Why Should Delaware Care?
As a population and housing boom happens across the state, land use decisions are at the forefront of local politics. But a group of former state secretaries wants to change how Delaware thinks about those decisions.
With Delaware rapidly developing, residents growing increasingly concerned about the change and new leadership taking over virtually every branch of government in the state, a group of former state Cabinet secretaries, community advocates and county leadership is making a push to change land use policy across the First State.
The group, who have named themselves Rethinking Delaware, wants to see a paradigm shift in how people think about land use policy, and for them to see those decisions don’t exist in silos.
After each of the group’s different leaders have called for change separately, they now pose a unified front that makes it harder for leadership to ignore.
Anne Canby, a former eight-year Transportation Secretary under the Carper administration, said the group came to fruition after many of its members started to take note of the growth across the state.
They thought that if they could put their heads together with all of their different backgrounds over decades, they could make meaningful recommendations and changes to Delaware land use policies.
“We’ve been talking about doing stuff in Delaware for decades, and it’s now time to walk the walk,” Canby said. “So that’s what we’re all about.”
What have they done?
What that’s culminated up to this point is op-eds in publications across Delaware, as well as different recommendations for future state leadership to implement. But as the state is in the middle of a statewide leadership transition, Rethinking Delaware looks to put its foot in the door.
Some of those recommendations look to give more legal authority to the Office of State Planning Coordination (OSPC) and limit development outside of targeted growth areas.
Every four years OSPC creates a new guide for “Delaware Strategies for State Policies and Spending,” which includes land use recommendations for growth, breaking land in the state into four levels.
Level one and two areas are denser parts of the state targeted for development and level three and four areas are more rural. But when it comes to putting these recommendations into action, it’s up to counties and local municipalities to decide whether or not they want to listen.
At a recent Sussex County meeting, OSPC Director David Edgell said the state’s current development in level four areas “unsustainable.”
New Castle County Councilwoman Dee Durham, who is a Rethinking Delaware member, said the state needs to offer better incentives for developing in targeted areas.
“There’s carrots and sticks, but let’s carrot the state planning levels one and two areas and stick the levels three and four,” she said.
Interconnected decisions
A major reason the group formed was to show the interconnected nature of land use decisions, and how they could impact public health and taxpayers.
Rita Landgraf, an eight-year Health and Social Services Secretary in the Markell administration, said that when communities are planned with pedestrians and bikers in mind those people can have better health outcomes.
Giving residents the option to walk or bike to work limits sedentary lifestyles in communities, according to Landgraf.
Towns and communities not planned with these groups in mind could lead to dependence on cars to get to work, as well as longer distances to amenities like health care and healthy food.
Christophe Tulou is the current executive director at the Center for the Inland Bays, but also served five years as Cabinet secretary for the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) in the Carper administration.
As a Rethinking Delaware member, Tulou stressed that housing and environmental advocates shouldn’t be the only groups invested in land use decisions.
Tulou also argues that by being “smarter” in state development, it could save the state money in the long-term as opposed to “sprawling development.”
He said developments right now come with costs completely unrelated to the houses themselves like new streets and infrastructure, along with the personal costs of owning and maintaining a car.
“I think one of the reasons why we’re compelled to do this is that land use in some form or fashion affects all of us to the core,” Tulou said.
‘Something should have been done 30 years ago’
Many members of Rethinking Delaware are tapped in politically to happenings around the state, and it leaves questions about the group’s appeal to the general public.
Canby says there is value in what Rethinking Delaware wants for the state, but the group still needs to focus more attention on getting people on board with the ideas.
Mark Nardone, the director of the Delaware Nature Society and Rethinking Delaware member, said he has conversations with people about these issues “every day.”
He said the costs of reshaping land use practice in Delaware will save the state in the long run, as opposed to waiting and trying to adjust later.
Nardone argues nobody in the group is anti-development, but wants to see the state look at land use in a holistic manner.
“We’ve kind of just watched the bad decisions pile on to each other, and here we are at this cumulative point,” Nardone said. “We’ve reached a point where something should have been done 30 years ago, when the development really started taking off.”
Rethinking Delaware members
- Rita Landgraf (former Delaware Health and Social Services secretary)
- Christophe Tulou (former Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control secretary)
- Anne Canby (former Delaware Department of Transportation secretary)
- Charles Salkin (former director of the Division of Parks and Recreation at DNREC)
- Mark Chura (executive director of Sussex County Land Trust)
- Joseph Pika (Professor Emeritus, UD; former president of the Delaware State Board of Education)
- Dee Durham (New Castle County Council, Preservation Delaware)
- Delaware Community Foundation
- Delaware Housing Alliance
- Healthy Communities Delaware
- Delaware Nature Society
- Delaware Chapter of the Sierra Club
- The Nature Conservancy in Delaware
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