September 3, 2003
Be Our Guest
Wausau Daily Herald (Wausau, Wisconsin)

Legislators Shouldn't Monkey with Land-Use Law

By Paul Farmer

Pay me now or pay me a lot more later. For most of us, that's an easy decision to make, particularly when it comes to our own pocketbooks. But a group of ideologues in the Wisconsin Legislature seems eager to make a poor choice with your pocketbooks and your grandchildren's pocketbooks.

This small group is making noises about repealing the law that requires Wisconsin communities to develop comprehensive land-use plans by 2010. Their reason? Planning for community growth is a big chore thrust upon local officials by the state. And it costs too much.

This seems shortsighted. Waiting for problems to come to Wisconsin communities before thinking about how to avoid them is an expensive recipe for fiscal disaster. Every successful business plans for its future. Every family tries to plan for its needs.

As the principal stewards of the land resources that benefit entire communities, Wisconsin's local elected officials, Republican and Democrat, need to provide leadership in community planning. That means engaging all of Wisconsin's citizens — landowners, developers, neighborhood groups, and concerned citizens — in a civic dialogue about their collective future. This kind of municipal governance requires open decision-making, in which the politics of development are played out in public hearings, interagency panels and legislative bodies. The debate is tedious, but building great American communities always is.

By scrapping the give-and-take of land-use planning, some state lawmakers want to abdicate their responsibility to manage land in ways that promote public values and balance the often-competing interests of private property owners. That will cost a lot more in the end. Recent studies in Kentucky and South Carolina found that counties could shave almost 12 percent off their infrastructure tabs by planning for development instead of leaving it to chance.

Other states are learning that building schools, roads and sewers without a coordinated vision for the community's future saddles all taxpayers with the cost of mistakes that could have been foreseen.

For Wisconsin's smaller communities that don't have a lot of money and expertise, help is available. Every spring semester the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison conducts a planning workshop that allows rural communities to tap into the knowledge and skills of the department's graduate students.

Twenty-five years ago, students and faculty in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Planning Program provided assistance to the local government to help resolve several policy disputes that had stymied redevelopment of Milwaukee's downtown lakefront. At the location where the highest land values in the state intersected with Lake Michigan, the defining natural feature of Wisconsin, the land use was surface parking for 75 cents a day.

Through planning, the disputes were resolved, a vision was established and now the area is internationally known for the Calatrava addition to the museum. Think of the returns to Milwaukee and to the state for this kind of bold planning. And think of the returns possible by replicating this kind of planning in communities throughout Wisconsin.

Pay me now or pay me later. It should be an easy choice. There is no excuse for putting off planning for Wisconsin's future. State lawmakers should step up to the challenge and reject ill-considered attempts to gut sound legislation even before it has had a chance to work.

Paul Farmer is executive director of the American Planning Association.