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The Southern Maryland RC&D Board of Directors is hard at work developing its Area Plan for the next five years.  Area Planning is a community and partner driven strategic planning process that helps the RC&D Board of Directors identify needs and opportunities in the communities they serve throughout Southern Maryland.  The RC&D currently serves the four-county area of Anne Arundel, Calvert, Charles and St. Mary's Counties, referred to by the RC&D as the Southern Maryland Development Area.  This community driven Area Planning process is essential to ensure that the RC&D is responsive to the diverse and dynamic quality of life issues that our communities in the Development Area face every day.

The Area Planning process started a few months ago when the RC&D sent a survey to Southern Marylanders, asking them to identify and rank challenges as well as opportunities.  The respondents overwhelmingly listed community development and land conservation challenges as the most critical.  On June 28th, RC&D Coordinator Jeremy West led the RC&D Board of Directors and some partners and community members in an Area Planning workshop to assess the results of this survey and organize the responses into cohesive Goals and Objectives. 

RC&D is a national program of the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).  NRCS requires that all RC&D Area Plans have Goals, Objectives and Strategies that are SMART, or Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results-oriented and Time bound.  The June 28th workshop began with several group exercises designed to train workshop participants on the SMART criteria.  After the participants were fluent in the NRCS SMART criteria, they worked together to develop SMART Goals.  There were six Goals developed, four addressing Community Development and two addressing Land Conservation challenges. 

With SMART Goals in hand, Board Members Jim Bardsley and Tom Tudor led the workshop attendees in break-out sessions to develop SMART Objectives, resulting in 11 Objectives.  After the workshop, the RC&D Board and Coordinator Jeremy West used the workshop product and survey responses to develop 42 SMART Strategies.  The SMART Goals, Objectives and Strategies will serve as the foundation of the Area Plan.  The RC&D Board of Directors hope to have their comprehensive planning document completed and approved by NRCS in early September.  Once approved by NRCS, the Area Plan will be available for download on the RC&D's website.

For additional information about the Area Planning process, or Southern Maryland RC&D, please contact Jeremy West at (301) 932-4638.

Board Members and workshop participants diligently working on developing a community development Goal.

Board Member Tom Tudor leading the Community Development break-out session.