Williamstown's Comprehensive Plan Committee Nears Final Report
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The end is in sight for the committee charged with drafting the town's plan for the next two decades.
At its Aug. 1 meeting, the Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee worked through members' concerns about specific language in the draft document, including in a 75-point implementation plan that consumes eight pages in a 42-page document.
The steering committee, which started its work at the beginning of 2022, may be ready to send a completed plan to the Planning Board for approval as soon as October.
Although the plan is not, in and of itself, a binding document that creates zoning bylaws or allocates tax dollars, it is meant to inform those decisions in order to address the plan's many aspirations.
Those aspirations are the result of more than a year of outreach to the community and deliberation by the steering committee which the Planning Board created with an eye toward including a wide array of viewpoints.
While, in some ways, the point-by-point action items are the heart of the draft plan, its soul is found on Page 14 of the document, where the committee authors its vision for the town it hopes to see in 2035.
"Williamstown is a dynamic, inclusive, and forward-looking community that is embedded in a natural landscape and rural lands," the vision statement reads. "It is known for its world-renowned art, culture, and educational institutions. Williamstown supports a strong local economy, vibrant town center, diverse neighborhoods and housing options, welcoming indoor and outdoor public spaces, and a valued network of farms, forests, and trails.
"Our community is inclusive, multi-generational, racially and ethnically diverse, and provides residents of all ages and income levels the opportunity to live and thrive in Williamstown. Our town is well-connected by an accessible transportation network that safely supports and encourages bicycle and pedestrian travel. We have made great strides in our overall environmental sustainability by increasing our resilience to climate change and reaching toward net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. Our thoughtful land use planning and land protection policies balance environmental priorities with the housing needs of our community."
The plan is a call to preserve the parts of town that support that vision and pursue policy initiatives that will create new structures to bring the vision to fruition.
The finished plan will include a dynamic "implementation table" that will identify which town government structures are responsible for implementing various pieces of the plan.
In part, that is why the steering committee at its Aug. 1 meeting talked about proactively going to some of those structures, like the Select Board and Finance Committee, for example, to get buy-in for the plan before it is finalized.
"Ten years from now, if five [members of the Planning Board] disagree with an action item we put in the plan, they won't do it," said Peter Beck, a current Planning Board member who serves on the steering committee. "It's why we should get the feedback, because it should be convincing to them. But they get the biggest veto power of all."
That said, Beck cautioned the group against raising other expectations that other town committees will have the ability to make line-item edits to items in the comprehensive plan.
"I think public input has been essential all along the way," Beck said. "But, ultimately, the document, with all the great things about it and all its flaws, comes from us and not from different boards and committees.
"We should keep asking for comments … but it should always be clear to folks that this 11- and now 13-person committee has spent two years working on this and sends it out as their document."
Steering committee member Daniel Gura put Beck's comment another way.
"I think it's your stance — and it's a fair one to take — to provide for general commentary, and we'll take the commentary in and choose to use it or not," Gura said. "That's fair to say. But we should make that clear."
Roger Lawrence, who serves with Beck on the Planning Board, noted that there was neither in-person nor virtual participation in the Aug. 1 steering committee meeting by members of the public and suggested that public comments will increase when the draft is more completed.
All but one section of the document was available for review by the steering committee at its August meeting. Consultant Steve Whitman of Plymouth, N.H.'s, Resilience Planning and Design told the panel that an updated draft with all of the sections completed and revisions based on the Aug. 1 discussion will be presented to the members in time for consideration in September.
Tags: master plan,
