November 8, 2006
Smart Growth: Speaker's Bios

Thomas Hylton is author of a coffee table book called Save Our Land, Save Our Towns and host of a public television documentary called Saving Pennsylvania, which has aired on more than 100 PBS stations nationwide under the title Save Our Land, Save Our Towns. Hylton has given hundreds of presentations in Pennsylvania and 35 other states on land use planning and community building. He addressed the nation’s governors at the winter 2001 conference of the National Governors’ Association. He has given talks to legislators sponsored by both the Democratic and Republican caucuses of the Pennsylvania House and Senate. For 22 years, he wrote for Pottstown’s daily newspaper, The Mercury. His editorials advocating the preservation of farmland and open space in southeastern Pennsylvania won a Pulitzer Prize in 1990. Hylton is chairman of the Pottstown Planning Commission and the Pottstown Shade Tree Commission.

Robert Kerns, AICP, is a certified planner with over 10 years of planning experience. He is currently a planning consultant with Wallace, Roberts & Todd, LLC, a national planning and design firm based in Center City Philadelphia. Comprehensive and regional planning have been major focuses of his work, emphasizing the latest growth management, community design and circulation strategies. To ensure implementation of a community's planning goals, Rob has drafted a wide variety of zoning and development regulations, and worked cooperatively with development teams to achieve optimum community and private market results. His town revitalization and urban design experience, particularly transit-oriented design (TOD) projects, have enhanced and diversified his planning practice. Rob is a trained mediator, certified instructor of the Pennsylvania Municipal Planning Education Institute, and has completed Pennsylvania's Growing Greener training. Rob is also an adjunct instructor of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania.

Jim Wendelgass is currently the Township Manager for West Vincent Township. He had previously served the Township in the capacity of Chairman and member of the Township’s Planning Commission and the Environmental Advisory Council. He also had previously served as the Executive Director of the West Vincent Land Trust. He is a graduate of Syracuse and Case Western Reserve Universities and practiced for many years as an environmental attorney before taking the position with the Township.