Taintor & Associates - South County Sustainable Economy

Regional Economic Strategies for 9 Rhode Island Towns

The Washington County Regional Planning Council and Grow Smart Rhode Island commissioned the South County Sustainable Economy Project to help address a complex series of questions that face Washington County's mainland municipalities. Can the communities attract sufficient business and industry to meet their goals for economic growth? What types of economic development should be pursued and where should it be located? Can the desired level of growth be achieved without damaging the environment or significantly changing the character of the region?

Washington County municipalities recognize that some planning issues are better addressed at the regional than at the municipal level. In 1993, the municipalities formed the Washington County Regional Planning Council as a mechanism to facilitate cooperative planning efforts. As its first step, in July 2002 the Council produced A Shared Future: Washington County in 2020, a document describing a shared vision for the County's future and outlining five regional goals. One of those goals is to achieve a sustainable economy, one that addresses fiscal and employment needs while protecting and enhancing the region's two greatest assets: the natural environment of beaches and coastal salt ponds, rivers and forests, and the regional character created by historic villages, towns and agricultural landscapes. The South County Sustainable Economy Project is designed to help the communities, collectively and individually, identify specific strategies to achieve that goal.

The project addresses the understandable reality that individual towns focus on economic development within their borders. Every community in the region has an economic development strategy, outlined in each town's local comprehensive plan and displayed in simple form on its zoning map. But these individual town strategies generally do not consider the character and role of a community in the regional economy or the potential cumulative impacts of economic development efforts across the region. Nor do they generally identify opportunities to enhance economic development efforts through multi-town or regional cooperative effort. Taken together, the plans do not combine to create a cohesive plan for South County as a whole. The Sustainable Economy Project seeks to provide that perspective for communities to consider.

Project Documents

Draft Report -- February 2003

The draft report presents the findings and recommendations of the South County Sustainable Economy Project.

Contents:

Introduction

Section 1: The Economy of South County

Section 2: The Region

Section 3: Opportunities

Section 4: Issues and Challenges

Section 5: The Property Tax Dilemma

Section 6: A Regional Development Framework

Section 7: Recommended Strategies

Appendices

	Cover, Contents, and Introduction [PDF, 144K]
	Sections 1-2 [PDF, 660K]
	Sections 3 - 6 [PDF, 1.2MB]
	Section 7 [PDF, 4.2MB]
	Appendices [PDF, 252K]
	Executive Summary (March 2003) The little report .... [MS Word doc, 132K]

Presentation to Washington County Congress of Councils -- March 2003

Download PDF document [1MB]
The presentation may also be viewed online in two formats:

HTML version for dial-up connections

QuickTime movie (2.7MB) for broadband connections