Molly Berns is a
Sangamon County native who is retiring this month as executive director of the
Springfield-Sangamon County Regional Planning Commission. She joined the SSCRPC
in 2008 as the senior planner for land use and was promoted to her current
position in 2018. Berns has a bachelor’s degree in communications and a
master’s degree with an emphasis on persuasive message strategies, both from
Illinois State University.
She and her husband,
Kevin, live in Springfield.
Where were you born and raised, and what was your first job?
I was born at Springfield Memorial Hospital and raised primarily on a farm southeast of Rochester near Sangchris Lake until we moved to Rochester when I was in high school.
My first paying job was processing deer permits for the Illinois Department of Conservation. I worked for them for five summers. I’d get out of school on a Friday, start with Conservation on a Monday, and have no breaks whatsoever until I quit my job on a Friday and started school on a Monday. Back in those days, I earned enough to basically pay for two semesters of college tuition.
How did your career path take you to your role as executive director of the Springfield-Sangamon County Regional Planning Commission?
I had previously worked with Norm Sims at the Department of Commerce and Community Affairs, now known as the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. When Norm became the executive director of the Planning Commission, he had a senior planner for land use position open, and they were looking for someone with critical thinking and public speaking skills. He called and said, “Hey, I’m putting the band back together,” an old inside joke with former DCCA employees. I got the job in February 2008, and I’ve been here ever since.
The commission was formed in 1957, the year I was born, and I am only its eighth executive director, so it tends to have leadership that stays for quite a few years.
Have you always been a person who values a good planning strategy?
Yes, I have, and planning goes well beyond urban planning. I think it’s important that people have a road map, whether it be for urban planning, transportation, a legislative agenda or how to run a newspaper or magazine. There needs to be some sort of a planning strategy associated with almost everything we do in life.
But we also need to make sure we are open to new ideas, because you never know when something new is going to hit you and make you think we ought to be pivoting a little bit and going in a different direction.
What was the most memorable planning project in which you were involved?
The two-year process to update the City of Springfield’s Comprehensive Plan. We started it in early 2016, and it was adopted by the Springfield City Council in 2018. Normand I went to all of the aldermanic meetings and heard from the citizens, and it was just a standard, textbook example of how you do a comprehensive planning process. We’ve also had some very interesting zoning cases through the years.
Is it true that citizens may not know good planning when they see it, but they can certainly spot bad planning?
Many people think that when you have a comprehensive or land use plan, within two years or so everything will be done. They don’t understand that everything has to fall in place – it takes a combination of funding, coordination and synergy for something to come to fruition. Not many people know that consolidating the Third Street rail line was first recommended in the 1925 City Comprehensive Plan, and 100 years later it’s just now happening.
I think that there ought to be people assigned in government to bring plans off the shelf every few months and say, “OK, how are we going to do X, Y and Z? What do we need to do to get to the next step?” My comprehensive plan is tattered and has notes all over it because I used it constantly during zoning analyses. So people do recognize bad planning when they see it, but they don’t realize that good planning is going on every day.
How has the rise in green energy production impacted the commission’s operations?
We work very closely with Illinois Department of Transportation and Springfield Mass Transit District on how federal government regulations are affecting them, where electric-vehicle stations might be located and whether what is planned for the city of Springfield in terms of green energy is, in fact, implemented. We also write the text for ordinances, and I think I’m on the third or fourth rewrite of the solar and wind ordinances for the county to make sure they are in compliance with state law.
Are there other new technologies or trends on the horizon that will affect community planning?
Battery energy storage systems, or BESS, are large battery fields that can store power that comes from a generating source and then onto the grid. It’s a temporary place off of the grid to serve as backup for some of the grid systems. There is definitely going to be a land use component, making sure things that are placed in certain areas are compatible with adjacent land uses. It will be important to monitor that issue in the future.
What advice would you give to young people who are entering your career field?
You really need to focus on your tangible skill set rather than your college major. In urban planning, for instance, we need statisticians, researchers, geographic information system experts, grant writers, and even meeting facilitators and public speakers. Those skills are much more important to an employer than a specific planning-related field.
If you’re not a critical thinker, you need to become one. Learn how to conduct solid research from multiple sources, evaluate data and communicate your findings to others. Those skills are so important in today’s workplace.
What might people be surprised to learn about you?
I love doing genealogy research and it means I spend a lot of my free time in cemeteries. As an offshoot of that, I make decorative floral arrangements for the tops of grave markers. I did it to honor the birthdays of my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, and it’s kind of grown from there.
This article appears in SBJ January 2025.