Our foremost challenges are our lack of jobs and lack of affordable, decent housing. Consider an analogy. A hungry person who owns nothing but a hen may choose to either eat the hen or keep the hen and eat the eggs. Similarly, real development uses the community's assets to meet its needs, but it does not drain the assets. Real development will make the community better in a way that lasts.
Bad development brings rapid growth that drains the community and leaves it worse off than before.
To meet these challenges, Northampton County is currently pursuing a development strategy designed to employ its considerable assets to better the community without depleting those assets. Considerable progress has been achieved in our first steps to implement this strategy. We must persevere. As our success gains momentum and opportunities begin to multiply, we must take care to stay on course. Further progress on our chosen path requires us to specify community standards for land use.