Workshop promotes growth models

By TOM KANE

LAKE WALLENPAUPACK, PA — A seminar on the latest, most successful methods to promote and guide land use and community planning in Pennsylvania attracted 25 municipal officials and others to the PPL Learning Center on June 28.

Planning board members, township board members, individuals from environmental and action groups, a code enforcement officer, a member of the Pike County Planning Commission, individuals from service organizations, interested residents and members of the press were in the audience.

“We need to prepare for the growth that is coming,” said Susan Beecher, District Manager of the Pike County Conservation District, one of the organizers and sponsors of the seminar. “We’re looking to provide educational information for municipal officials, planners and residents so that they know the options for handling growth that are so successful in other communities.”

“We need to know what growth issues we are facing and how we can address them,” said Michael Mrozinski, Director of the Pike County Planning Department, another sponsor of the workshop. “We’ll be holding five more seminars on other related topics from July to October.

Two specialists from the Pennsylvania Governor’s Center for Local Government, Neil Kinsey and Phil Robbins, conducted the training, introducing new planning methods and sharing the experience of other PA municipalities who used them.

One of the strategies they highlighted was multi-municipal planning.

“One quarter of all PA municipalities are involved in some kind of multi-municipal planning,” Kinsey said. “It’s a growing practice in the state and has achieved remarkable success.”

Kinsey enumerated the advantages of multi-municipal planning: it saves money, reduces redundancy in infrastructure projects, minimizes environmental impacts, preserves open space, distributes cost over larger populations, maintains farmland and distributes all land uses over a wider geographic area.

Other strategies discussed were transfer of development rights, adoption of an official map for a community, creating designated growth areas, transportation impact fees, overlay zoning, traditional neighborhood development, conservation subdivision and agriculture zoning.

“In Damascus Township, we’re just getting started in developing a master plan,” said Sandra Maciejewski, a member of the township planning board who attended the meeting. “This kind of training is very good for me right now.”

Attendee Neal Halloran, code enforcement officer for the Town of Goshen in Orange County, NY said the ideas expressed were valid in any municipality. “There are only minor adjustments to be made,” he said.

The workshop was given through the auspices of the Pennsylvania Supervisors Association of Townships, and funded, in part, by the Visioning Committee of the Upper Delaware River Corridor.