ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes community facility planning for local governments in the general context of a local comprehensive plan. Community facilities have for many decades been a component, element, or section of comprehensive or urban general plan. The community facilities element provides an inventory of existing facilities, an assessment of conditions and future needs, establishes level-of-service standards, and proposes capital projects designed to meet existing and future needs. To measure the impact of development, or of future population and employment increases more generally, on a given community facility, there must be some measure of the service provided. Schools have a profound impact on community design. School-sitting decisions, for example, influence the extent to which youth both near and far are able to walk and bicycle to school as part of their daily routines. The choice in determining impacts of residential development on schools is to ask the local school board if such information already exists and can be made available.
