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Lafayette will host Lehigh Valley officials and municipal managers for a conference on inter-municipal planning beginning 7:30 a.m. Thursday in Kirby Hall of Civil Rights.
Entitled “Planning the Future Together,” the conference will be conducted by the College’s Meyner Center for the Study of State and Local Government. It will feature a keynote address by Joanne Denworth of the Governor’s Office of Policy and presentations by Michael Kaiser, executive director of the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission; Thomas Daniels, professor of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania; Eric Madden, director of policy of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation; and Ken Klothen, deputy secretary for community affairs of the Governor’s Center for Local Services.
Also speaking will be Lafayette President Arthur J. Rothkopf ’55; John Kincaid, director of the Meyner Center; and Diane V. Elliott, director for public service of the Meyner Center. The conference will conclude with a screening of the 2004 film The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream.
The goal is to provide municipalities with the tools and contacts to make sensible land-use decisions in cooperation with neighboring municipalities. It will also be a time for municipalities to challenge state, county, and local officials to “think outside the box” and let them know what municipalities need from them. It is also a chance to ask the Meyner Center, a non-partisan academic and public-service unit of Lafayette, for assistance on issues that cannot be readily resolved.
“Pennsylvania’s cities, towns, and older suburbs are declining as the state sprawls. Pennsylvania’s economy is drifting as it responds incoherently to continued industrial restructuring,” states the Brookings Institution’s 2003 report Back to Prosperity: A Competitive Agenda for Renewing Pennsylvania. Explaining that the number of municipalities and Pennsylvania’s bureaucratic fragmentation have caused jurisdictions to compete against each other rather than act together on tough problems such as land-use planning and economic development, the report recommends “that Pennsylvania assess its state-local government system, foster more coordination through its own actions and incentives, and make it far easier for governments that want to work together to do so.”
In response, the Meyner Center organized and hosted a meeting with officials from the 63 municipalities in Lehigh and Northampton Counties and Phillipsburg, N.J., last spring. Since then, the center has worked with the three Council of Governments in Northampton County and the Lehigh Valley municipal managers, engaged in visioning with the Bangor Area School District, and is now assisting with preparing a strategic plan in that region. It has also brought together the cities of Easton and Phillipsburg to engage in planning with the Delaware River Joint Bridge Commission to make the river the focal point of a regional downtown revitalization, full of activities and a vibrant nightlife.
For information, contact Elliott at (610) 330-5856.
The schedule: