Dr. Joe VanderMeulen, Executive Director,
Land Information Access Association

Joe VanderMeulen is the Executive Director of the Land Information Access Association (LIAA), a non-profit community service organization located in Traverse City that has taken a leading role in facilitating intergovernmental cooperation in land-use planning and community development under the Partnerships for Change Program.  Trained as a welder, Joe has been a sheet metal worker, a journalist, a hydrogeologist, and a science advisor to the Michigan Legislature (Director of Science & Technology Division, Legislative Service Bureau).  A “double” alumni of Western Michigan University (WMU), he holds a B.A. in english and creative writing, as well as a Master of Science degree in earth science and hydrogeology.  Joe received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in Natural Resources and Environmental Policy winning the Ayers Brinser Award for his research in land-use policy and the applications of geographic information systems (GIS).

Monday

February 4, 2008

Acknowledging Interdependence

Thanks to MML for giving me this Guest Blog opportunity (actually five opportunities).  Over the next week, I’ll offer some opinions, commentary, and suggestions on the future of Michigan’s communities, with a heavy emphasis on inter-jurisdictional cooperation in land-use planning and resource management.

When I was working for the Michigan Legislative Service Bureau as a nonpartisan science advisor many years ago, I received lots of calls about contamination sites.  Legislators wanted to know where the old landfill or leaking storage tank was located.  Mostly, they wanted to know that it wasn’t in their district.  I spent a good deal of time explaining that both surface water and groundwater transported pollution away from these sites, and that their district lines offered no defense.  I also learned that cities and villages actually owned some of these contamination sites which were, often, located in the township next door.  Of course, there were lots of privately owned waste dumps out in the townships that held the remains of manufacturing operations located inside city or village boundaries.

We’ve all learned a lot about managing municipal and industrial wastes since then; and we’re still learning.  For me, these problems demonstrated quite dramatically that human communities are physically and culturally larger than the jurisdictional boundaries of a single city, township, or village.  Air, water, and wildlife, as well as cars, commerce, and most people, pay little attention to local government boundaries.  The truth is cities, townships and villages must work together to preserve or regain the health and vitality of their communities.

About three years ago, the Partnerships for Change (PfC) Program was created by the MML, Michigan Townships Association (MTA) and the Land Information Access Association (LIAA) to help cities, townships and villages work together in land-use planning and community development.  The Michigan Association of Planning and Michigan State University Extension also support this cooperative program.  Through grants of professional planning and technical support services, the PfC Program has already helped municipalities in 13 Michigan communities create recreational authorities and programs, transportation corridors plans and projects, joint municipal planning commissions, and other multi-jurisdictional partnerships.

Ultimately, the PfC Program embraces the idea that true communities are larger than a single municipality and that people in our communities are interconnected and interdependent in complex ways.  I’ll offer more information about the PfC Program in the next few days.  A copy of the program summary is available online at www.partnershipsforchange.cc.

Check back tomorrow for Joe's thoughts on information systems and authentic communities.

You may contact Joe VanderMeulen, at 231-929-3696 or e-mail jvander@liaa.org

Tuesday

February 5, 2008

Information Systems & Authentic Communities

This year, I will mark a special anniversary professionally and personally.  Fifteen years ago, I joined with a small group of like-minded colleagues and friends to form the Land Information Access Association (LIAA).  Our goal was to integrate information technologies with public participation processes to increase civic engagement for community planning and development.  We wanted to give municipalities new ways to inform residents and involve them in making choices about economic growth and land use.

At the time, the World Wide Web was just peaking over the horizon, having been offered as a free Internet service for the first time in 1992.  But only a few people had access and nobody had web pages.  Of course, personal computers were beginning to appear everywhere and the Microsoft Windows 3.1 operating system had just emerged as a “killer app.”  And most of us were using the new high-density 3½″ floppy disks for file back up and copying.  (I still have stacks of those things stuffed in closets.)

LIAA’s first efforts were based on touch-screen computerized kiosks.  With these kiosks in city halls and libraries, people were able to use interactive digital maps (based on geographic information systems—GIS), pull up text documents like zoning ordinances and meeting minutes, or quickly view pictures and video clips that described the historic and cultural features of their community.  These systems were popular too.  With help from a host of foundations, we put these systems into dozens of city, township, village and county buildings within a few years.

We quickly learned that such information systems can be much more than multimedia encyclopedias and transaction machines.  Those touch-screen kiosks, like our websites today, may offer easy access to information and electronic transactions, but they can be so much more.

More than a dozen years ago, the MML backed LIAA’s development of a community building and asset mapping process called Building a Sense of Place.  That process engages citizens and local officials from the whole community in an effort to identify, map, and document those cultural and natural features that matter most.  The result is a more accurate and inclusive community asset database owned and updated by officials and citizens.  Together, the process and the product can lay the groundwork for inter-jurisdictional cooperation in community planning and development as demonstrated in the Fremont Community and others (see www.partnershipsforchange.cc). 

In recent years, I have been pleased to see how cities and villages across the state have developed websites to provide public information and services.  I hope more of these municipalities will use the web to engage their residents and neighboring jurisdictions in a multimedia discussion about what they value about their place and their hopes for the future.

Check back tomorrow for Joe's thoughts on multi-jurisdiction communities and the necessity of cooperation.

You may contact Joe VanderMeulen, at 231-929-3696 or e-mail jvander@liaa.org

Wednesday

February 6, 2008

Multi-Jurisdiction Communities & the Necessity of Cooperation

By now, everyone’s heard and felt the bad news—change is hard upon us.  As nicely summarized in publications such as Charles Ballard’s, Michigan’s Economic Future, statewide economic trends are pretty dismal.  The remedies promoted by many experts include reinvestment in education, investments in high-technology manufacturing, and investments in our communities.  Clearly, we need to attract entrepreneurial development by offering attractive, vibrant, and engaging communities.

As MML’s Dan Gilmartin and others say, place matters.  Communities need to offer entrepreneurs (young and old) places with a full spectrum of services, cultural and natural amenities, reasonable living costs, and an authentic sense of place.  That sounds like a tall order for most of Michigan’s cities and villages.  How can one municipality offer it all?  Are there really any cities or villages that can offer all the jobs, public services, shopping, educational facilities, recreation, entertainment, open space and cultural heritage needed and desired by residents within its own boundaries?

As I’ve said before, most Michigan communities are multi-jurisdictional, with different municipalities offering their very mobile residents different parts of the whole experience.  A quick geographic analysis shows that over 156 cities and 244 villages are either fully within or surrounded by townships (see www.partnershipsforchange.cc for a map).  If these municipalities fail to cooperate and coordinate in land-use planning and economic development, as well as the delivery of services, they will almost certainly waste taxpayer dollars and damage their own prospects.

Thankfully, most local officials agree that inter-jurisdictional cooperation is needed.  In a recent survey of local government officials conducted by LIAA, MML and other partners, about 64% of the respondents said their municipalities cooperate with others in land-use planning and regulation (a survey summary is available here).  However, that cooperation appears to be mostly informal and ad hoc.  Based on survey responses, only about 10% of planning commissions meet with neighboring planning commissions even once a year.  Shared resource management plans were reported in only 15% of the time; and only 6% of the local governments reported having joint management agreements.

Apparently, we will need to work harder to get beyond the status quo.  Local officials and other community leaders will need to challenge the structural barriers and traditional ways of doing things to build meaningful cooperation.  

Check back tomorrow for Joe's thoughts on inter-jurisdictional diplomacy.

You may contact Joe VanderMeulen, at 231-929-3696 or e-mail jvander@liaa.org

Thursday

February 7, 2008

Inter-Jurisdictional Diplomacy

Last June, the MML joined with LIAA, the Michigan Townships Association, Michigan Association of Planning and three regional chambers of commerce to offer an Inter-Jurisdictional Diplomacy Seminar in three different locations.  [A DVD of the Traverse City Seminar is available through www.partnershipsforchange.cc.]  During that seminar, I asserted that government experts from all quarters have come to the conclusion that inter-jurisdictional cooperation for community planning and development is a necessity.  Whether the goal is to improve the economics of service delivery, preserve natural and cultural resources, or attract new businesses and jobs, cooperation between multiple jurisdictions is often the only way to succeed.

On the other hand, nearly every local official can list a dozen barriers to inter-jurisdictional cooperation, and the barriers can sound insurmountable.  In focus groups and surveys, public officials describe a history of local disputes, a sense of distrust, win-lose attitudes, an insistence on control, and other barriers that seem to be all about human relationships.  These barriers also reflect structural issues inherent in the cultures and legal foundations of our local governments.  For example, cities and villages are created and organized by the people under Michigan’s Home Rule Acts; while townships are creatures of the state constitution and statutes.  The vast majority of townships have a culture of volunteerism in governance, using very few full-time paid staff.  In contrast, most cities and villages use professional staff to manage and deliver a larger number of complex services.

In short, government officials may find it difficult to relate to each other across jurisdictional boundaries.  Further, they may have little immediate incentive to reach across those boundaries.  Inter-jurisdictional cooperation in land-use planning can bring a community huge cost savings while supporting efficient economic development, but only over time.  Local officials are unlikely to see quick gains or immediate political benefits from these efforts.

So, what is the answer?  For many of the Partnerships for Change (PfC) Program communities the answer has been leadership.  Local public officials have become true community leaders by taking the time to listen and learn from their neighbors, to build a common vision, and to work out cooperative solutions.  These leaders use the skills and patience of a diplomat to engage the whole community.

Over the next three years, the PfC Program will again offer grants of professional planning and technical support services to communities across Michigan on a competitive basis.  Our goal is to help multi-jurisdictional partnerships succeed with community economic development while preserving cultural and natural resources.  Community leadership and inter-jurisdictional diplomacy will be a key to this success.

Check back tomorrow for Joe's thoughts on service grants.

You may contact Joe VanderMeulen, at 231-929-3696 or e-mail jvander@liaa.org

Friday

February 8, 2008

Service Grants from Partnerships for Change

This week, the Partnerships for Change (PfC) Program will issue two new requests for proposals (RFPs) from cities, townships and villages interested in working together for the benefit of their communities.  We are offering grants of professional planning and technical services to support efforts by multi-jurisdictional partnerships working to develop community-wide land-use planning policies or resource management programs.

Over the past three years, the PfC Program has accumulated some valuable experience and fostered some real success with multi-jurisdictional cooperation in land-use planning.  For example, PfC helped cities and townships in the Fremont, Bear Lake, and Mayville communities form some of Michigan’s first Joint Planning Commissions.  With facilitation and planning support from PfC, a team of local officials from the City of West Branch, West Branch Township and Ogemaw Township completed a joint Corridor Plan that is guiding economic development and historic preservation along the I-75 Business Loop.

A PfC service grant helped the City of Newaygo work with Garfield and Brooks Townships to create an effective Recreational Authority as well as an area-wide recreation plan that has already resulted in well over $100,000 in grants for a new trail system.  According to Mark Pitzer, Chairman of the Brooks Township Planning Commission, this could never have happened without the PfC Program.

Pitzer told PfC Program evaluators, “It was critical that we had LIAA to act as not only a clearinghouse for information, but also as a neutral third party.  Their involvement got us over some political hurdles that came up.”

In the Gaylord Community, the PfC Program focused on establishing a multi-jurisdictional committee to address ongoing concerns related to growth management.  Gaylord City Manager, Joe Duff told PfC Program evaluators, “I don’t think inter-jurisdictional planning would have taken off without the grant.  It took us to the next level.  It engaged us all.  It helped us see clearly and moved us to the action step.”

This year, we are delighted to be able to offer First Step project grants of up to $7,000 in assistance to help establish a basis for further inter-jurisdictional discussions.  Other grants are available to help local governments achieve substantial land-use policy change with $20,000 to over $60,000 in direct services.

If your municipality is ready to achieve more in community-wide land-use planning, I encourage you to consider the Partnerships for Change Program.  For more information, please visit www.partnershipsforchange.cc.

You may contact Joe VanderMeulen, at 231-929-3696 or e-mail jvander@liaa.org

Check back Monday to hear from Carolyn Coleman, Federal Relations Director for the National League of Cities…