Planners find On Course workshops valuable

Council GIS Specialist Paul Hanson demonstrates the Natural Resources Digital Atlas to planners at an On Course workshop.

Using Council forecasts is key to successful plan review

The deadline for submitting comprehensive plan updates to the Metropolitan Council is two years away, and one community — Prior Lake — has already submitted its updated plan.

In March 2006 the Council started a series of eight monthly planning workshops called “On Course.” The goal of the workshops was to help local officials, planning staff, engineers and consultants prepare comprehensive plan updates. Topics included highways, transit, water resources, demographics, forecasting, natural resources, housing and rural issues.

Julie Wischnack, a planner with the city of Minnetonka, found the sessions she attended useful. “It was a good refresher course on the update procedures, and gave planners the opportunity to focus and become familiar with policies.”

Planners connect with peers

The session on housing produced a very good discussion on affordable housing and what different communities are doing to address the needs, Wischnack said. “It was a really good way to connect with my peers and hear what’s happening in their communities.”

Cover of a recent On Course presentation. See presentations from On Course workshops.

Similarly, Karen Nicolai said the workshop she attended was a great opportunity to meet other planners. Nicolai is Hennepin County’s new community design liaison. She is working to integrate health strategies, language and outcomes into the county’s transportation system plan, and appreciated the opportunity to talk to local planners about the issue.

Lance Bernard, a planner with HKG, Inc., is sharing the information and resources he gained at the workshops with other planners in the firm. An unexpected benefit of attending, he said, was learning more about the breadth of data available from the Council, including housing data that saved him time when preparing a recent comprehensive plan amendment.

In September 2005 the Council issued “system statements” to every community in the region. The statements are customized documents that inform each community how it is affected by the Council’s updated system plans for transportation/aviation, water resources (including wastewater treatment) and regional parks. Under state law, communities must update their local comprehensive plans by 2008 to be reviewed for consistency with the Council’s system plans.

Planning handbook wins award

Local Planning Handbook home page showing topics covered, and links to resources. See the handbook.

A year ago the Council also introduced an interactive, online Local Planning Handbook that communities can use to guide their plan updates. The handbook includes new forms, worksheets and templates; links to numerous online resources, including the latest forecasts and data; step-by-step descriptions of the comprehensive plan preparation, review and adoption processes; and other helpful features.

In September this year, the Minnesota Chapter of the American Planning Association (MnAPA) presented the Council with an Outstanding Planning Award for the Local Planning Handbook.

Using Council forecasts is crucial

Council sector representatives recently conducted an informal survey of communities in the region to determine where in the plan update process they are. Approximately 60 percent of the region’s 189 communities responded, and of those, 71 percent have started their 2008 plan updates.

At this stage, one of the most important considerations for local planners is to make sure that they and any consultants their community has hired are using the same growth forecasts that the Council issued in the systems statements, said Phyllis Hanson, manager of Local Planning Assistance for the Council. Often plans are incomplete for review due to consultants using various household, employment and population forecasts from other sources, she said. Major, time-consuming revisions sometimes follow, “which everyone wants to avoid,” she added.

Local plan updates are due to the Council in 2008. Earlier submittal is highly recommended, Hanson said.