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New York
Support Grows for Proposed Erie County Planning Board
''We need to work together and not have a parochial approach to land use management,'' said Partners for a Livable Western New York funder and real estate lawyer George Grasser at a Hamburg Town Hall meeting on a prospective independent countywide planning board -- a subject of legislation first proposed by County Legislature Democratic Majority Leader Maria R. Whyte and now in the Energy and Environmental Committee -- urging its creation as necessary to curb sprawl without affecting local autonomy and likely to help the county save some $800 million on infrastructure extension over 25 years.
The dollar estimate, reports Buffalo News writer Phil Fairbanks, comes from the ''Framework for Regional Growth -- Erie and Niagara Counties'' planning report, with Buffalo Niagara Partnership vice president of business development Laura Smith saying besides those savings ''(i)t's also important for business to have clarity and certainty in the development process.''
Backed by a growing coalition of stakeholders, ranging from the League of Women Voters to the American Planning Association, the writer notes, the proposed countywide planning board would coordinate and steer development, review and assess projects, and provide expertise to local jurisdictions, but leave to them the final decision in each case.
Not dependent on and unsusceptible to local politics, the board would include nine voting members from all of the county's geographic sections, six non-voting members from planning and development agencies, and at least two appointed professional planners.
Legislative majority leader Whyte said public input from three community meetings -- in Buffalo, Amherst and the last in Hamburg -- will help legislators hone the board creation bill before it goes for a plenary vote. -- Buffalo News 9/16/2008
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