Lewes planner gets to work

Tom West checked all the boxes for city officials in their search for the city’s first full-time planner. 

The father of two spent the last 30 years as a planner for the Chester County Planning Commission in Pennsylvania, developing comprehensive plans, working closely with the county’s 73 municipalities and engaging the public in the process. 

Mayor Ted Becker said West will assist the city’s boards and commissions, particularly the planning commission, as they review requests and proposed regulations. He will also play a key role in working with county officials.

“One of the most important things will be for him to help improve communications between the city, the county and the state office of planning, as we are constantly influenced by what goes on around us,” Becker said. 

Working collaboratively with other jurisdictions and different levels of government was part of West’s job in Chester County. In Pennsylvania, all municipalities can do zoning and subdivision ordinances, whereas in Delaware, only incorporated towns and cities have that authority; all other areas fall into the county’s jurisdiction. 

“Very much similar to the boards and commissions down here, they are not professionals,” West said. “They’re volunteers and they rely on the professionals to come in who’ve had training and walk them through the process of doing a comp plan or a zoning update or studies.”

In Chester County, West was part of a team that developed the county’s comp plan, called Landscapes. It won state and national awards for public engagement. West and his Chester County colleagues were also successful in establishing the Vision Partnership Program, an initiative that rewarded local municipalities with grants for adopting policies or engaging in projects that were in line with the county’s comp plan. All 73 municipalities participated in the program, he said. 

“I think a lot of the successes of comp plans is making them collaborative, getting a lot of opportunities for people to weigh in and see what’s going on,” he said.

Establishing relationships with county and state officials started on Day 1 for West, as he accompanied Becker to the Feb. 1 meeting of the Sussex County Association of Towns, where he was able to network with municipal, county and state officials.  

To prep for his new position, West familiarized himself with the city’s pending 2016 comp plan as well as the city’s recently completed traffic study, the byways plan and the climate adaptation plan. 

“When I came down, I read [the comp plan] cover to cover,” he said. “I didn’t read every word, but as a planner I kind of knew where they were headed.”

West started his college degree with the dream of becoming an architect. After attending a community college in California, he transferred to Drexel in Philadelphia. It was during that time, he had a change of heart and decided planning was his path.

“I told my grandmother, [planners] are like architects except they don’t design buildings, they design neighborhoods,” he said. 

He earned a bachelor’s in planning from West Chester University in Pennsylvania and followed it with a master’s in public administration with an emphasis in planning, also from West Chester.

His first professional job was with the Chester County Planning Commission. In the early years, he said, he worked closely with the county’s municipalities, basically serving as a consultant. He then moved into plan review and eventually managed the department. Then he became the county’s first GIS planner and helped form the county’s technical services division.

“In some ways I’ve come full circle,” he said. “I’m back to where I started, but I really love boots-on-the-ground planning.”

West was born and raised in Chester County and often visited the Delaware beaches. His father moved to the Lewes area in his retirement years.

West has been married to his wife for more than 25 years. She, too, works in the planning field, doing watershed modeling for the Environmental Protection Agency in Philadelphia. Their eldest son graduated from Washington College in Chestertown, Md., and works for The Vanguard Group, while their youngest son is a sophomore at West Chester University, studying geography.