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ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN UD MESSENGER, CONNECTION TO THE COLLEGES
- FALL 2003
Planning Ahead written by Amie
Voith, AS ’03 / photo by Duane Perry
Program provides service
to towns and hands-on experience to students
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Grduate students
(seated, from left) Troy Mix and William Fasano are part
of the team that helped Frederica, Del., develop a comprehensive
plan. Martin Wollaston and Ed O’Donnell (standing, from left) oversee the team's work.
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The mayor and council members in Frederica, Del., realized they
had a problem when absentee landlords began converting single-family
homes into apartment houses and other developers started talking
about locating mobile home parks within the town limits.
With no comprehensive land-use plan or zoning ordinance, the central
Delaware community lacked the means to regulate its growth and development
in a way that would preserve the small-town atmosphere that most
residents prize, Dianne Rager, a former council member, says. And,
she adds, with only 648 residents and no full-time employees other
than police, the town lacked both the expertise and the resources
for professional land-use planning.
Like other Delaware municipalities in the same situation, Frederica turned to CHEP’s Institute for
Public Administration (IPA), which provides planning assistance
to towns.
“They were very helpful to us and very knowledgeable,”
Rager says. “We really had no idea about the process of developing
a comprehensive plan—or even where to start. The IPA staff
and graduate students came in and met with us, gave us suggestions
and worked us all the way through the process.”
The IPA planning program has been offering assistance
to towns for about ten years, providing a practical learning
experience for graduate students as well as community service. In
the past couple of years, since Gov. Ruth Ann Minner implemented
the “Livable Delaware” initiative to better manage development
and limit suburban sprawl throughout the state, demand for the services
has increased, according to IPA director Jerome
Lewis.
“The towns were already required to do a comprehensive plan,
but Livable Delaware put more teeth into the requirement,”
Lewis says. “We have a partnership agreement with the Office
of State Planning Coordination, and the number of requests for
our services has exploded recently.”
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