La Plata, MD – Peter Aluotto, planning director for Charles County, is getting ready to step down after 40 years of developing planning strategies for governments.

Aluotto, originally from New Jersey, spent the vast majority of his time as a planner in Florida. He has been Charles County’s planning director the past five years.

“I got into this quite by accident,” he recalled recently. “I was in college, this was back in the early to mid-70s, back in the days of Ralph Nader. It was during the Vietnam era. It was all about social justice through the law. Everybody wanted to be a lawyer, and so did I.

“Well, it came up to my senior year and I had to fill out my electives. There was a course in city planning, so I took it and the guy who taught it was a newly elected member of the local planning board,” Aluotto said. “I remember him telling us that there was going to be a big demand for planners in the future, that there were going to be a lot of jobs. That got me interested in it. I went to graduate school and became a planner. And I’m actually quite grateful, because as you know, the woods are full of lawyers right now.”

Aluotto said he came to Charles County in 2011, following a recession in the building industry, which left a glutted market in Florida.

“I was in management, and I had to let a lot of people go,” he said. “It was not a pleasant experience.”

In the five years he had been in Charles, he said, “we managed to get a few things done here and there.”

Charles County, while having its share of challenges in the years ahead, also has a lot going for it, he said.

“The biggest challenge by far, I would have to say, is the comprehensive plan,” Aluotto explained. “It has taken an inordinately long amount of time to accomplish. We were six months into it before I got here. In October it will be five years. I think,” he said, knocking on wood, “we’ll be finished by then.”

He added that an endeavor such as the county’s comprehensive plan, intended to guide growth in the future, the longer it takes, the more it evolves and changes as the effort drags on.

“It’s like trying to hit a moving target,” he explained. “We always strive for concensus, to allow all people to participate in the process. It’s very difficult, because regimes change, the population changes, governments change, but we’re rounding third and heading for home on that one,” he noted.

Other challenges include transportation and affordable housing, Aluotto pointed out.

“These are not going to be easy to achieve,” he admitted. “Those will be challenges for my successor and subsequent administrations.”

Transportation is one arena where the county’s dichotomy more or less dictates the problem while limiting the solution.

“Charles County has two major roads in and out, those are 301 and Route 210,” Aluotto said. “So, right off the bat, you’re constrained. Those arteries have been expanded about as much as they can be.”

The times they are most congested are in the morning and evening rush hours.

He admits that remedies are very difficult to come by, saying the county has tried to alleviate the congestion with buses, park and rides and proposals for mass transit, the latter being way off in the future, “but you have to lay the groundwork now.

“Money is tight and the time frame is challenging, because you have to have environmental impact statements, alignment and right of way studies—those take time, too,” said. “It’s going to take some time.”

He said Charles County is “a very nice place,” and that its natural resources and hiking, biking and water trails are tremendous assets to promote and accent.

“The thing people don’t understand sometimes, is that it’s not about us,” Aluotto stressed. “This is for our kids and grandkids, to leave a legacy for the ones that follow us. You and I will likely not see some of these things in our lifetime [such as mass transit], but I’d like to come back when I’m 80 and take a ride on that train. That would tickle me to death.”

Aluotto said he has lived in communities where the biggest single export was college students, where the kids go off to college and they don’t come back because there are no jobs back home.

“I’d like to see job creation here,” he admitted.

“Everything we’re doing is about future generations,” Aluotto stated. “In between, we’ve managed to solve a few problems.”

Contact Joseph Norris at joe.norris@thebaynet.com