Strategy Description:

This strategy will list and develop ideas from recent planning literature and current PA legislative agendas that would aid in providing more tools to Pennsylvania communities for growth management that currently are not available or allowed in the Commonwealth. The strategy will be built as a basis for local and/or regional level work with the region’s legislative delegation.

Key Components:

• Support changes to Article V-A of the PAMPC on Municipal Capital Improvement – Traffic Impact Fees

• Municipalities, not counties, are granted the required power to enact, amend, and repeal impact ordinances if they have adopted any of the following:

• Municipal comprehensive plan
• County comprehensive plan (not explained how this applied to municipalities)
• Subdivision ordinance
• Land development ordinance
• Zoning ordinance

• Only those roadways identified on the legally adopted municipal street or highway plan or official map are eligible for analysis. These plans may exclude important road links.

• "Existing deficiencies" are based on the "preferred" LOS designated in the adopted Capital Improvement Plan and may vary from municipality to municipality within a county.

• Service areas for study cannot exceed seven square miles and have to have an aggregation of potential development sites which create a need for transportation improvements. Why seven square miles was selected is not known, and some areas may not have what is termed sufficient potential development sites.

• The transportation CIP must be adopted by a municipality prior to enactment of an impact fee ordinance. Usually CIP programs are two to six years, so this plan does not account for longer-range infrastructure needs.

• The "impact" advisory committee must develop land use assumptions for determining future growth yet states that the period cover at least the next five years. In order to establish a growth rate, previous five-year growth rates should be determined. There is a big difference in a five-year impact fee and a "future"; i.e. buildout or 70% buildout impact fee. An impact fee based on five-year projections would need to be updated frequently in a high growth area.

• Municipalities may jointly commission roadway sufficiency analyses to establish both existing and the "future" of five-year LOS analyses and needed improvements. Critical to this analysis is "pass through" traffic projections for not less than five years. Determining pass through traffic and its impact is quite complex and needs to be determined versus traffic impact created by local new development within the area under study; i.e. seven square miles or less.

• The preferred LOS depends on what is preferred by each municipality; LOS C may be nice for +5 years, LOS D practical for 10 years and LOS E rational after 10 years in high growth areas. As traffic volumes increase, the lower the LOS B or C, the more costly the roadway improvements and the higher the impact fees.

• A municipality may update the CIP and impact fee but not more frequently than annually.

• No reference, except in Item (n) in Section 505-A, is made to the role that the passby capture phenomena would have on the traffic impact study process. Passby capture trips are already on the existing roadway network so they should be subtracted from total trips generated by certain land uses (especially retail).

• If municipalities are jointly involved and adopt an impact fee, an additional impact fee can be imposed on a new development if it exceeds 1,000 or more new peak hour trips (total less passby capture = new trips).

• Support tax reform for farmers.

• Support changes to the MPC regarding the inability of municipalities to control the location of mineral recovery operations, particularly in areas with an abundance of these resources in many locations. The inclusion of these activities in rural resource areas as defined in the MPC is the point of contention.

• Define a 50-year planning process to support a 20-year land use and transportation plan.

• Advocate the pursuit of greater levels of funding at the State and Federal levels and a change in the formula for calculation of the local share of that funding based on existing and future levels of service.

Supporting these initiatives should be a priority for all members of the community if the sustainable future is to be reached.

Implementation:

Municipal and county officials should take the lead in working with their legislative delegation.

Indicators:

• Amount and type of legislation initiated and supported by local delegation