Thursday, June 17, 1999
Western land-use plan proving hard sell
BY RACHEL MELCER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
In the three-year, $300,000 collaborative planning process for the future of western Hamilton County, commissioners made it clear Wednesday that there is little collaboration.
They said that it has no teeth — no power to control the decisions of the region's six townships, one city and three towns.
Yet local officials say they think the land use plan, which will partially determine the rate and method of develop ment in the largely rural area, is nipping at their heels.
Some fear the plan is being ushered in as policy through a back door.
In an unpublicized staff meeting held sometime this spring, county commissioners changed the way it is being considered, said Ron Miller, executive director of the county Regional Planning Commission (RPC). The Board of Commissioners decided to hold Wednesday's public hearing and vote on the plan before it is forwarded to local governments for a “thumbs-up” or “thumbs-down.”
Members of the RPC already approved the land use map, policy goals and outlines for development-driving wa ter, sewer and transportation improvements in the townships of Colerain, Green, Whitewater, Crosby, Harrison and Miami, the city of Harrison, and the villages of North Bend, Addyston and Cleves. The plan will affect RPC recommendations to the county commission for the next 20 years — and those recommendations are usually followed, Mr. Miller said.
“It can have an impact, and it should have an impact, and I think it will have an impact. But it's not mandated to have an impact, which I think is probably better,” Mr. Miller said. “We all know that once you have laws, someone starts trying to get around them. It's probably a healthier environ ment if we can build voluntary consensus.”
At the two-hour public hearing, that seemed unlikely.
Commissioners Bob Bedinghaus, Tom Neyer and John Dowlin — who conceptualized and championed the plan — said they do not know exactly what it would mean. They professed to not understand how, or if, it will be enforced.
In the end, the commission sent it back to the RPC for clarification and continued the hearing until later this summer.
They want to foster collaboration among 10 separate jurisdictions — but can't make it happen between the sixth and eighth floors of the county building.
“I've had quite a few con flicting messages in the past few days about what this does and doesn't do,” Mr. Neyer said.
Two members of the steering committee of local officials who drafted the plan protested the process as it is unfolding. Colerain Township Trustee Joe Wolterman and Chuck Mitchell, a Western Economic Council board member, said they do not want it to impinge on township and municipal decision-making.
“Send this back to the local jurisdictions and see how they want to use it ... That's where this should start,” Mr. Wolterman said.
An array of opponents of the plan made speeches and unfurled petitions. They said if it is carried out, the plan will bring rapid development to displace their rolling hills and wooded estates, farms and mobile homes.
Glen Brand, director of the national Sierra Club's Cincinnati office, applauded the concept of collaborative future land use planning. But he railed against the measures already being approved in the county building, saying they will lead to environmental harm and suburban sprawl.
“They seem to lack the leadership to get a good, responsible county land use plan through. So they've been playing games,” he said. “It's never an easy process. But from what I've seen, this is a real bumbling effort.”
Mr. Dowlin said the collaborative plan is a way to “elevate the place of planning as we look into the future,” fostering cooperation to avoid transportation snarls and urban sprawl.
Such movements are gaining momentum nationwide and are figuring prominently in the 2000 presidential race. In the Tristate, business and government leaders are looking to Monday's release of a regional growth report by urban planner Michael Gallis to guide their planning decisions for the future.
But in Hamilton County, officials are learning how difficult the process can be.
“We hear a lot about (collaborative planning). Certainly, we have a role to play,” Mr. Bedinghaus said. “Maybe this is a good example of where the rubber hits the road in regionalism.”
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TRISTATE DIGEST
Western land-use plan proving hard sell
