Hanley helps Charlotte and Chittenden County plan

Dana Hanley has spent her career making sure that land-use decisions are made wisely. She has done it for municipalities, regional entities and non-profit organizations.

For the last three years, Hanley has served as Charlotte’s representative on the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. She described her position there as looking out for Charlotte on a wide variety of issues.

“I was drawn to it because I love the regional level,” she said. “It’s not as political as the state or municipal level, and it concentrates a lot on policy.”

At the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission, Hanely serves on the Long-Range Planning Committee which is currently updating the county’s Environment, Community, Opportunity and Sustainability plan.

“That has proven to be quite the task,” Hanley said.

The plan includes a number of variables including the agricultural and energy economies. She finds the emphasis on policy to be more appealing than working in the regulatory field. For Hanley, one of the most interesting parts of being on the commission is its work in transportation.

“I’m always looking for road projects that affect Charlotte,” she said, citing as an example, $65,000 which the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission has for municipal emergency management projects. Hanley has approached Charlotte’s town manager and emergency management coordinator to see if there are any projects which might benefit from those funds.

Hanley moved to Vermont when she attended Bennington College. Although she left for graduate school at Georgetown, she returned in 1982 and moved to Charlotte five years later.

She worked for Act 250 for 10 years in the 1990s, and while she enjoyed the work, she admitted that working in the regulatory field involved some degree of stress.

Hanley spent three years as the associate director of the Vermont Forum on Sprawl which later merged with the Vermont Natural Resources Council. The organization developed policies and plans that encouraged building in designated growth areas in the form of compact development surrounded by open countryside. From there, she moved to a position as director of planning and zoning in Shelburne.

For 14 years, Hanley was the planning director in Essex and during that time she wrote and implemented their Town Plan. In 2009, she was named Outstanding Professional Planner by the Vermont Planners Association and the 2009 Professional Planner of the Year by the Northern New England Chapter of the American Planning Association.

Part of the Essex job involved applications for development which were reviewed by the planning commission.

“That was a really interesting job,” she said. “Essex saw a lot of growth.”

From there, she moved to the Addison County Economic Development Corporation, which has a mission of helping small and medium-sized businesses grow and thrive.

“We applied for state and federal grants for development in places the county had designated for growth,” she said. “It was wonderful to see the other side of the coin.”

Hanley noted that the Scott administration is trying to make development easier by eliminating Act 250 restrictions in areas where towns support growth through their municipal plans. She believes there will be pressure on towns to build in those growth centers but recognizes that there may still be opposition.

In the mid-1990s, Hanley was the executive director of the Charlotte Land Trust, and she rejoined the organization as a board member in 2021.

“This is the busiest we’ve ever been,” she said. “We try to focus on projects that protect wildlife corridors, open space and water resources and they’re coming at us fast and furious. It’s a lot of work for a bunch of volunteers.”

Hanley is semi-retired, but she offers her expertise to the town on projects that can benefit from her assistance, like the West Village Wastewater Committee.

“I try to serve on boards and get involved in activities that involve land use,” she said.

In the late 1980s she served on the Charlotte Conservation Commission, followed by five years on the Planning Commission. She believes her professional and volunteer work in land conservation and planning on the regional and municipal levels are all tied together.

“How land is used affects all of us, and we can’t have willy-nilly development all over the place,” Hanley said. “We need zoning regulations and town plans that direct where we focus our growth and where we have open space.”

Hanley believes open space is important for both wildlife corridors and recreation planning.

“It’s all part of a big puzzle, and we all have different roles within it,” she said.