Following completion of the study by the consulting firm, they submit a final eport to the commission. Reports should include (a) population and economic formation, (b) land use, (c) community facilities, (d) preliminary plans, and e) final plans, including recommended zoning and subdivision standards. The county planning commission the studies the report and makes recommendaions to the county board of supervisors. The county board may approved, disaprove, or approve with amendments to the report. The approval of the report oes not set up regulatoins or establish county zoning or subdivision ordinances. This step merely establishes guidelines for future developments within the county r region. John A. Quinn, Assistant Professor of Community Planning, Department of Agricultural Economics and Bureau of Community Planning, University of Illiois, will meet with county planning commissioners or boards of supervisors to liscuss county or regional planning. He may be contacted through the county arm adviser. WATER-SYSTEM LOAN APPROVED FOR MACOUPIN AND SANGAMON COUNTIES The Farmers Home Administration has approved a $2,770,000 loan to six communities in Macoupin and Sangamon Counties to develop a water system capable of relieving the low water pressure in the area and to eliminate the serious water shortages that have occurred in recent years. The loan is the largest of its type ever. COMMUNITY AND RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT COOPERATIVE EXTENSION, NEW YORK STATE Rural development in the urbanizing Northeast has special characteristics and issues. In the Northeastern U.S. is an urban complex containing 43 percent of the nation's population. It stretches from west of Chicago east to Boston and south to Richmond. Farming is big in this region, but so are its problems. In this richest market, farmers are both thriving and threatened. Here are found all the perplexities of keeping a strong agriculture in the face of urbanization's many pressures. New York is the core of this complex. The State is highly urbanized, yet our agricultural industry is a $3.5-billion-a-year enterprise. We rank 13th in the value of farm products. The College and Extension have an obligation to protect this productivity to increase it if possible. We must discover all we can about how agriculture can remain a viable part of this complex . . . how the land can be used to everyone's benefit. We must work with other agencies of State and federal government (such as Farmers Home Administration; Soil Conservation Service; ASCS; HUD; HEW; Labor; etc. of federal and comparable departments of State government). This is a united effort to help rural people in this urbanizing complex participate more fully in the educational, health, job training, welfare, and others-by any standard rural people do not share as fully as do urban people in Federal and State programs that could be of benefit to them. There is need for improving the "Outreach" to rural people. These are the objectives of what we call the Mid-New York Project in a fivecounty area surrounding metropolitan Syracuse financed by FES-USDA as a special project. The area has the urban vigor and the rich agriculture typical of much of the Northeast. This experimental project is designed to use research and education to improve public decision-making and to find the answers to rural-urban conflicts in the countryside to help rural areas bridge the rural gap. For instance, how can the conflicts between farmer and his nonfarming neighbors be resolved? How can farmers continue to spray and dust crops, operate machinery, spread manure or use large amounts of water without irritating neighbors, or actually endangering their health? The stakes in this effort are large, and a critical proving ground will be the agriculturally rich Cortland Valley south of Syracuse. Farming here has already been restricted by the unwise routing of Interstate 81 which destroyed some of the best land. More trouble could be ahead for farming if urbanization continues to creep into the valley. But there is an alternative. The project should help in the community decisions which would direct growth away from good farmland toward land equally suitable for urban uses to the north and west where farming is not strong. Success in this and in other growing areas can mean new continuing investments in the farm plant . . . the kind New York needs to keep a competitve agriculture. Investments like this make good rural communities and create infinite nonfarm jobs. There are answers to agriculture's problems in urban New York. We hope to find them in the Mid-New York Project by acting as teacher, interpreter, demon strater and organizer. Most important, we hope to help people and communities throughout the State to act to build healthy, balanced economies and, in the process, to use resources better. Thus this project is directed to the decision makers-both public and private-to help them shape a planned and better community for all the people. Time was when the lines between rural and urban, farmers and nonfarmers, were comfortably fixed and unvarying. The city's sphere of influence was well defined. When urban limits did move toward the countryside, they usually ad i vanced slowly and in a fairly methodical fashion. Their inroads into farm lands were seldom spectacular nor particularly disturbing in agriculture's uncontested domain. The knowledge of rural and urban people of each other's environments was likely to be gained by occasional vacation excursions into the country and in marketing or shopping forays to the city. Farmers who succeed in building thriving businesses and have every promises of sharing in the future might seem to have solved most of their problems. Perhaps so-in a simpler time. But the farmer is no longer alone in the rural areas; his neighbors are not necessarily other farmers who share the same interests and desires. The adjoining farm may no longer even be a farm. The same fields that once supported crops now sprout homes. Where a barn once stood, a shopping center spreads its pavement over acres. The families shopping there clog the old road with new traffic. More important to the farmer, they don't like dust; every morning noise disturbs them and farm smells are unwelcome in the patio. Clearly, here are possible conflicts; someone must adjust. The farmer was there first. Then can't we assume that the newcomers must do the adjusting? We can't. The newcomers can, and have, in many instances forced farmers ont, forced them to install expensive abatement equipment, or to alter radically their operations. The problems of environmental pollution, rural and urban, are one of the major issues of the times. An advisory group to President Johnson called pollution of all kinds one of the most pervasive problems in our society. As such, it will require concerted efforts in rural areas to find solutions acceptable to both farmers and the new rural residents. Pollution is one problem in a complex web of issues and problems created by the changing nature of the rural areas. Before the trends that were to blur urban-rural distinctions were many years old, the very real problems of land management and use, disorderly development, friction and even conflict that are with us today arose. Rural people, inexperienced with urban growth, were and still are, unprepared for the sometimes helter-skelter patterns of development created by the urban wedges driving deep into the countryside. Fresh from the city, the new residents also found to their consternation that serenity and the good life did not come guaranteed with a bucolic setting. Mushrooming growth soon, pushed taxes higher than they had expected. Open spaces the family had intended to use for recreation soon sprouted other homes built by families who had planned to do the same thing. Odors wafted from the nearby barnyard or poultry house to the living room windows soon resulted in acrimony and zoning quarrels where neighbor accused neighbor, and of concern to all of us, rural people are too often short changed in human development-schooling, health and welfare measures are not as effective as in urban settings. The conflicts and incompatibilities created by urban expansion will prove to be some of the most stubborn problems agriculture will have to face. Urban demands for more huge slices of land are only some of the many perplexities. Taxes and zoning are others. Prohibitive taxes and restrictive zoning regulations are very real problems threatening, in some cases, and in some areas, farming's existence. Agricultural interests will have to participate more aggressively in local gorernment if they are to speak with a strong voice in an urbanizing society. They ist serve on zoning commissions, town boards and boards of supervisors if their ee in this society is to be sturdy and profitable. Managed wisely and developed systematically, natural resources can mean the ference between a community's smooth, profitable transition out of commercial rming and a tragic transition in which both land and human values suffer. Open spaces, clean water, unspoiled forests and unpolluted air to breathe come more powerful lures to the urban resident every year-good schools, equate health facilities, job opportunities, are still too often a dream rather an a reality. Outdoor recreation has grown so rapidly that predictions of exnsion continue to fall short of the fact. Rural people can profit by attracting urban people to the countryside. A comnation of imagination, training and leadership with information supplied by ucational programs can present an almost endless variety of profitable tivities. In the people themselves, responding to leadership, will the answers to the oblems of heedless urban sprawl, pollution, water and forest conservation and isuse of land be found. We recognize the benefit, not challenge, of the urban riented use of farmland. But, wise progress must be progress with restraint. Wayward development nd indiscriminate use of land will not bring maximum benefit to rural and rban people. Land best suited for agriculture and not needed for urban use hould remain in production, not fall victim to premature exploitive developent. The community that allows undisciplined suburban growth may forfeit for ll time agriculturally related job opportunities, parks, open space, and public ecreation land. ummary Four kinds of "rural development" efforts in New York State are illustrative f Cooperative Extension's active involvement. 1. The Community and Resources Development project of the 5-country area urrounding Syracuse, New York-this special project funded by FES-USDA s aimed at solution of both the public and private problems of a rich urbanizing area where there is also evidence of "rural lag." Here Extension provides leaderhip working with other Federal and State agencies to help this community in a lanned orderly development of benefit to rural and urban people. Note attachment #1-Quarterly Report, MIDNY PROJECT, January 1-March 31, 1967. 2. The Mid-Hudson Program (Southeastern New York) under the leadership of FHA. Here Extension is a participant in assisting with programs dealing with the development of the rural sector of this region. 3. The Seven County Resource Conservation and Development Project-in this rural area of South Central New York, SCS has primary leadership responsibility in the development of the natural resources of land, water, and forests of the region. It is expected this will provide alternate job opportunities in recreation and other rural based activities. Cooperative Extension is providing educational leadership in this pilot project. 4. Individual county Resource Development Committees involved in study and recommendations-these are Cooperative Extension sponsored and guided. Note example attachment II for Genesee County, New York. 5. Attachment III-Statement of C. R. Harrington-Cooperative Extension and Community Resource Development. LOGAN-UNION-CHAMPAIGN TRI-COUNTY COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT SEMINAR The Ohio Cooperative Extension Service, The Ohio State University in Cooperation with Local Leaders Introduction TRI-COUNTY COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT SEMINAR MARCH 30, 1967-8:00 P.M. An Outsider's View of the Tri-County Area Area Economics Consultants, Columbus, Ohio Exploring Community Goals Dr. John S. Bottum, Cooperative Extension Service The Ohio State University Transportation Research Center Plans and Developments Adjourn-10:10 P.M. Leadership Development for Meeting Community Needs Dr. Robert McCormick, Assistant to the Vice President for Educational The Ohio State University Getting the Most Out of Regional Planning Mr. William M. Shaw, Extension Specialist Adjourn-10:10 P.M. Implementing the Regional Plan Mr. Donald L. Crawford, Dayton City Planning Commission The Economics of Community Development Dr. Wallace Barr, Extension Economist The Ohio State University Road Blocks to Community Development Dr. John S. Bottum, Cooperative Extension Service Alternative Opportunities for Meeting Community Needs Where We Go From Here-Follow-Up-Summary FORT SMITH, ARK., Director, Division of Community Resource Development, Federal Ertension Serr ice, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C. DEAR MR. PETTY JOHN: The following comments are to provide you with cer tain information which Kenneth S. Bates, Assistant Director, requested that I make available to you. The Western Arkansas Economic Development was designated in February 6, 1967 and funded in March of 1967. The counties involved were Crawford Sebastian, Franklin, Logan, Scott, and Polk. It was necessary that each county update its Overall Economic Development Plan and submit an annual progress report so that an Area OEDP could be developed for counties that were in compliance with EDA. County Agents i the six county area were requested by the State EDA Field Coordinator to as sume the leadership in organizing county leadership to meet with the county requirements prior to development of an Area OEDP. County Development Cour cils previously organized for Overall Economic Development were mutuall agreed upon as the organized group to update the OEDP's. Once this was com ted, public hearings in each county were held by the Director of the Economic velopment District, to provide further evidence of immediate and long range eds for economic development. Again the county agents working in connecn with the Resource Development Agent assumed the responsibilities of selectgcounty-wide leadership for the public meetings and to provide current data agriculture development. When this phase was completed work was begun on a preliminary Area EDP. A request was again made from the director of the district to the Area source Development Agent for an identification of specific problems and oppornities for agriculture business oriented industries. Each county through the unty Agent presented economic data to support leadership thinking that there ere further opportunities in certain areas for further agriculture business velopment. The Resource Development Agent then prepared this on an area basis and bmitted this to the director for use in developing an area OEDP. Four spealists on a state basis, The Extension Poultryman, Extension Vegetable Mareting Specialist, Extension Livestock Marketing Specialist and Extension Fort Products Marketing Specialist, also contributed to the area OEDP by makg available to the Area Resource Development Agent, economic data on the x county area to use in projections for the OEDP. Cooperation with the Director of the Western Arkansas Development Disict has been excellent in every way. Office conferences are set up periodically › discuss activities where there is mutual concern. Some examples are workg with county and city leadership on industrial development, commercial receation, educational facilities, OEO and municipal water systems for industrial evelopment. Our (Extension's chief contribution is in working with local leadrship to the point where they can use specialized services in planning, financing, nd action. I do not visualize any duplication of services to this point since our role has een to work with leadership to the point where they recognize opportunities o accomplish economic goals. Normally at this point the are in need of specialzed help to accomplish specific phases of their economic goals. I think our experiences with the Economic Development District to date have een one in which we both recognize that much can be accomplished by presenting o leadership a cooperative effort toward total economic development. I think ve have demonstrated that we can motivate leadership to the point where there s a proper attitude toward economic growth and can organize leadership into effective groups for the action phase. I think that this is the point where EDA can use such leadership for specific action in any phase of economic development. Again let me emphasize that our relationship has been excellent and no major problems have been encountered. I would like to relate one experience as evidence of the above statements although there are many similar experiences in each of the six counties involved. With the enactment of the Economic Development Act of 1965, Franklin County was designated as a re-development area eligible for 80% grants with EDA for assistance in Economic Development. As soon as interpretations of the act were printed the Franklin County Extension Agent met with the Ozark Chamber of Commerce Industrial Committee and explained the features of the act and gave examples of how the area could make use of these funds in economic development. Shortly thereafter a large industry wanted to locate in the area but could locate only if certain facilities were provided including additional industrial water, an additional sewer, an industrial street, an airport, rail barge facilities across the Arkansas River, an industrial site and evidence of an adequate labor supply. From the previous discussion of the Economic Development Act of 1965, leadership recognized that it was possible to enter negotiations with the industry to try to workout plans for locating in the area. The County Development Council, the County Extension Agent, Job Development Coordinator with the community action program, Chamber of Commerce, and State Employment Security Division of the Department of Labor, coordinated efforts to conduct a detailed labor survey through the smaller communities pro |