Elected leaders, and the communities they serve, ask a lot of their planning boards. Planning boards (and other land-use review bodies) are tasked with creating a future where their community thrives, where new development harmoniously blends with the character of existing neighborhoods, and one in which citizens understand the review process and feel heard in shaping their community’s future. Unfortunately realizing this vision is often hampered by burdensome processes that can frustrate all those involved. 

The pandemic prompted many review boards to transition from fully paper-based reviews to digital files – application forms were made available in PDF format, email became the primary means of communications between applicants and the board, and in many cases a shared online drive was implemented for project file storage. This transition was an improvement over the former paper-based workflow, but asset management, distribution and communication are still fully manual processes.

Those improvements came at a critical moment, but they only go so far. With increasing pressure on planning boards, some with application volume steadily increasing as New York begins to tackle the housing crisis, planning boards must continue to evolve. 

Like with other areas of government, much of the communication, expectation setting, process management, and public transparency happens through the tools being used. Planning boards, alongside Zoning Board of Appeals, Historical Review, and other land-use review boards have specific needs that most private sector tools simply are not built to solve. Purpose-built tools for planning boards have been few and far between, but that is quickly changing. Web-based tools are available today, tailored specifically to meet these challenges and help communities thrive. 

While their formal role in the land-use review process is indirect, supervisors and mayors can markedly improve and streamline the process for their planning boards, applicants, citizens, and staff by giving their boards the tools they need to succeed – tools that enable them to make the best possible decisions about the future of the communities they serve.

Purpose-built web-based interactive tools can greatly enhance a review board’s operations by: 1) improving the application process, 2) enabling efficient and effective review, and 3) maintaining a clear record, tracking all related application materials such that the decision that flowed from them is well supported – and will hold up to a challenge. 

Challenge 1: Improving the Application Process

Many communities rely on PDF application forms which have design limitations that limit their usefulness as tools for application intake. PDFs have static layouts and become exceedingly long when expanded to cover the full range of possible information required in all cases. Moving to an interactive application has many benefits.

The case for change: 

  • PDF application forms are hard to decipher without guidance, and not all fields are relevant to all applicants.
  • Applications are often submitted missing critical information.

The benefits of improving in these areas:

  1. Dynamically adjusting to fit each project

    Configured to show applicants only the necessary fields based on their prior answers about their project, interactive forms reduce confusion, saving time and cutting down on errors.
  2. Guide and educate applicants

    Interactive application forms can educate and coach applicants through submission without requiring real-time involvement of staff or consultants. Forms that directly embed the information that applications should reference as they complete their application are hugely helpful in achieving this goal.

    Conditionally configured to show tips and provide references, interactive application forms can reduce the need for phone calls or emails, reducing the staff time required by each applicant.
  3. Easily surface municipal code with the application

    Municipal code provides the backbone on which reviews are conducted and should be surfaced throughout the application process.

    Specific passages of code can be provided in-context within relevant application sections, informing applicants what is required, and reducing the frequency of insufficient answers and subsequent review delays.
  4. Answer applicant questions more readily 


When an applicant calls the office with questions about their draft application, staff should be able to  quickly and easily look at their draft application online to help answer any questions they might have.

  1. Eliminate incomplete application submissions

    Web-based applications can be configured to require responses to certain questions, preventing submission before all required answers have been provided. 

Challenge 2: Efficient & Effective Review

The real heavy lifting begins once an application is submitted for review. At this stage, the challenge for applicants and boards is clear communication around requests from the board and requirements for revisions. It is critical that applicants receive concise and timely feedback on the changes they are asked to make. 

For the board it is equally important to keep track of all changes requested of applicants. No decision should be issued until all requests have been addressed. Decisions made by the board today will impact the community for decades to come.

The case for change: 

  • Planning board meetings, their outcomes, and their progress (or lack thereof) month to month can overwhelm applicants, whether they are a large developer or a small local business, particularly if it is not extremely clear what changes are required to advance a project to a public hearing or approval resolution. 
  • Boards need to make certain all requirements in the code are addressed by the applicant; doing so with limited checklist tools and no in-context references is difficult.
  • Boards need to integrate comments from multiple consultants, other municipal departments, and the public. This means managing recommendations from many documents without overwhelming applicants.
  • Managing an influx of piecemeal revisions and updated file versions sent by applicants via email often results in headaches for boards and staff, wasting precious time and energy.
  • It needs to be easier to communicate and track requirements and requests as they surface, and the changes submitted to address them. 
  • Process improvements that reduce delays and shorten the turnaround time of revisions are a huge benefit to the private sector, which in turn can help communities attract investment.

Benefits of improving in these areas:

  1. Enable easy access to the municipal code by boards during review 

Surfacing the relevant municipal code alongside applications during review helps align boards around the rules and regulations they should consider in relation to the application. 

  1. Provide clearly defined requests, documented alongside pertinent sections 

Boards should record requests in real-time during planning board review meetings, within the context of pertinent application sections, and make it easy to reference which requests have been fulfilled and those which are yet unmet. With a running list of requests, Applicants should be able to easily identify the changes needed and follow through quickly on next steps, helping advance the review in a timely fashion. 

  1. Easily track request completion 

Applicants should be able to associate design revisions with specific requests made by the board, freeing planning board staff from triage and organization of project updates with staggered arrivals and unclear relation to requests, enabling staff to focus their time on higher-level tasks that technology cannot solve. 

Challenge 3: Maintaining a Secure and Transparent Project Record

Critically, any planning board tool or process must maintain an authoritative record, as well as facilitating a fully transparent public land use review process that engages an array of stakeholders and allows everyone easy access to the relevant information. Many boards now use a shared drive (e.g. Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive) to share project data amongst their members, staff and the public. This helps, but still has significant limitations.

The case for change:

  • With a variety of players at the table, each with their own documents to submit, testimony to provide, and review to complete, maintaining a single source of truth for application and review materials is both critical and difficult via a shared drive, email, or other file organization system. 
  • Shared drives leave the onus on staff to manually organize and clearly name applicant project files, which requires considerable time and effort that could otherwise be directed to the substance of the project. Applicants often submit revisions with unconventional file names, leaving staff to sort through all manner of files before framing “what’s what” for the board to review.
  • Reviewing projects via a shared folder is cumbersome, requiring users to understand the folder and file naming system as well as determine which files contain the most recent revisions. 
  • Making shared drive data accessible to the public requires additional steps from planning board staff to manually add files to the public website. With a web-based tool applicants add their own files and revisions, which can be configured to be publicly available by default.  

The benefits of improving in these areas:

  1. Automatic organization of project information by topic, easily viewed by those involved 

By enabling applicants to upload their documents directly into each relevant section of the application, there is no need to re-organize data for board consumption or public transparency. It is all done automatically.

  1. Securely documenting the process with automatic revision tracking  

Web-based tools designed to automatically track versions also maintain a record of the process, helping municipalities meet their requirements and defend their decisions. This helps boards, consultants, staff, and the general public confidently and easily access the latest documents, rather than having to hunt through emails or file trees. 

  1. Data can be easily searched and extracted later on, used to populate fields further along in the process, rather than copied and pasted manually each time 

This is in contrast to fillable PDFs stored in online file directories. This functionality helps applicants and staff, and can also facilitate cross-department collaboration, such as helping building departments and code enforcement officers ensure that approved designs and requirements are followed during implementation of approved plans. 

While planning boards face many challenges, if we provide them with better tools for an efficient and effective review process, they have an incredible opportunity to improve the futures of the communities they serve. This is not only imperative for applicants otherwise bogged down in review, but also for board members overwhelmed with emailed changes, and staff with overflowing daily task lists. It is vital for the public relying on each of these groups to work together to make the best decisions possible for their community.