MSU Extension Planning

Bad planning and zoning can do more harm than good in a community, and is even worse than having no zoning at all. Every community strives for the best possible planning and zoning because it can be a great benefit to a residents. It is a continuum -- bad zoning being the least optimal outcome, great zoning the most optimal, and no zoning is somewhere in between.

There are many factors that can result in a community's successful planning and zoning program. It ranges from the purely technical process practices such as basic study and to intimate understanding of what policies will help or harm the long- term development of a community.

Rather than try to list all of those factors, it might be more useful to run down a list of strategies and practices that people involved with planning and zoning should follow. If a community focuses on those things, then the difference between harmful and good planning and zoning is often directly related to the following factors:

• Amount of continuing education, training of appointed officials, employees, and contractors have had.
• Zoning that truly is based on the community’s Master Plan, and an effort to keep it that way over time.
• Commitment to enforcement of various ordinances in a proper but strict matter.
• Commitment to a professional administrative system where the community enforces their ideas through continuing education into day-to-day practice.
• Detailed record keeping.
• Recognition a practice of respecting and following the governmental checks and balance separation of powers: legislative, administrative, quasi-judicial.
• A budget and funding level that makes it possible to do the above.

MSU Extension has self-evaluation tools that a community can use to conduct a performance audit of its planning and zoning program. These performance audits can be done “in-house” or can be done with the assistance of an MSU Extension landand use educator. Click here to find the nearest Extension land use educator.

To locate the MSU Extension self-help performance audit tools can be found online:

• Basic Setup
• The Plan
• Planning Coordination
• The Zoning Ordinance
• Administrative Structure
• Special Land Use
• Planned Unit Development
• Site Plan Review
• Capital Improvement Programming
• Subdivision and Land Splitting Reviews
• Capital Improvement Review