[Massplanners] MAPD Updates

[Kristina Johnson]

Planning Friends and Colleagues,

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.

I have a couple of quick MAPD updates:

MAPD Membership

  *   Attached is a 2023-2024 MAPD dues form. If you have paid dues in calendar year 2023, you are all set and do not have to pay dues.   If you have paid dues in calendar year 2023 and switched jobs, you don't have to pay dues. Membership follows the individual not the position.   Dues are $90.



  *   Interested joining MAPD?!? You do not have to be a Planning Director to be a member; the organization name is a bit out of date. All planning practitioners (and those support who planners-engineers, attorneys, architects, landscape architects, etc.) from Commonwealth agencies, Regional Planning Agencies, private sector firms, and municipal governments are welcome to join.   MAPD provides AICP CM eligible educational workshops (both zoom and in-person) and legislative advocacy.



  *   MAPD would like to hold a conference in 2024. You heard correct, an in-person conference, which we have not done since 2019. Membership dues help offset the cost of holding a conference (it's very expensive, even more so now than back in 2019), and members always receive a discount on the conference rate.  We also hope to have more workshops throughout the year; ideas for workshop topics are welcomed! If we keep the workshops on Zoom, we can save money have an in-person conference!

MAPD Legislative Update
Earlier this month Steve Sadwick and I joined a panel with fellow planning colleague and State Representative Kristin Kassner to provide testimony on several land use bills before the Joint Committee of Municipalities, including  an Act Relative to Voting Thresholds  H.3552.  <https://malegislature.gov/Bills/193/H3552> Another bill of interest to the planning community is An Act Facilitating Site Plan Review H. 3551, which  was filed by Representative Kassner and has been referred to the Joint Committee on Housing. I managed to sneak in some remarks about the Site Plan Review Bill during our testimony before the Joint Committee on Municipalities. Here's the link to the Microsoft Team recording:  https://malegislature.gov/Events/Hearings/Detail/4735 Our panel is first.

Thank you for everyone's patience during this period of MAPD semi-dormancy. If you are interested in serving on the MAPD Board, please feel free to contact me at maplanningdirectors at gmail.com<mailto:maplanningdirectors at gmail.com>


Best,
Kristina
Kristina Johnson, AICP
Director of Planning and Community Development
Town of Hudson, Massachusetts
978-562-2989
kjohnson at townofhudson.org<mailto:kjohnson at townofhudson.org>


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://masscptc.org/pipermail/massplanners_masscptc.org/attachments/20231124/213eaf68/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: MAPD 2023 dues form.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 76517 bytes
Desc: MAPD 2023 dues form.pdf
URL: <http://masscptc.org/pipermail/massplanners_masscptc.org/attachments/20231124/213eaf68/attachment.pdf>