The problematic planning and zoning policies of Plymouth and Whitemarsh townships

Plymouth Township , Whitemarsh Township | Local News , Opinion

August 16th, 2026 | By Kevin Tierney

Plymouth and Whitemarsh townships handle planning and zoning transparency issues in exact opposite ways.

Planning and zoning agendas in Plymouth Township are one page with little information. In Whitemarsh, its agendas are often more than a hundred pages.

In Plymouth Township, audio of planning and zoning meetings is posted to YouTube.com the following day. If you want to know what happens in the same meetings in Whitemarsh, you’d better attend, because they don’t post any recordings (minutes are posted a month later).

MoreThanTheCurve.com recently covered a planning agency meeting in Plymouth Township. The meeting involved a proposed zoning ordinance and listed it on the agenda simply as “Mixed Use Gateway District Ordinance,” with no explanation or supporting documents. If this had been Whitemarsh, it would have included the draft language of the proposed ordinance.

We watched the meeting in Plymouth on YouTube.com the following day and wanted to include the text of the draft ordinance in the article we had written. We asked Plymouth Township for the text of the proposed ordinance and were told it wouldn’t be available until the council voted to advertise it.

That is simply a choice. It is not based on any type of legal justification. For example, when we covered the proposed data center ordinance in Whitemarsh Township, we were able to include the draft ordinance with our initial article. It had been publicly posted with the agenda several days before the meeting.

Now, if the same meeting were held in Whitemarsh and we had an obligation that kept us from attending in person, we would have no idea what happened. No audio or video is offered. In this case, Plymouth has chosen to offer a recording. Nothing prevents Whitemarsh from doing the same.

How is the public supposed to ask informed questions during meetings if they can’t review details beforehand or research past meetings when an issue comes up later in the process?

Both townships need to rethink these policies and be more transparent.