SHERIDAN — “Land use concerns didn’t exist until your neighbor moved in,” said Wade Sanner, community development director for the city of Sheridan, and there’s some truth to that.

In fact, city and county planning departments are a relatively recent invention, dating back to the early 1900s, according to Sanner.

“Planning was initially used to address problems like breathing in coal dust,” Sanner said. “Obviously, you don’t want to place a coal plant next to a residence with small children. From the beginning, it was about protecting the health, safety and welfare of the community.”

As development spread throughout the country, so did planning departments. And although the times have changed, the careers of people like Sanner and Sheridan County Planner Mark Reid have remained more or less the same: Make sure a construction job is done right the first time to protect both the applicants and their neighbors.

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