New York Growth-Control Collaboration
Involves State, County and Local Governments
Prior to a referendum on the bond, village residents had formed an anti-PDR coalition that vigorously opposed the proposition.
When the referendum passed, the three villages consulted with the State Attorney General and State Comptroller to see whether they could opt out of the PDR program. In addition, the villages began campaigning against the entire agricultural preservation initiative. They encouraged opposition to town preservation plans, voiced objections at town meetings, and urged county and state officials not to support the town’s efforts.
Amid the contention, two local leaders from the Town of Warwick – one from the Warwick Chamber of Commerce and the other an elected member of the Town Board – decided to try a collaborative approach. The two had recently completed the Land Use Leadership Alliance Training Program at Pace Law School’s Land Use Law Center. The training was funded by a state agency called the Hudson River Greenway, created through the state’s Hudson River Valley Greenway Act of 1991.
The agency’s role is to facilitate development of regional strategies for preserving natural, historic, cultural and recreational resources while encouraging compatible economic development and maintaining a home-rule tradition for land use decision making.
The Hudson River Greenway is made up of two entities: The Greenways Communities Council and the Greenways Conservancy. The Communities Council provides community planning grants and technical assistance and tools to help communities develop a vision for their future. The Conservancy focuses on land preservation, working with the Council to strengthen state agency cooperation with local governments.
The Land Use Training Program at Pace was created in 1995 with additional funding from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a sub agency of the US Department of Agriculture.
According to Sean Nolon, Director of the Land Use Law Center, the two leaders from Orange County returned from the Land Use Leadership Alliance program and began working to incorporate consensus-building techniques into Warwick’s controversial land use plan.
“After participating in the program, these two leaders recognized the value of a collaborative process over an adversarial one that would eventually lead to litigation,” Nolon said. This recognition helped them overcome opposition to mediation within their ranks and eventually paved the way for the Land Use Law Center to mediate the situation.
For five months, Nolon and Vincent Tamagna – a legislator from neighboring Putnam County who had also participated in the Leadership Alliance training – worked with a group of 17 representatives from the town and three villages to find a mutually acceptable solution. An agreement was reached that met the interests of the villages through a formula that returns a pro-rata portion of the land acquisition funds to those jurisdictions. In return for this agreement, the villages pledged to support the entire agricultural preservation initiative and to assist efforts to raise funds from county, state, and federal sources.
The case was a classic “win-win,” Nolon said. “Besides giving a little to get more, and getting community members behind the initiative, people improved their relationships and began to see their neighbors in a different light. It helped build a community that wasn’t there.”
The Land Use Leadership Alliance program represents a unique approach to regionalism that was supported by both state and federal agencies, Nolon said. “Rather than governing by command and control, the Greenway Communities Council provides the incentives to plan in a sustainable, collaborative way. It offers planning guidance, as opposed to planning edicts.”
For local and county governments, the case highlights the importance of gaining strong public support for a piece of legislation or an initiative, he said. “Sponsors and participants in a collaborative process need to make sure they have the support of the appropriate administrative agencies and other partners,” he said, “not just to enact it in to law, but to ensure that once it’s enacted it can be implemented.”
To read more about the collaborative land use planning efforts at the Land Use Law Center, visit their web site, or contact Sean Nolon.