Subdividing Land in Clearfield County: The County SALDO and the 31/19 Split

31 municipalities fall under the county's own 1995 ordinance by default

Clearfield County's own published zoning/SALDO/building-code report is direct about the split: 19 of the county's 50 municipalities have adopted their own individual Subdivision and Land Development Ordinance, while the remaining 31 have not, and fall under the Clearfield County Subdivision and Land Development Ordinance -- originally adopted in 1995 and administered directly by the county Planning Department and its nine-member Planning Commission -- as their default subdivision-review authority. That's a large majority of the county's municipalities relying on the county's own ordinance rather than a locally written one, reflecting Clearfield County's pattern of many small, sparsely staffed boroughs and townships across a large, largely rural land area.

This is a subdivision-review question, not a zoning one, and the two shouldn't be conflated: a SALDO governs how land is legally divided and how new development is physically laid out -- lot configuration, road and stormwater standards, required plan submissions -- while zoning governs what uses and dimensional standards (setbacks, minimum lot size, height) apply within a given district. A municipality can have adopted its own SALDO while having no zoning ordinance at all, or vice versa; confirm both separately for any specific Clearfield County parcel rather than assuming one implies the other.

The actual process and fees under the county SALDO

For the 31 municipalities relying on the county ordinance, the Clearfield County Planning Department publishes both a citizen's guide to the subdivision process and a specific application fee schedule. A minor subdivision -- generally a straightforward division into a small number of lots -- carries a final plan fee of $25 plus $5 per lot starting with the second lot. A major subdivision or land development -- larger or more complex projects -- carries a preliminary plan fee of $100 plus $10 per lot. Those are meaningfully lower flat fees than many suburban Pennsylvania counties charge, consistent with the county's rural character, but they are still a real, required step: an unrecorded or improperly processed subdivision can create title and financing problems for a buyer years later, regardless of how informal the original division felt at the time.

The county ordinance does not set a single countywide minimum lot size on its own; lot-size and dimensional requirements still run through whichever zoning ordinance (municipal or, where none exists, no zoning restriction at all) applies to the specific parcel. A buyer planning to subdivide land in one of the 31 county-SALDO municipalities should expect to submit plans directly to the Clearfield County Planning Department rather than a township office, and should separately confirm that municipality's zoning status -- since, consistent with Pennsylvania's statewide optional-zoning pattern, some of these same rural townships may have no zoning ordinance limiting lot size or use at all.

How to tell which rule applies to a specific parcel

1. Identify the specific municipality (borough or township) where the parcel sits -- not just the county -- since the SALDO split runs municipality by municipality.
2. Contact the Clearfield County Planning Department directly and ask whether that municipality is one of the 19 with its own adopted SALDO or one of the 31 relying on the county's 1995 ordinance; the county's own published list is the authoritative source, and this page's use of "19 and 31" reflects the county's report as of this research pass rather than a live, re-verified count.
3. If the county SALDO applies, request the current citizen's guide and fee schedule directly from the Planning Department -- both are county-published documents, not something to estimate from a general Pennsylvania subdivision guide.
4. Separately confirm the municipality's zoning status (or absence of one), since a completed, approved subdivision plan under the SALDO does not by itself establish what uses or lot sizes zoning would otherwise allow on the resulting parcels.