Recreation next on to do list for town plan

"The whole idea of this discussion ... is kind of a vision statement for the town," Zoning Administrator Bill Kearns, said. "We'll be working on the town plan through next spring."

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Recreation chapter next on to do list for town plan

By Katelyn  Harding
Twin State Valley Media Network
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 10:36 PM

"The whole idea of this discussion ... is kind of a vision statement for the town," Zoning Administrator Bill Kearns, said. "We'll be working on the town plan through next spring."

In addition to recreation, the planning commission will also amend or change chapters about transportation, housing, education, cultural and historic resources and energy and economic development, to name a few.

Kearns said updating the town plan is essential in order for Springfield to receive municipal grants and invites all residents to participate at the meeting to give their input.

"It's really important the town plan says what the people want to do," he said.

The commission updated the plan this April and although the state mandates towns do this every five years, Kearns said the planning commission is working to upgrade it for next spring.

"That update was simply to add about three paragraphs about childcare ... but we didn't make any updates on changes [in] organizations. We didn't update the data on housing or anything. All we did is add a report on childcare to comply with new regulations and had it approved," Kearns said. "That work was done just to get it approved. We couldn't let it expire, but we didn't have time to re-write [it]."

Kearns said re-writing a town plan is a "really long process" and after today's meeting, the recreation chapter will be adopted, but not in the legal sense.

Once the town plan is complete, it will be open for public review and comment, but not until next spring.

"In this case, the one [meeting] that we're doing is a review of recreation, but we may get into other stuff. There could be people interested in recreation especially as recreation planning could be done in town with the use of parks and so on," Kearns said, adding that a topic of conversation could be the dam in Weathersfield, which belongs to the town of Springfield.

"It could be a question of whether or not people want to even continue saying things like, 'fix the dam site up for recreation' because you would really have to do a lot of work," Kearns said.

The planning commission meeting is at 7 p.m. at the town hall.

The next meeting, Aug. 5, will be a community values workshop and will have Jennes Hilkey from the Agency of Natural Resources facilitating a "what do you love about Springfield-type meeting," according to John Broker-Campbell, a planner with the SWCRPC.

"The public is invited to identify areas in town that they value," Broker-Campbell said.

http://www.eagletimes.com/ET/story/090701-kmh-spfldtownplan