This educational seminar explores issues that zoning officers and planning/zoning officials face on a regular basis, and discusses effective strategies to address them.

This webinar presentation will discuss the preparation and implementation of a Residential Conservation Development Ordinance that has been proven to work in a township as it transitions from a rural to suburban community.

The use of short-term rentals (STRs) has exploded across the commonwealth and country, making it critical for municipalities to be prepared to address the numerous issues that can result, including resident complaints and registration and zoning challenges. In this session, learn about the recent trends for regulating STRs around the country, as well as best practices to ensure that your municipality can address these issues head-on in an effective and efficient manner.

A property is abandoned, and the neighbors are outraged. What do you do when an owner ignores/avoids code enforcement and tax sales? The Abandoned and Blighted Property Conservatorship Act gave municipalities a powerful tool to eliminate persistent blight. This webinar will introduce participants to the process of conservatorship, how to evaluate if a property fits the qualifications, and how to bring a property from blight to blessing in just one year.

Join staff members from the Pennsylvania Recreation and Park Society (PRPS), as they share recent legal updates and funding opportunities, current research activities, and operation trends impacting the parks and recreation industry, public works departments and land managers, across the commonwealth.

Traditional public outreach efforts often fail at soliciting input from every segment of the community. As a result, municipal projects may not meet the true needs of their constituents. This session will explore which groups are often under-represented in traditional outreach programs and provide creative engagement strategies to ensure all voices are heard. Participants will also hear real-world success stories from local municipalities that have used these strategies.

The session will focus on Planning in Rural Communities during the development of Westmoreland County’s first rural Active Transportation Plan. The Smithton Borough - Scottdale Borough Active Transportation Plan was adopted in December 2020 and provides an excellent example of how planners, local officials and county and regional partnerships, non-profits and institutional resources and state agencies can collaborate on community engagement and planning efforts. Capacity building at the local level was vital to developing a Plan that advanced active transportation priorities, projects and initiatives within local budgetary parameters and that met local governmental expectations.

Supervisors who enact zoning ordinances must understand the purpose and function of zoning. This workshop explains why we have zoning, how we implement it, and the tools it affords townships to protect the public’s health, safety, and welfare. The workshop is intended to educate both the newest supervisors and the ones who have seen it all. We will discuss the legal roles of supervisors and others, zoning hearings (including conditional uses), and several other important aspects of zoning ordinances that are often overlooked or misunderstood.

The recent publications by Daniel Parolek of Opticos Design and policy changes from around the country have spurred a renewed interest in ‘Missing Middle’ Housing. Missing Middle Housing includes a diverse set of housing types that were fundamental building blocks of pre-1940s neighborhoods. Today, typical single-family zoning often prevents a range of housing options within a given district or proposed residential development. This presentation will review how Cranberry Township has worked to create greater flexibility and remove regulatory barriers imposed by typical Euclidean zoning. Specifically, the presentation will examine the Township’s recently adopted Planned Neighborhood (PN) Overlay and its elements. In addition, the presentation will review important metrics to consider as other communities analyze their existing housing stock and plan for long-term solvency and financial sustainability.

As individuals grow apart in today’s society, communities need to come together. Communities not only provide a geographic location where people live, they also offer social interaction and common ties that bind their people together. Ideally, these community features and related opportunities should be available to benefit all within a community, including the very young and old residents. Many communities would like to engage citizens in an all-age inclusive planning process, but do not have the knowledge, staffing or expertise to develop such assessments and strategies to capture information for use in a decision-making process. In this webinar, representatives of Penn State Extension will first engage participants in a discussion of challenges they have faced and provide practices for how they can address them to the benefit of their communities.