Opinion: Prospective planning board members should be prepared

As the Wake Forest Board of Commissioners is about to reduce the number of planning board members from nine to seven and approve a handbook describing the duties of the planning board members and the conduct of the board, it seems the commissioners should also require that people who ask to be appointed come with credentials: successful completion of the Wake Forest Planning Board Academy and of the Wake Forest Area Chamber of Commerce Leadership Wake Forest.

In past years the planning board candidates were almost entirely of people who had either been born here or had been in town for years. No more. Now people apply for the planning board or other boards within a year or three or five of moving into one of the newer subdivisions. Do they shop downtown or know where it is? Do they have a map of the town?

They move here from other states where the land use law can be very different from North Carolina’s. Within a year or five, can they know how the town began, why its downtown is on White Street not Main Street, the background of the former Wake Forest Country Club (which may be on their agenda soon), or why prime commercial land like the former Parker-Hannifin site (Schrader) lies largely untouched? Have they wondered why they get their electricity from Wake Electric, not Wake Forest Power? Do they understand the Neuse River Buffer rules?

Planning board applicants should attend more than one planning board meeting before their formal application, and they should familiarize themselves with the various plans affecting the town, including at least the Community Plan, the Transportation Plan, the Northeast Community Plan, and the state Department of Transportation U.S. 1 Corridor Plan and its impact on the town during construction and when complete.

Only one of the three men appointed to the planning board in 2020 had attended the Planning Board Academy, and that was Michael Siderio in 2014. Michael Hickey wrote on his application that he was a “member of Wake Forest Planning Board education group,” whatever that was. Actually, the only applicant aside from Siderio who had attended the academy was Grif Bond, who was passed over for reappointment along with Ed Gary, the then chairman.

You can see all the 2020 applications by going to the town website, www.wakeforestnc.gov, selecting the Public Meeting Portal on the first page, scrolling down to Available Archives and choosing Board of Commissioners, selecting 2020 and the Dec. 15, 2020 meeting agenda. Look through the agenda until you get to item 6.C and select Planning_Board_Application_Packet.pdf.

Most of us had assumed that attendance at the Planning Board Academy was a requirement for planning board applicants, but it has been only an unwritten rule. It needs to be written and enforced along with the Leadership Wake Forest requirement.

Since former head of the Wake Forest Planning Department Chip Russell formed the Wake Forest Planning Academy it has been praised by state and local planning officials for its rigorous introduction into the state laws and local ordinances which govern planning in North Carolina and all aspects of the law and what they will encounter on the Wake Forest Planning Board.

Leadership Wake Forest is the complement to the academy, covering town history, its government, local businesses and industry, its schools and its volunteer organizations. The goal is to provide an educated cadre of professionals who understand the community. Unlike the planning academy, it is not free, $750 for chamber members, $900 for non-members, but there are two scholarships for those people with limited means but high hopes.

If we are to expect to have applicants for the Wake Forest Planning Board increasingly to be newcomers to town, then we need to be sure they know about the town and about the planning law in North Carolina.

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