WASHINGTON PLANNING BOARD

Master Plan Subcommittee – Working meeting

Minutes

August 20, 2013

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

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

2.0 Approval of Minutes: We looked at the minutes of the meeting held on July 29, 2013. After going over the change requested by Crandall at our last meeting and Terani requesting one more change, Crandall motioned to approve, Bissonnette seconded the motion, all voted in favor. We then looked at the minutes from our August 9, 2013 working meeting and Gilbert made a motion to approve without any changes, Bissonnette seconded the motion, all voted in favor.

3.0 Kluk passed out copies of RSA 674:2, which is relative to the Master Plan, so everyone could read it over, be familiar with the governing RSA and understand the basis for what we are doing. She suggested changing the order of the agenda to talk about the survey first as long as everyone had a chance to go over the first draft. Everyone said they had ample time to review it so we jumped into it. Crandall asked Kluk if she had the sheets from the August 9^th work session on hand for reference and she did.

4.0 We reviewed and discussed the first draft of the community survey. Williams commented that it feels long and asked if we need to be concerned with that, there are a lot of multipart questions. Crandall wondered what we can do to shorten it. Kluk pointed out that the Goshen survey was 8 pages, Tamworth’s was 7 pages and the previous Washington survey was 5 pages. Williams is concerned that people will chuck them if they are too long. Bullock suggested we go through the survey line-by-line and see what we can cut. She commented that we will need a cover letter to accompany the survey. Everyone agreed. Bissonnette had a cover letter example that she had recently received. Terani commented that he was surprised it wasn’t longer. Both Bullock and Crandall complimented the setup and layout of the survey.

We went through the draft survey line-by-line and Kluk and Schwartz made full notes on changes, typos, deletions and additions. The committee then went over the list of suggestions from the departments and decided most of them were covered. Some suggestions we felt were better handled in the future community workshops or through a more informal survey.

5.0 We then moved to discuss using the electronic “Survey Monkey” survey for an alternate way to answer the community survey. Williams talked about the short practice survey he created to help us experiment and see if it was going to work for our needs. He answered the questions we sent after trying the survey. He said that the survey questions are numbered sequentially but there is an opportunity for headers/grouping on a page. We decided that however it will work on Survey Monkey, we will match the numbering for the paper survey to keep them the same. He discussed the random unique key we want to use to insure a single use for the survey. We will need a paid subscription to Survey Monkey to see what it can do. We want to keep the code simple but random so it can’t be hacked. Bissonnette asked if a polite prompting to go back and complete every answer is that a good thing or should we require all questions to be answered to go on or complete the survey. Williams felt people might bail out of the survey if they are required to answer all questions. We felt that the paper survey takers wouldn’t have to do this so the electronic survey takers shouldn’t have to either. He said he thinks you can save a version in the middle of taking the survey and go back to it later. He then showed us how the results are reported at the back end of the survey. He said that you will get the results as an Excel document and also they are reported in bar charts, percentages and numerically online. We were all impressed and Bullock made a motion to pursue using Survey Monkey, Bissonnette seconded the motion and all voted in favor.

Kluk asked Williams how he would get all the questions into the Survey Monkey form. He said it will be grunt work but thought it could be done in a couple of hours. He said he doesn’t mind doing it. Schwartz asked if he could use a word document to cut and paste and he thought he might be able to. Kluk will provide the document when we are finished with it.

We looked at the different levels of service for Survey Monkey. Williams had done the practice survey using the basic “free” level but to do anything more we need to go to a paid subscription. The “Select” service is $24 dollars a month and will give us the services we require. You can buy as many months as you need at this level and seemed best for our needs. Crandall made a motion to commit to pay for 4 months of “Select” level service from Survey Monkey, Gilbert seconded the motion and all voted in favor. The request will now be made to the Planning Board for final authorization. We discussed issues with sending the survey out by mail. Gilbert felt we need to go with return postage on the paper survey so they will be returned. We all agreed, Schwartz will talk with Guy Eaton about some options on postage and permit usage.

6.0 Our next meeting will be on August 27 at 6:30PM at the Town Hall and we will take care of the unfinished agenda items at that time. Some of the committee were not available to attend that evening but felt comfortable with the rest of the committee taking care of this business. Kluk invited the full committee to attend the Planning Board meeting on Tuesday, September 3^rd at 6:30PM, when we present and go over the completed survey with members and ask for their approval. We will forward the finished survey to PB members prior to the meeting so they have time to review ahead of time.

Meeting adjourned at 9:15 PM.

Respectfully submitted,

Nan Schwartz

Planning Board Secretary