As we embark on this new journey, we will begin introducing our Staff that works everyday to provide high-quality customer service to Moore County.  In this issue, we will also take a glimpse into our Long Range Planning Division, as well as the dangers of outdoor burning.

I want to begin by thanking Mr. Tim Emmert for his creation of this newsletter and for allowing our staff to carry the torch into the future.  This is an exciting time for our Department and we look forward to continuing to provide quality information.  We hope that this and future issues will continue to serve and benefit all our current and future readers.

We would like to begin our third year or 36th issue of the Planning & Community Development Newsletter by introducing our new editor, Jeremy Sparrow.

This month we will begin a series focused on the various divisions within our Planning & Community Development Department. The Department currently has three main divisions which include the following: community development, planning (current & long-range planning), and central permitting (which includes building code enforcement/inspections). Our department as a whole works on a wide variety of projects often cross-pollinating and collaborating between divisions to provide the best result for our customers. In future editions of the newsletter we will have similar articles intended to introduce you to more of our of Department's divisions.

In this edition, we will begin the series looking at the function of Long-Range Planning (LRP) within The Department's Planning Division. In our office there is one full-time dedicated staff member to this function, named Jeremy Rust, and another planner, named Jeremy Sparrow whose time is split between both current and long-range planning efforts.  

As the name implies, our long-range planners coordinate many of the long-range community planning type efforts for both the department, as well as for the organization. The division maintains much of the community's statistical data that can be used in various planning and reporting efforts. Significant sources of data included the U.S. Census and the American Community Survey.

This division's efforts are intended to help solicit the community's vision and goals for its future. The work often focuses on the process of planning more so at times than the end result. It is important that long-range planning projects offer significant opportunities for the public and stakeholders to provide input and to be a part of the decision-making process. This is important because plans must be developed for the community, by the community so they will have support for implementation.  For instance, one method of public involvement is through a citizen-based steering committee as is the case with the Land Use Plan Update. The project is being guided by a twenty-seven person committee made up of citizens who meet monthly to "steer" the project and provide feedback on the material being reviewed and the process to update the plan. Staff provides other opportunities for citizen involvement through holding community information and input meetings, posting information to project websites, and writing newsletters, such as this one. Our staff even continues to evaluate new and modern ways to provide information and capture input from the community through such methods as on-line surveys, various social media tools, and virtual meetings; all great topics for future newsletters!

At any one time our long-range planners could be overseeing several long-range plans all at once. In doing so, they have the responsibility of helping to make sure the various plans are in harmony with one another. Currently our long-range planners  are working on implementing the Moore County Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan, awaiting adoption of the Moore County Working Lands Protection Plan, updating the Moore County Land Use Plan, assisting NCDOT with their work to conduct a Moore County Comprehensive Transportation Plan, and attempting to chart a course toward conducting a planning effort in regards to our parks and recreation resources. These plans are in varying stages of the planning process, to keep track of each of them you can view updates by visiting our Moore County Projects webpage.

This leads to the next most common task for our long-range planners,  plan implementation. Once a plan is completed it is our long-range planners' job to take long-range planning policies and strategies developed during the planning process and implement them. Policies and strategies stemming from adopted long-range plans are often used as the basis for multi-year work plans for planning and other agency staff. Long-range planners, through their annual work plan, implement long-range plans using several tools such as the annual capital budgeting process, zoning and subdivision ordinances, and even new future long-range planning and implementation efforts in the Planning and Community Development Department. To implement plans it is often a collaborative effort between other agency departments, other local, regional, state and/or even federal agencies, as well as through private land improvement and development projects. One example of this would be how staff recently worked in collaboration with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the NC Department of Public Safety - Hazard Mitigation Division, and Moore County Public Safety to develop methods and new ideas to better mitigate flooding risks throughout the county - based on a strategy in the County's adopted Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan.  

Next month Planning and Community Development staff will continue focus on the Current Planning portion of the planning division.....stay tuned!