Minutes of Long Range Strategic Planning Committee – Monday, January 21, 2008
Call to order at 7:35pm
Attendance: Peter Marshall, Geoff Dent, Kathy Fetchick, Anna Wiedemann, Julia Wasserman
Absent: Gerry Robilotti, Michael Floros
Public: Paul Lundquist, Guy Howard
Public Comments: None
Acceptance of Minutes: Motion to accept minutes made by Peter, 2nd by Geoff, passed unanimously.
Guest Speaker: Paul Lundquist who came to share his findings of the “Comprehensive Survey of Newtown Residents”.
· Town leaders need to do a better job of communicating where we are and where we’re going.
· Some things are being done at FFH – i.e. walking trails.
· Many people feel they are not getting proper information on what taxes are spent on.
· Challenges facing Newtown
· Town government lacks clear vision for future – lack of communication
· Substance abuse problem
· Housing concerns, particularly among older residents
· Traffic congestion
· Lyme disease
· Over crowding at the senior center and general need for recreation activities for seniors
· Commercial development – 76% feel it should be in the form of businesses or a major corporation moving into town to help property taxes
· 73% believe new home construction leads to increased property taxes for everyone
· Specific types of commercial development – restaurant/pub/tavern
· Information sharing – specific ideas on how to do it better
· Share grid information on town website
· People feel more information should be available on internet
· Survey response was 10% of households but it represents only 2% of the population of Newtown
· Voting behavior – 53% support referendum, 59% actually voted. Representative of people with kids in school/higher income level
Question was asked how often we should do a survey similar to this one and the response was every year. Would cost upwards of $30,000
Correspondence: Build-out Study Contract. Board of Selectman sent this to Kathy. Pat Llodra, Stacy Doyle, John Kortze and Harry Waterbury are serving on this committee. They will take an assessment of where we are today with housing do a GIS survey, overlay zoning regs and see where potential for building is, based on zoning regs. This would help determine future needs when planning budgets. Would allow a timeframe for building to occur. Copy of a report from Planimetrics given out at meeting outlining the background data for the Newtown build-out study. Outlined 2002 Plan of Conservation and Development notes and community facilities and services. There is a page with current data on surrounding towns listing population, land area, median household
income, per capita tax, total expenditure, education expenditure, other expenditures and median home sales. The last page outlines the work element, comments and a time schedule. The pdf file of the Planimetrics report is attached as well. Julia expressed concern that this new group should collaborate with Planning and Zoning, perhaps call George Benson.
Unfinished Business:
· Discuss vision statement. Julia felt it was too wordy and too long. All felt it said everything we discussed. Once done, wewill pass this off to the Long Range Planning group. We’ll work on condensing statement, perhaps doing it in bullet form.
· Cost of Consulting Services – Kathy contacted Dr. Howard Feddema to see if he would work with us in developing a long range plan. He told Kathy that he has typically done this with boards of education only. He suggested she search out other companies, as the basic methodology would work. We all felt it was a good idea to have the town and the board of ed work on a long range plan in tandem. Kathy will continue to search for other companies that could help with this.
· Town Agency Planning Documents – Anna will contact town departments to see who has planning documents and get copies.
· Peter and Geoff will talk to 1 or 2 towns whose plans we liked – Cheshire and Farmington. How did they put it together? What would they do differently? Is it relative now? Is it a living document? Did they use an outside consulting firm? Peter felt our goal is to develop a mission statement and a process. Where do we go from here? Geoff will e mail us a checklist inquiring about their successes and failures that he and Peter will use when calling Cheshire and Farmington. We also need to find out what the selectman’s ideas are.
· All felt we should have a date in mind for wrapping up our work – 2 or 3 more meetings.
· Vision statement is a plateau, process is taking into consideration what other towns did, making sure it’s a living document.
· Latest Demographics: Kathy handed out data representing the current demographics. Data was from CERC, Liz Strocker, CT Dept. of Labor. Working on getting economic development data - % of businesses in town, i.e. 5/4% agricultural business that employs 2.5%. Liz keeps track of top 5 employers and top 5 taxpayers. Kathy will get updated data from Liz and finish demographics.
The next meeting will be held on Monday, February 25th at 7:30 pm in the Mary Hawley Room.
The meeting was adjourned at 9:17pm.
Respectfully submitted: Anna Wiedemann
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