Township Alliances - Unintended Consequences and Potentials

In the Fall of 2004, the Northern Tier Coalition ( NTC) proposed a Commercial Communications Facilities ordinance. The ordinance was long, ambiguous, and unnecessarily regulated desirable activities besides just the intended cellphone towers. With County support, I was able to draft a short ordinance based on an existing one to regulate the cell towers without undesirable impacts. The NTC listened and towns were given the option to follow the county ordinance, the short version, or the original proposal.

While the story had a happy ending The experience made me consider the reasons for township alliances and the unintended consequences of those good intentions. I put my thoughts in a short article for the Susquehanna Community Information Network which can be read here : Town Alliances and Citizens .

The current NTC Zoning ordinance reveals a serious gap between the desires of the citizens and the NTC ; a gap which many township officials are finding hard to bridge. So, using the article, I'll discuss some unintended consequences of these alliances and suggest improvements for town and county cooperation.

The unintended consequences include : 1) lack of public awareness of alliance issues and meetings; 2) scarcity of local volunteer expertise; 3) bureaucratic distancing between the alliance, the citizens, and even between township representatives.

Finally, citizen awareness and influence is enough outside this process that one could feel powerless or disenfranchised. Most rural citizens know their 3 town supervisors and 3 county commissioners by sight and vote for them directly. In an Alliance of 12 towns, decisions are made by 36 representatives; 33 of whom a citizen does not vote for and may not know. While each town may vote for each alliance proposal, there is a tendency to go along with the group; and the citizen is unlikely to be aware of the group, much less influencing it.

Insertion of an extra bureaucratic layer, especially a relatively unaccountable or low visibility one, is rarely good business management practice and much less so for government entities that need citizen involvement. It can lead to redundant effort, diffusion of talent, and weakening of the bond between citizens and officials.

A key reason for forming alliances is to obtain preferential treatment for funding grants. But the NTC Zoning experience indicates that our current use of the State's preferential funding policy can result in an alliance being perceived as an unaccountable regional governmental layer. So, how can we leverage state funding preferences without creating that extra layer?

Let's start with some goals to :
* Foster broad citizen visibility into and involvement with issues,
* Share the limited available expertise,
* Avoid redundant or overlapping studies or regulations, and
* Be flexible enough to accommodate differences in town priorities, population, and land area.

In a low population county, the best way to keep the public aware is by newspaper accounts, supplemented by direct mailings for critical issues. Unlike town meetings, county commissioner meetings are well attended with several reporters. Monthly reports at a commissioner meeting, would keep an important alliance issue in the newspapers and encourage public participation and discussion at township meetings.

Volunteers and experts could serve both county and towns. As an example, for land development ordinances and plans, Susquehanna County has a Planning Department and a Planning Commission with 9 members to serve 42,000 residents in 42 municipalities. This commission, perhaps augmented by a small number of township volunteers, could handle town subdivision cases as well as county ones. Their recommendations could be provided to the township for decision and action. Under this arrangement, a town might need 1 person as their planning liaison instead of 3 for a town planning commission. In a 10 town alliance, this would save at least 20 persons.

This county/town partnership seems preferable to the current NTC effort to develop and administer their unique Subdivision and Land Development Ordinance(SLADO). It centralizes and minimizes essential expertise and technical services, increases public visibility, and keeps decision making authority at the townships. It may even be eligible for state funding incentives.

Instead of static formal alliances like the NTC, incentives could be provided to towns and counties that form partnerships for specific limited objectives. Each partnership would include towns working on common objectives and would last only as long as the common objective required. For example, five towns might partner to get new road maintenance equipment and to share repair parts or services. Different towns might partner for a different objective. These flexible partnerships should have the same funding preferences now provided only to the more static alliances. There would be no need to continue beyond the stated objectives and , hence, no motivation to become a self-perpetuating bureaucratic layer. Flexible partnering and team competition for state funds is a close replica of industry teaming arrangements for large competitive contracts.

In addition to fostering more flexible partnering arrangements, there should be incentives for minimizing redundant efforts. Current state policy encourages townships and alliances to develop comprehensive plans that track their county plan. While this may be good policy for large rapidly growing counties, it seems wastefully redundant to incentivize multiple alliances and plans in a rural county like Susquehanna. Instead, towns which utilize existing county (or other town) ordinances could be given higher priority for grants, per the SLADO example above. This seems to fit the intent of current law and may need only an administrative policy change or re-interpretation. The result would reduce wasteful spending, develop a higher quality product by more efficient use of local expertise, and keep township decision authority. It might also curb the financial incentive to over-plan.

While these suggestions are offered for discussion, some of them could be acted upon by townships and counties under current law. Others might require administrative adjustments or legislation at the state level.