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GENERAL
INFORMATION
Why
Plan?
Smart Growth Overview
Smart Growth Defined
Definition
of the 14 Goals
State Planning
Grants
Why Plan?
Everybody plans. People make financial plans, work plans, and even retirement
plans to help them efficiently achieve their goals. Planning helps each of
us work toward accomplishing our objectives in an orderly and timely fashion.
Similarly, planning also helps communities avoid costly errors by allowing
them to carefully consider future issues and needs. Other reasons that community’s
plan include:
• Planning helps a community
identify its assets and weaknesses and defines actions
to address them.
• Uncontrolled, haphazard development that may damage or detract from a
community’s assets is prevented through good planning.
• Planning requires community members to get involved in defining the characteristics
they want in their communities. The planning process empowers individuals and
the whole community by encouraging them to become involved and stay informed
about planning and land use decisions.
• Planning helps a community estimate future needs for schools, roads,
fire stations, housing, sewer and water extensions.
• Tax money is saved by purchasing land and other resources at today’s
prices to meet those future needs.
• Planning gives potential developers, homebuilders, and businesses a predictable
and consistent set of guidelines.
• Comprehensive planning is now mandated under the state’s Smart
Growth legislation.
Smart Growth Overview
In October 1999, Governor Tommy Thompson signed into law Wisconsin’s
new Comprehensive Planning and Smart Growth Legislation. The legislation ensures
that by 2010, every city, village, county and town in the state that wishes
to engage in any program or action that affects land use will be guided by
a comprehensive plan as defined by state statute.
This legislation was crafted by many diverse interest groups, including:
• Wisconsin Builders Association
• Wisconsin Realtors Association
• 1000 Friends of Wisconsin
• Wisconsin Chapter of the American Planning Association
• Wisconsin Council of Regional Planning Organizations
• Wisconsin Counties Association
• Wisconsin League of Municipalities
• Wisconsin Alliance of Cities
• Wisconsin Town’s Association
• Wisconsin Department of Administration
The new law was passed to ensure responsible planning, create a framework such
that the planning is implemented, rein in sprawl and enhance the health of
our urban and rural communities.
Smart Growth Defined
Smart growth is defined by the Urban Land Institute as “growth that is
economically sound, environmentally friendly, and supports community values
and livability.”
Wisconsin’s Smart Growth legislation allows communities to plan for any
type of future they desire, but the law does define what must be included in
the plan.
• Smart Growth provides state planning
grants [link to definition below]-- but only if communities
promise to meet six criteria. Each plan must: include nine
elements, meet local planning goals, designate Smart Growth
Areas to which state and local infrastructure will be directed,
be completed within 30 months, create implementing ordinances
and provide for public participation.
• Plans must include nine elements [link to page describing the elements]:
issues & opportunities; housing; transportation; utilities & community
facilities; agricultural, natural & cultural resources; economic development;
intergovernmental cooperation; land use and implementation.
• Smart Growth outlines fourteen goals [link to the 14 goals] that communities
are encouraged to work toward in their plans. Additionally, any community that
receives a state planning grant is required to include these goals in their plan.
• Smart Growth requires all cities and villages above 12,500 in population
to adopt a model traditional neighborhood development ordinance (TND). It also
requires the University of Wisconsin Extension to develop a model conservation
subdivision ordinance that communities may adopt.
• Traditional neighborhood developments are compact, mixed-use neighborhoods
where residential, commercial and civic buildings are within close proximity
to each other.
• Conservation
subdivisions are housing developments in rural areas that are characterized
by compact lots and common open spaces. In this type of development,
the natural features of the land are maintained to the greatest extent
possible.
• The new law provides specific minimum public participation [link to public
participation section] standards that all local planning efforts must follow,
whether the planning effort receives state funding or not.
• An
additional requirement of the new law is consistency. Beginning on
January 1, 2010, local land use actions must be consistent with a
comprehensive plan. This applies to zoning, annexations, official
mapping, subdivision regulation, ordinances, plans, land regulations,
etc. This means that unless a community intends to take no official
actions regarding land use whatsoever, it should have a comprehensive
plan in place by January 1, 2010. That date (a full ten years from
passage of the legislation) was selected to give communities enough
time to complete their plans.
Definition
of the 14 Goals
The new law provides fourteen goals that state agencies are asked to consider
when taking actions and which communities must consider when writing a comprehensive
plan with state planning aids:
1. Promotion of the redevelopment
of lands with existing infrastructure and public services and the
maintenance and rehabilitation of existing residential, commercial
and industrial structures.
2. Encouragement of neighborhood designs that
support a range of transportation choices.
3. Protection of natural areas, including wetlands,
wildlife habitats, lakes, woodlands, open spaces and groundwater
resources.
4. Protection of economically productive areas, including
farmland and forests.
5. Encouragement of land uses, densities and regulations that
promote efficient development patterns and relatively low municipal, state
governmental and utility costs.
6. Preservation of cultural, historic and archaeological sites.
7. Encouragement of coordination and cooperation among nearby
units of government.
8. Building of community identity by revitalizing main streets
and enforcing design standards.
9. Providing an adequate supply of affordable housing for
individuals of all income levels throughout each community.
10. Providing adequate infrastructure and public services
and an adequate supply of developable land to meet existing and future market
demand for residential, commercial and industrial uses.
11. Promoting the expansion or stabilization of the current
economic base and the creation of a range of employment opportunities at the
state, regional and local levels.
12. Balancing individual property rights with community interests
and goals.
13. Planning and development of land uses that create or preserve
varied and unique urban and rural communities.
14. Providing an integrated, efficient and economical transportation
system that affords mobility, convenience and safety and that meets the needs
of all citizens, including transit-dependent and disabled citizens.
State
Planning Grants
In 2001, the state began providing funds to help communities write comprehensive
plans. In order to obtain these funds, communities must apply to the state
Land Council. An official body made up of state agency heads and citizens appointed
by the Governor, the Land Council is staffed by the state’s Department
of Administration [link to DOA/grant section]. The first requirement is that
communities must commit to a plan that will address the nine elements required
by the law. Grants will be awarded through a competitive process and communities
will rank higher if they:
• Agree to write a plan that will address the interests of overlapping
or neighboring jurisdictions. So, joint planning efforts among overlapping (counties
and towns, for example) and neighboring jurisdictions (cities and towns, for
example) will score higher than single unit planning proposals.
• Describe how they plan to meet the broad land use goals set out in the
new law. Those goals are described later.
• Agree to designate smart growth areas to which state and local infrastructure
will be directed. Smart growth areas are defined as areas that can be redeveloped
(an old warehouse district, for example) or that have existing municipal services
(like sewer, water and roads that have already been extended to an area that
has not yet been built out) or which are contiguous to existing development and
which can be developed at densities that have relatively low government and utility
service costs.
• Commit to developing the necessary ordinances to actually execute the
plan.
• Commit to finishing the planning process within two-and-one-half years.
• Commit to providing opportunities for public participation throughout
the planning process.
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