WASHINGTON PLANNING BOARD

Master Plan Update Subcommittee – Working meeting Minutes

 

March 25, 2014

 

Committee members present: Lolly Gilbert, Carolyn Bullock, Jean Kluk, Bob Williams, Steve Terani, and Nan Schwartz.

Visitor: Dan Reidy

 

1.0       The meeting was called to order by Jean Kluk at 2:00 PM, in the Town Hall.

 

2.0       Kluk opened the meeting and said our major goal for this afternoon is to discuss the workshop focus group discussion topics. She reviewed the five topics that were identified at our December 10th, 2013, meeting: zoning districts, historic preservation, town facilities, preservation of rural character, and economic development. She said that the workshop will be a listening opportunity where we can do some educating but no advocacy and it is all based on messages we got from the survey. She thought that zoning districts were warranted because a high number of people thought that businesses should be in certain areas. With historic preservation Gilbert felt we could discuss historic districts and village districts. We all felt that it was appropriate to discuss town facilities. Preservation of rural character was something everyone wanted to keep on the list, we felt that we could discuss land use here and try to define rural character for the town. Bullock commented that Economic development is more than just stores, she asked what kind of economic development we should discuss. Kluk mentioned that what we donŐt have here is general visioning. She read the vision statement from the existing Master Plan to the group. She asked Reidy whether he had seen a lot of vision statements from other Master Plans. He said he had seen a few and ours sounded strong. He asked about village centers in Washington and how many there were. Schwartz said there are two village centers; Washington and East Washington. Reidy will visit East Washington center when the roads are better. He asked about any restrictions on industry. Kluk mentioned the restrictions in the LUO. Kluk asked if we want to have a vision group at the workshop? Everyone thought that we wouldnŐt have a specific group for this as long as we cover all the subject matter in the other groups. Reidy asked if we want our vision statement to be something easy to repeat to the public or do we want something longer? Kluk felt we could cover the vision statement later.

Reidy asked if he had given us material from the Brookline workshop that he had lead, previously. He hadnŐt, so he shared with us the lists of topics and questions that were asked. They were for a community profile and covered either 11 or 6 topics that they covered. He felt we could take some ideas from this and we could craft from this list for our workshop. Williams asked about the community profile and he felt it assumed you were starting from scratch and hadnŐt already done a survey. We have already done our survey so we would need to tweak this a lot to do ours. He felt we should just craft ours from scratch. All agreed. Kluk got out our Master Plan chapter list to review. She stated that the Vision section and Land Use sections are the only two chapters that are required. Reidy asked about our demographic and whether the town is aging. Williams said there is not a lot of younger population. Bullock said it is a challenge for young families to make a home here. Kluk got out her census data and said that 20-30 year olds are 7% of the population, 30 to 60 year olds are 42% and over 60 is 28% of the town. Reidy said we should look at the trends and compare to statewide and similar towns.

We discussed our small group topics list; Land Use and Zoning, Economic Development, Community Facilities and Services, Historic Resources and Preservation and Preservation of Rural Character. We decided to include Sense of Community with Rural Character and add Recreation as a topic making a total of 6 groups. Terani felt that we spend lots of money on Camp Morgan and recreation should be discussed. Parks and Rec can be involved with writing the chapter for recreation.

Kluk asked Reidy how long the breakout sessions would be and we decided 45 minutes or longer. Bullock felt that with 45 minutes you would get lots of ideas thrown out. We decided that the previously mentioned topics would be our focus groups for the workshop.

 

3.0       Discuss student facilitator prospects: Jean/Lolly spoke with conversation with Noah Denslow who is a high school teacher at H-D high school and he validated ReidyŐs though that using students as facilitators will help keep things on track and aid in participation by adults. He had some specific students to recommend to us. We made a list of possible local students who are juniors or recent grads to contact. Reidy said we will need one for each group and also a recorder. We thought that committee members could act as recorders with the students acting as facilitators.

 

4.0       Determine potential dates for training and for the workshop. We all listed any lake association meeting dates, town committee and board meetings and town special events that we knew of. We decided that in order to get summer residentŐs participation we should pick a weekend date in late June. We looked at the school schedule to consider high school student facilitatorsŐ schedules (athletics, prom, exams) and avoided anything on that schedule. We decided on June 21st, Saturday. Schwartz coordinated with Michelle to get Camp Morgan Lodge reserved for that date.

 

5.0       Discuss and determine ŇmagnetsÓ for attendance: We discussed food for the workshop. It was suggested that we have coffee, water, fruit and pastries for the morning. Gilbert offered to cook if needed. Williams asked about a potluck, ask people to bring something to share. Schwartz suggested we could have Auxiliary do something as a fundraiser. We decided to discuss this more later.

Kluk suggested having the WES students do artwork and writing about their favorite thing about living in Washington, we could then display their work, which might bring parents out to participate.

We decided we would hold drawings for unclaimed prizes we still have and give out raffle tickets as people arrive.

Bullock feels communication is key to getting people to attend. We will need to reach out to people to ask for their help and get them to come to the workshop. Schwartz asked if sending a postcard would suffice for printed notice and what kind of other publicity we need. We will discuss this at our next meeting.

 

6.0       Discuss and determine preparation tasks for workshop: Kluk said we need to determine the materials needed for our 6 focus group topics. She feels we need to educate ourselves and do the homework needed to come up with our bullet points for each workshop topic. We decided to break up the topics and each take two to research. Crandall will do Zoning and Rural Character/ Sense of Community, Gilbert will do Zoning and Community Facilities and Services, Terani will do Recreation and Economic Development, Bullock will do Recreation and Economic Development, Schwartz will do Rural Character/Sense of Community and Community Facilities and Services, Williams will do Community Facilities and Services and Rural Character/Sense of Community, Kluk will cover Demographics and Trends, Bissonette will do Historic Resources and Preservation. We will all bring our research to the next meeting in April.

We discussed the facilitator training and Reidy said that he likes to do training a week to 10 days out from the workshop. We looked at dates for training and settled on tentative dates of June 10th, 12th or the 17th in the early evening 5-5:30PM, depending on the students schedules. Reidy said one meeting of 2 to 2.5 hours is needed. We will have pizza dinner available for the students and committee members. Kluk will contact the school to see if we could use it for the training and workshop. Reidy said it is helpful to have separate spaces for the breakout groups. Kluk will contact the principal and check on availability. We will hang on to CML until we know if we can use the school.

 

7.0       Review Memorandum of Understanding from UNH Cooperative Extension for

facilitating the workshop. We looked over the MOU that Reidy supplied us. Bullock asked if we were confident we can supply all the things Reidy was asking of us. We all felt we could. After discussion we all agreed to have Kluk and Schwartz bring the contract to the Planning Board for approval at the April 1st meeting and then to the Selectmen on the following Thursday for their signature if PB approval is gained. The Subcommittee is invited to come to the PB meeting on the 1st at 6:30PM.

 

8.0       Discuss and determine approaches for increasing visibility/support of MPUC efforts/plans. Schwartz and Kluk said they met briefly with 2 selectmen last Thursday and asked for their opinion about the timing of soliciting input from town boards and committees. We originally had planned to do it before the workshop after discussion we decided to push it until after the workshop, to September in Phase 2. Kluk will make the change to the schedule of tasks. We discussed how we could increase our visibility by regularly providing the Selectmen with updates that will appear in their minutes.

 

9.0       Determine Next Meeting Date and Goals: We decided that our next meeting would be April 15th at 2 PM in the Town Hall. We will bring our research and findings to help determine the bullet points for the workshop focus groups. We would also bring ideas for community awareness and outreach. Williams suggested an alternate date in case things donŐt go smoothly with the PB and Selectmen. If we donŐt gain approval of the contract we will meet on April 8th at 6:30PM.

 

Meeting adjourned at 3:40 PM.

 

Respectfully submitted,

Nan Schwartz

Planning Board Secretary