WASHINGTON PLANNING BOARD

Master Plan Update Subcommittee – Working meeting Minutes

 

May 7, 2014

 

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

Visitor: None

 

1.0       The meeting was called to order by Jean Kluk at 2:30 PM, in the Town Hall.

 

2.0       Kluk asked if there were any changes suggested for the minutes of April 30^th. Crandall had a request to expand the minutes to explain the random 2-step process for assignment to a focus group at the Workshop. Schwartz said she would add it to this set of minutes, everyone was fine with the minutes, otherwise.

The two step process for random assignment to a focus groups is this: first a registrant is assigned by Dan Reidy to one of six groups as they sign up for the Workshop (1-6), the focus group names will be pulled out of a hat at the Workshop and assigned a group number, in order. Everyone with the number 1 (one) will be asked to go into to the first focus group name pulled, etc.

 

3.0       Kluk recapped our progress since our last meeting:

Recruitment for focus group student facilitators – Kluk said she has 5 students lined up but we need a few more. She asked at the Planning Board meeting on Tuesday night and got a few more names to try. Terani said we will need a few extra kids for note takers and Kluk said we would fill in if needed.

Online Registration - Bob Williams has set up the online registration and we are asking for names only.

Selectmen’s meeting - Dan Reidy is attending the Selectmen’s meeting on May 8^th at 7:30PM to answer questions about the workshop and format.

           

4.0       Kluk said that the small mailer has gone to the printer and before it went she made a minor change to the wording “Workshop Topics”. The larger mailer for residents is all ready and going to the printer also. We will need to get together to prepare both pieces for mailing. The smaller one should go out by the 16^th, the larger goes out by the 21^st.

She showed us the Poster she had designed and asked if we should be concerned that it doesn’t say it is open to everyone. We decided to have Kluk add a bubble and put “open to all taxpayers” in the upper left corner.

 

5.0       We reviewed the talking points from Brookline’s Workshop and decided we weren’t happy with using them. We decided to pick two topics to review today. We decided to do Historic Resources first. Bissonnette had done the research and Kluk formatted the pages. Williams suggested not using all the data in the intro but rounding up the number who agreed with a survey question. He suggested being more graphic to cut down on space, maybe go two columns. Everyone agreed that they could cut off the list at the top 5. Bissonnette wants to put all the historic sites on a poster. Bullock suggested keeping the questions general, so as to not lead the discussion. Everyone approved of their questions. We decided to make the “Did You Know?” page a handout for everyone attending.

Next we reviewed the Recreation document, Kluk wanted tweaks to the definition of recreation to include cultural. We thought that Q25 and Q26 were relevant to recreation and should be added to the reference questions. We added to their list of recreational opportunities for a handout. We went over what to take out and what should be added, Bullock will make the changes to the document.

Economic Development was next, we decided to remove “Standard of living” and add healthy community to the definition. We will include the top 5 percentages, made a few questions more generic. We added, “What business could the town support?”, How can the town promote our facilities, services and character to attract people to town? or What aspects of Washington can be promoted to attract homebuyers or business. We will have a definition of light industry available.

We will tackle as many topics as we can at our next meeting.

We briefly discussed plans for food for the workshop. We will serve coffee and muffins for the breakfast and we are talking to the Senior Lunch group and Auxiliary about help with the lunch. We discussed keeping the lunch simple so servers can also participate in the workshop, if they want to. We discuss this more later.

 

Note: Our next meeting will be May 13^th, Tuesday at 9:00 AM.

 

Meeting adjourned at 4:50 PM.

 

Respectfully submitted,

Nan Schwartz

Planning Board Secretary