February 4, 2009
Smart Growth Committee Meeting
In attendance: Mark Amado
Rebecca Borders
Terry Gould
Howard Levin
Kevin Rocke
The meeting began at 7:00 p.m.
Minutes of the last meeting were reviewed and accepted by all.
Follow up to BRPC possible grant. Howard found that the BRPC was only looking for participants from towns to be able to get funding for the commission to set up an educational program to be offered to towns. No funds would be directly available to individual towns.
Terry has followed up with Ed Partyka asking how many hours he would need to begin work on the language or legal errors in the existing by laws. He responded that it could be up to 40 hours of work. Terry will draft a letter to the selectboard regarding this to see if they will approve the funding for these hours. This will allow us to move forward on the committee work.
Discussion began about goals of our master plan. It was agreed that we are basically a recreational community. Kevin noted that we need big things to make Otis a Destination. The town is limited with regard to places to stay. He felt that our motel/hotel by law might have been made too restrictive for a smaller business to succeed. Re-visiting this information in the by-law would probably be one of the things that Ed would address.
Rebecca spoke about bringing something recreational to the town. (Kevin mentioned a bike race that used to happen in town)
This lead to a discussion of a combination fair/festival that would happen over 3 to 4 days combining different town groups, clubs and committees. The possibility of approaching the town about using town owned land for something of this nature was explored. It could offer a “destination”, good for the town, and business development. As this was not officially a Smart Growth subject, we moved on to other discussion.
The large business in town is Otis Ridge and it is in need of the support and help of the town to continue to offer a “destination” to bring families and business to the town.
Rebecca opened discussion of bringing Green energy to town and Otis Ridge may be a place for a windmill. She has access to research and information regarding possible grants for wind power. She will do additional research and bring it to the next meeting.
Howard noted that a small industry like graphic design or software development would work really well here but without broadband access it is not yet possible. This might be a good business for the town as it would not adversely effect development. It could in fact bring business to the town. (Employees and customers who would frequent existing town businesses. )
Howard suggested that we prepare not only the letter for the selectboard, but bring information to the selectboard about all that we would like to do with regard to the master plan and development of a Recreational Community plan. He noted that we may need the participation of the town administrator for some of our ideas. It may also be a good idea to get on the agendas of other committees to get their input in development of a recreational community.
We then reviewed the Planning Board annual report as Smart Growth is a subcommittee of Planning. Howard also presented the Planning board follow up information regarding Parking issues and Sign information.
Next meeting is Wednesday February 25th.
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