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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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