Community Growth Readiness Workshop Series
building consensus for change

The workshop series is expected to be available in winter 2005.

Through a series of workshops, participants come to consensus on changes to their community’s development rules and workshops. Participants become familiar with the water and land use issues facing their community, and the menu of choices they have to address these issues. They predict how land use is likely to change as population grows. They review maps showing how these changes are likely to affect water quality. They come to consensus on recommended changes to their development rules. They support these recommendations as they are adopted by their community’s elected officials.

Communities are also encouraged to consider using the process described in the Site Planning Roundtable Management Training Workshop.

Workshop locations
The workshop is held in one of the participating jurisdictions conference room. Workshop facilitators work with the Core Team to set dates and times.

Objectives and goals
Participants agree on:
• what they want to accomplish
• obstacles to achieving their goals; resources available to achieve their goals
• steps to accomplishing goals and responsibilities for taking steps
• who else should be involved

Prerequisites
The workshop series is hosted by a community that has formed a Core Team whose responsibility is building consensus for making changes to development rules and processes. The Core Team is chaired by those that work for or with local governments to address land use or water quality issues. The Core Team chair and some of the team members have taken the Site Planning Roundtable Management Training Workshop. This is not mandatory, particularly if local elected officials and key opinion leaders support changing their community’s development rules. The Core Team has evaluated their existing development rules using Center for Watershed Protection’s Codes and Ordinance Worksheet. If multiple jurisdictions are involved, they have completed a Multiple Jurisdiction Review Workshop. The Core Team has developed an action plan for work required to support the workshops.

Participants in the workshops are invited to participate by the Community Core Team. They include key community opinion leaders concerned with development rules effecting land use and water quality.

Materials
Participants use reference material from the Site Planning Roundtable Management Training Workshop. After each workshop, they receive a report of meeting results. Workshop facilitators work with a Core Team to set dates and times.

Certification
Participants do not receive a certificate.

Workshop Series

Workshop 1 - Understanding Growth’s Impact on Water Quality (4 hours)

The stakeholder team learns how urbanization affects water quality and how water quality can have an economic, legal and quality of life impact on a community. They learn the importance of percent of impervious surfaces to water quality. They receive 30 year population projections for their county and a county map. They make a list of all the factors they think will influence the location of growth in the county, mark on the map all planned infrastructure extensions and other developments, and place dots on the map to locate growth. (Homework: Workshop facilitators prepare maps using population projections.)

Workshop 2 – Having Growth and Water Quality too (4 hours)

The team compares existing population and impervious maps with projected population and impervious maps formulated from the first workshop. They discuss issues in their community raised by the maps. They review the Cumberland Region Tomorrow maps which compare future imperviousness using current development practices with future imperviousness using best practices. They learn about the 22 model principles in the Better Site Design manual and the codes and ordinances worksheet (COW) approach to evaluating development rules. (Homework: planning and engineering officials complete the COW for their community. The team reviews the Consensus Agreement.)

Workshop 3 – Deciding What’s Right for Our Community (4 hours)

Community planners review the results of the COW. The group reviews the model principles and COW results and decides which model principles would be most useful and acceptable for their community. They identify any other principles or best practices they want to consider. They develop an action plan with assigned responsibilities for tailoring the selected model principles to their community, writing development rules, researching additional best practices and/or sites to visit, etc. (Homework: Folks carry out their assignments.)

Workshop 4 – Getting Organized for Action (4 hours)

The group discusses and endorses the homework assignment results. They develop an action plan for getting recommendations adopted.

Resources and Testimonials

Site Planning Roundtable Process.pdf