Schuylkill County is seeking proposals for a firm to conduct a comprehensive study of the county’s resources, including land, water, infrastructure and housing, and what its needs will be over the next 30 years.

The study is integral to a Responsible Infrastructure Development plan officials have drafted that they hope will be the basis for an ordinance regulating large-scale industrial projects.

The county has published a request for proposals; they will be opened on June 24. The county expects to decide who to have an initial draft within 90 days after that.

County Director of Finance Glenn A. Geissinger spoke about the study last week.

“Every county is getting to the point where, as we look at our available resources — land, water, people, housing, infrastructure — we need to be able to be realistic about looking at that as a whole, at the county as a whole,” he said.

The firm would look at “our road structure, our water, our housing, our infrastructure, our sewer, our available land, our brownfields, everything as one,” Geissinger said.

He described the study as “holistic.”

It’s a big project, but county officials see the study as an investment in the future.

“It could very well lay out a very reasonable and decent plan for the citizens of this county for the next 30 years,” he said.

Geissinger, a former Northampton County councilman and also a director of an airport authority, drew on those experiences.

Airports, he said, are required by federal law to have long-term planning in place.

“And when you do that, you realize that you know the resources. What are we going to need in human resources? What are we going to need in fire support? Do we want to expand the runway? When you think about an airport, it’s like a small city. It has police, it has fire, it has needs such as water,” he said.

The county is similar in that it needs to think ahead, far ahead, in its long term needs.

Geissinger referred to projects such as widening busy Route 61, which runs through the county, and the need for new housing to attract young families that will staff growing businesses and industries.

The study will assess the county’s assets and liabilities, he said. The county will revise the document as more information becomes available.

“This is an investment by the Board (of Commissioners) in the future of Schuylkill County,” Geissinger said. “I have to give credit to the three commissioners because they sat down and said, ‘We’re not always going to be in office. We’re not always going to be the ones sitting up here making these decisions. But we can leave a road map for the people that follow us’, where we’ve talked about jobs, about development, about the kind of businesses we can see at this point, about how land should be used.

“How do we protect our farms? How do we protect our water? How do we develop places where people can have parks and want to build communities?”

The study would provide a solid basis for the county to better communicate with those municipalities that have their own zoning and land use rules.

Further, he said, “it will also allow us to go to state and federal government entities and say, ‘we have a real plan for development and because of that, we are asking for certain grants.

“You know, when you have a good, solid development plan like that, you can approach government entities and get development dollars more easily.”