On Thursday night, the County Board refused to reconsider its approval of the Vision 2020 land-use and transportation plan. Vision 2020 offers a framework for Dane County's growth over the next 20 years. It calls for promoting balanced communities, compact urban development visually distinct communities and affordable housing. The plan also promotes concentrating employment and activity centers along public transit corridors as well as protecting the environment and farmland. The Vision 2020 debate has reflected the same political divisions that have existed for three decades.
City supervisors support the plan while town officials oppose it.
Although Falk has endorsed some of the Vision 2020 goals, she has maintained distance from the controversial plan, perhaps to avoid tainting her efforts with those traditional political divisions. Discussion topics at last week's workshop provide a glimpse of items that may be part of Falk's implementation plan next spring. The town of Dunn is pioneering a purchase of development rights program in which the town pays property owners not to develop their land. In a transfer program, developers would buy development credits from property owners, then transfer those credits to another area where development is encouraged. Municipal growth boundaries.