HomeMy Public PortalAboutMarch 2016 Report from the Long Range Vision Group Moving Forward to a Long Range Plan :
A Report from the Long Range Vision Work Group
March 2016
A. Background
In August 2014, the Board of Selectmen directed the Town Administrator to appoint a five
person working group to take the first step in defining how a long range plan for Brewster
might be developed . Specifically, the working group was tasked to :
1 . Define the principal phases of the planning process and outcomes
2 . Identify the key steps to involve citizens in the planning process
3 . Describe the oversight and coordination mechanisms Including possibly a joint
town/citizen oversight committee
4. Define external resources that may be needed, how they will be used, and estimated
costs .
B. Types of long range plans
The working group examined the various types of long range plans that are permitted under
current legislation or exist in current practice . State law indicates that a planning board "shall
make a master plan" to orient the long term physical development of the municipality. Master
plans are typically developed along functional lines including land use, housing, economic
development, natural resources, and open space and recreation . Similarly, the Cape Cod
Commission Act promotes the development of local comprehensive plans which include "a plan
for the capital facilities which will be necessary in that municipality to accommodate growth
and development both in the municipality and throughout Barnstable County". Like master
plans, comprehensive plans have been developed around functional components . The group
noted that while providing detailed guidance for functional areas, the traditional master plans
have large data development requirements, thus tend to be consultant driven, and their final
output tends to be voluminous . Implementation is often weak.
The working group also explored other types of long range plans, including strategic plans.
Several states and the International City Management Association ( ICMA) have developed
guidance for strategic planning. In comparison to traditional master planning, strategic plans
are more of a goal oriented policy framework and tend to be more community driven , focusing
on community priorities, which may be functional or cut across cross functions . A recent
evolution of strategic planning is a community visioning process that generates a vision and
goals based on community-defined needs and establishes actions to achieve the goals. Because
of the nature of their community-based process and the simplicity of the output (plan), these
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plans often lead more readily to implementation than master plans. The Working Group looked
at examples from Aiken, South Carolina and Tisbury, Massachusetts (on Martha's Vineyard ) .
The working group agreed that as the first step in long range planning, a strategic or vision plan
would be more appropriate for Brewster because of the degree to which it could mobilize
citizens and provide policy guidance to the Town . The policy framework could then provide
direction for the development of a functionally-oriented comprehensive plan . The group
decided to look more closely at the Tisbury Vision Plan experience and interviewed one of the
architects of the process.
C. The Tisbury Vision Plan
The Working Group met with Cheryl Doble, the principal architect of the Tisbury process, who
described the town's experience . Cheryl is a member of the Tisbury Planning Board and the
former director of the Community Research Program at State University of New York's School
of Forestry at Syracuse University. Key points of her presentation about Tisbury's experience
are the following.
1 . The process came out of controversy involving the expansion of the downtown Stop and
Shop and its review by the Martha's Vineyard Commission . The Town had little say in
the process and realized they had no development strategy by which to judge the
project. The visioning process was designed and implemented quickly to address this
shortcoming.
2 . The Planning Board, with strong support from the Selectmen, created an advisory board
of 12 people to run the visioning process. They wanted people who would be respected
and trusted by the community. The process was designed to be very participatory and
lead to Implementation .
3. The visioning process started with a broad public outreach program to inform citizens,
begin to get their perspectives and identify volunteers . It then ran through a series of
workshops open to the community. The first workshop, held three times at different
times and different locations to facilitate participation, focused on participants'
identification of opportunities and challenges and their ideas for elements of a vision
statement. After the first workshop, the Advisory board analyzed the results and from
that, identified six major issues in the town and a possible mission statement. At the
second public workshop, the participants reviewed the outcomes of the first workshop
and began to work on implementation actions for the issue areas. Subsequently, a
town-wide survey solicited other ideas for Implementation actions. At the third
workshop participants reviewed the draft plan and prioritized the implementation
actions. Citizen volunteers from the community were trained as facilitators for the
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workshops and the Advisory Board carried out all of the analysis. No external resources
were used . The final Tisbury Vision Plan is a 12 page document.
4. Cheryl reported that the process had immediate impact in terms of the articles
approved at the next Town meeting and actions taken by the BOS. However, citizen and
community organization proposals for projects that would further implementation have
been slow in coming.
D. Moving forward In Brewster
The Working Group was impressed by numerous aspects of the Tisbury experience including
the degree of citizen involvement, the consensus around key Issues In the town, and the
actionable Ideas that the process generated . At the same time, the group noted that because
of the speed at which the process necessarily had run, they had not been able to delve more
deeply into the key issues by gathering additional information for analysis and discussion in the
workshops. Accordingly, the working group proposes the following general process for the
development of a Brewster vision plan .
Steo 1- Establish an advisory committee to euide the orocess : The committee would be
composed of a range of stakeholders and people who are respected in the community. The
committee should be representative, but small enough to be an effective working committee,
Ideally with 12 to 14 members . The advisory committee would be responsible for moving the
process forward, including the design of each of the phases of the process, mobilizing the
public, analyzing results of each phase and presenting the conclusions to the public. There
could also be liaisons from other groups in town to broaden the range of input to the process.
Steo 2- Public outreach : This step will include outreach through the media and contacts with
community groups to spread the word about the vision process .
Step 3 — First communitv workshops : The first workshops will gather community views on
challenges and opportunities in Brewster and solicit citizens' ideas for the future vision of the
town . Like in Tisbury, the workshop should be repeated in multiple locations and at different
times of the day to permit all citizens to participate . Following the first workshop, the advisory
group will analyze the results of the workshop to identify the main issues that were raised .
Step 4 — Develoo issue papers and draft vision statement: based on the issues identified at the
first workshop, members of the advisory group, other resource people in town or external
consultants will develop short papers around each issue . The papers should be concise
statements of trends and current conditions with the goal of providing basic objective data to
all participants. The papers will be available to the public in preparation for the next step .
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Step 5 — Second communitv workshops : The outcome of the first workshops will be provided to
the participants at the second round of workshops to validate the findings and participants will
review the draft vision for the town . The participants will then form sub groups to work on each
of the issues and begin to identify appropriate goals and actions .
Step 6 — Draft Vision Plan : Based on the results of the second workshops, the advisory
committee will prepare a draft vision plan .
Step 7 — Workshops to review draft plan and prioritize actions : the final round of community
workshops will include a review of the draft plan and discussion to prioritize implementation
actions .
Step 8 - Adoption of the plan : The advisory committee will finalize the plan and present it to the
Board of Selectmen for adoption as the town vision plan ,
E. Resources
If Brewster is able to follow the Tisbury model, the vision process can be achieved with modest
resources , The working group proposes to use Cheryl Doble as the principal assistant, working
with the advisory group to develop the details of the process, design the workshops, assist in
analyzing the results and preparing them for public presentation, and training the volunteer
facilitators for the workshops. Her costs are estimated at $5,000.
Additional resources would be required for workshop logistics, some consultant support in
preparing Issue papers, publicity, and printing ( large numbers of draft and final vision plan
copies to be made available to the public) . These costs are estimated at $ 15,000 to $20,000.
Currently Town Meeting has approved $10,000 for the Board of Selectmen and $25,000 for the
Planning Board to begin long range planning. This combined $35,000 should be sufficient for
the process described above, or at least to get the Town through most of the process.
F. Next steps
The working group believes that the process described above should get underway as soon as is
feasible. Accordingly the process should be agreed to by the current Board of Selectmen (as the
initiator of the working group) and Planning Board, but the actual designation of the proposed
advisory committee should be made by the new BOS after the election, since they will
ultimately oversee implementation of the process.
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