On June 20th, the North Dakota Policy Council (NDPC) outlined the reasons why Burleigh County should demand the nearly $1000,000 back it is paying SRF Consulting to update the Burleigh County Comprehensive Plan. Those reasons were:

• Effective comprehensive planning is impossible.
  
  
• SRF skipped crucial steps that make up the rational planning model.
  
  
• SRF is promoting a fad called "smart growth," instead of making the plan specific to Burleigh County.
  
  
• The Draft Plan is little more than regurgitated plans SRF has completed in the past for other counties.
  
  
• SRF completely ignored public input that they were paid to collect and use.

In June 2007, Burleigh County hired SRF Consulting (SRF) to update the Burleigh County Comprehensive Plan.  The contract would pay SRF almost $100,000.  Planners, such as those at SRF, use a “rational planning model” to write long-range plans.  Rational planning identifies problems, establishes criteria to evaluate alternatives, creates alternatives, and chooses one. 

SRF, the private consulting firm hired to update the Burleigh County comprehensive land-use plan, says its goal is to “reduce sprawl.” But why, in a state that is 99 percent rural, has sprawl become such an overriding problem?

The planners say it costs more to provide infrastructure and services to far-flung developments. Yet they admit they have no evidence this is true in Burleigh County. UPS, FedEx, electricity, and telephone companies manage to cover their costs serving low-density developments. Burleigh County should also be able to do so.

The planning profession uses a “rational planning model” to address issues like this one. Rational planners identify goals, develop alternative ways of achieving those goals, and estimate the benefits and costs of each alternative. Only then do they put together a plan that attempts to achieve the greatest benefits at the least cost.

In early September, the North Dakota Policy Council released a report detailing the dangerous agenda that "professional" city planners are promoting entitled "smart growt," a global land grab scheme aimed at increasing land regulations and decreasing the number of privately held acres of land.

There is a new North Dakota-based organization that is helping the fight against government takeover of private property, the North Dakota Policy Council (NDPC). The NDPC is a non-profit educational corporation dedicated to free-markets and private property.

BISMARCK - In a meeting of the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR) at the capitol on Monday, citizens from around the state gathered to address the issue of extraterritorial zoning. The discussion on ET zoning had nothing to do with aliens invading, but several attendees had concerns about private property rights being invaded.

Extraterritorial zoning is the authority given to cities by the state to have zoning power beyond the city limits. It was in 1970s the first piece of ET zoning legislation was passed.

BISMARCK - The lines were drawn before the meeting ever began.

The Burleigh County Commission's public hearing on its comprehensive plan drew quite a crowd Monday night. Dozens of people were in attendance to give and listen to the testimony spoken before the commission.

On one side of the room sat public employees and representatives of business in support of the plan, who stand to potentially gain from land acquisition opportunities and more tax revenue. On the other sat landowners with concerns of their rights being infringed upon by the plan.

After opening comments from the chairman of the planning commission Chuck Peterson and city and county planner Carl Hokenstad about the history and structure of the plan, the debate began.