Greenspace Planning Tools Comprehensive planning is an integral part of developing a community greenspace program, as such when developing its local program, a county should evaluate the needs of its community to determine how best to acquire and preserve its greenspace. A county must describe in the program submittal, its 20% goal and vision of what it wants the county to look like in terms of greenspace over the next 30-50 years. A county and its grantee municipalities must describe the following elements in its program submittal: the types of land and acreage that the county intends to permanently protect; methods for acquiring and permanently protecting land strategies for using existing regulatory tools; prohibitive legal and structural barriers strategies for establishing and using new regulations, ordinances, and policies to remove prohibitive barriers; and additional funding sources The Application Template provides local governments with guidance on developing a community greenspace program. The guidance described in the application template, along with the information provided on this web site should be useful to local governments when developing their community greenspace programs. The table "Calculation of County Greenspace Goal" is a listing of eligible counties, which includes the net base acreage for the 20% goal and federal and state protected acres for each county. The table "State Heritage Preserves" is a listing of state lands that are permanently protected and can be counted as greenspace acreage. The table "Federal Protected Lands" is a listing of federal lands within the state. These lands qualify as permanently protected greenspace. Greenspace grant funds can be used to leverage federal and other state grants. Guidance on using greenspace grants as matching funds for Hazard Mitigation Grants is herein described. Eligible counties are required to identify in program applications other fund sources that local governments will seek to leverage their greenspace funds. A general listing of web sites that offer potential fund sources for land acquisition and/or improvements is herein provided The flexibility of the program allows for a local government to derive land use planning tools that will be unique to the needs of its community's growth and development. However, some local governments may not be equipped to develop such tools internally and, therefore, may need to rely on external sources to assist them with their comprehensive planning. As such, several organizations have developed model ordinances and other preservation tools that can be used to assist local governments in their community greenspace program planning. Web sites to these sources are herein provided as follows: http://outreach.ecology.uga.edu/tools.html http://outreach.ecology.uga.edu/community/greenspace.html http://www.dca.state.ga.us/planning/impactfees.html Currently, the Georgia Community Greenspace Program allows for permanent protection as fee-simple acquisition with funds that require land to be kept in perpetuity, as well as, conservation easements and permanent restrictive covenants. The Department of Natural Resources has developed a template for a permanent restrictive covenant, which local governments may use as a tool for permanent protection. Protecting lands through conservation easements is another tool that local governments are proposing to use to permanently protect land. Preserving land through conservation easements can leverage the cost of acquisition significantly. Information on conservation easements can be accessed from the University of Georgia, Institute of Ecology at: http://outreach.ecology.uga.edu/tools/cons_easements.html   Back to the top