Caroline project information

Caroline team -- Below is is the basic information send via email

Caroline documents

1. Caroline Comprehensive Plan. http://www.townofcaroline.org/announcements/Comprehensive%20Plan%202006.pdf Caroline's Comp Plan is organized into 2 parts: 1) Part I articulates the vision and goals for what Caroline citizens want their town to be like to be in 20 years. 2) Part II presents specific actions steps over the next five years to achieve these 20-year goals. This is the most important document because it is basis for all of our effort.

2. Grant Proposal. (sent via email "grant appl-2005") Erick Smith and I submitted this grant proposal to the NY State Quality Communities Program for professional planning support to implement our a major portion of our Comprehensive Plan: to design an innovative point-based development guidance system.

3. Request for Proposals. (sent via email "RFP for planning consultant") This RFP detailing our project and need for professional planning assistance was distributed throughout New York State. The Town eventually hired Laberge Group. Read this document for a sense of the specifics for what help the Town wishes in order to create a development guidance system.


Model documents

4. Hardin County Kentucky. http://www.hcky.org/hcpdc/wholedgs.pdf Hardin County's Development Guidance System inspired Caroline to experiment with non-zoning-based tools to shepherd land-use in the Town. How much can it serve as a model for Caroline? Some parts might not work -- for example, the negotiated process was struck down by the courts -- but we don't know. It is unclear how something like this would work in a small town with limited resources. Don't hurt yourself reading this.

5. LEED. https://www.usgbc.org/ShowFile.aspx?DocumentID=1095. Salima, this is the basic LEED rating system for green buildings, as created by the US Green Building Council. It is widely used as the objective standard for green buildings in the US, and many municipalities and institutions are adopting policies to build buildings according to these standards. Notice how there are several categories (Sites, Water, Energy, Materials, Indoor quality, etc), and within each category there are both mandatory actions ("Prerequisites") and optional actions ("Credits"). You can pick and choose which Credits to shoot for based on your individual project, providing for flexibility and creativity. One is required to achieve all the prerequisites in each category and achieve a certain number of points from all the categories combined to attain "LEED certification" for a building project. The level of certification ("Certified", "Silver", "Gold", "Platinum") depends on the number of points (the more points, the higher the certification). Also note how the LEED system cites existing third-party/independent standards in its prerequisites and credits. This is important because for a system in Caroline to work, it must be based on objective criteria.

6. LEED-ND. http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=148. Now, this is the cool part. The US Green Building Council created a LEED rating system for neighborhood development. As with the LEED building standards, there are several categories (Location, Design, Construction, and Process), and again within each category there are both mandatory prerequisites and optional credits. The prerequisites are basic land use things like "don't build on a flood plain" and "prevent pollution during construction", whereas the credits are more bold elements like "walkable streets" or "reuse of historic buildings". Isn't that awesome? The challenging part is how to apply this idea to Caroline within the legal and political environment we find ourselves. How might this work without zoning? Again, it is unclear how something like this can work in a small town with limited resources.


Exciting, huh? We need your help: What other models are out there? What models could work in Caroline? How would they work? It will be great to have your energy and curiosity to help us learn what is possible for us in Caroline.