Washington Planning Board

Master Plan Update Committee

MINUTES – Working Meeting

July 28, 2015

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

Visitors: Chief Steve Marshall

1.0 Kluk called the meeting to order at 2:00 p.m. in the Town Hall.

2.0 Minutes - There were no changes suggested and we approved the minutes from the June 16, 2015 meeting.

3.0 We reviewed the draft Services and Facilities chapter. Jean will check the header, which wasn’t correctly printing on the draft pdf. We went through the document by page and section.

Page 1 – Carolyn felt that where it says “this report” should be changed to “the following” and in the overview section it should read “this chapter”, all agreed.

Page 2 – Bob pointed out that we should check the Town Meeting vote dates. We checked the annual reports and corrected the dates. He asked about reconfiguring the office space and we decided to lose the last sentence. In the F&R section Bob asked about hiring Rescue staff, Lolly concurred that this statement was true but we changed the statement to “start thinking about”. We found a few capitalization needs and will change the last sentence to clarify.

Page 3 – The dates were corrected on Town Meeting votes, as was the sentence about current plans. Meetinghouse should always be one word. In the Police section we added that animal control requires a trip to Swanzey. Chief Marshall came in and answered a few of our questions about procedures and requirements. The current facility is non-compliant for juvenile handling and not compliant with industry standards for current Police Stations. We corrected the section about the two different plans for the Safety building proposals. We made a few other corrections to the equipment (tablet to computer).

Page 4 – Public Works section we made corrections to the section on bridges and removed the road repair paragraph. We discussed sending this to Ed Thayer for fact checking.

Page 5 – In the education section we corrected the fact that the Old School house in East Washington is owned by the Historical Society. We will check that Steve Terani’s comment is covered in the Historic chapter.

Page 6 – No changes to Library or Camp Morgan sections.

Page 7 – Bob commented that we should lose the sentence that says the website is easy to navigate, he feels some people don’t agree with that statement. There were several capitalizations to correct. Under the Nixle section we added that you must sign up on the website for this service. Under the Cell Phone Service section we made clarifying edits. We will add that the events sign was installed since it is in the works.

Page 8 - In the Summary of Community Input section jean explained that she split the services and facilities into separate sections. We will correct the percentage on the service cost table to read 15%.

Page 9 - We corrected the 40% at top of Facilities page and Jean will fix the grey type and make it black. No other changes to this section.

Page 10 – No changes.

Page 11 – We discussed Jim Crandall’s suggestion to consolidate the Goals for Municipal and Safety. Jean showed us the memo he had written and we discussed the issue. We were all in agreement that we would stick with the format the committee had decided on at our last meeting and will keep the Goals and Recommendations separate for each.

We will move “in-town paramedical” to Goal B, where it is more appropriate.

On Goal B we will switch 3 and 4 and 5 and 6 to be more consistent with Goal A. We will make “private fundraising” the same as Goal A. Wording was changed for consistency.

Page 12 – Goal C #1 should read “continue”. On Goal D #1 the word “center” will be changed to Transfer Station, #2 change council to commission and lose the “r” after waste. On Goal E #2 insert the word consider and change Board of Education to School Board.

Page 13 – Goal F – capitalize Library throughout. On Goal G, we made some wording changes concerning the Town website, fixed the spelling of Nixle and changed #3 to encourage the use of the new Events sign instead of install, as it will be installed soon.

We removed the Implementation Techniques paragraph as it is not needed here.

We didn’t have enough time to review the draft Energy Chapter so Jean asked us all to read it over and email any suggestions for changes to Nan. We will present it to the Planning Board as is, for now.

4.0 The committee discussed a date for the Public Hearing for the last 5 chapters, Nan said that the PB has 2 business permits to hold hearings for at their September meeting so we thought that the next Tuesday, September 8^th might be a good date. We will discuss this with the Planning Board at their August meeting when we review the F&S and Energy chapters. Jean will make all the changes agreed upon today and will send new versions out to the MPUC members, Nan will send the finished drafts out to Planning Board members so they can read them prior to next Tuesday’s meeting.

5.0 No new meeting date was set for now.

6.0 Meeting was adjourned at 4:15pm.

Respectfully submitted,

Nan Schwartz

Planning Board Secretary