Strafford County commissioners agreed to support a joint application to the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) planning program to update a statewide zoning “Atlas” and use it as a public outreach tool.

Alyssa Margolin, director of the Initiative for Housing Policy and Practice at Saint Anson College, told the commissioners the Atlas catalogs zoning across the state and is being updated for 2025: “we have an Atlas. It is, 269 jurisdictions in all 234 municipalities … the entire land mass of the state has been, researched, cataloged, and portrayed.”

The nut of the pitch was that the Atlas—an online compilation of municipal zoning—could be made more user friendly and used to frame public conversations about where to invest in infrastructure and where housing could be built. Jen Siz, director of the Strafford Regional Planning Commission, said the county’s regional planning update provides a vehicle for outreach: the Atlas would “serve 2 purposes for us. It’d be a mechanism to frame some conversations about housing … and in turn for the initiative, they would be getting some feedback on how they could make the tool more user friendly.”

Commissioners were asked to allow the county to act as the applicant and administrator for the CDBG planning grant; county staff said that state staff had recommended the county serve as applicant. The planning grant amount discussed at the meeting was $25,000. Commissioners stated they would work with county staff on the application and outreach plan. One commissioner voiced practical questions about how frequently zoning changes and how municipalities would respond; Margolin and Siz said the update team intends to validate data with local planning commissions and use the Atlas to facilitate regional coordination.

The commission approved moving forward with the application and coordinating with Strafford Regional Planning Commission and Saint Anson College on outreach. County staff will work with municipal officials and the initiative team on application steps and subsequent public engagement if the grant is awarded.

Details the commissioners asked staff to supply before final commitments included a description of the county’s administrative role, a draft timeline for updating the Atlas, and coordination steps with municipal planning commissions. The initiative and the regional commission will provide technical support and outreach design as part of the collaboration.

The discussion clarified that the Atlas is a research and outreach tool—not a change in local zoning law—and that any zoning changes would remain the responsibility of each municipality.