Several years ago the State of Delaware adopted an infrastructure investment strategies map, to guide the State’s decision-making process over where the state government will spend discretionary funds on local needs. (Click here for a copy of the Sussex County portion of the map.)

In addition, the Minner Administration developed the Livable Delaware initiative, in which the State asserts an increasingly important role in local land use policy matters.

I discussed the City of Brighton proposal with the Minner Administration. The State Planning Office supports this concept as a reasonable approach to addressing the needs of new development in the area, while remaining sensitive both to the environment and the reasonable investment expectations of Delaware's citizens.

The linchpin between the City of Brighton proposal and state land use policy is the recommendation to enhance the areas of the city that the State recognizes should develop, and to create the legal conditions whereby other areas are kept in a relatively undeveloped state, in as fair a manner as possible.

Any new city must create a comprehensive land use plan for review by the State, prior to engaging in any land use regulatory activity affecting private landownership within the municipality. The basic elements of the required plan are detailed in the Delaware Code. For the City of Brighton, however, I suggest that certain additional elements of its comprehensive development plan should be mandated as part of the legislation creating the city.

Complying with these additional provisions will assure the creation of a rational municipal environment for this community, while giving property owners the reassurance that if the City is created it will fulfill critical needs, and not evade them.

On another page I describe some of these proposed required elements.