Lt.Gov. Timothy Murray announced the Patrick administration will sign contracts with the 13 Regional Planning Agencies (RPAs) in the Commonwealth to provide cities and towns with technical assistance toward land use planning, economic development activities, and regionalization of municipal services.
The planning assistance, offered through the District Local Technical Assistance Fund (DLTA), is funded at $2 million for Fiscal 2009, and will be distributed among the state’s 13 RPAs. Each of the state’s 351 cities and towns belongs to one of the 13 RPAs, which all have significant expertise in facilitating regional collaboration and service delivery, and thus are well suited use DLTA funds to help implement regional initiatives and build on past successes.
Program funds will help municipalities in two ways this year: achieving smart growth land use objectives, and consolidating procurement, services and planning across city and town lines.
“With municipalities across the commonwealth facing challenging budgets, many are unable to support the kind of planning that is necessary to achieve sustainable growth and development. Many small communities have no planning staff at all,” said Marc Draisen, executive director of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, which is metro Boston’s regional planning agency. “At least 30 percent of the funding will be used for regionalization. Consolidating municipal functions is another way for communities to save money and enhance the quality of services to residents.”
In the first round of funding, offered in 2006, DLTA funds supported several key initiatives:
• Regional planning agencies helped dozens of communities promote economic development through Chapter 43D Expedited Permitting and provided assistance in reforming the local permitting process.
• The fund also allowed regional planning agencies to assist other communities with smart growth land use, rezoning for economic development, and housing production.
• RPAs assisted communities across the state with their master plans, open space plans, and adoption of 40R districts.
The new round of DLTA funding will allow RPAs to continue these types of projects, while expanding existing efforts in regional service delivery. RPAs will now begin soliciting proposals from communities for the second round of the program.
