SCRANTON — Lackawanna County seeks grant funding on behalf of the nine communities comprising the Scranton-Abingtons Planning Association to update a 2009 SAPA comprehensive plan and the member municipalities’ respective zoning ordinances that took effect in late 2023.
The project that county Planning Director Mary Liz Donato calls “SAPA 2.0” would eventually update the plan and ordinances to address artificial intelligence data centers and other new land uses, but would also take a few years to complete. A number of SAPA members, including Scranton, are working on implementing their own data center standards in the meantime.
In addition to Scranton, SAPA includes Clarks Green, Clarks Summit, Dalton, Dunmore, Newton Twp., South Abington Twp., Waverly Twp. and West Abington Twp. There are currently no data centers proposed within the SAPA boundaries.
Normally municipalities must allow for every type of land use somewhere within their borders. But SAPA and similar zoning collaboratives allow participants the flexibility to share land uses, meaning if one participant allows something considered undesirable elsewhere within the boundaries of the broader group, the other participants don’t have to.
Because Dunmore has the Keystone Sanitary Landfill, for example, none of the other SAPA communities have to allow landfills. Such collaboratives effectively allow participants to strategically plan for where different types of development make the most sense within a region.
Data centers, however, are an example of a relatively new, controversial and often undesirable land use the current SAPA comprehensive plan doesn’t address. Given the explosion of data center proposals in parts of the county and region, and because updating the SAPA plan and zoning ordinances will take some time, county planning officials have advised member municipalities to enact their own data center regulations pending the broader update.
County Commissioners Thom Welby, Bill Gaughan and Chris Chermak approved last week an application seeking $90,000 in state grant funding that would cover half of the estimated $180,000 cost of the update project. If awarded, that funding would be delivered through the state Department of Community and Economic Development’s Municipal Assistance Program.
The county would provide another $35,000 toward the project, with the SAPA members covering the remaining cost. The total funding would be used to secure a consultant that would work with the members to update the plan and ordinances.
“All of the current participating municipalities are agreeing to move forward with updating the comprehensive plan and then going back and looking into their zoning ordinances to see what needs to be addressed based on the changes in the plan,” Donato told the commissioners. “I mean we all know a lot has changed since 2009, and currently we’re having the data center issue and this will all be addressed in this new plan coming up.”
Assuming the county secures the grant, the project would likely begin early next year after a consultant is secured through a competitive process. Updating the plan and ordinances should take about two years, Donato said.
Asked by Welby if her department is able to offer recommendations about data centers to municipal members in the meantime, Donato said it is.
“We’re currently providing them with model ordinances from across the state and … whatever assistance they need, but unfortunately they need to act on those by themselves right now until we get this plan in place,” she said.
Pressed by Gaughan, Donato confirmed all nine SAPA members will have input into the overall plan and the specific elements addressing data center development.
“They have the final decision on what they allow within their borders,” she said.