May 8, 2000
Hon. Christine Todd Whitman
Governor of the State of New Jersey
PO Box 001
State House,
Trenton, NJ 08625
Dear Governor Whitman:
Congratulations on your recent award from the American Planning Association. Since you appointed me to the State Planning Commission five years ago, I have been present on a number of occasions to hear you declare your support for state planning and "smart growth". No other New Jersey Governor has been such an excellent spokesperson. Your Open Space Initiative, in particular, will be a wonderful and lasting legacy for New Jersey. Your new initiatives in watershed management - putting watershed management area plans in place, undertaking a full Environmental Impact Assessment before wastewater treatment decisions are made, and strengthening the current wastewater rules to clarify how the State Plan will be applied when extending wastewater treatment facilities -- will enhance that legacy, once they are in place.
No one could have been more pleased than I to hear you declare your support for State Plan-based wastewater rules. I have sat frustrated during numerous Cross-Acceptance meetings over the last couple of years where we heard that because DEP had approved wastewater plans without reference to the State Plan, we were then being asked to change the State Plan map to reflect their decisions! On the well established planning principle that land use goals should lead infrastructure decisions, this state of affairs, I'm sure you will agree, is definitely backward -- in both senses of the word.
Although I am writing this letter primarily to express my admiration and support for your Smart Growth initiatives, I am going to take the opportunity to suggest two more which I hope you will consider.
If you combine the Open Space Initiative and the stronger wastewater rules, they both enhance our ability to restrict growth where we don't want it. That is only half of the Smart Growth equation. The other half is about how to encourage growth where we do want it? How can we put the "growth" in Smart Growth?
Twelve years ago, the first draft of the State Plan was discredited for
its land use strategy characterized as the "push down/pop up" strategy.
The critics said that if you "push down" growth in rural areas
you cannot
expect it to "pop up" in the urban areas. On the contrary, they
said, if it "pops up" anywhere it will be in Pennsylvania!
Ever since then, those of us who support "pushing down" growth in rural areas have tried to consider ways to "pull it up" in urban areas -- to take actions to re-direct growth to cities and other desirable growth areas.
What will help to "pull up" the growth? We need many different strategies. One is using the huge investment the State is about to make in the Abbott district schools as a catalyst for community redevelopment. Another is continuing the work of your Property Tax Reform Commission to allow communities to stop participating in the ratables chase. A third is re-prioritizing expenditures from a re-authorized and hopefully expanded Transportation Trust Fund.
I have two more: one, develop an Infrastructure Bank to encourage growth in areas supported by the State Plan; and two, put together a consortium of business and non-profits under the direction of the Office of State Planning/State Planning Commission to develop a Strategic Growth Plan for the State.
Infrastructure Bank: Although Smart Growth is often described as putting the growth where there is already infrastructure, it is often true that the infrastructure in growth areas is old-fashioned, crumbling or inadequate to support growth. Some cities and boroughs have had to sell sewerage treatment to suburban areas around them in order to afford needed improvements to their treatment plants.
In addition, to make these growth areas healthy and therefore more "smart" and attractive to growth, we must invest in systems that will clean stormwater runoff and improve our "green" infrastructure (street trees, parks, etc.).
In almost all growth areas we need new transit services to "pull up" higher densities, and more compact mixed-use development. If Smart Growth is about changing land use from auto-dependent densities, we will need a major redirection of funds from highways to non-auto systems, again in advance of the growth. Transit investments solve two major obstacles to redevelopment -- it provides the increase in property values needed to encourage the financial investment in redevelopment, and it provides the ability to reduce auto trips that would otherwise clog the new, denser centers.
Finally, in most cases, the communities that we would agree should grow, will not be able to afford these improvements on their own. Nor should they have to. Putting growth in the developed parts of this State will benefit everyone and should be valued as such. I understand that Commissioner Jane Kenny is considering introducing an Infrastructure Bank of some kind. I encourage you both to make it happen as soon as possible.
A Strategic Growth Plan for New Jersey: My second proposal came to me during the March 1st State Planning Commission meeting in Newark The Port Authority made a presentation on the economy of the region. The presentation was similar to others I had heard in which business experts had described New Jersey's three biggest economic assets - our location, our multi-modal transportation system and our skilled workforce. If we capitalize on these assets, we will attract the wealth of the world to be distributed to the rest of the continent through our "gateway".
Not achieving this economic success would clearly be disastrous for us. But success itself could have disastrous results - looking only to become a conduit for the world's goods could destroy our quality of life. How can we achieve this economic success and achieve the environmental quality we want?
In my view, and I know you share it, striking this balance is what Smart Growth is about. The Strategic Growth Project should be fashioned to bring together the various threads currently in the works in New Jersey and supported by the goals underlying the State Plan - reducing sprawl, revitalizing cities, reducing traffic congestion, making efficient infrastructure systems, protecting environmental quality and conserving resources.
Such a Growth Plan would first do a capacity analysis of the State: look at the current capacity of our "green" and "gray" infrastructure to support growth and at the costs of expanding that capacity and of reducing and mitigating growth's environmental impacts. This capacity analysis would then be coupled with two or three economic scenarios which would describe the scale, type and location of growth. These scenarios would be based on macro-economic forces in various sectors important to New Jersey, such as goods distribution, high tech and finance. It would be essential that these scenarios identify the extent to which each region in New Jersey figures into this big picture. The scenarios would then be tested and growth targets in specific locations could be selected.
This process would create the components of a Strategic Growth Plan, a complement to your Open Space Plan. Both supplement and enhance the State Development and Redevelopment Plan. The Strategic Growth Plan will demonstrate how to capitalize on these economic forces to redevelop and revitalize our cities and downtowns, retrofit suburban centers, and develop a small number of rural growth centers into a growth pattern which can be supported with a geographically specific investment plan to put the infrastructure -- particularly transportation choices -- in place.
I know that the Board of Directors and staff of The Regional Planning Partnership are ready to offer whatever resources we have to help you build your Smart Growth legacy with initiatives which both restrict development where we don't want it and encourage it where we do.
In closing, we congratulate you on your existing achievements and wish you every success in the future.
Yours sincerely,
Dianne R. Brake
President
Copy: Hon. Jane Kenny, Commissioner, Department of Community Affairs
Hon. Eileen McGinnis, Chief, Governor's Office of Policy and Planning
Hon. Gualberto Medina, Secretary, Commerce and Economic Growth Commission
Hon. Robert Shinn, Commissioner, Department of Environmental Protection
Hon. James Weinstein, Commissioner, Department of Transportation
Hon. Jack Collins, Speaker of the New Jersey Assembly
Hon. Donald DiFrancesco, President of the New Jersey Senator
Joseph Maraziti, Esq., Chairman, State Planning Commission
Herbert Simmens, Executive Director, Office of State Planning
Stephen Sasala, Executive Director, Prosperity New Jersey
Barbara Lawrence, Executive Director, New Jersey Future
Board of Directors, The Regional Planning Partnership