Exploring Tools For Balanced Growth
An initial donation of $16,000 by a major landowner plus the $2 an acre dues funded our first planning activities. We were embarking on so many ideas that were new to planners, regulators and elected officials and we realized the challenge ahead. Transfer Development Rights (TDRs) was a new concept in the south where people were not accustomed to severing rights from the dirt. Land owners in places like Colorado are accustomed to selling mineral and water rights so the ideas of severing a development right simply added another layer to the staked values within a parcel of land. However, those commodities were not traded in the south and thus the idea of severing value was a new idea. We realized that our government leaders would be more receptive to ideas if they heard from their counterpart in other parts of the country.
In June 2001, The Fulton County Office of Environment and Community Affairs, The Nature Conservancy, and the Chattahoochee Hill Country Alliance collaborated in scheduling a one-day seminar on Tools for Sustainable Development. We engaged government and community leaders from Boulder County, Colorado and Howard County, Maryland to share how they guide growth including through the use of TDRs.
Someone suggested we contact Laurie Fowler who was a professor of law at the University of Georgia. Her courses were described as a guide that wove together law, ecology, environmental design, economics and other disciplines in service learning projects to protect critical natural resources. Wow, that sounded like someone we needed on our team. And join our team she did. Laurie brought along professor Jamie Baker Roskie who specialized in land use law and the two Georgia professors lent leadership and credibility in planing our first information sharing on new tools for land planning.
For this meeting involving local and state leaders, there was participation from Fulton County staff, the Georgia Conservancy, South Fulton landowners and developers, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the Atlanta Regional Commission, Oglethorpe Power, the National Park Service, the Southern Company, the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority and the Association of County Commissioners in Georgia.
As a result of this gathering, the University of Georgia law department conducted research regarding TDRs and wrote legislation that was introduced in the 2003 Georgia legislative session and passed in the closing hours of that session. The Association of County Commissioners of Georga carried this legislation for us helping educate leaders in the state Senate and House on the advantage to this tool for all of Georgia. More on this at a later time. Blow is a slide from the deck we developed to familiarize people with the concept.
