OFFICE OF EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS

Planning Group Information

Elected and appointed government officials, business leaders, volunteers of non-profit organizations, citizens, and other stakeholders who choose to participate will become part of our overall Atlantic County Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Planning Committee.

To keep meeting sizes to workable numbers, the Planning Committee will be broken up into a Core Planning Group (CPG) and a series of Jurisdictional Assessment Teams (JATs).

The organization of the hazard mitigation plan participants involves three main components in an inverse triangle, as shown in the figure below.

URS, as the consultant, is at the bottom, reporting on up to the CPG and through the Atlantic County OEP.

The CPG includes head members of the participating jurisdictional assessment teams. The CPG will include representatives of Atlantic County and any of the county’s jurisdictions who elect to participate in the process. The CPG will manage the overall plan formulation activities and contribute to the decision making process. Representatives on the CPG will coordinate the plan efforts by organizing outreach by means of a team concept through individual Jurisdictional Assessment Teams (JATs) within each participating jurisdiction.

At the top is the larger Planning Committee that includes the CPG plus public participants and other stakeholders such as businesses, civic associations, universities, etc.

The JATs will include representatives from the individual participating jurisdictions. The JATs will be responsible for local community involvement in the multi-jurisdictional mitigation plan.

Regardless of team, all participating jurisdictions must:

• Coordinate and facilitate local efforts.
• Attend meetings.
• Provide information and feedback.
• Involve the public and community stakeholders in the planning process.
• Assess mitigation alternatives.
• Select a course of action to be followed for their communities.
• Adopt the plan.
• Implement the plan and monitor its progress.