{"id":142884,"date":"2025-06-05T08:58:50","date_gmt":"2025-06-05T12:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/?p=142884"},"modified":"2025-06-05T09:00:19","modified_gmt":"2025-06-05T13:00:19","slug":"freeman-proposal-would-simplify-municipal-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/?p=142884","title":{"rendered":"Freeman proposal would simplify municipal development\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Freeman proposal would simplify municipal development\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>HARRISBURG, June 2 \u2013<\/strong>\u00a0State Rep. Robert Freeman has introduced legislation that would give municipalities another tool to plan their communities and streamline development.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo cut down on the complexity of the municipal permitting process, my proposal would help to expand the use of \u2018specific plans.\u2019 Currently, planners use specific plans to provide a more detailed plan for development within a certain area. When a developer proposes to develop the land consistently with the specific plan, the developer can take advantage of a streamlined approval process and proceed directly to final subdivision and land development approval,\u201d said Freeman, chairman of the House Local Government Committee.<\/p>\n<p>Freeman said specific plan authorization was originally added to the Municipalities Planning Code nearly 25 years ago as part of a larger effort to encourage planning through multi-municipal comprehensive plans. However, the MPC only allows them to be implemented through these plans and limits them to non-residential development. By adding residential development to the authorized uses for specific plans, it is hoped that the streamlined process could facilitate the establishment of more affordable housing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy bill would authorize individual municipalities to adopt specific plans and allow both residential and non-residential development to be covered under them,\u201d Freeman said.<\/p>\n<p>Developers would use sketch plans in presenting their proposed development to give municipalities and residents a clearer indication of how the development will look.<\/p>\n<p>Expanding specific plans was part of the State Planning Board\u2019s 2023 recommendations for streamlining local permitting and development.<\/p>\n<p>House Bill 1532 was referred to the House Local Government Committee for consideration.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Information provided to TVL by:<br \/>\n<i>Tom Andrews<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Freeman proposal would simplify municipal development\u00a0 HARRISBURG, June 2 \u2013\u00a0State Rep. Robert Freeman has introduced legislation that would give municipalities another tool to plan their communities and streamline development. \u201cTo &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/?p=142884\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Freeman proposal would simplify municipal development\u00a0<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111789,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-the-valley"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Freeman.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142884"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=142884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/111789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=142884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=142884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=142884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}