New members will be able to implement the State Development and Redevelopment Plan
By: David Campbell
Dianne Brake, president of The Regional Planning Partnership, a nonprofit organization that advocates for "smart growth," had a few choice words for the newly convened State Planning Commission at its recent meeting.
Ms. Brake told commission members, many newly appointed by the governor, that they are the first generation of commissioners to have the opportunity to implement the State Development and Redevelopment Plan, the state’s blueprint for smart growth.
"Implementation has never really been tried," she said. "This new commission is the one which will really try to understand how to put the plan into action."
The State Plan’s smart growth approach aims to focus new development and redevelopment in "regional centers" in order to protect undeveloped open spaces and diminish sprawl. The plan seeks a balance between conservation and economic growth.
According to Ms. Brake, herself a former commissioner, until now the State Planning Commission has focused on developing and revising the State Plan and not on implementation.
The first State Plan was finalized in 1992 in response to a mandate by the state Legislature under the State Planning Act, which was signed by former Gov. Thomas Kean in 1986.
The Planning Commission was created under the legislation, as was the Office of State Planning, which has been renamed the Office of Smart Growth under Gov. James E. McGreevey.
Also, the State Planning Act directed that a State Plan be developed, and the act created a statewide planning process called Cross-acceptance to ensure that state, county and local governments, with the public, participate in preparing and updating the State Plan, and that compatibility among policies at all levels is sought.
The first round of cross-acceptance began following the enactment of the State Planning Act, and the second round began with the Planning Commission’s release of its preliminary revised State Plan in 1997. The final draft of the revised State Plan was approved March 1, 2001.
Ms. Brake recommended the commission now focus its implementation efforts by concentrating on three key systems the economy, transportation and the environment. Economic growth targets must be set; transit corridors must be selected; and watersheds must be protected, she said.
"The commission needs to know how much growth municipalities have currently zoned for and where they currently say it will go," Ms. Brake said.
"This picture of the future build-out of the state, anticipated to be reached when today’s babies become teen-agers, must be changed to avoid all the bad things that go along with ‘dumb growth’ traffic congestion, loss of open space, air and water pollution," she said.
One of the tools the commission has at its disposal, Ms. Brake said, is the Regional Planning Partnership’s Goal Oriented Zoning (GOZ) computer modeling software, which calculates the amount and type of residential and commercial development that would occur if all developable land were built out as zoned.
GOZ has been used to show that environmental impacts from full build-out in Middlesex, Mercer and Somerset counties are reduced through smart-growth planning under the State Plan, she said.
"I hold out hope to you that if it can be done for one region, it can be done for the whole state, for a better future for all of New Jersey," Ms. Brake said.
Planning Commission Vice Chair Michele Byers said the commission indeed has focused up until now on writing the State Plan rather than implementation.
"We were sidetracked on cross-acceptance, but it didn’t have to be that way," Ms. Byers said. "We wanted to make the plan more user-friendly, more comprehensive. A whole slew of issues kept us busy, but it kept us from working on implementation."
Responding to Ms. Brake’s action plan, Ms. Byers said: "I’m very supportive of everything Dianne has presented. What Dianne’s got are some great ideas and some specific steps that can be done."
Commissioner David Fisher said he agreed with Ms. Brake’s assessment of past work by the commission.
"The past three or four years has focused to a great extent on the reconstruction of the State Plan, and cross-acceptance with municipal bodies and counties to develop a new State Plan," he said.
"I think there’s a new opportunity here now that the re-adopted plan is off to the side a bit to get to the tough job of making a difference, especially in the centers," Mr. Fisher said. "We want to encourage more towns to create centers and encourage redevelopment and improvement."