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January 25, 2002

The Hon. James E. McGreevey, Governor
State House
Trenton, New Jersey 08608

RE: Supporting State Planning

Dear Governor McGreevey:

With thirty years experience in growth management and a reputation as the premier regional planning organization in New Jersey, The Regional Planning Partnership (RPP) urges you to use state planning to achieve economic stimulation, environmental protection, and equity. Build on the strengths already established in the State Planning Commission and the Office of State Planning and address its weaknesses (identified in the second attachment).

As one of the most powerful governors in the country, you are in a position to overtake Oregon and make New Jersey the national Smart Growth model. Oregon used a growth management plan during a recession in the 1970s as the basis for investing scarce public resources - saving money at the same time as building a recovery plan.

As director of the Regional Planning Partnership since 1990 and a State Planning Commissioner until last month, I feel qualified to provide you with eight immediate actions you can take to implement Smart Growth. These actions are enclosed as an "Immediate Action List". I have also enclosed an outline entitled, "The State Planning Process: Building on Strengths & Addressing Weaknesses".

RPP has researched and thought deeply about growth management issues from a regional perspective. We work to move the public debate away from project-by-project battles toward pursuing multiple goals within a region. RPP provided the first State Plan with a practical framework for center-based planning. RPP provided the newly adopted State Plan and Endorsement Guidelines with a regional framework to connect statewide and local planning. We have developed a build-out model (GOZ®) to test for consistency with the State Plan and a growth targets methodology for moving away from trend and toward smart growth. We are currently working in Trenton on our Urban Growth Targets Project, balancing economy, environment and equity on the ground.

Please let me know when it would be convenient to meet with you and your staff to discuss these actions further. RPP will continue to promote regional planning and is willing and prepared to contribute our experience, tools and models to the state planning efforts that emerge under your administration.

Sincerely,

Dianne R. Brake
President

cc. Mr. Gary Taffet, Chief of Staff
Ms. Jo Glading, Chief of Policy and Communications
Hon. Susan Bass Levin, Commissioner of the DCA

Enclosures

Eight Immediate Actions to Implement Smart Growth in New Jersey

1. Have agencies do Capacity Analyses (RPP has a build-out model), set statewide Growth Targets (RPP has a methodology), institute a Centers Infrastructure Fund (NJDCA has a proposal) and maintain the Open Space Preservation Fund and Smart Growth Planning Grants. Build on the key state agency Implementation Teams by requiring performance indicators for agency activities. (See the Position Paper attached for more details.)

2. Strategic Planning: Use two groundbreaking reports currently being written by national experts for New Jersey. One being done for Prosperity New Jersey will demonstrate how to harness our "economic engines" to achieve smart growth goals. A complementary report being prepared for the New Jersey Regional Coalition (RPP, CAHE, Isles, and others) will identify social equity concerns of the current economy.

3. Transit Corridor Planning: End the gridlock caused by auto-dependence and the inability to agree on the necessary public investment and land use changes. Create a process for selecting multi-modal corridors throughout the State. RPP has been active leading the Central Jersey Transportation Forum, a public/private initiative of NJDOT and DVRPC. Give the Forum the right resources to provide a model for transportation and land use planning that will produce better outcomes for equity, the environment and the economy.

4. Watershed Planning: RPP is working on two watershed plans as part of NJDEP's current statewide effort. Sharpen and strengthen this effort by championing the passage of strict new rules integrating the watershed plans with the goals and policies of the State Development and Redevelopment Plan.

5. Support for Local Smart Growth: Increasing the density of some urban and suburban areas - the key to smart growth - is opposed for at least two reasons: centers add housing add more congestion both unwanted in most New Jersey municipalities. On the other hand, decreasing the density of open land to preserve it is opposed because of the perception - sometimes the reality - that the value of the land will be diminished. Protect municipalities that are pursuing smart growth consistent with State Plan policies and objectives from litigation and from the full cost of educating school children.

6. Permit Streamlining for Smart Growth: Local zoning and many existing state regulations forbid smart growth! Smart growth is, therefore, more difficult than standard greenfield development, making it much more costly for developers. Your leadership is needed to change regulations preventing smart growth and to provide real permit streamlining for development of the right amount, kind and in the right location.

7. New Legislation: Support the "Sprawl Costs us All" campaign of the Coalition for Affordable Housing and the Environment (CAHE), of which RPP is a founding member. The campaign lists bills that would provide vital tools for smart growth and social justice, such as Transfer of Development Rights (S-1101/A-855), and the Redevelopment Area Bond Financing Act (S-1316/A-2592).

8. Affordable Housing/Tax Reform: Champion property tax reform to stop the ratables chase and have the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) adopt the concept of a "growth share" methodology for providing affordable housing.

The State Planning Process: Building on Strengths & Addressing Weaknesses

Build on Existing Strengths

1. Use the recently revised and strengthened State Development and Redevelopment Plan, newly adopted rule and Endorsement Guidelines as touchstones. They have legislative force. Competing efforts such as the Sustainable State Project, undertaken by the last Administration, distract from implementation unless given a mandate, e.g., tying state funding for municipalities to meeting targets set for sustainability indicators.

2. Maintain state planning on two levels: horizontally, across state agencies, and vertically, down through state, county and local government. Efficiencies can be found through state planning, not by eliminating state planning.

3. Strengthen the horizontal planning well underway with the Implementation Teams (I-Teams) put into place and coordinated by Dr. Martin Bierbaum in the Department of Community Affairs by mandating Dr. Bierbaum's staff to develop performance indicators with state departments and agencies for state activities.

4. Strengthen the resources available to do vertical planning. Since most plans currently are NOT consistent with the Plan, county and local governments need the continued support of Smart Growth Planning Grants to change their plans to meet State Plan Endorsement criteria. Now a $6 million investment, the Smart Growth Planning Grants are vital to Plan implementation. With no Grants and no planning staff to oversee them, we know from decades of experience that local planning will not change. OSP Planner Chuck Newcomb was the capable director of this program and he should be reinstated to undertake this and other valuable, statewide local planning initiatives. Architect Carlos Rodrigues, the talented director of OSP's Design Program, should be reinstated to help communities replace the vision of sprawling suburbs embedded in our current zoning and land use regulations with a vision consistent with the State Plan.

Address Weaknesses

1. Growth Targets - Weakness: A failure to address Growth Targets has resulted in almost everyone planning for Trend with no one focusing on State Plan numbers. Unless we have some handle on Trend versus Plan, we will be planning for Trend by default. Until we come to grips with the numbers, we will have no handle on growth patterns, which is, in RPP's view, the heart of the Plan. Growth targets will also give us some idea of how much redevelopment we expect to happen, as opposed to "green field." In addition, we need these numbers to undertake a capacity analysis on a regional basis.

Recommendation: The state should use the new Census data to review the Plan's projections for 2020. The state must decide whether or not the Impact Assessment numbers are the ones it wants to use. Both Trend Projections and Plan Projections must make sense for the state's Key Indicators/Targets and be accepted by state agencies, counties and municipalities. The projections (Trend and Plan) must be attributed to each municipality and to each Planning Area (the state must get around the technical problems and do this). RPP has developed a methodology the State can use.

2. Capacity Analysis - Weakness: We have no good idea of the capacity of New Jersey to grow (as the Builders Association, environmentalists and RPP have pointed out).

Recommendation: Although RPP knows there are technical obstacles to carrying out a statewide capacity analysis, the state must do the best it can with the data it has. A capacity analysis is necessary to show others that the State is practicing what it is preaching, and to serve as the basis for regional considerations of capacity. At its best, it could provide the basis for decisions on where investments should and should not be made to achieve the goals of the State Plan. This would lead to information to aid in the Endorsement process, as the basis for considering the capacity of regional systems.

Although discussions are bound to be tricky as to determining when the capacity of a particular system should be considered a limit and when it should be considered ripe for expansion, such discussions would reveal the strengths and weaknesses of pro-growth and anti-growth factions. RPP advocates an approach to optimizing outcomes rather than maximizing one faction at the expense of another.

A capacity analysis would also force the state to consider what it means by "encourage growth" in PA 1 and 2, and "accommodate growth" in PA 3, 4, and 5. RPP's build-out model, GOZ®, can be used for these purposes.

3. The "Big Idea" Project - Weakness: The State Plan has not been clearly linked to our economic future. How that economic future is expected to deliver urban revitalization as well as open space and natural resources conservation has not been demonstrated. Therefore, certain sectors have found nothing so far in the Plan for them.

Articulating an economic plan that is expected to deliver the State Plan goals could serve as the basis for focusing State agency plans, permits and investments, e.g., a geographically specific transportation plan or a State Plan-infused watershed rule, supporting the economy and the environment.

Recommendation: While the Gallis and Orfield projects are providing critical material for it, a Big Idea project could further people's understanding of why we should have a State Plan - how will the whole be greater than the sum of the parts. Such a project could attract interest and resources to Plan implementation. Such a project could be among other State initiatives which re-tool traditional analyses from a single goal orientation (growing the economy) to a multiple goal orientation (achieve all the State Plan goals, while growing the economy). This could be used as the basis for the Administration's Smart Growth legacy.


4. Redevelopment Implementation Agenda - Weakness: It is only with substantial redevelopment that the state will be able to meet the major goals of the State Plan, yet there is no Redevelopment Implementation Agenda. This project needs research, an advocacy agenda, and an implementation program.

Recommendation: One major initiative under this heading would be to use the state's Special Resource Area category to designate the eight Urban Centers. In so doing, we could explore the capacity and desire of the cities to absorb growth and recommend strategies for directing regional growth to fuel revitalization efforts. (RPP has already started its own urban growth analysis project in Trenton with funding from the Schumann Fund.)

The Coalition for Affordable Housing and the Environment (CAHE) has a Revitalization Agenda that should be reviewed and implemented.

Another way to support redevelopment is to have the State fund an Infrastructure Bank to provide what is needed in endorsed growth centers. Such a Bank would be an excellent follow-up to the Smart Growth Planning Grants, and demonstrate the state's commitment to implementation. The Department of Community Affairs has already developed such a proposal.

The state could spearhead some regional plans in various key locations around the state to demonstrate how growth can be targeted on a regional basis and directed away from open land into appropriate growth centers. RPP is beginning such a project in Mercer County.

5. Legislative Agenda - Weakness: There are four policy areas that need new legislation: affordable housing, property tax reform, TDR, and regional planning. To the extent that we are successful in restraining development on green fields and making our state more desirable, housing prices will go up and the opportunity for ratables will go down. An analysis of zoning in the state will demonstrate that we zone to provide lots of opportunities for non-residential development and limit the opportunities for housing. A build-out of RPP's region according to zoning, would add a jobs-to-housing ratio of 13:1! The ratables chase will lead in the long run to labor shortages, skyrocketing housing costs, and more traffic congestion.

Recommendation: State Planning must be more pro-active in stopping the ratable chase and ensuring that there is plentiful affordable housing. Adopt the Coalition of Affordable Housing and the Environment's (CAHE) Growth Share methodology to replace COAH's complicated formula for setting a municipal Fair Share number. Review CAHE's work on regional tax sharing, as well as other ideas for reforming the property tax system.

Adopt proposed legislation for Transfer of Development Rights (S-1101/A-855) and Redevelopment Area Bond Financing (S-1316/A-2592).

6. Coordination of Decision-making - Weakness: The Land Use Infrastructure and the Environment (LUIE) report was handed over to the SPC back in late1997. The Commission never did anything with it (except get the Smart Growth Planning Grants - an important LUIE recommendation), because of Cross-Acceptance and Plan adoption. The LUIE Report contained a number of recommendations on how to make planning, regulating and infrastructure spending consistent at all levels of government. Now's the time to act.

Recommendation: Although there was considerable controversy over a few of LUIE's recommendations, there was consensus on many. It is time to review where the state stands, and develop a strategy for weeding out those recommendations which cannot be supported by most stakeholders and moving ahead with those that can.

Most of LUIE's recommendations do not need new legislation, but a review of the report could extract a list that would be more effective with enabling legislation.

7. Committee Work - Weakness: The way in which the State Planning Commission has been undertaking its work is no longer relevant to the new rules and a strengthened mission. The Commission needs direction and staff in order to oversee their statutory growth management function.

Recommendation: The following suggestions for work plans are for committees relevant to any effort to implement state planning.