This step-by-step guidebook gets new commissioners off on the right foot and helps experienced commission members navigate their roles. The authors, all practicing planners, have worked extensively with planning commissions for decades. They have watched commissioners scramble up a steep learning curve, sit in the hot seat of controversy, and strive to make sound decisions for the places they call home. In this helpful handbook, the authors share ideas, insights, and information to help commissioners succeed. Eight detailed chapters cover everything from the nuts and bolts of development applications to the nuances of legal issues to the part commissioners play in long-range planning. Readers will learn how to prepare for their first commission meeting, review a development plan, invite productive public input, and steer clear of ethical dilemmas.

A popular and practical guide on how to be an effective planning commissioner. Filled with checklists and outlines, it's both a good introduction and a handy reference. Includes a training checklist for new commissioners, criteria for keeping a master plan in working order, lists of tools to guide growth, advice on how to deal with professional staff, and dos and don'ts for conducting successful public meetings. This edition sharpens the focus on how commissioners and their staffs can operate under four core principles for planning commissioners: citizen involvement, smaller is better, living in a market-driven system, and orderly growth.