WASHINGTON PLANNING BOARD

Master Plan Update Subcommittee – Working meeting Minutes

June 10, 2014

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

Visitors: Dan Reidy

1.0 The meeting was called to order by Jean Kluk at 6:30 PM, in the Town Hall.

2.0 Kluk asked if there were any changes suggested for the minutes of June 4^th. There were no changes.

3.0 Kluk reviewed the status of our communications plans:

All the mailings have been done and cards are coming back for registration. The articles were sent to the Messenger and the Villager papers and the Messenger printed a good article in last week’s paper and the Villager will have something this week. Crandall will make an announcement at the senior lunch on Thursday. Bullock said she is manning the table at the Farmer’s Market on the 14^th. Schwartz updated the town website and put a link to register online. She sent out an announcement to the news list and will have a Nixle announcement sent out tomorrow.

4.0 Registration – Kluk said we have 32 registered and another approximately 20 to input on the list. Kluk asked about how check in will work, will there be a list and nametags already made up? Reidy said we should go ahead and make up the nametags ahead. Williams requested that Reidy assign the numbers to the tags so we are totally out of the group assigning. We will use Avery labels, Kluk will pick some up at Staples. Williams will print out the tags from the Google list. We will wait until just before setup day to get them done.

5.0 Student recruitment – Kluk said we lost one of our student facilitators, but we still have 5. We have a couple of adults that have agreed to help also. Williams asked if we are considering other kids who might be younger but mature. We feel we have reached out to all that we can at this point. Crandall will reach out one more adult. Kluk asked Reidy if he could give the students a certificate of thanks and community service hours. He suggested that we make something up; Bissonnette said she would do something and maybe get a coffee mug from the historical society for a thank you.

6.0 Review the Workshop Schedule – Reidy shared the latest workshop schedule with us, he and Kluk had updated it and fleshed it out. They added a goal, added Crandall’s opening words and welcome. Kluk will discuss the demographics of the community survey and several of the committee will do highlights of the survey. Reidy suggested 2 interesting points from each topic. Kluk will drafts some highlights and send them out to everyone to comment and OK them. Williams is concerned about what we share and the reactions to it, he thinks it might sideline things. Reidy isn’t concern about that; he feels he can keep that from happening. Bissonnette feels we are going to have skeptics to the process and offered an alternative idea of using a jeopardy game to get people engaged. Reidy said that his “mosaic and vision” session would do this and get people warmed up and talking. Williams thinks no more than 2 of our group should do the highlights, so it doesn’t seem like a parade of people. Reidy will do the “mosaic and vision” and then an overview of the agenda. He added 15 minutes to lunch and will hold it before the group reports. Then we have questions and comments, voting for priorities using 3 stickers per person. Schwartz asked if during the final discussion and comment time whether another priority could be suggested. Reidy said this could happen if the majority of people thought it was a good idea. Next we will give out door prizes, while he tabulates the voting and then announce the results. Kluk will talk about next steps in our process and Crandall with do the thank yous before adjourning. Reidy said we will have a report in 45 days, Schwartz asked if we could have a preliminary report by late July for a public community meeting being planned by the Selectmen. He thought he could do this. Williams asked about the small group schedule and Reidy said the times were suggestions at this point.

5.0 Focus Group Materials – Kluk explained that Reidy still had concerns about our edited version of the materials so she and Reidy went through everything again and she had a new version of the topic materials. Kluk said that there was not much in the survey on recreation so there was not much to work with for a full focus group. She and Reidy decided that it would be better to incorporate the recreation stuff into all the groups and eliminate the 6^th group, so she worked to do that. Crandall asked what the maximum number of people in a group would be for Reidy. He said 15 should be the max in each group. If we have more people we could run two simultaneous groups on one subject. Crandall commented that the committee members shouldn’t be signing up for the workshop, we agreed that we wouldn’t. Crandall will add about 20 people to the count for lunch. We agreed to let people pick up the handouts from a table as they are leaving. We discussed maps, Schwartz will get pins for the “where do you live” map. We discussed the number of easels we will need. Reidy will bring 7 and he can possibly get a few more. Anyone who has an easel should bring one. Kluk will get some foam core. We will hang the student artwork in the hallway. Schwartz will make copies of the “Did you know” handouts once we know the counts for attendance.

Kluk talked about how the small group questions were considered too specific and Reidy felt could derail the process. She talked about the role-play we did last meeting to see how it would work using the strengths, weaknesses and 10-year vision scenario. We felt it would work. Kluk and Reidy went through everything together and changed questions to statements for comment and discussion. Williams said that when we started this process we wanted to dive deeper from what we got out of the survey, now we have gone back and are using a generic model. He thinks we are losing the idea of going deeper and doesn’t like the changes. Bissonnette said she was stunned that last meeting we threw everything out, she was hoping that our statements would be used for prompts and have things backed up with data. Crandall said he had the same reaction and was upset that Reidy was throwing our work out. Kluk said that Reidy thought our detailed questions were too leading. He feels we need to come out of this with the top priorities and a direction for moving forward. First you get the top 3 priorities from each focus group, and then from that you get the top 3 priorities of the entire group, if you don’t have the voting we don’t get those priorities. Williams thinks we have completely changed everything to fit Reidy’s need to fit his mold. Reidy said he is trying to come up with something to frame the conversation. He was concerned that our questions were to radical and we would not get answers from the community that we are looking for.

Kluk said we are trying to elaborate on what’s in the survey and not get derailed. Bissonnette said she would trust the process. Reidy said that generally communities are for something to guide the decision makers to help make decisions for the future. Terani thinks the best way to prod people is to give them a statement they can react to. Kluk feels we can still use all the work we did for the Master Plan writing. Reidy feels the problem is that the rewrites went on in isolation and he didn’t get to guide us enough. Kluk said that we thought we were going down a path and it didn’t turn out the way we thought. Crandall said as far as he is concerned the new documents are good, and he wondered if we needed to go through all of them. Kluk felt we need consensus so we should read through them. Bullock wondered if there are more things to consider, is it too long? Reidy thinks one page is fine. Bissonnette asked if the focus groups would read both sides before starting discussion or just one side. She wants a standard set of steps for all the facilitators so they all are doing the same thing. It needs to be pre-structured to get continuity. Reidy said everyone gets the document and are asked to read it while sign ups are going on. The facilitator can read out the survey items to the group then begin discussion. He feels the “things to consider” statements are just things to think about to get discussion going. We are asking for strengths, weaknesses and a 10-year vision.

We went through the sheets and made a few edits and additions.

6.0 Crandall wanted to talk about the nitty-gritties. He wants to know who will help us with the setup. The setup is on Friday at 1:30PM; we will try to get a few people to help out. We are getting 12 round tables from Camp Morgan Lodge. The focus rooms will be setup in the classrooms. Kluk thought we can use the kid’s chairs but other though this was a bad idea. We will make a decision when we do the setup. Williams asked how the room is set up and Reidy said in a semicircle. Kluk had some census data to put on a poster that we went over and approved. The information came from census data publicly available online. We think it is a good idea to cite where it came from.

7.0 Our next meeting is next Tuesday, the 17^th at 6PM at the WE School for the facilitator training. Terani is picking up pizza, Bullock will bring a salad, Schwartz will bring cookies, Bissonnette will bring plates, napkins, etc.

Meeting adjourned at 8:40 PM.

Respectfully submitted,

Nan Schwartz

Planning Board Secretary