Ethics at the Front Counter

Planners help to shape their community by helping applicants understand development regulations or by improving (or preventing!) incompatible or poorly designed development. Planners interact with customers – applicants, property owners, developers, planning commissioners, and the general public – at many stages in the process. Each step, from answering zoning questions to pre-application meetings to Planning Commission public hearings, presents the possibility of new ethical challenges.

This session explores possible ethical quandaries raised in development review to examine how planners can ethically respond to our customers. Incorporating ethics into the review process can assist planners in providing excellent customer service. We will explore guidance from the Code of Ethics related to communications, dealing with applicants, and public meetings to explore questions such as: does a planner have an ethical obligation to help an applicant develop an undesirable land use? Has a planner made an ethical misstep when speaking hypothetically in a pre-application meeting? What should a planner do when new information comes to light during a planning commission meeting?

This session will prepare planners to respond ethically to challenges in development review. It will also encourage planners to consider ethical obligations to the community at-large while they respond to applicants.