The National Association of County Planners and The County Planning Division of the American Planning Association invite you to attend their annual meeting on Sunday, April 11, 2010 (11:45-12:45) during the Annual Conference of the American Planning Association in New Orleans, Louisiana. Please refer to your conference agenda for the specific room location. Items on the meeting agenda will include announcing the awards for “Excellence in County Planning.”

The National Association of County Planners and the County Planning Division of APA are teaming up to recognize excellence in county planning and plan implementation.

Eligibility

Nominations may be submitted for a county plan / implementation (adopted within the last five calendar years) that demonstrates leadership, innovation, and commitment to ethical planning principles and civic engagement.

Judging Criteria

Submittals will be reviewed by a panel of members from the National Association of County Planners and the County Planning Division of APA and evaluated according to the following criteria:

• Originality – To what extent does the submission present a visionary approach or innovative concept that results in a meaningful advancement of the planning process?
• Transferability – To what extent is there a potential application in other areas or to other projects? How does this work increase our understanding of planning principles?
• Quality – To what extent is there excellence in thought, writing, analysis, graphics, and ethical planning principles?
• Implementation – To what extent is the plan or program effective as evidenced by its degree of post-completion or post-adoption activity?
• Comprehensiveness – To what extent have planning principles been observed, especially in considering the plan’s / project’s effects on other public objectives?

Nomination Submittal Must Include (digital submittals encouraged)

• Complete name and contact information for the nominator and nominee. Also include a brief description (urban / suburban / rural)  and size category for the county (small = pop. under 150,000, medium = pop. between 150,000-499,999, large = pop. over 500,000)
• List of other contacts including media
• 5 hard or electronic copies of a narrative (not to exceed 3 letter-sized pages) describing the plan and associated implementation activities which describe the setting, process, significance to planning, innovative achievements, and outcomes
• 5 hard or electronic copies of the planning document and any other relevant support materials

ALL MATERIALS MUST BE RECIEVED BY 5:00 PM EST ON MARCH 5, 2010.

Please send all nomination materials to: Judy Francis, AICP, NCDENR, 2090 Hwy. 70, Swannanoa, NC  28778

Winners will be notified by March 21 and invited to attend the awards presentation at the Annual Conference of the American Planning Association on April 11, 2010.

With the launch of a web page called Planning Near Pipelines, there is now available in one place a wide range of resources so that development proposed for lands near large gas and oil pipelines can be carried out with the least risk to both the public and the pipelines.

On-line at http://mrsc.org/subjects/pubsafe/transpipes.aspx, Planning Near Pipelines is an important source of information for local government officials, land use planners, developers, pipeline operators, attorneys, emergency responders, and other stakeholders. Here is where to learn about good land use practices that can be put in place before residential, commercial, or public development is considered for an area where a large pipeline already exists.

This web page is just one component of a federally-funded project awarded to the Association of Washington Cities (AWC) and its partners to improve land use planning practices near pipelines. Over the next year, local governments in Washington State will be able to obtain free technical assistance to help them understand and implement these practices. The project will also include publication of electronic newsletters, the hosting of an on-line discussion group, and presentations to Washington State stakeholder organizations.

Among the on-line resources are a series of practical and optional steps—Recommended Practices—that local governments, developers, pipeline operators and others should consider before proposals to develop land near pipelines are drawn up. These Recommended Practices, which were developed by the Pipelines and Informed Planning Alliance (PIPA), are in the final stages of adoption. PIPA is a task force of stakeholders brought together by the federal government from across the nation to help rapidly-growing communities resolve land use issues as they expand into areas that were sparsely populated when large gas and oil pipelines were built.

Other resources available on the Planning Near Pipelines web page include sample ordinances for implementing some of the Recommended Practices, as well as on-line links to laws, regulations, organizations, and governmental agencies involved with pipeline safety and land use planning.

Although free technical assistance is available only to Washington State local governments, everyone is encouraged to subscribe to the electronic newsletter or join the on-line discussion group. For further information about the grant activities, contact these grant partners: Municipal Research and Services Center (jdoherty@mrsc.org) or the Pipeline Safety Trust (info@pstrust.org).

In addition to MRSC and PST, other AWC project partners are the Northwest Gas Association, the Washington State Association of Counties, the Washington State Citizens’ Committee on Pipeline Safety, and the Washington State Utilities and Transportation Commission.

source: http://www.fs.fed.us/openspace/fote/literature.html

source: http://www.fs.fed.us/openspace/fote/sensitivity.html

Dennis is the Director of Planning and Development for McHenry County, Illinois, where he is responsible for the County’s overall planning, zoning, stormwater management, and construction permitting functions. Prior to joining McHenry County in 2008, Dennis spent 10 years with the Lake County, Illinois, Planning, Building, and Development Department. For the last nine years he was a Deputy Director responsible for managing the Planning and Support Services Division. Dennis has additional planning and GIS experience in Kansas, New York, and New Jersey.

Dennis received a B.S. in Geography and a Certificate In Environmental Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received a Master of City and Regional Planning degree from Rutgers University.

Dennis is the author of a URISA Quick Study Report entitled Development Management Systems (1999) and has given numerous presentations at planning, NACO, and GIS conferences.

The 2010 Annual Conference of the American Planning Association will be held in New Orleans, LA on April 10-13, 2010. We strongly encourage conference participation from NACP members, so please consider preparing a presentation proposal. The deadline for submitting presentation proposals is August 18, 2009. Please follow this link for submittal guidelines for APA members and non-members:

http://www.planning.org/conference/proposals/index.htm

You do not need to have all of your speakers identified and confirmed in order to submit a proposal. Proposal acceptance letters will be sent out in November, 2009. You will have until January to finalize your proposed speakers. All speakers must register for the conference by February 18, 2010.

Once you have submitted your proposal, please notify James Davenport, NACo / NACP liaison at JDavenport@naco.org and include your name and session title so we know what the NACP membership has submitted.

Thank You!

In that capacity, she assists local governments in achieving their conservation objectives through ecological and economic analysis. She is active as an NACP Board member and in the North Carolina Chapter of APA.

Ms. Francis has B.A. and M.A. degrees from Colorado State University and has focused her career on environmental issues and has been involved in numerous conservation activities of regional and national significance. Her work involves establishing partnerships between multiple levels of government, as well as non-governmental entities and non-profit organizations. In 2005, she was awarded the Local Government Conservationist of the Year award by the North Carolina Land Trust Council. Ms. Francis is also an adjunct faculty member at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina where she teaches her students about historic and current planning techniques, the responsibilities of citizenship, and the role of democracy in the planning process. She and her family live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina where they enjoy fly-fishing on some of the world

Mike has served in leadership positions in many of the professional organizations to which he belongs. He was President of the Nevada Chapter of the American Planning Association, Commissioner on the AICP Commission, and President of the Sierra Nevada Chapter, American Society for Public Administration. He is currently the Nevada Chapter, APA, representative to the Western Planning Resources, Inc. (and a member of the executive board); a member of the site review team pool for the Planning Accreditation Board; and Treasurer of the County Planning Division, APA.

Lake Tahoe has been an important part of Mike’s planning experience. He was Chair of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency’s Advisory Planning Commission and Chair of the State of Nevada Commission: Purchase of Land in the Lake Tahoe Basin. He served four terms as Chair of the Tahoe Transportation District/Tahoe Transportation Commission, and was Washoe County’s permanent alternate to the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency’s Governing Board since 1981.

Assisting with planners’ professional development and planning officials training has led Mike to a second career of teaching. As APA Nevada Chapter president he assisted in the creation of a planning commissioner’s primer. Mike served as both the APA Nevada Chapter’s Professional Development Officer and Planning Officials Development Officer. As an APA Planners Support Network member he participated in the development of a presentation on career related issues particular to professional planners. In recognition of his service to APA and AICP, Mike was inducted into the AICP College of Fellows in 2004 and received the Nevada Chapter’s President’s Award for Outstanding Service in 2009. Mike is a National Business Institute faculty member, lecturing on planning statutes in Nevada; and adjunct faculty in the University of Nevada, Reno’s Geography Department. Mike frequently conducts planning commissioner training at the state planning conference. Mike has a Bachelor’s degree in History and a Master of Public Administration degree. He is married to Vickie and has two grown sons.