Title:ساخت و اجرای طرح سری بررسی آزمون AICP

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قسمتي از متن فيلم: Everybody uh we have about 143 people logged in so we’re going to go ahead and get started my name is jamie simone i am the professional development officer for the illinois chapter thanks for logging in this morning um just a few housekeeping items um this session is being recorded and

This is my first time doing one of these webinar series for the aicp review so i believe that it will once it’s once we’re done today it will be uploaded to the pennsylvania chapter website so if there’s anything you want to go back and review it should be there

The slides were not available in advance today this is the first year we’re doing this aicp review session as a webinar series and i think that’s something that we may change for next year but when we set up all the speakers this year we didn’t request that in advance

So i apologize if you were hoping to get the slides in advance you’ll have to look at the recording afterwards another thing to note all of the attendees are on mute and you will remain unmute for the entire session if you have questions about the content of the uh

Of the session you can send me a question using the question tab on your screen and i will answer those questions as best i can during the session but i will also keep track of those and if there are questions that are better answered by the presenters they will answer them

At the end of their presentation the presentation is scheduled to last about an hour and then afterwards we’ll have some time to answer the questions that you’ve all sent in so you can stay on after that i think those are all the housekeeping things i wanted to address

We have three speakers today they’re all members of the illinois chapter and they’ve been doing aic prep sessions for years now they’re they are co-creators of planning prep so i will pass it over to john house seal and we’ll get going and one last thing if you’re having tech

Issues please email planning webcast yahoo.com if you have content related questions john john i can hear you hold on if you have content related questions um send them to me as the organizer of the webinar so i’m going to go ahead and pass it over to john hauseill

Hang on john i’m passing it over right now right jamie let me know when you can see my screen okay go ahead you should have there okay i can see it all right perfect uh good morning everybody my name is john hauseill we’re out of chicago i know we

Have people here from several different states and over the course of this morning we’re going to have uh three different presenters uh working on the presentation this morning myself john hauseill devin levine and trevor dick and uh trevor devin and i have been providing just a little bit of a background of providing

Planning prep the website and planning prep the day-long aicp training course for about the last seven or eight or eight years here in illinois as well as uh training classes in other states and the website has actually been utilized by people all over the world so we’ve given this presentation several

Times as part of a day-long training seminar and look forward to giving to you today uh to reiterate what jamie said we anticipate this lasting about an hour maybe a little bit longer than an hour and then opening it up for q a again this uh webinar is for plan making and implementation

Plan making an implementation accounts for approximately 30 percent of the scoring on the aicp examination so you give it a little bit of a sense of how much time you need to devote to the different areas as you study and again the purpose of this is not to give you

We get this in our classes all the time it’s not to give you the answers or the exact questions that are going to be on the exam but to prepare you for the types of knowledge you’re going to be expected to have to inform you or educate you as the

Areas of things you’re going to need to study for or be aware of and the types of questions that you will likely run into on the exam and sort of how to be prepared so the intent is to train you to and to help prepare you for taking

The exam not necessarily give you all the exam answers on the exam oh that would be nice a little bit about myself just real quick uh principal and founding partner of halsey levine associates at about 20 years in the public and private sector undergraduate degree from university of michigan masters degree from

Arizona state university and you can see some of the awards on the screen devin levine is the principal and co-founder of house levine associate he has about 15 years of experience in the public and private sector and his degree is from urban regional planning in ryerson polytechnic university in toronto

You can also see the other speaker this morning is trevor dick uh senior associate with chicago metropolitan agency for planning cmap he’s got about 15 years of experience in the public and private sectors and also has his degree from urban and regional planning from ryerson polytechnic university in toronto

Real quick the topic areas that we’re going to be covering today for those of you that are taking notes and can write quickly i’ll read through these there are several of them and they’re highlighted on the screen in front of you right now visioning and goal setting quantitative and qualitative research methods

Collecting organizing analyzing and reporting data and information demographics and economics natural and built environment land use and development regulations application of legal principles environmental analysis growth management techniques budgets and financing options gis and spatial analysis policy analysis and decision making development plan and project review program evaluation communications techniques intergovernmental relationships

Stakeholder relationships and project and program management i hope you guys know what you’re getting into in terms of the breadth of coverage when you signed up to take the aicp exam they really do expect you to have a pretty wide knowledge of all of these things

And as we go through this because we’re talking with people from eight different states or several different states keep in mind that the approach to taking the examination not only this topic area but all of them is a national approach or a profession right wide approach if you happen to

Work for a municipality or an mpo or an organization that does things in a unique or sort of off the beaten pathway that may be good to know if you’re working for that organization but in terms of the exam you have to think nationally you have to think typical practice typical procedures

So we talk about plan commissions and city councils and zoning board of appeals and things like this understand what is typical of the industry across the country not what may be specific to your unique situation so think nationally not the locally when it comes to understanding these procedures

Apa has a selected reading list for this topic area you can get this on the apa’s website and i won’t read through all of these but these are the things that you’re going to want to come up to speed on in terms of your reading materials there is no one single source

To become prepared for the aicp examiner take it there is no one single book that you have to read that will give you all the answers but you have to become familiar with a lot of this information and the best way to do it is to begin going through the selected reading list

That is provided as part of the apa website so if you don’t uh not familiar with these check them out if you’re not familiar with utilizing the apa’s website uh it has some tremendous resources on there in terms of history law resources reading lists uh it’s a pretty good

Setup with regard to preparing for the aicp exam all right the first thing i’m going to do now is i’m going to turn it over to trevor dick and he’s going to walk through a visioning and goal setting so here’s trevor thank you john good morning everyone

The first topic that we’re going to cover this morning is visioning and goal setting this is one of the most effective and beneficial tools that planners can use to help them really as they create their planning process come up with a long-range planning policies and eventually recommendations for long-range plans

Visioning often leads to goal statements and objectives and i’ll talk about that in a few minutes when we talk about goal setting a little bit more but it really is a beneficial process to really ask people where do they want to be in their study area their community

Over the next 10 or 15 years and a lot of communities that planners work in are are knee-deep in you know day-to-day issues or know the day-to-day issues and concerns but this gives the the attendees the chance to you know get out of the weeds so to speak and look at the

Bigger picture and really ask themselves okay what is the vision we want for our community uh another good benefit of visioning is includes our diverse viewpoints i’ll talk about this in a few slides that the more different stakeholders and people and residents that you can include in the visioning

Process the better and it really allows a lot of different people to provide a lot of different uh comments through the process how is the public typically involved as i was saying it should involve as many groups and types of people as possible and also should be interactive and engaging

People should feel like they’re being listened to and able to be involved that’s probably pretty pretty similar to almost every public meeting that should happen but envisioning in particular it’s a really good chance to involve public with a lot of interactive ways the vision process should also be kept

Open and transparent once again very similar to a lot of public meetings you really want it to be open so that the public knows that a lot of the public input was heard and that also the decisions made were community-wide and not just the consultant for example making up the vision

Why is visioning useful as i talked about the beginning visioning is one of the most beneficial tools for planners to use to try and not only involve the public but also come up with a bigger picture and coming up with a bigger picture will really set the framework for future goals and recommendations

And minimizes reactionary approaches uh by that we mean that um a lot of times like i talked about earlier city councils or village boards are concerned with the day-to-day concerns activities and you know solving the problem of the day or putting up the fire of the day this allows them to

Think big picture and how little steps can come up to the bigger picture so it avoids any reactionary or piecemeal approaches and it’s important to keep the bigger picture in sight how are visioning results used results are typically used to come up with the potential policy directions and recommendations of the

Planning document for example in a comprehensive plan it really helps set the stage for the plan’s ultimate recommendations leading in the goal setting it’s important to know what the difference between goals and objectives are i’m sure a lot of you already are very familiar with this but this is something

That is sometimes asked or is the basis of some questions on the examination keep in mind that goals are higher higher level goals are value-based statements that are not necessarily measurable but they lead to objectives which are measurable and very specific that’s also a good way for communities to see if

They’re actually meeting their goals by seeing how many of the objectives that they’ve met what is goal setting once a list of community issues have been identified and that typically is a result of the visioning exercise goals can be established and as i talked about

At the top of the slide after the goals objectives can be made the next two topic areas research methods and data collection and presentation we’re actually going to be presenting on march 16th a webinar uh for quantitative and qualitative methods data collecting organizing and easy for me to say analyzing and reporting data

And we are going to cover those two topic areas a lot more depth in that that area so um kind of think of this as a placeholder and when we talk to you again on march 16th we’ll really get into a lot more detail about those two topic areas the next topic area

That i wanted to cover is um on the next slide john demographics and economics as john talked about earlier the importance in plan making implementation understanding a community’s current and projected demographics as well as their economic situation and it could be their economics in terms of employment could be their market

Realities it could even get down into such detail as a specific site performer for a potential site development but understanding demographics and economics how to understand the data how to do some simple mathematics to estimate data or what resources are available to help planners come up with

The data are are very important for not only our jobs but for the examination uh why do we estimate population well it really helps us understand the current population and future populations to help us come up with long-range planning and future governmental funding and i’ll get into a little bit more detail about

The funding but really it is essential for long-range planning especially for the ones listed here on the slide to assist governmental agencies the municipality of the city decision makers city council board members helps them make decisions the school districts the special taxing districts are listed here school districts park districts library

Districts i would say is very essential in fact you know in our experience school districts if you are a planner working for a school district or assisting a school district in their long-range planning understanding demographics is crucial um in illinois there’s a land cash dedication ordinance actually began in april illinois

And there is a kind of agreed-upon matrix where land cash dedication ordinance calculations are based upon future projection and that leads to future school donations and park acreage amounts but that’s just an example of how important understanding demographics is for those special taxing districts we all know that the country is aging so

It’s important to know about how that will affect senior services and facilities moving forward and the last bullet point here is determining and receiving federal and state funding which i think is crucial for a lot of municipalities especially in today’s economy uh understanding what the demographics are according to the census etc often

Leads to different amounts of federal and state funding that they can apply for and receive this here is just a screenshot taken from the u.s census the census came out and it’s still coming in different pieces i would expect that there will be like likely be questions regarding the new

Census on this examination um in uh i don’t think there were any uh questions on it well in the fall because it was just they’re just trying to get some initial data but i would expect some questions from the census on this examination so take a look at the website uh the uscensus.gov

And be familiar with the data that’s on there and the different types of data sets that you can use as planners this is just an example of the information that was on the us government our u.s census website this shows rust belt and declining populations these are the type of questions or the

Type of information that is often used to help provide questions on the examination for example they may ask what are some of the what do these communities have in common and you could say that they’re experiencing declining populations they could show an area on the map and

Say what is happening with this area for example and maybe even ask you what are some of the reasons why the populations are declining so rapidly in these areas so this also gets back to and i’m sure this other webinars have talked about this importance of reading the planning magazine every month and

Being familiar with the topics of the day and this is just a slide here that shows how the topics of the day and the demographics are so related uh for the uh demographic section here we’ve also shown some key population terms and there’s several but here’s just some ones to be familiar

With the first is estimates just know that they’re based upon current population levels forecasts are also based on population levels but there’s more subjective and include projections uh projections are calculated on both actually calculated on future population levels and before the uh the market uh is where it is today i’m

Trying to say it as nicely as i can a lot of projections were made a lot of plans are having to be redone or uh re-looked at to try and make them more fit in with the current economic climate and the projections are something that need to be changed right off the bat

When we look at those plans the last one is migration just be familiar with that this means the movement of people in and out of a study area migration is typically subdivided into two categories in migration and out migration and those are the two population scenarios that are looked at in the

Migration uh area trevor trevor yes chad can you hear me i’m sorry i’m going to interrupt i’m getting a bunch of questions from people um it looks like the um the attendees have been told that it will not be 2010 census data because the exam has not been updated

Since 2008 so instead of answering everybody’s questions i thought i would just interrupt and say i’m going to do my best to find a definitive answer to that question um from the apa and so um i’ll do my best to get that answered before the end of the session so sorry

For the interruption go ahead trevor oh thank you very much jamie um so forget that last section i’m kidding no uh that’s good to know that’s good to know uh this next section uh the slide here talks about the important types of population projections uh once again similar to the last slide there’s

A lot of different population projections out there just be familiar with with these uh five or six they’re shown here the first is extrapolation methods um they are good at the county level for example they’re necessary for a little higher level wouldn’t be as applicable to a specific site or even a municipality

They are based on an observed growth trend both linear projections geographic geometric projections excuse me and exponential production projections as well the next is some symptomatic methods this basically looks at regression analysis and can be used for more smaller areas so instead of a county level this is where you can get down

Into municipality or specific site housing unit methods is pretty much the answer is on the title it is calculated based upon the amount of housing data maybe it’s the amount of housing or building permits that have been issued in the community but it gets really uh down into the

Development of specific housing in the community level the cohort survival level this can be very complicated can often involve a lot of data it is good for much larger area projections like states and the projection is based upon past trends and data often involving birth rates death rates and migration rates

The last is the ratio step down model this is often less technically complicated and compares the specific study to a larger known area for example such as the county um often in our in our classroom we teach this face-to-face we ask people what this is um

This is a type of a graphic that you may see on the examinations especially now that it’s computer-based these are the type of graphics or figures you may see and if we go to the next slide you’ll see this is a population pyramid for a lot of people that might be something

That is it’s pretty simple you could spot it right away but maybe for others who maybe aren’t so um their planning jobs don’t really have to look at demographic projections maybe this is something i’ve seen since school for for example and this you can see and you might actually see this probably

Even more exaggerated so to speak and they might ask you what cohort or what is this community doing you could say that it’s aging or it’s got a young population that’s coming through that you need may need to build more schools maybe in aging the bubble may be larger

At the top and that’s where you know you’d have to focus on some service senior services senior facilities so just be familiar with what a population pyramid is and how to read it this next slide moves us into more of the economics similar to demographics understanding the economic climate

Is very important for long-range planning as well as reviewing planning documents this first slide talks about economic base analysis and it divides regional industries into two different sectors the basic which is the export and the non-basic which is the local sector it assumes that the basic sector is the one that drives the

Economy and this analysis analysis can be used for determining the impact of a change in the economy and for predicting future growth this next slide talks a little bit more detail about the basic sector assumptions uh the main assumption though here is that the basic sector is the driving

Force and economy and it’s based upon the following two main assumptions that exports from a region give the region a competitive economic edge or an advantage and exports produce a multiplier effect that is beneficial to the local economy for example if there’s an automaker in the community that will support a restaurant

That will support uh the grocery stores etc etc so everything is is related on that assumption know the types of different approaches that can be used in an economic analysis the first is the cost benefits and cost benefit analysis pretty simple to explain it really looks at a comparison

Of the cost of a project or specific action versus the expected benefits and then the community has to ask themself should we do this project does the benefit outweigh the cost the fiscal impact analysis very similar but it looks at more of the cost the fiscal cost of a project and what

Its likely impact will be on not only the current municipal budget but then the future budgets to try and pay for that the empirical approach it looks at assigning industries into the basic and non-sector basic sectors which i talked about the previous slide and assumes that each industry has

Has a good knowledge of the economy and everything is related the minimum requirements approach this utilizes an outside study area for reference and calibration and assumes that a regional economy economy will completely meet its own local demand before any exports are made shift share analysis this is one that is typically asked on

The examination and we have uh that’s also the same that’s also true for the location quotient method and we have two slides following this to get into some more detail so the first the next slide is talking about shift share analysis and this is actually a sample question

A shift share analysis is used primarily to a identify the location quotient b identify the level of employment in a given sector of a local economy against a regional or national economy c identify the differences of growth or decline in a local economy or d identify the regional shift in the given industry

And this is a very typical question that you are likely to see on the examination and the next slide the answer is b i identify the level of employment in a given sector and now i’m going to turn it back over to john who’s going to talk about the natural unbuilt environment

All right and again real quickly just sort of to step back a second as we go through all of these a way to help prepare for the examination is understand the nature of what it is this category talks about plan making as you go to the other webinar series you know

There’s going to be history there’s going to be sort of understand the history of the profession why it started when it started how it started the legal foundation for the profession what we legally can do why we legally can do it what we can’t do the legal understanding

Of it uh then there’s this part the plan making and implementation what do we have to do to be in a position to make plans we have to do demographic analysis fiscal analysis economic analysis we have to understand environmental issues we have to say understand how to take communities through visioning

Processes these are all components that we have to go through in order to develop a plan and that so keep in mind these are the steps of creating a plan and the tools utilized in creating a plan and if you think of it in that

Manner when you come to the exam and a situational question they might give you a scenario and say based on this scenario which is the following techniques is best or most important in developing a plan for this community and you might say demographic analysis or fiscal analysis of the new

Development or so keep in mind that this is literally the tools utilized to develop plans as professionals so this part is about natural and built environment and in a couple of sections we’ll be talking about environmental analysis and they’re a little bit related but the natural built environment the energy

Policy federal energy policy there will be questions on the exam regarding this period you’ll have to have a good understanding of federal state and local policies uh and the apa policy guide for energy climate change is a good place to go to on their website to find out with regard

To environmental policy there will be questions specifically more than likely there always seem to be based on our discussions with people who have taken the exam on the clean water act the clean uh air act coastal zone management act when was the epa created there really is a lot of emphasis placed

On the federal efforts initially to get into the environmental policy discussions so again uh the required reading list touches on some of this as does the timeline that is produced on the apa’s website a sort of a timeline of key events in the planning profession become familiar with uh like i said the

Clean air act the clean water act uh superfund the coastal zone management epa there will be questions about when these things were formed what the purpose of these uh and in the year exactly and on when these agencies or policies were created um they’re every year these questions are on the exam so

Become familiar with them and these are terms that you should know um they will often ask a question uh again they’ll create a scenario for a community and then they’ll say does above scenario depict an issue regarding point or non-point pollution so you’ve got to understand some of these different

Terminologies as they’re going to be used in the narrative of the exam so the ones that are most common are airshed and watershed point versus non-point pollution that’s straightforward point is it comes out of a pipe so to speak a specific point of source of pollution nonpoint that might

Come from an area or uh sedimentation or something like that but not from a specific one point heat island effect impervious versus pervious surface this also has uh is relative because when you get into zoning standards and questions about zoning regulations in the exam they could ask you specifically about

Impervious or pervious surface questions or calculations given a scenario and if you don’t know what those two things are you’re not going to know how to calculate the answer given a site plan evapo transport evapotranspiration recharge areas that’s becoming an increasing issue with regard to groundwater quality and

Best management practices and what they will typically do on the examination you’ll see is so say is what is a bmp or what is the lid and they’ll give you a multiple choice and some of them may look like their answers they actually might meet those initials

But understand that a bmp is the best management practice low impact development is lid and green infrastructure is gi these are things the bmps typically will appear on an examination bioswear bioswale and riparian buffer but these are the types of terminology you’re going to need to know now also

State that as you go through these give a decent amount of effort in keeping up with current events i know there are other topic areas and webinars talking about current events or trends but you know pick up and read planning magazine pick up and read your local

Newspaper uh go to a couple news websites but stay up on current events and you’ll see some of these terms being used in a more general vernacular across the the new sphere and but it’s going to have relevance to planning and you should know what these terms are as they

Become more and more common next we’re going to talk about land use and development regulations and there will be a decent amount of questions on the examination regarding this and this is where it may be most important uh harking back to what i said at the beginning of this presentation

Understand the general approach to zoning land use special permits and the process to get things entitled don’t necessarily think that the way your community does it or what your experience is as a developer is the way it is typically done be familiar with the typical standards and typical procedures for zoning

And subdivision regulations but you’ll understand the basic concepts of land use land use designation for a principle accessory or special uses what’s the principles uh use of a site what’s the accessory use what’s the terminology what’s the difference between the two uh what’s accumulative or exclusive in terms of land use or legal

Non-conforming is something legal is it illegal is it quote unquote grandfathered in what are the conditions under which a non-conforming legal status is lost over time they will give you scenario questions uh asking you questions about these different components if you don’t know what they mean you can’t answer the

Question but they won’t come out and ask a question directly about one of these things they will give you a situation or a scenario paragraph and they’ll say this paragraph above applies to which one of the following and so you’ve got to understand the basic concepts of this

Understand the different types of zoning that are most common pud of planned unit development in overlay district tdr transfer development rights understand what incentive zoning is or performance zoning they’ll give you a scenario that if it is the intent of a community to encourage developers to build new homes with front porches

That are a minimum of eight feet deep what is the best technique to begin to encourage this type of development incentive zoning or bonus zoning or performance zoning there’s typically questions about tdrs and there are often questions about a pud they’ll describe a development that is approved by a pud

To give you some of the conditions of the pud ordnance then they’ll say does the pud ordnance provisions take precedent over the underlying zoning or base zoning for the site before pud was put into place understand the procedures and what these different things are know what a pud is

Understand what base zoning is understand what a tdr is there are lots of books out there some of my preferred reading list that specifically discusses zoning and development regulations if you’re planning for a municipality this might be something that you don’t have to spend much time on because

You’re familiar with it for others it may be something you don’t deal with at all you need to come up to speed on it and then subdivision regulations what are the different types of elements of a subdivision regulations cul-de-sac radii street widths sewer requirements part way requirements landscaping

Line of sight turning radii all these types of things in terms of subdivision regulations and again the questions will not be an exact you know what is the following you know is it a b or c they will give you a scenario they will paint a picture of a paragraph or a situation

And say which of the following answers best applies so understand what subdivision regulations are understand zoning administration how something gets zoning how something gets approved how a special use gets handled how a variation is handled understand the role of the city council village board depending on what state you’re from

City will typically use city council as a terminology understand the role of the planning commission again in most communities the planning commission is a recommending body to the city council the planning commission does not approve or deny something it makes a recommendation to approve or deny something with that

Recommendation going to city council who has the final say understand that sequence the zba the zoning board of adjustment is the recommending body again typically it varies here and there uh is the zoning board of adjustments resonating board of appeals is the zoning body that grants relief through variations or variances

To provide relief to strict adherence to sony regulations based on property hardships they may very well ask questions about hardships what is or isn’t a hardship a situation where a variation or a special use or pud may be applied know the difference and understand the role of planning

Staff in that chain of custody of the event what is staff’s role of you as a professional planner in preparing a report uh providing recommendations to the zoning border plan commission what if the zoning border plan commission goes against staff’s recommendation what is your responsibility then the city council understand the sequence or

Hierarchy of everybody involved in the zoning administration’s decision making process professional planning staff that is responsible to the zoning board of appeals and plan commission the planned commission’s learning board of appeals who was a recommending body to the city council understand the roles of each one of those in the process

One of the things that’s getting more and more attention is urban design and design guidelines so image and identity understand the different components of design guidelines typically facade architectural public spaces parking signage landscaping buffer treatments all these different types of components are more and more commonly used now for design guidelines with more

Effectiveness they will often ask questions relating to urban design or to design guideline components sometimes they’ll be perceived as very much architectural or architects questions but they will ask you here’s some examples if you look at the image on the left you’ll see the building in sort of a historic small downtown

And they have a b c d on the building and the question might be what is c above and then you see the build uh the garage on the right they’ll say a lot of ordinances are addressing the development of new single family homes how is the garage on the picture at the

Right characterized and the answers would be that on the picture in the left a is a decorative cornice c is a window hood d is window display and b is bulkhead and they may very well ask you that type of thing but see if you understand the basics of architecture you understand

The basics of urban design components and design guidelines and again with regard to possibly writing a zoning ordinance or design guidelines for a single family neighborhood that garage is described as side facing front loading so the garage bulk is loaded onto the front of the structure the

Doors are facing the side so side facing front loading these are the types of questions you need to know about in terms of the practical application of design guidelines in urban design because it relates specifically back to design guidelines or zoning a little bit for form based code be

Familiar with this this is sort of i guess before sustainability was the flavor of the month or flavor of the decade in terms of what’s popular it was form-based code and form-based code still has some relevance in certain areas you know it’s a method of regulating development to achieve a specific urban form

And understand what is form based code versus an incentive zoning versus euclidean zoning again they will paint a scenario picture and then say which one of these zoning applications or approaches is best to solve this problem understand what form-based code is against all the other types of zone

Inputs smart code is an example of that sort of a base model code it’s a model transect-based development code available for all scales of planning from region to the community to the block the court is intended for local calibration for your town or your neighborhood uh it’s a basic sort of a

Form-based code based model uh it’s free it’s out there and it’s been around for a while so they could very well ask questions about the application of smart code uh lead for neighborhood development lead and sustainable stuff there will be questions about this on the exam no question lead for neighborhood development is

Relatively new so there may very well be questions about it understand the rating system that integrates the principles of smart growth urbanism and green buildings that’s the first national system for neighborhood design ever independent third party verification of environmentally responsible sustainable development and it was a collaboration

Among the us gbc the congress renew uh congress new urbanism of the natural resource defense council so this has been coming on really strong in the last few years people have been waiting for it with baited breath for a while it’s finally sort of here uh so understand

What it is in its potential application as a planning professional all right i’m not going to turn it over to trevor he’s going to walk through quickly some of the application of legal principles thanks john okay this section here uh the application of legal principles uh we’re

Just gonna highlight for you some of the uh key legal basis decisions that help you in your daily lives as a planner unlike the specific law section that’s gonna be be held for you later on in this series of webinars this one here is more concerned about how to apply these planning case

Planning case laws into your daily assignments or work we’re briefly going to talk about the legal basis decisions uh some of the key ones for police power takings amino domain zoning religion and growth management and all of those are the type of land use control decisions

That affect uh typically a lot of our daily planning lives and planning work projects that we do the first and there are several there are several that basically give the basis or the police power for zoning in this country the first one and the only one really showed here right now is

Is one of the most important village of euclid versus ambler realty back in 1926 and this is one of those uh benchmark case laws that said that zoning is the proper use of the police power as decided upon by the us supreme court the next slide talks about takings uh

This is something especially uh when we make planning decisions when we do development review typically if you work for a park district for example and you want to work with the developer to dedicate park space for example quite often takings is an issue that comes up

And these are two of the most famous examples like i said earlier there are half a dozen if not a dozen or more examples these are just the two we wanted to show you this morning lucas versus south carolina coastal council back in 1992. the u.s supreme court said that if the

Regulation is not based on a public nuisance and it causes the property to lose all economic value then it is a taking pennsylvania coal versus man back in 1922 this also said that if a regulation goes too far it is a taking so just be familiar with

The different types of case law dealing with takings the different type of examples i know one of the famous examples is penn central station in new york be familiar with that case law and how that impacted not only takings but that would have a direct effect with historic preservation as well

The next is eminent domain this is those two examples here the first is burnham versus parker back in 1954. the us supreme court decided that aesthetics were a valid public purpose for an eminent domain action groundbreaking case law then in 2005 and one that’s come up we

Believe from talking to people over the last several exams is something dealing with kilo versus the city of new london this was probably if not the last one of the last big u.s supreme court decisions that affected planning and this was very controversial some states have since come up with their own

Decisions to try and come to terms with this or or either just accept it or or kind of tried to get get around it or go against it but basically the city’s use of emerald domain in that example for redevelopment was actually considered a public use so development was actually

Property was acquired and was allowed to be developed and that was actually considered a public use at the time so that was the first case where that was decided there’s a lot more information not only in planning prep but in the research you’ll find about those cases but i just

Want to give you some highlights the next is zoning regulations i talked about this a little bit earlier with police power but this gets into even more examples uh when we do development review or ask people to come up with setbacks for example it’s you know important to be able to

Reference eubank versus the city of richmond say back in 1912 the us supreme court was the first decision where they approved setback regulations and had a check and versus sebastian way back in 1915 the u.s supreme court first decided that an instance of regulating location

Of land uses so not only just zoning but also locating the different type of land uses in the community was was a decision religion there’s a lot of religious legal principles legal cases that have been made a lot dealing with sexual oriented businesses billboards first you know

Et cetera et cetera but the one example on our show here is the relupa which was back in 2000 the religious land use and institutionalized persons act be very familiar with this case law this really laid out a supreme court decision where land use provisions protected individuals houses of worship and other religious

Institutions from discrimination and zoning and landmarking laws and that’s something that comes up a lot for example when uh religious institutions now for example are trying to locate in industrial parks they’re trying to locate in neighborhoods and you just have to be familiar with this case law so you don’t get yourself

Into trouble uh the last slide in this section is growth management uh this is something especially when the economy was hot so to speak a lot of us had to deal with a lot but these are two of the most famous legal principles golden versus planning board of the town of

Romapwa 1972 and it’s a growth management system which was approved and that was actually the community looking at how much growth or how much development could happen in a given year uh also sonoma versus petaluma in 1975 this also looked at the quotas more specifically on the annual number of

Building permits and that was actually upheld by the u.s court of appeals this next section environmental analysis i’m going to turn it back over to john all right thanks and real quick i just want to emphasize what trevor was just going over with regard to the legal

Foundation for some of that stuff i know the legal analysis or the legal understanding of the professions may very well be a separate webinar but in terms of plan making if you’re looking at how do you prevent churches from locating in the tax revenue generating areas of a

Commercial corridor and try to get them to locate someplace else how do you know how far you can push with regard to emino domain whether it’s in a tif district or not a tif district as a tool to encourage redevelopment well now this u.s supreme court says that

Economic development itself is a public good and you can use eminent domain so it’s a tool that may be available if your local state laws didn’t usurp that that authority but the principle of the seven or eight things that trevor went through was not to sort of give you an in-depth

Background of law but if you’re looking at developing or plan making you have to understand what is or is not available to you legally as a tool to make a plan to achieve your community’s objectives so understand those legal concepts in the terms of what is available to you for plan making so

Environmental analysis real quickly they’re not going to expect you to go out and do a phase 1 study but they are going to ask you a couple of things nepa national environmental protection or a policy act will be on the exam um i know that there are equator questions on

The if you guys didn’t know this there are equator questions on the exams that show up every year year after year year after year year after year um as sort of a baseline as how that year’s aicp exam takers are doing this may or may not be uh equator question i don’t know

But all i know is from talking to anybody who’s ever taken the exam this is on there so there will be likely information or a question on nepa and according to nepa whenever the us federal government takes a major federal action significantly affecting the quality of human environment it might first

Consider the environmental impact in a document called an eis environmental impact statement again there will likely be questions specifically about eises so know what nepa is why it was created and known an eis is and when it is used and what its key components are because it will likely be on the exam

An eis typically has four sections purpose and need or so an introduction including a statement of the purpose and the need and the proposed action a description of the affected environment on when maybe they’re building an airport or a new highway or uh some sort of other regional

Infrastructure or project they have to do these things a range of alternatives uh to the proposed action alternatives are considered the heart of the eis uh what uh you know if we do uh if the highway goes here here’s the environmental impact if the highway is shifted over to here there’s the impact

Of the environmental assessment and one of the range of alternatives and eis is always do nothing so in order to really assess the impact on the environment and eis has to look at several alternatives that are considered and one of the ones by law it has to consider is

What if we don’t do this project what’s the impact on the environment because sometimes a mayoral major federal project may be a dam it may be some flood mitigation it may be to specifically to mitigate an environmental problem so to do nothing and say well if we don’t do anything

Flooding will get worse so do nothing is one of the alternatives it has to consider and then an analysis of the environmental impacts of each possible alternative so it has to analyze what the environmental impact would be of the different alternatives considered so understand again the nepa process we’re

Talking about the purpose and need of a project the affected environments and the constraints any alternatives that should be discussed uh public involvement is included mitigation of anything that may come up as a problem and this is excuse me the process of nepa for eis

Next i want to just touch a little bit about growth management over the past couple of decades a big thing has been sprawl and communities across the country especially the profession of planning has seemed to been had done a much better job of uh of stopping sprawl or

Specifically in in a very direct manner addressing sprawl we’re in the past uh as a country we have not done a good job as a profession we have fallen short in the last couple of decades there are a number of different things that are being done to eliminate sprawl

As we now begin to see as a profession the impacts of increased commute time environmental degradation pollution going through the roof loss of valuable agricultural production property or land all these things are problems the cost of maintaining extensive infrastructure to service areas that are three miles away from the

City with a new development these are all issues that we’ve begun to see develop and communities really struggle with so understand the different techniques that are used for growth management some of them are public facilities and infrastructure concurrency requirements or adjacency requirements and more coordinated cips capital improvement programming or planning

Concurrency or adjacency requirements prevent leapfrog development if you will if you have a community and a developer wants to come in and build a 400 acre development he has to do it immediately adjacent to or concurrent to the existing infrastructure or adjacent to an existing developed area he can’t jump

Out two miles because he’s able to get somebody’s farm and build it out and then run two miles of infrastructure out to that location so it’s a technique that’s beginning to be used but better control and better planning and better regulatory adherence to public facilities and public infrastructure as

A way of managing growth and limiting where it can go and directing it defining and planning documents urban growth areas having impact fees that are directly correlate back to the installation of a long-term maintenance of service needs for development not to try to get a

Bunch of money out of them as a negative impact or a deterrent but if development goes in it needs to have the impact fees that are appropriate or proportional to pay for the infrastructure to pay for the increase in police service to pay for the increase in fire protection or ambulatory service

To this area water sewer everything else so make sure the development pays its fair share tdrs transfer development rights it may very well be that in order to prevent development in one area whether it be a site-specific area or an area within a growth boundary the tdr can be used to

Say listen we don’t want growth to go in this area we prefer to go up north as opposed to out west we will transfer the development rights for what you could have done out west or your property up north give you more up north but leave the west alone so

Transfer development rights is pretty good moratoriums is also very effective to curtail development in an area while the study is taking place and then adherence to smart growth and the apa policy got on smart glow this is a good place to look if you look at this slide it gives you

Some of the basics of smart growth and a growth management technique that is smart growth you can get some of this on the apa website and they have pretty good policy regarding this but to create a range of housing opportunities and choices to create walkable neighborhoods to encourage community and stakeholder

Collaboration foster attractive communities with a strong sense of place make decisions that are predictable fair and cost effective for all parties involved to provide a mix of land uses not necessarily segregate land uses out through sprawling development to preserve open space sometimes to preserve open space you have to provide

Development incentives in other areas to provide other areas that remain open hence tdr provide a variety of transportation choices strengthening direct development towards existing communities as opposed to new undeveloped areas and take advantage of compact building design while these are principles of smart growth and part of the apa policy on

Smart growth many of these can be used directly and formed into regulatory approaches to limit or guide quality development smart growth strategies urban growth boundaries adequate public facilities concurrency requirements reuse of existing buildings and impact fees for somebody that might develop in areas new and impacts of smart growth higher density increased

Utilization of existing often older inadequate infrastructure this bullet this infrastructure issue has become hyper sensitive and may be one of the driving issues at this point with regard to limited growth communities simply cannot afford to install and more importantly maintain over the long haul the cost of infrastructure to growth areas

I’m not going to turn it over to trevor he’s going to talk about budgeting and financing options thank you john you’re probably starting to see too that a lot of these are interrelated this one here budget and financing relates a lot to the demographic and economic session and

You’ll see later it relates a lot to even the project and program management section but really the the overall thing to keep in mind in this section is that you have to be familiar with the different types of budgeting and financing options that are out there and how to use them

Also be familiar with how to understand the different ways that they’re calculated and more specifically how budgets make plans work a lot of times when we do planning or when we do plans we’re often asked how are things going to be implemented how can you assure that this

Plan will become come to fruition well oftentimes we say that as long as you tie it to a budget that often leads to one of the greatest chances of the actual plan being implemented but also be familiar with the different types of budgets and finance financing options that are available for the

Different types of recommendations that you may come up with types of budgets um these here are the uh five main types of budgets they’re typically asked on the examination the first is the zero based budget pretty easy to remember the best way to remember it is that it starts from

Scratch every year uh some previous examinations that uh i know about that’s actually one of the questions is which budget starts from scratch every year so um be familiar with that and it largely depends on last year’s budget the ppbs which is the program planning and budgeting system

This links goals to objectives it really helps to determine how to fund each specific program by linking it to what the potential outcome would be pert which is the program evaluation review technique it was developed to handle more complex or even larger projects there’s a lot of

Different ways to make things happen a lot of different ways to measure the results and the pert is one of those techniques that really looks at one of those larger projects i think even an example for example john was talking about a dam or a federal project

Quite often that’s used in in in trying to come up with budgeting for those type of larger projects and it may very likely be on the examination right the gim which is the goals or the gam which is the goals achievement achievements matrix and this type of technique looks at

Objectives which are broken down into more measurable indicators so what you do is you come up with the objectives and you look at okay what are the indicators to measure those objectives you then rank the alternative strategies come up with different strategies to come up with those objectives and rank them

You weight the objectives and then lastly you create a score for each alternative and that really helps you pick which course of action almost like a choose your own adventure that’s the type of of technique that you would use to pick that budget and the last is the capital improvements

Program the cip this is typically something it was something we see municipalities have it’s typically five years and it is often tied to the annual budget uh it is often in our opinion too probably the one the most successful ways for specific let’s say capital projects or recommendations of a plan to

Get actually implemented by municipality because they can budget over the next five years and seek funding sources and and put it on their budget horizon and so that’s a very very powerful budget tool the next slide another financing option of state and federal grants and there is

A number of different grants out there be familiar with all of the grants that are available it changes almost constantly but just be familiar with some of the big ones some of the state or federal grants keep in mind for example that as john tucked with beginning this is a

National examination so if you live in a state where there’s a specific like for example the idnr oslad grant maybe different states have open space land acquisition grants but maybe they’re not called the australia grant so just be familiar with those type of funding sources that are out there for

More of a national perspective and grants are typically awarded applicants with conditions of tax attached it’s often there’s a dollar amount budgeted municipalities if they get the grant can’t get over it and also there’s a timeline there’s a certain amount of time where you have to spend the money

And get the project done often applying for grants too as john will tell you he i know he applies for a lot of grants on behalf of municipalities there’s a lot of work that goes into applying for a grant a lot of paperwork so just be familiar with there’s a lot

Of front-end work as well the next financing option one of the most popular too especially here in illinois is the tif tax increment financing be familiar with this there’s a lot of detail a lot of case law on this on this we just show on the side some of the main points

Really the thing to keep in mind is that it is a way to to improve let’s say quote unquote a blighted area and there’s a definition of requirements that need to be met to make an area designated inflated area once the area is blighted a tif bond is

Issued to develop the designated area and that increment the amount of tax revenue that’s gained as from the redevelopment site is then used to actually retire the tif bond and uh it cannot be used by the special taxing districts for example the school districts or the park districts until

The tif bonds are retired the next financing option slide talks about some other municipal financing options the most popular the main source of income for most municipalities and tax industries tax districts is property taxes i know because i just saw my property tax bill so i’m eating lunches in the office a

Little bit more often right now but property taxes are the main source for those for those districts current revenue those are the funds that are raised through traditional taxing methods reserve funds these are funds that municipalities or districts often place aside of almost a rainy day fund for emergency purposes

General obligation funds this is where the agency the municipality has pledged to retire these bonds with the full commitment of their taxing body and then the revenue bonds is are usually sold to finance projects that will eventually and hopefully produce revenues this next option is special assessments

I just wanted to show this real quickly another funding source might be special assessments special tax for example may be assessed on businesses in a downtown designated downtown area if the community wants to build a public parking structure they may ask those local businesses within a walking distance with certain radius from the

Parking garage hopefully those they expect to actually benefit from the parking structure to pay a special tax assessment another one is that special taxing authorities or districts such as park districts or school districts are special assess a special tax rate onto residents in that community and now with the gis and spatial analysis

Section i’m going to turn it over to devon levine all right thank you trevor um let’s see the the pertaining to gis and spatial analysis referring back to the slide about the apa’s recommended reading they list a book it’s called an introduction to gis and i guess based on

That title it sounds like a cursory introduction into gis the book is actually a university textbook on gis systems if you look on amazon it’s about 120 dollars and and um i guess this to save you some money in you know how this exam will put you into sort of any planner in

Any town usa it’s not going to get incredibly detailed into gis and so i think i would be familiar with you know what is gis if you go to esri’s website esri.com right on the home page there’s a link to i think what is gis you can also go to

Gis.com it’s a separate site that’s maintained by esri and as an introduction to what gis is and what it’s capable of and i think that’s probably the the level of understanding that this exam will test you on um sort of related to gis and spatial analysis

I would know what a typical map element is i’d almost say these are required map elements and found on just about every single map a title a legend a north arrow and then a scale a representative and a graphic scale and this might be a type of question where you might have

Uh have a graphic scale and you might have to you know measure how many feet one building is from another or how close a residential property is from another property so there might be some some math that would relate to some type of scaling and then also related to gis is layering

Information sort of the true power of gis is to be able to run query spatial queries uh taking layers of information and seeing how they relate to others which sort of touches on the proximity analysis to be able to take a a site and provide a buffer so if

You know there’s a public hearing notice requirement to 500 feet from a subject property you know gis can easily do some type of buffering analysis also related to proximity to a stream bank or some other type of sensitive environmental area and you get into network analysis which is routing you know

Sort of how a pedestrian would walk to a park site as opposed to just taking a half-mile buffer how that you know person might walk there would be based on a route so either through uh some type of sidewalk line file or a right-of-way or a center line file

But gis has two different ways to to do analysis through networking and then also through proximity so this is an example of sort of both you can see these concentric rings which show some type of buffer analysis and routing or that network analysis is shown in that red

Uh shape and you know the difference being one is you know a 10 minute drive and a five minute drive and the other one is a based on distance and so those are the two types of uh analysis you can perform with gis and again refer to gis.com and esri’s

Website to get a you know basic understanding of gis if you’re not familiar with it it’ll it should give you the the breadth of knowledge you’ll need to handle any questions that might show up on the exam pertaining to gis and then i would almost bank on some type of question

Between the difference between raster and vector data raster information refers to you know an image like the aero photograph on the left any type of ortho ortho image which is an aero photograph uh is raster meaning it’s their information stored in pixels uh vector and you know for the purpose of this

Presentation that the vector graphic on the right has been rasterized for the presentation but vector information is you know lines uh and geometry and so if you take your typical gis system it’s comprised of both raster and vector data vector would be your parcel lines uh right of way

Uh and then your raster data will be uh your aerial photographs and um gis can calculate different types of raster sets like hill shade and elevation uh any type of heat map so as and you can usually tell the difference if you zoom into the data if it starts to pixelate

It’s its raster if it sort of maintains its fidelity and it’s crystal clear regardless of what zoom level it’s vector data all right now we’re going to jump in real quick this is john again on policy analysis and decision making at some point as professional planners

You have to sort of step back and assess policy decisions and decisions decisions that either were made in the past decisions you’re currently making or recommendations as a professional your your thinking need to be made by your elected officials or organization moving forward and uh we have here this slide

That says you know sir isaac newton said that for every action there’s equal and opposite reaction well i’m planning for every action there’s some sort of a reaction as well it’s not always equal it’s not always uh it’s not always fair but there’s almost always a reaction and you have to be

Cognizant of that both in terms of how situations are presented to the public uh and as well as sort of going back and evaluating uh the maybe the unintended consequence of the zoning decision that was made with regard to the sign ordinance or densities or multi-family or affordable housing you have to be

Able to go back and do a little bit of analysis of the policy in order to make better and more informed decision making to evaluate what’s done in the past as well as going forward so the role of the planner is to inform decision making and sometimes this can

Be frustrating if you work in the public sector or the private sector as a professional you get paid direct recommendations to people who ultimately will make the policy decisions it may very well be that you’re a staff planner in a community and the mayor is a dentist and his only

Familiarity with how to run a city or zoning or planning or land use or capital improvements or expenditures is zero uh he may have just been elected because he’s been there for a while and yeah he wants to run for local office you as a professional has to try to help

Him make informed decision making and to set policy and sometimes uh our jobs as planners is not just to consult and to recommend but to educate as to why things are done what should be done and the consequences of either doing something or the consequences of inaction

So we have to be able to analyze policy that’s an important step there’s no one specific way to analyze policy there are some things that are popping up that are pretty effective counter factual analysis is one i think is effective counter factual analysis is where you take a policy

And say boy if we went back 20 years ago and eliminated the requirement for homes to have front garage doors or front loaded garages and we enacted that zoning change 20 years ago then project ahead all the building permits that took place over the last 20 years and changed

The character of those buildings to not have garages in the front but garages in the back it would have transformed neighborhoods and if through visualization techniques whether it be through sketchup or cad 3d or something else you can begin to visually communicate or visualize uh this change in policy historically and

It’s a way to sort of present policy analysis to say here’s the unintended consequence of the policy decision that was made or you can do analysis to say going forward i think if we make this decision here is what it could lead to or the impact it could cause so maybe we

Don’t want to undertake or we do want to undertake the policy but be prepared to understand the value of providing analysis to different policies and you’re not going to be required to know specific names of analysis techniques but understand in a scenario based question again i keep stating that

Because it’s so prevalent in the examination again real quick side note here again a footnote some aspects of the examination are memorization they’re questions you just need to know what is euclid versus antler uh who was responsible for the city beautiful movement these are memorization things other things are

Things you have to figure out some simple math some far calculations some setbacks some height maybe some simple map math other things are having a knowledge of the profession this is why there is an experience requirement before you are eligible to even take the exam

And a lot of this can’t really be taught you can read about it but a lot of it is based on my professional experience i have come across this i understand the nuance of this requirement or this condition understanding how to analyze policy is part of one of these things the more you

Do it the more you understand the value of it and how to do it another one is scenario or database modeling we have a lot of traffic modeling maybe economic forecasts demographic modeling and traffic modeling are the three different types of modeling categories that are most heavily utilized by the profession

Either directly or indirectly we did some comprehensive planning work for an entire county teamed up with university of illinois who conducted a lean model which is land use evaluation and impact assessment model and that’s when we were able to do a scenario based modeling for the

Entire county to take a look at areas of existing residential existing commercial existing open space as well as projected new residential and new commercial in 2040 and based on modeling of land use development traffic and other things produced by the lean model by the university we were able to make more

Informed decisions and recommendations to the county board with regard to where development should take place and maybe more importantly where development should not take place but again modeling for land use and development modeling for transportation modeling for economics and modeling for demographics and projections are ways for us to begin to assess

Analyze and maybe more importantly inform a policy and decision making as part of our planning development and recommendations uh um so i’m going to turn this over now to trevor real quickly he’s going to talk a little bit about development plan and project review thanks john

For this topic uh one of the key things to know about is the knowledge of how a project is generally reviewed uh once again keep in mind from an actual national uh perspective uh you may do things differently in your community than others but just be familiar with

The typical steps in the review process we’re going to talk a little bit about what to be aware of and what types of factors to consider when you do a development or project review and then also be familiar with the different types of players and how they are involved in a review

Process maybe what the role is and what the steps is two types of review that we wanted to share with you the first is the technical site plan review and the second is the planning documents or plan review the first technical site plan review is where you really get into

The nitty gritty you get down into reviewing a specific project for example or development proposal and you look at all regulatory documents look at the municipal codes the ordinances any plan that may impact that project for a comprehensive plan or a corridor plan or even urban design guidelines

And also in this step you may need to work with and it’s quite often times you work with other other specialties such as engineers architects or landscape architects typically when you do development review you get memorandums maybe letters of opinion from each of those experts and that gets presented to the

Decision makers the second type of review is the planning document or plan review we just wanted to put this in here because it’s important to remember not just the technical site plan review but any comprehensive plans that you have on the books make sure you come back and revisit them

Make sure you’re as up-to-date as possible and it will really help you make sure that you implement the successful the successful components of that plan typical development review processes just be familiar with the different types of review that can happen we just listed here about six different types of

Reviews that are very common for a planner to do uh rezoning that’s something that planters are quite often uh often the lead employee for us paldion be familiar with special or conditional use permits design and site plan review historic preservation reviews subdivisions and variances there’s a lot of different information

Out there describing each of those i’m not going to go through it right now but just be familiar with the different types of review processes that planners often do this slide here we also just wanted to show some examples of factors to consider it’s important that a planner

Just not look at one document or one information source but to try and think big picture all the time and this is just some factors to consider you can see from this list that it isn’t just one thing that you look at you should look at the surrounding uses

Just look at the geography the economics the demographics pretty much everything we talked about in this entire webinar this morning are the things you should keep in mind when you do a project review the review findings and analysis uh this is typically the review process john

Actually touched on this um back in an earlier section when he was talking about the land use and development regulations be familiar with the process for chain of command so to speak and so it usually starts with the planner coming up with a memorandum of opinion identifying issues or deficiencies

Things that need to be addressed and make sure you support it by fax reference back to an existing code an existing ordinance an existing plan the more facts you can provide the better um the planner is generally responsible make it unbiased professional level recommendation you’ll probably see that

A lot or hear that a lot from the person or group that’s talking about the ethics webinar that’s something that comes up a lot make sure you do an unbiased professional recommendation and then the last point just talks about what john’s time with earlier typically it goes to your boss followed

By a presentation or review by the public or planning commission which is the elected officials recommendation body which then goes on the elected officials which is the actual final decision maker this next category is program evaluation uh we just wanted to talk about three of the main programs that are available to help

People help planners do project management a lot of these are software our software evaluation tools now the first is cpm critical path method this is where it’s used to determine optimal solution and accomplishes this by estimating for each of the specific tasks a an expected cost and estimated time necessary to complete

That project typically this is a straight line graphic we don’t have a graphic here but you’ll see it in your in your books your other study material the critical path method is often the path of least resistance so to speak the next is gantt charts this is something that’s very common

Especially i think in the projects we work on and is very helpful when you have a lot of different players you can share this with sub consultants everybody is familiar with it it has tasks along the y-axis and time is generally depicted along the x-axis and then you guessed estimate and follow

The time period for the length of the entire project the next is pert which is something that was developed in the 1950s originally by the us navy it’s commonly used in conjunction with critical path method and this is something that’s often used for projects with a lot of different a

Lot of players a lot of different actions that are necessary and if you look at a graphic of it it often looks like a web a spider web it can sprout off in different directions so you may actually see a diagram of that on the examination

And now i’m going to turn it back over to john for communication techniques okay this slide could be titled stating the obvious as opposed to communication techniques so i’m not going to spend a lot of time uh expounding on it but understand the importance of what is pulling it out on the slide

In terms of questions that may be asked on the examination and again think of it in terms of you as a professional planner committing to this profession in terms of how you communicate plan recommendations depending on what the audience is it may be a neighborhood group it may be a

Housing advocacy group it may be the city council it may be a group of business leaders it may be high school students you have to be able to effectively communicate to all of these different groups using different mediums and different techniques depending on what the messages you are trying to convey or

What information you’re trying to process or obtain from the group that you’re talking to so be familiar with the different types of communication and presentation techniques again i’m not going to try to teach you all of these obviously but be familiar with them again these will be scenario-based questions

They will say you as a planning professional they’ve created a scenario where you’re trying to convey let’s say a development concept to a list of economic development professionals which is the best way to present this information to the group understand powerpoint presentations or keynote presentations understand when to

Use presentation boards maybe an open house setting where people can come in and mill around for a couple hours as opposed to a specific 20-minute presentation understand the purpose and function of memorandums when crafted by you or received from you by somebody else understand the impact of oral presentation when simply an oral

Presentation is the best form of communication and uh review the entire planning document so understand the different types of techniques to be used in different areas to provide the most effective type of communication because regardless of what type of planning professional or planning area of expertise you are in or desire

To get into communication is essential i mean even gis or 3d modeling or sketchup can be utilized as a way of visual communication so understand the importance of communication in this profession and understand the benefits and the shortcomings of each type of communication and when and how best to

Use it or when how to not use it so i’m going to kick it back over to trevor for uh intergovernmental relationships thanks john intergovernmental relationships uh it really is important for planners to know that they’re not acting alone and that a lot of plans need the help of different governmental agencies

A lot of stakeholders residents and business owners for that matter but this really is getting at the point to keep thinking about how to be successful to make your plans successful involving other governmental agencies to help you in the planning process and implement the plans are really essential

This first slide talks about two different types of governmental functions line functions and staff functions this is something to keep in mind that line functions are those that provide the services directly to the public and staff functions are those which generally assist or help the line functions do their work

That’s something that often comes up in the examination so if you’d be familiar with the differences between line functions and staff functions this slide here talks about the different types of local governments uh really what we’re trying to say in this slide is just be familiar with the

Different type of internal planning that happens at a municipality level there are two examples we show here the planning department this is your more traditional planning department that may be have sub-categories or subgroups that look at plan review or long-range planning or maybe do zoning analysis but we’re also seeing a lot of

Communities that have community development departments uh this typically leads to involving more economic development and implementation steps uh often it is something that really is tied into a capital improvements program the annual budget but they’re two different types of planning departments that we typically see we’ve talked about this a bunch already

Just be familiar with the different other or the different roles of the elected appointed officials in your community and in the planning process and know how important they are these are two examples of potential government partners just real quickly special districts and then county regional governments as well

As federal agencies just be familiar with the different type of partners that maybe impact your community have jurisdiction or community or have documents or plans that that involve your community quite often a county for example has a bike trail plan already that may come through your community uh so it’s important to know

What the county has planned um you know just to make sure that that is that is a successful in this example a bike trail that can actually get built this slide here talks about some examples of specific planning projects where different governments should work together we should always keep in mind that

You’ll hear time and time again that the planner’s obligation is to the overall public good and a lot of times the best way to do that is for planners to work with other agencies and governmental agencies to advance that public good uh some of the example projects here are tips

School and park dedication reviews watershed planning transportation planning intergovernmental grants uh for the tiff i show here an example here in illinois the glenn in glenview illinois it’s an example of different governmental agencies working together from the u.s navy all the way through the village to the

School district park district etc to a major redevelopment of a closed u.s navy base another one i just want to mention here is transportation planning uh john housefield says this time and time again that transportation issues know no municipal boundary and what he what he means by that is that

Um when you’re driving a car you’re stuck in traffic you don’t really know or care what community you’re in this is an example where many municipalities need to work together or a county or the federal estate because just solving the issues in one municipality isn’t going to help stakeholder relationships uh this

Section here talks about the different type of relationships not only with government but to remember that a planner’s responsibility to the public and as we all know planning is political can be very political quite frankly and these uh this section here talks about the importance of trying to balance those two facts

One of the ways to do that is to involve as many stakeholders in the planning process as possible we list here some of the different stakeholders that could be included in the process but the main point is that the if you involve as many different representatives or stakeholders in the

Process early and often it really helps you not only get through the process but will definitely help you in the formal adoption process building and maintaining strong relationships with stakeholders will benefit the process in these following ways consensus building it’ll help you get to uh recommendations and policy

Where most of the community wants to head it has the potential avoiding unnecessary conflicts i think we’ve all been the process where somebody comes into the meeting at the very end and says i didn’t know about this plan i didn’t know what was happening although it’s been going on

For 10 months and we’ve been in all the papers and the websites um you know they’re sometimes somebody can come up with the last minute and really just derail things so this helps avoid that stakeholders can also help spread the world this world spread the word especially if they’re representative of

An agency a neighborhood group they can be your conduit to help get the word out about your project and at the end of the day they can be your biggest supporters and actually the ones that implement the plan if you have a big business owner on your steering committee for example when you

Leave you know what that business owner might be the one who either benefits from the plan or actually has the funds to implement a lot of what you’re recommending the last topic area is project and program management and we’ve talked a lot about this in a lot of different

Sections but we just wanted to quickly talk about how planners in both the public and private sector need to have strong project and and program management tools there’s a lot of software out there we’ve talked about the different ways to help manage a process process i know especially in the private sector

Those private sector planners out there listening you know how important it is to finish a project on time on budget and actually under time and under budget or is even better but be familiar with that or be know how important that is for the both public and the private sector planners

And you need to know how to be in charge of a project but also how to work with the team that’s something that is often asked on the examination is how would you work with a team to solve a group dynamic problem know how to negotiate and lastly learn

How to complete the project on time and on budget and with that i’m going to turn over to john for a wrap-up and then we’re going to open it up for any questions all right thanks for hanging in there i know we’ve been about 90 minutes it’s a

Lot of material and uh i can’t emphasize enough that when you take the examination again we’ve been teaching training for this exam for about eight years on several states the breadth of what you’re expected to cover is pretty wide so start studying early study often work as study groups if that’s more effective

For you but there’s a lot of material out there that you had to become familiar with you don’t necessarily need to be an expert in any one of those but you need to have a broad understanding of all aspects of planning as a profession and it is that broad understanding and application of

Planning principles and understanding that it’s going to be what they are trying to test you on uh they’re not trying to trip you up or get you on any one specific thing but they’re trying to test your knowledge as a planning professional so there’s a lot of different things you need to cover

So with that we think we’ve effectively covered all the different areas that you’re going to need to be responsible for and hopefully provided some understanding with the rationale or what it is that the apa feels is most important with regard to getting aicp certification and an understanding of what it is you

Need to understand when it comes to plan making and implementation whether it be the tools techniques methods or procedures that you are expected to have understanding of uh to help you as a professional draft and develop plans so with that i will turn it over i guess to jamie or

Anybody else out there to facilitate questions i’m ready um just a couple notes a lot of people have emailed and i know i put in the chat window and i’m not sure all of you are looking at the chat window all of the sessions from this webinar

For the aicp exam prep can be found at utah apa webcast dash archive and i went fast but if you look in your little chat window it’s there there are pdfs available for some of the sessions and for i believe for all of the sessions if you right click on the title

Of the session it will open in windows media player and it will show you the recorded session so i believe all of the sessions are there with the exception of maybe there might be some missing information from last week’s um session so give us a little time and

We’ll get that updated i don’t know exactly the process for getting today’s session up on that website or how long it will take so i’m not going to make any promises other than to say we’ve been recording the session and we hope to get it up as soon as possible um

Devin john trevor can i um send you some questions via chat and who should i send it to just so we can keep moving you can send them to me this is john okay um i’ll i’ll do the first question verbally and then i’ll send um let’s see

Someone asked what the abbreviation ssa stands for and i answered uh and this might be somebody else it stands for special service area and it’s very similar to a bid or bid improvement or business improvement district in other areas i don’t know if the three of you want to

Say anything more about that but you can’t find the chat box john yep it should be on the right-hand side of your okay you have it yep okay so i don’t know if the three of you want to say anything more about ssas but i just wanted to make sure we clarified

That in many other places they’re called business improvement districts or bids um go ahead you know that’s right ssa is a special service area and the bid is a business improvement they’re a little bit different but in terms of what they’re going to likely ask on the exam

More than likely sort of identify a scenario and say in this case an ssa may be the best thing used to recommend it and then they’ll say what is an ssa and they’ll give you four different things to choose from so they want to exit and they won’t expect anything too

Specific with regard to a bid or an ssa but just don’t know what they are great um let’s see oh the person who asked this question just left but we’ll ask it anyway um Let’s see if impact fees are not necessarily allowed in all states for example they’re illegal in massachusetts would it be a question on the aicp exam and what i answered her in writing was i maybe the concept would be on the exam i don’t know john what do you think

Well no yeah but they’re not going to ask specifically if a state has is it illegal or not in that state but they may ask you what an impact fee is right so you need to understand what it is now again different states in different areas may have specific laws but what they’re

Trying to test is the general knowledge across the country as a whole so understand what an impact fee is or an exaction fee is even if where you are it’s so nuanced it may be illegal or effectively illegal understand what it is so but they won’t ask uh

Uh they won’t ask in what state is yeah so understand what it is assuming that if they’re asking the question it’s not a trick question it’s it’s you know do you understand what it is okay um jamie i was just add that just the fact you know because one area or one state

It’s illegal one state wouldn’t rule it out from examination the entire country so okay great um let’s see what is a good source to learn about the the different types of economic analysis think that go back to the recommended reading list and there and again this is the

It may be the part that is most uh uncomfortable or least familiar with the majority of uh people taking the examination and they’re not they’re going to ask you about purge or they’re going to ask you about other types of economic analysis they’re not going to expect you to conduct any

Of it they oftentimes in the question in the wording of the question they’re giving you the answer because of the acronym that’s used or the wording that they use the apa website is actually a good place to find some of this but go back to the recommended reading list

Hold on pulling up right now okay um while you’re pulling that up um a follow-up question can you explain the differences between pert cpm etc maybe briefly since we have some other questions to get through yeah let me uh actually hand that over to see debra travis if either of you two

Want to pert cpm let’s we’ll pull up that information real quick bird is program evaluation and review technique it’s sort of a linear model where as you’re walking through it’s first developed by again the navy back in the 50s but it’s commonly used in conjunction with the cpm the cpm is a

Critical path method but what these are used for is sort of it graphically depicts a relationship about different tasks so you’re moving linearly from phase one to phase two in a process at phase two depending on what is done you can either go one direction or another direction think of the a flow

Chart and sort of have your line and then a box with some text in it and then a line with a box and some text and depending on what decision is made where that box is you can either go up or you can go down to another tier of decision

Making processes but that is what that is um i’ve talked with a number of people and it seems that pert is on the exam fairly often they’ll want you know sort of recognize what is part i don’t recall ever talk anybody where critical path method or cpm has been on the exam but

There are some basic statistical um reading materials and there are some information on the apa’s website that i think would be most helpful if i can find those books or references i’ll try to pull those yeah if you go on the apa’s website there’s a section about exam

Prep and there’s a whole list of suggested readings from the apa website so you could follow up there as well correct um let’s move on to the next question let’s see what level of knowledge do we need to understand for projections i don’t know if you can address that real basic

They’re not asking you to do calculated projections but what they’re going to say is they will give you some let’s say some basic demographic information and it may be a an age pyramid or some sort of thing like that and they will say based on this and based on

Using projections based on the demographic information provided below in 10 years this community needs to start focusing on and it may be building senior housing an option maybe building more elementary schools and it may be providing more activities for college kids and depending on where the age

Pyramid is and where the cohorts are lined up you have to sort of look at where the bulk of the population is project forward 10 years to see where the bulk of the bike the population is to say in 10 years the issue is going to

Be there’s going to be a ton of people over the age of 55 or 65 they’re going to start needing senior housing um or if there’s you know if they say five years from now but it looks like in the in the one year category there’s a bunch of

Kids that have just been born in five to ten years the elementary schools are going to have to need greater capacity so it’s pretty basic projections they’re not talking about anything you’re going to have to calculate they’re going to give you the data set or they’re going to give you

The information and it’s going to be very obvious what they want you to do is be familiar with how to utilize projections not how to calculate projections so the statistical the math the analytical stuff they’re expecting here is nominal let me just say that you’re not going to need a calculator you’re

Not going to understand uh a derivatives or a complex uh calculation you’re not going to have to know how to do statistics you need to understand the terminology you need to understand what these things are used to project you need to understand how they’re used and why they’re used but

There will not be complicated statistics there will not be complimented complicated projections there will not be complicated math as part of this exam they want you to understand what it is and how it’s used um let’s see uh yeah i’m going to contradict john just a

Bit you can bring a calculator in so he’s saying don’t you’re not going to need a calculator bring it in you may need it but it is going to be basic math and it might be just a if you refer to the recommended reading unless it’s cliff notes for statistics so it’s not

You know incredibly difficult calculations but you know you may have to calculate the percentage of one age group as uh you know as the pop compared to the population as a whole so okay i’m getting clarification from our attendees you cannot bring your own calculator but they provide you with one um

And let’s see there was a step down ratio calculation type question in the last exam but then this person clarified um it was simple calculations and yes they do provide a calculator um let’s see let me just the math is not what you’ll get hung up on you just

Understand what it is you’re trying to do with the math is as elementary as can be great um let’s see can you explain how tdrs are administered there’s no one specific way on how a tdr is administered and again what you have to understand is the concept is when a

Tdr might be used and let’s say an objective is to uh keep uh development height in an area down maybe there’s a bluff of an area has a great view to the sunset or a good great view to a mountain range and rather than allowing intense or high development in that area

They will allow some of the development that would go in that area into another area by transferring the development rights of that site or area to more intense development on another site it’s an incentive to keep development down in an area for instance so it may very well

Be if someone owns uh some property and they want to keep certain area low intensity developed low buildings or no development at all they can say we will tran there are development rights that run with this property we acknowledge that we will transfer those development rights to another piece of property

And transfer the rights of that development to some place else keeping this site uncovered with development at all or overly intense development so it doesn’t matter how it’s administered because it’s different from community to community even if a community wants to take on this technique but understand

The value and what is a tdr tdr is a transfer of development rights they’ll want you to know what it is or a scenario where it may be used as a tool you’re not going to have to worry about how it’s administered and you couldn’t even answer how it is

It’s different depending on location great um i don’t know if you can answer this off the top of your head so i’ll ask and then maybe you can go back and find it someone was asking what was the website for the federal energy policy oh don’t know

Um did you have it in your presentation i have to admit i wasn’t looking at that point you don’t have our presentation memorized i’m working on it yeah i don’t know if it is in your presentation go ahead and sign it and you can tell us let me see

If i can’t uh let’s see if we’ve got it i don’t know um someone following up on the tdr question could tdr be temporary or are they all perpetual uh i i’ve never heard of a temporary tdr because once uh the idea is it was a property you know i

Suppose in theory everything is temporary development but development for residential structure will sit there for 100 years or more commercial development will sit there for 30 years or more so i don’t know of anybody that would look at if i’m trying to preserve a line of sight view from a bluff to a

Sunset over a lake that’s a permanent asset to the community if what i’m trying to do is transfer development rights for anything that could block that view that’s a permanent relocation of development rights so i suppose in theory it could be temporary but i don’t under i couldn’t imagine off the top of

My head a scenario where there’d be a benefit to a temporary tdr so that’s a nuance that may be specific to a locale you’re not going to have to worry about that great um let’s see uh someone just this is i’ll answer this question someone’s asking if we have a

Recommendation on how to set up a study group if apa has any type of message boards i i’m not aware of any message boards but what i would do is look to your local chapter each chapter should have a professional development officer a pdo that’s what i

Am and i think if you get in touch with your pdo and tell them that you want to set up a um you know a study group or find someone to help you study um that they should know who’s taking the exam or be able to

Send out an email to the entire chapter and then you know put together a list of people who are interested that’s that’s my recommendation for how to deal with that and they go back to the energy policy real quick we don’t we don’t give the web address

Uh but what we do is we say if you go back to the apa’s website the apa does have a policy guide for energy and climate change uh and so if you go to the apa’s website and look at that policy that would be where we suggest you start looking at

Issues of energy and climate change is that the apa’s website and just someone else asked go ahead i’m sorry it’s planning.org slash research slash energy and do you know if they someone else asked earlier is there a similar policy guide for budget and finance maybe you don’t know that the answer to

That but if you do someone’s asking uh we can have somebody start looking it up while we’re talking about other things okay i didn’t find anything when i was looking quickly but you might have a better you might have better luck than me um let’s see john did you get the the one

That i sent you to the chat i don’t know if you want to address that or not uh the one about uh board of adjustment yeah uh it’s interesting again this is where there are some nuances no one else can see the question but use

If you want to repeat it says um did he just say the board of adjustments is a recommending body to counsel and i think i know where this question is uh again i don’t remember seeing a question on the exam or hearing anybody talk about a board of adjustments

Using its uh zba it’s often referred to as the cba zoning board of appeals zba is where you go to appeal and seek a variation or a variance to get relief from the underlying standards of a zoning district in some communities a board of adjustment has the authority to

Grant relief as a body and it’s not a recommending body to counsel i’m guessing that’s where this question is headed again in some communities a board of adjustment a boa is the board has the ability to grant relief it’s not a recommending body zoning board of appeals a zba which is

The only thing i’ve seen on the exam zba is a recommending body and again i’m talking universally here zba is a recommending body to the city council recommending when a variation variation or variance should be granted in some communities a board of adjustment can grant the relief or the adjustment at

That board and it’s not a recommending body so generally speaking zba is a recommending body board of adjustment sometimes is and sometimes it’s not great thanks and i’m gonna um while we were on the session i emailed apa to find out about the census question and um

Someone there confirmed it says the 2012 aicp exam will only include questions from the 2000 census and none from the 2010 census so actually official answer from a from apa so okay and that’s more than likely because it takes a while to roll out since this information in some

Areas it’s not out yet well and i think they don’t update the exam every year so correct let’s see someone is asking again about the webinar if it’s available online again please look at your chat window if you can find that the the link to the website where all of the review

Sessions will be is there let’s see i just emailed back to apa to see if they had a suggestion about a policy guide for budget and financing so we’ll hopefully get an answer to that soon okay um let’s see the question here what kind of specialized easements might be covered

What kind of specialized easements yeah do you have any opinion on that no i think people may be getting a bit too uh specific again they’re looking at uh you know you might want to say that if pedestrian mobility is important to a community but a lack of right-of-way

Exists along the corridor you know what’s one way to provide sidewalks where right-of-way doesn’t exist well you can get an access easement uh if you get an adjacent property owner you can get an access easement for a sidewalk or a bike trail or you know communities have easements for all sorts

Of things i’ve seen east you know there’s utility easements i’ve seen pedestrian access events i’ve seen water access to eastmans uh there are all sorts of easements that are very specific uh yeah but it might you know relate back to uh you know a law type of

A foundation but understand i don’t i can’t imagine there being a question about easements on the exam but understand that as an easement is some sort of typically again generally a public access over private property for a specific purpose this is a public access easement through this property so

Everybody has access to the waterfront or the lake this is an access easement through this property because we have to connect this area to this area there is no right of way we want pedestrians to be able to cross through here so an easement is you know utilities have easements on private property

Everywhere so utility companies can get their trucks and service men and women to the infrastructure or utility that exists on that private property it is a utility easement so they’re not going to get so nuanced as to say what are the different types or specific allocations of different types of access easements i

Mean know what an access easement is but the range of the application of them is infinite and someone here is pointing out that an aviation easement for example would be to clear trees yeah i mean it’s it’s the the list of easements is is infinite uh

But know what it is it’s basically some sort of limited or specific access either to an entity a government agency or the public over private property for a specific reason great um someone’s asking will the exam spell out acronyms like tdr stands for transfer of development rights or should we memorize

The acronyms memorize them that could very well be a question to prevent a tall buildings from blocking line of sight to a monument uh the community is employing tdrs to get development to be someplace else what is a tdr and they’ll give you like you know uh trevor dick’s resume

Transfer of development rights uh you know whatever you’ve got to pick what a tdr is so don’t assume in fact that’s one of the exams favorite things is what is pert program evaluation and review technique what is an eis what is whatever so know the acronyms they will

Not necessarily give them to you great um i sent you another one via chat john if you want to address that but i’m going to ask another question and i’m not sure it says would there be quasi judicial questions relating to different boards i’m not sure i understand that question i’m not wondering

Okay if the person who sent that question could maybe say a little bit more about that question we’ll try to get it answered going back to when trevor was presenting i know he was talking about census information and population decrease and i don’t know if you have this at the

Ready but someone’s asking what different years were assumed for the decrease in population and i’m sorry i don’t know exactly what figures were given to help you narrow that down but do you do you know hi the slide was referring to the declining population of the rust belt cities and it was um

From 2000 to 2010. okay so it was the the two cents those two censuses sensai whatever from 2000 to 2010. and someone asked and i don’t know if you just want to give your opinion why would the population be declining in the rust belt is it because

Of the loss of manufacturing jobs well it’s interesting that would very well be a perfect exam question uh why uh why is it um inclement weather people not liking more than likely it’s manufacturing your jobs why do people move out to arizona and nevada and florida

You know as they get older they like the warm weather elderly people tend to move out there uh there’s it’s newer there’s infrastructure is newer it’s warmer climate it tends to be the growth shift of the country they’re all spelled as jobs uh manufacturing jobs are lost people

Move out and that’s a great question is uh you know below of the four possibilities identified below what is the what are likely reasons for the declining population in rust belt cities and they may give you four and say a b c uh d or all of the above so that’s that’s almost

A perfect example of the type of question you would get on the exam exactly because they want there is no right answer and here’s another thing you have to understand they’re looking for the most right answer and this is very confusing it may very well be that you answer b

And technically that’s correct but c is a more correct answer so they’re looking for you to use your judgment as a planner but that’s a that question may very well be on the exam that’s exactly the type of questions they ask great we have about 10 minutes left so if

People have questions please keep them coming i have two more going back to the um well someone’s asking rust belts so what is the most correct answer well and again i don’t know if there is one the biggest one i’ve got to think is going to be the decline in the

Manufacturing industry i mean as detroit flint some places in indiana and ohio as manufacturing jobs leave the region people are going to leave as well that’s very very common then the older population again populations across the country generally are all aging and there is a national trend of people

Aging again not everybody but a trend of people retiring to warmer climates so though there’s two right there now depending on what uh questions they give in term or answers are given the multiple choice there may be other ones as well but those are two very valid ones okay um

So the person who asked about the quasi-judicial questions referring to different boards sent a little clarification he says we were recently made aware that some boards such as design review boards would have to follow quasi-judicial procedures does that ring a bell to you is that it

Because if not i think the best thing would be to contact epa and see if they have any well yeah you define quasi-judicial that’s not even okay they follow roberts you want to get technical they follow robert’s rules of order that’s the legal rules the quasi-judicial doesn’t even really mean

Anything you have to define that uh boards and commissions uh elected boards officials appointing boards and commissions have to follow robert’s rules of order for anybody who’s out there as a planner who says uh you know i have you know mr chairman i have a question about whatever the chairman

Goes uh you can’t ask a question we have a motion on the floor you know somebody made a motion do i have a second do i you know if i don’t have a second the motion dies due to lack of second uh uh i second the motion

But i want to amend the motion okay do we have approval to amend the motion that’s robert’s rule of order um so i don’t know what quasi-judicial is they’re not going to ask that but what you’re going to need to know is not the rules by which they have to function but

What is the role of the zoning board of appeals what is the role of a planned commission what is the role of city council in a in a procedure great thank you thank you i want to go back and clarify something okay about the rest of the rust belt communities in

That one figure the populations were from 1960 to 2010. so in 50 years there’s there’s so much great thanks um i just heard back from apa apa does not have a policy guide for budgeting or finance just fyi for everybody um hold on let me get back to the question screen um

Let’s see just some more comments on the quasi-judicial issue if the person is from vermont quasi-judicial is typically what a development review board is called they review subdivisions variants requests conditional use requests etc and then another person says the individual may be referring to a board of adjustment which is a quasi-quasi

Judicial board and another person says additional clarification should we be able to distinguish between ministerial judicial and quasi-judicial acts no i’ve never heard of them ever asking questions that specific it’s never come up again they’re going to want you to know what is the what is

The purpose of a zoning board of appeals what’s their job as a staff planner who’s writing reports to the zoning board of appeals what what’s your role as a staff planner in terms of writing reports or recommendations what’s the role of the plan commission in reviewing a planned

Unit development and what should it consider before it makes a recommendation to city council they’re not going to expect you to know the legal conditions from state to state or wherever as to whether a planning commission is considered quasi-judicial or zoning board is they’re not going to ask that

That’s the level of detail they’re not going to get into here i’m getting more comments from people quasi judicial roles vary by community does quasi judicial refer to the way the meeting is run exactly they’re not going to get into that yeah they’re not going to get into that again

They’re going to want to know uh you know they’re going to say like you write a staff report to the plan commission recommending staff recommends denial of a plan development but because the proposed developer is the brother-in-law the plan commission chairman the plan commission chair says

Uh you know hey i want you to write the staff report saying the plan commission recommends it what should you do to inform the plan commission as they prepare their recommendation for city council understand the roles of the different boards and commissions you do not have to understand the governance by

Which they operate it’s it will not come up are you getting too too specific yeah i i was going to say i think we should move on from this question because we’re getting a little too um too specific someone’s asking i must not have been clear apa emailed me back and

Said they don’t have a policy guide for budgeting and finance just want to make sure everyone heard that there’s a question here the far question is always on the exam please explain floor area ratio okay floor area ratio pretty straight forward a floor area ratio is the ratio of the floor area of

The building to the property area or the site area of a building so let’s say that you have a zoning lot a property that is twenty thousand square feet in size this lot area you have a building on that site a one story building that has a ten thousand square foot

Footprint or floor area the far of that building is point five the building area is ten thousand square feet the lot area is twenty thousand square feet the far is point five now you let’s say you have a twenty thousand square foot lot and you have a two story five thousand

Square foot floor plan building so the first floor is five thousand square feet the second floor is five thousand square feet the total floor area of that two-story building is still ten thousand square feet so the far is still going to be 0.5 so far is floor area ratio

So it’s the floor area of the building and the ratio of that to the lot area of the lot that that building is on so again if you had a 100 000 square foot lot and you had a 10 000 square foot building the far is point one or ten

Percent ten thousand square foot building hundred thousand square foot lot far is point one there will likely be an far this is a this is the level of calculation on the exam calculate the far of the proposed site plan and they’ll give you a building they’ll give you a uh uh

A building whether it’s two-story three-story four-story five-story or whatever they will give you um the lot area and then we’ll they will ask you to calculate the far but it’s floor area ratio i think what we’re pulling up right now on your screens uh wait hold up while

You’re finishing logging in let me just ask one more question sorry john do you know where people can find key findings or outcomes from the 2000 census uh i i would imagine key findings of for the census best place to find that yeah the apa might even have something on

Their way i think the best place is right on the census website okay and i haven’t visited the census website in a very long time but i would think that there are some summary sheets that you could find and look at yep what you should have on the screen now jamie if

You can see it is this is actually uh one of the questions from planning prep the website oh i’m sorry yes if you can see it on your screen everybody and what it shows here is uh it’s a little uh image of the planning prep world headquarters

Uh and it is situated on a site that is 200 by 200 feet is the lot that the building is on and it looks like the building covers up about half a lot and the building is eight stories tall this is a typical type of question so given this information and your

Understanding of far what is the far of the building in the above diagram so the building is one two three four five six seven eight stories tall it covers half of the site so the footprint of the building is half the site it’s eight stories tall that’s the same as a four-story building

Covering up the entire site the far of this scenario is four or 4.0 is the far of this picture great um so if you on the planning prep website there are stuff about what is far how to calculate it but it’s very simple it’s a floor area ratio floor

Area of the building to the area of the site and i know that you just logged into planningprep.com do you want to say anything about that because people are asking i guess the first webinar hosted mentioned planning preps i don’t know if you want to tell people where to find it

What it is and etc yeah it’s uh real quickly it’s uh planning prep was developed about eight years ago or so as a website for people to prepare for the aicp exam we have had people use the aicp or the planning prep website uh from nearly every state and in several countries you

Know you may be a planner in the middle of timbuktu and not have any planners around to have a study group with and this is a great resource or in another country there are seven practice exams there are different categories it used to be for the first

Seven years of the site it was a fee based site you had to pay to take it or pay to register the site is now free we gave it this is something we’ve developed it was developed by devin levine and trevor dick who are the presenters here

And it was developed uh by them about eight years ago and uh we have launched the site free about a year ago or so so you can go onto planningprep.com register and it’s a great tool uh to prepare for the exam you can query the questions by like i

Only want to focus on law or legal questions because i’m not good at that you can filter out everything else there’s thousands of questions and you can just focus on legal questions or you can just focus on implementation questions or you can just focus on history questions

You can track how well you do you can see if you’re doing well or not doing well questions provide we have the question we provide the answers we say why if the answer is d we say why d is the correct answer and for most questions there’s a link and if you

Click on the link it will take you to a newspaper article or or a planning prep article or an apa website that gives further information so it’s a great study tool to go in and help augment your preparation for the exam great thanks john i’m only going to cut

You off because it’s 10 o’clock so we’ve reached the end of our session i don’t want to keep people any longer um just i think the question that you’ve pulled up is actually a good one because someone pointed out that sometimes on the exam they will give you the far and

You have to calculate the the building area so i think this question that you’re showing here is actually a good example of that um i believe we answered probably 99 of the questions that were asked so i want to thank john devin and trevor for their time and remind everybody that

This session was recorded and it will be up on the utah chapters website so check there give us a couple days and next week next friday we’ll be doing this again um john devin and trevor will be joining us again on march 16th and so we’ll hear

From everybody again then and just one last quick question someone is asking um i was under the impression there are 170 questions on the exam this this site indicates 150. um i know that they put some practice tests uh questions on the exam i don’t know if that’s the discrepancy

Yeah they put uh there are questions that they have on the exam every year that don’t count to sort of equator questions and they don’t count to your score so there are questions on the exam that don’t count toward your total score but they ask in many ways sort of equate

Your questions and also questions to sort of get you used to taking questions in the electronic format so not every question asked is counts toward your score but you don’t know which questions necessarily do or don’t so you have to answer them all great um let’s see

I’m sorry i had one more thing i wanted to say and i completely blanked out oh the other thing i want to mention is that in addition to planning prep having to um practice practice exams the ai the apa website also has practice exams available so on apa’s website that’s

Just another source for practice exam plus there are other review materials available for purchase on the apa website just as another source of information so i think we’re done again thanks to john devin and trevor and i hope to hear from everybody again in two weeks thank you thanks jamie bye bye thanks

ID: 0r3pq8mgZDM
Time: 1375239316
Date: 2013-07-31 07:25:16
Duration: 02:01:38

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