Girding for growth

Techniques are available to make development a win-win situation for local municipalities

A developer comes before a local planning board with a proposal – to build 45 housing units, or a mini-shopping mall, or a factory building, or even a race track for private use. Neighbors as well as other residents are upset. They show up at board meetings to express their outrage. Both sides threaten to sue the board if its decision goes against their wishes.

Trying to juggle such competing interests and concerns challenges the many residents who serve on local land use boards. All 18 towns in Columbia County as well as some of the 4 villages and the City of Hudson have these planning boards and most also have zoning boards. Serving on these boards are dedicated residents who, for little or no pay, must sort through what are increasingly contentious community issues. Think Widewaters in Kinderhook. Think Wilzig's race track in Taghkanic. Think Housing Resources' Copake Commons.

The result is sometimes a long drawn out process that is costly for everyone involved, including the municipality and its taxpayers. And a hidden cost is the chilling effect on businesses looking to expand or relocate to the area, which can bring needed services and an expanded tax base.

To support the often difficult work of local planning and zoning boards, the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce and the Columbia Hudson Partnership will sponsor one-day workshops around the county in March of 2007 for those who serve on these boards as well as town supervisors and village mayors. Titled “Local Land Use Decision-Making,” the sessions will be run by the Pace Land Use Law Center .

According to the Center, the land-use regulations adopted by individual communities create a blueprint for sprawl or for smart growth—for random development or for growth that is directed to appropriate areas and that preserves natural and cultural resources, open space, and quality of life.

The Center offers training opportunities to community leaders representing all interest groups involved in land use matters, introduces them to innovative land-use techniques and works to develop consensus among stakeholders in the development process.

Similar to sessions Pace runs for Dutchess County , the workshops focus on the roles and responsibilities of land use decision-makers. They help identify stakeholders (developer, neighbor, officials), facilitate examining needs vs. wants as well as issues vs. wants, and develop leadership skills so that all sides of a contentious application are still talking to one another after the process.

The Land Use Leaders Training Program is designed to benefit zoning and planning board members, members of other administrative boards, members of local legislative bodies, and future board members. The program consists of training modules that teach local board members:

•  how the land use system operates,

•  procedural aspects of land use decision-making,

•  board roles and responsibilities,

•  local conservation and development techniques, and

•  how to use mediation to resolve land use disputes creatively.  

The training gives local board members the practical and technical skills they need to make sound land use decisions and to address critical land use issues facing their communities.

Each one-day program is effective because it is tailored to the specific issues of the participants. The program adopted by the Dutchess County legislature has been used to train more than 125 local leaders from nearly every municipality in Dutchess.

The Pace workshop will “capacity build,” explains Todd Erling of the co-sponsoring Partnership. He attended a four-day version Pace ran last spring for land use officials in the Hudson Valley region.

“Projects can happen where everyone wins,” says Erling, even though the very word “developer” often has a bad connotation.

The Chamber and the Partnership, the economic development agency in the county, were motivated to bring the program to Columbia because the patchwork of local land use regulations and their sometimes inconsistent application can be a nightmare for businesses wanting to grow.

Chamber Vice Chairman John Maiuri recounted the difficulties for an up-and-coming entrepreneur who wanted to buy a national auto service franchise in one local town. “The planning board set him back six to eight months. They treated a 30-year-old kid just as if he were Wal-Mart coming to town. Some of the standards go well beyond the financial means of a small business wanting to grow.”

“The Pace program will define the legal guidelines and vulnerabilities,” says David Colby, President of the Chamber. “It will also provide an opportunity for local leaders to share their best practices, as well as raise specific problems they want addressed.”

“Without proper planning, it is hard to achieve enough of a balance to attract business and industry on the basis you want it,” says Jim Galvin, Director of the Columbia Hudson Partnership and a resident of Ghent . “If you're educated on the proper tools, you can make better decisions.”

2007 Workshops

Members of local municipal boards have the opportunity to participate in professional development workshops scheduled around the county in March 2007 conducted by Pace University . The sessions meet new state training requirements for local land use boards, and with the Columbia Hudson Partnership and the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce underwriting the cost, there will be only a modest registration fee. The exact dates will be announced after the first of the year, but interested officials can contact Todd Erling at the Partnership, 828-4718.