Provide technical and financial support for regional collaboration
Action
The State should help communities collaborate regionally on development issues. While decisions about growth and development happen mostly at the local level, the impacts of local decisions are often felt throughout a region. For instance, if a community decides to permit the construction of a shopping center on the edge of town, the resulting revenue and jobs may be concentrated in the permitting jurisdiction. However, costs related to the shopping center, such as increased traffic, environmental impacts, and the decline of business for existing retail, are often felt throughout the region. Regional coordination of development decisions can help to encourage more equitable, efficient, and balanced growth patterns.
Process
The state planning agency can support and encourage regional coordination by providing incentives, such as financial and technical assistance for regional planning efforts and prioritizing access to state funds to communities that collaborate regionally. The latter could be implemented by including criteria in discretionary grant programs that evaluate proposals based on the extent to which they have the demonstrated support of multiple jurisdictions in a region. Similarly, the State can also adopt a policy under which a state planning department or comparable agency reviews projects that will have regional impact (those of a significant size or with cross-jurisdictional boundaries, such as regional shopping malls). Projects that successfully demonstrate that they have support of jurisdictions in the region and do not disproportionately affect certain communities in the region would receive greater consideration for grants, capital infrastructure investments, and preferential loan terms.
Examples
- Maine’s Regional Challenge Grant Program
The State Planning Office in Maine established the Regional Challenge Grant Program to provide gap funding for promising regional initiatives, such as inter-municipal agreements, regional capital investment plans, and tax base sharing agreements. This is a non-competitive program in which applicants are required to provide a 100 percent match for awards. Funding has recently been reduced due to budgetary constraints.
— Maine Regional Challenge Grant Program - Utah’s Quality Growth Communities Program
Utah’s Quality Growth Communities Program, established in 2004, certifies jurisdictions that meet specific criteria as Quality Growth Communities or Quality Growth Service Providers. The certified communities receive preferred loan terms for water loans, preferred access to critical land conservation funds, preference for certain transportation funds, and preferred access to housing funds, such as Community Development Block Grants and funding from the Permanent Community Impact Fund Board. In addition, the communities receive special recognition from the governor and the Quality Growth Commission, as well as the right to use the Quality Growth Communities name and logo. The Quality Growth Communities Program is voluntary, so communities can choose not to accept the Quality Growth Community designation.
— Utah’s Quality Growth Communities Program
— Utah's Quality Growth Commission
