Top 3 Lessons Learned Throughout the CPW Process

Team Madras Hazards Plan Integration OPDR Oregon Partnership for Disaster Resilience CPW Community Planning Workshop
Team Madras: Sarah Allison, Project Manager with team members: Emily Kettell, Laura Stroud, Elizabeth Miller, Drew Pfefferle, Ross Peizer (photo taken at Smith Rock State Park, Terreborne, Oregon)

Team Madras (Madras Hazards Plan Integration) is made up of five first-year Community and Regional Planning graduate students enrolled in the Community Planning Workshop (CPW). The team’s project consists of taking Jefferson County’s Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan (NHMP) and integrating it with Madras’ comprehensive plan, the City’s regulatory planning document. For most of us on Team Madras, we came into the project knowing next to nothing about natural hazard planning. Some people devote their entire careers to hazard planning, and we were just taking on a six-month project. So, how were we to catch up, or at least begin to learn the basics of hazard planning and completing such an important project? This blog provides insight into some key lessons that our team learned about the project we have been working on.

1. Case Studies Can Provide a Huge Base of Knowledge
Aside from reading information from FEMA, and some pretty lengthy policy documents, our team found that the best way to learn about natural hazard planning was through case studies. Understanding what other cities have done to succeed (and fail) in the field of hazard mitigation, and more specifically, in the integration of the NHMP with the comprehensive plan, was extremely helpful for everyone on the team.

If we had just stuck to reading lengthy policy documents, we would have only had some abstract ideas as to what natural hazard planning was all about. The main lesson we learned about case studies is that by reading them, our team members were able to ground ourselves in natural hazard planning through concrete examples. After reading the case studies, our team began working on our project with a greater understanding of what we needed to accomplish moving forward.

2. Check In Often
While our team is working from Eugene, our client is three hours away in Madras and we need to make sure that we check in from time to time. As we create our revised natural hazards chapter, our client has been willing to review our goal and policy language, to ensure that what we write matches the standards and expectations that he has set for the final stages of the project.

Aside from our client, we have checked in with our Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) twice and had a conference call with Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) representatives to discuss our hazard inventory, as well as our goal and policy language before it becomes finalized. The main lesson that our team learned was that by checking in frequently, we can make changes early in order to try and avoid any conflicts at the end of the project.

3. Public Participation is Key to Successful Deliverables
One of the most important aspects of creating our final deliverables has been the public participation input. We held a public forum and realized that some people hold strong opinions on matters that affect land use and regulations. In an attempt to receive the greatest amount of input as possible and keep the dialogue productive, we created a set-up of stations so that we could have one-on-one conversations with attendees. This allowed us to gather valuable input, start dialogues, and diffuse any potential air of conflict by addressing concerns upfront.

The resulting input that we received has directly informed the goals, policies, and implementation measures that we have included in our primary deliverable, the hazard mitigation chapter for the comprehensive plan. The input not only gave us a sense of what would be more or less popular with citizens, but also clued us into specific language that we should or should not avoid using. We learned that including public input and understanding the public’s point of view would create a stronger end product that wins more public support. While we will never win everyone’s support, by including public input, we can create a product that the public feels better about because their input has been included in our process.

Conclusion
Over the course of this twenty-week project Team Madras has learned several lessons in the process. Our hope is that in the future other cities can learn from our process as they proceed in comprehensive hazard mitigation planning.

 

Elizabeth Miller Madras Hazards Integration Plan CPW Community Planning Workshop
Emily Kettell University of Oregon Community Planning Workshop CPW Madras Hazards Plan Integration

 

About the Authors: Elizabeth Miller is a Community and Regional Planning student at the University of Oregon, and is additionally pursuing a certificate in Nonprofit Management.  She is from Kalispell, Montana, and is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame with degrees in Fine Arts, Political Science, and Peace Studies. Emily Kettell is a first year Community and Regional Planning graduate student. She moved to Eugene from Chicago where she received her Bachelors degree from DePaul University, majoring in French and Public Policy, with a concentration in Environmental Studies.

Meet CPW Student: Stacy Ludington

Where were you born and where do you call home?Community Planning Workshop Oregon Partnership for Disaster Resilience CPW OPDR Stacy Ludington
I was born in Greensboro, NC but didn’t live there long. I call Eugene my west coast home, but Blacksburg, VA my hometown. “Hometown” is a bit of a stretch though, considering I attended 16 different schools before 9th grade. That’s my fun fact about myself.

What’s your favorite pig-out food?
I LOVE the fries from Falling Sky, a brewery restaurant that is located way too close to my house for my cholesterol health. I’m also guilty of occasionally eating ice cream for breakfast.

In which graduate program are you enrolled?
I’m working towards my Master of Community and Regional Planning and focusing on the mitigation of natural disasters, particularly those related to climate change. I’m also finding a strong interest in identifying ways organizations can reduce their greenhouse gas emissions though conducting GHG Inventories and life cycle assessments.

What Community Service Center program(s) are you working with?
Up till now, I’ve worked with the Community Planning Workshop, which has been the best experience of my program thus far. My CPW project, which I continued into the summer, was for the Oregon Partnership for Disaster Resilience (OPDR). The Oregon Partnership for Disaster Resilience (OPDR) is an applied research program working toward the mission of creating a disaster resilient and sustainable state.

What are you doing for the Community Service Center (CSC)?
I worked on a team that updated the Jefferson County Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan (NHMP), which forms the foundation for a county or city’s long-term strategy to reduce disaster losses and break the cycle of disaster damage, reconstruction, and repeated damage through hazard mitigation. Hazard mitigation is any sustained action taken to reduce or eliminate long-term risk to people, property and the local economy. NHMPs must be updated every five years in order to stay compliant with FEMA requirements. Over the summer I developed a final draft of the Jefferson County Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan (NHMP), which was pre-approved by FEMA on December 10th of 2013 and is now awaiting city and county adoption. Currently I’m assisting with the update of the Oregon NHMP and will soon be involved with the creation of a NHMP update training series for local officials.

How does your involvement with the Community Service Center relate to or inform your education?
My work on this project introduced me to the field of planning for natural disasters, which greatly interests me, partially how it relates to climate-related natural disasters that can affect planning such as sea level rise.

What did you get for your birthday?
My dad sent me a new hiking pack filled with everything I could possibly need to track down and find Big Foot. It’s been a running joke that instead of moving to Oregon for school, I was really on a journey of self-discovery, which involved finding Sasquatch.

Where can we ‘cyber-stalk’ you?
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/stacyludington