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For this past year, the southeastern
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Regional Planning and Economic Development
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District, also known as SRPEDD, worked with its 27 member communities to update their priority areas, which include priority development or PDAs and priority protection areas or PPAs. You may have heard about this work, but if you haven't, you can check out our previous video describing the project by visiting www.SRPEDD.org/priority-areas
Speaker 1 00:39
in essence, the goal of the 2024 priority areas project is to help municipalities identify important areas within their communities and plan for both future growth and conservation efforts. So what have we done over the past year to identify these areas? We've been busy, but let's start from the beginning to begin. Serpent held working meetings with municipal staff across the region to identify new priority areas. In total, the project team attended 54 total meetings between April 2023 and march 2024, these meetings held both in person and virtually, allowed municipal decision makers to directly
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pinpoint important priority areas.
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Through these sessions, a total of 179
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PDAs, 175
Speaker 1 01:34
PPAs and 69 combined areas, areas with both preservation and development goals were identified for inclusion in the 2024 update. Based on each community selection, we then identified regionally significant sites, regionally significant priority areas are best suited to help meet state regional goals for development and conservation within the SRPEDD region to determine this, the project team created a regional screening process that combines a data driven suitability analysis with local knowledge to figure out which priority areas are of regional significance. The project team started by gathering the most up to date geographic information systems data which were included as factors within a model using ArcMap and community vids, these factors help the project team understand which priority areas overlap with key development and conservation considerations. For example, the project team included data that is important to support growth, such as an area's walkability or whether it is identified as a FEMA flood zone. Additionally, the project team included data that is important to environmental protection, including key habitats and wetland locations. By combining this data using weights and map algebra, the project team generated a final score for each of the priority areas based on their purpose. From there, the project team ranked each priority area based on its suitability score and local context to create a final list of 40 regionally significant PDAs and 92 regionally significant PPAs. This is the last step in designating the final new set of 2024
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priority areas.
Speaker 1 03:32
But what can municipalities do with this information? We've gathered some case studies from the previous 2013 priority areas. Update to showcase how communities within our region have met their goals in the PDAs and PPAs. Let's start with the city of Taunton's transit-oriented development district, which is sited around the Taunton commuter station. This is a designated PDA in both the 2013 and 2024 update following the 2013 update, the city adopted the housing development incentive program, or HDIP, to encourage community development. In the following years, Taunton moved the TOD district to respond to the new location of the MBTA station and increased allowable densities and height limits. In 2023 Taunton received Housing Choice initiative funds to comply with Section Three a today, Taunton approved a 275
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unit development at this PDA,
Speaker 1 04:34
now let's switch gears and look at the Mattapoisett Acushnet, Rochester Regional PPA. This is a priority protection area in both the 2013 and 2024 update, motivated to protect over 240 acres of significant natural resources. This PPA enabled the partnership of three municipalities with the buzzers Bay coalition, three years after the 2013 update, Mattapoisett acquired over 100 acres of Tinkham woodlands, and in 2022 the towns received a four and a half million dollar MVP implementation grant to support aquifer protection. These are just some of the ways our communities have taken advantage of priority area designations within their city or town. However, there are many other examples you can learn about in the final report for the 2024 priority areas update. This report summarizes all of the project steps and findings, including notes from the community working sessions, any edits made to previous priority areas and which priority areas from this update are regionally significant. You can view the report by visiting the project website. We want to remind those watching that this work isn't zoning or an investment plan. Instead, This work represents an opportunity for communities within the survey region to think about the outcomes they wish to see within their city or town. We encourage communities to use this new resource to support their goals, including things like land acquisition grant application and other planning initiatives. We thank you for your interest in the 2024 priority areas project. We hope this work helps your community accomplish its planning goals over the next several years.
