning" meetings, such as those that let residents share their ideas during early plan revisions, and presentations to community groups were some of the other options the planning director listed.

Other residents at the meeting nodded emphatically when frequent council critic Nina Patterson said an advisory committee was the last thing she wanted to see because appointees were likely to be council allies.

The approach also would also leave out hundreds of residents who might want to weigh in on the update, she said.

"Personally, the idea of having one person selected by this council represent all of us (in a particular neighborhood) is horrifying to me," Patterson said. "That, to me, is typical of the type of political thinking that I personally am tired of seeing."

Mayor Jim Desmond said it was clear residents want any public outreach and citizen involvement efforts to be as broad as possible. The city's staff was asked to bring a plan for reaching as many residents as possible to a future meeting.

Contact staff writer Andrea Moss at (760) 739-6654 or amoss@nctimes.com.