The New Hampshire Planners Association serves the state’s planning community by providing information on current events, articles and opinions, current legislative initiatives, and news about planners around the state, as well as links to many resources. Please feel free to submit articles and opinions, tell us what's happening with you or your community, and tell us of a planning event that you have not found on this site. Let's work together!

One of the biggest challenges NHPA is has been working on is the discontinuance of LGC's Affiliate Group Services Program. This service had provided NHPA with meeting space, membership database management, designed our newsletter, assisted with event planning and created all the graphics we utilized for mailings and notifications - free of charge. As of December 1st they are no longer providing these services. 

To fill the gap left by LGC the Executive Committee has contracted with Cornerstone Management Association (add link to your website). Cornerstone comes highly recommended and specializes in providing professional services for non-profit organizations with a fee-for-service model. They have been in operation since 1975 in Concord, NH. The Executive Committee is very excited to work with such a proficient and personable group of professionals and we will keep you posted on the transition over the next couple of months. 

     Sarah Marchant, NHPA President

Goodbye and good luck to Vanessa Goold of Central New Hampshire Regional Planning Commission. She and her husband have moved to Maryland to be closer to their families and pursue new endeavors.

Jodie L. Levandowski joined the Milford Community Development Office as the Town Planner this past June. After graduating from Plymouth State University in 2004 with a degree in environmental planning and GIS, Ms. Levandowski worked for the Manchester Planning and Economic Development Office and the Londonderry Community Development Office, and spent the last two years working as a land use consultant with a private firm on Long Island. 

Mary Brundage is NRPC’s Regional Planner and provides support on a variety of land use projects including the NH Broadband Planning and Granite State Future. Prior to joining NRPC, she has worked at the Southern New Hampshire Planning Commission (SNHPC) as an Associate Planner. Her projects at SNHPC included scenic byways, open space plans, hazard mitigation, and source water protection. Mary has received her M.S. in Natural Resource Management at Antioch University New England and her B.S. in Geography from Montana State University.

One of NHPA's own, Steve Whitman of Jeffrey H. Taylor and Associates, has recently co-authored an article titled Taking the Permaculture Path to Community Resilience. The article appeared in Practicing Planner in June, and attempts to get planners to view our communities as the ecosystems they are and consider how the components of these places can be better integrated. Permaculture is a holistic, integrated system analysis and design tool that very few planners are using. Whitman and Ferguson suggest in the article that planners should know about permaculture and begin using it as a framework to guide their communities. The full article can be found at: http://www.planning.org/practicingplanner/default.htm