Planning commissioner training

[Julie Willis]

I work for the Village of DeForest located in fast growing Dane County, Wisconsin. We have a great many complicated development issues facing us and a citizen plan commission which needs training to tackle these issues. Anyone know of a good video training package?

The area has approx. 12,000 population and is projected at almost 20,000 by the year 2020. We need to have the informatation available to make good decisions based on the impacts of development.

I appreciate any help you can give.

 

[Katherine Hess]

Not a video, but I would encourage you to get your Commissioners subscriptions to the Planning Commissioners Journal. Our Commissioners have found it very useful. http://www.plannersweb.com/
It's not expensive if you have copies for all delivered to one address.

 

[Mary]

Washington State has an interesting program that while not available in your state you may be able to create for yourself. The state organizes a program where they get 2 professional planners from other communities and 1 lawyer to volunteer their time for an evening workshop. They then talk about current and long range planning and the law related parts of the job like quasi-judicial decisions. They also try to find out from the local planner if there are any areas that should be emphasized.

The program there appears to work quite well and has been being run by the state Department of Community Trade and Economic Development for quite some time.

 

[Chet]

UW-Extension

The University of Wisconsin - Extension offers GREAT one day training seminars for new Plan Commissioners. Everybody except God HImself is on their mailing list - Check with your City Clerk, maybe the pamphlets are getting tossed out as 'junk mail'.

 

[Cosmic]

More resources from the Planning Commissioners Journal.

Here is another vote for the Planning Commissioners Journal. The journal is non-jargon, pragmatic and useful. Both planners and planning commissioners should have a subscription.

They also have reprinted articles available consolidated under various topics like; sprawl, design and aesthetics, ethics and a planning law primer.

I believe that they also have a New Planning Commissioners Handbook which might help with your needs.

 

[Mary]

If you get planners from outside your community to do some of the talking there is an advantage of hearing the same messages again from someone other than you.

Also I developed a habit with my last planning commission that worked really well. When I read anything I felt might be of interest to them I copied it and sent it in the packets. The matterial was intended to be informative sometimes the papers had to do with current issues before them and sometime just things I though they might have to face and would want to learn a bit more about. Picking the right first few pieces is the important part so that it is useful information but so that it doesn't look like your using the mailings to critisis them or to tell them what to do. All in all it worked really well.