March Report from the Chebeague Comprehensive Planning Committee

In the Fall the Selectmen called for volunteers to work on the Town’s new Comprehensive Plan. In December they asked the Planning Board to organize effort. At its December 20 meeting, the Planning Board agreed that the Comprehensive Planning Committee will include all the people who volunteered last fall – about 20 people, listed below. This Committee will be the primary forum for discussion of the process and the policy proposals that come out of it. Since the comprehensive plan is an effort to develop general policy guidance to the Town, decisions will be made by consensus.

The Planning Board will function somewhat like an executive committee, handling administrative decisions, like reviewing proposals from consultants. The Town has a grant from the State for developing the plan. We also are lucky to have this year’s Island Institute Fellow, Thea Youngs, who is expert in Geographic Information Systems and can provide the Committee with maps which will make the process of both making and explaining the plan to others much easier.

The initial meeting of the full Comprehensive Planning Committee was held on January 21. The group discussed the topics the plan could cover, the state comprehensive planning guidelines and the time-frame for the various tasks such as collecting data, holding a goal-setting/visioning process and sending out a questionnaire. The next meeting on January 31 led to the organization of three major subcommittees. One will deal with the issues related to the natural and built environment. The second will focus on the island’s economy and services ranging from education to services for the elderly. The third will look at the island’s infrastructure needs. Beth Howe is serving as the Chair of the full Committee.

Since January 31 these subcommittees have begun to work on collecting data for the various “elements” or sections of the plan, and sorting out which aspects of the state guidelines are useful or irrelevant for our purposes.. In some cases they have divided into smaller subcommittees for this work. However, since everyone is very much aware of the way all the topics inter-relate, we will have regular reports back to the larger subcommittees and the whole Comprehensive Planning Committee.

These committees are trying to find regular meeting times in Chebeague’s busy meeting schedule. The Open Space/Wetlands/Critical Natural Resources group is meeting on Tuesday mornings at 9:00. Water Resources meets on Wednesday at 9:00. Call someone on the subcommittee for information about where the meetings are. The next meeting of the whole Comprehensive Planning Committee will be March 7 at 7:15 at the Hall.

A look at the list of members and the list of topics shows that there is a great deal of work to be done – more than even 20 people can take on. So we have already begun drawing in other island residents with knowledge about particular areas. If someone from the Comp Planning Project comes to you to ask for help, please do help us. And we welcome you to come to our meetings.

One of the areas where we need help is in creating and verifying island and Town maps showing data ranging from natural resources to historic development patterns.. We are finding that because we are a new Town and an island, State maps that are normally provided to Towns doing Comp Plans are either not available for us or are not very current or accurate. So we hope to make our own. A land-use map is now available for comments and input so we can get it as accurate as possible. Ernie has given us some great marine maps showing lobster, scallop, and shellfish areas, seabird nesting and landing sites, and seal haulouts. We need other fishermen to add to these maps.

We hope to have a monthly report like this one to keep you appraised of what we are doing. We also hope to have a website where all the maps and committee reports, as well as background materials will be available.

Beth Howe

Members of the Comprehensive Planning Committee and their subcommittees:

Tom Adams, Infrastructure

Sam Ballard, coordinating 2000 Long-Range Plan with State Planning Guidelines

Sandra Birkett, Education

Leila Bisharat, Open Space/Wetlands/Critical Natural Areas, Forestry

Erno Bonebakker, Water Resources, Critical Natural Areas

Ernie Burgess, the Fishing and On-Island Economies

Donna Colbeth, Demographics, Economy

Donna Damon, Demographics, Infrastructure, Economy, Historical and Archaeological

Resources

Mabel Doughty, Open Space/Wetlands/Critical Natural Resources

Bob Earnest, Economy and Services

Jane Frizzell, Demographics, Open Space/Wetlands/Critical Natural Areas, Historic and

Archaeological Resources

Beth Howe, Housing, Land Use, Demographics, Infrastructure

Phil Jordan, Open Space/Wetlands/Critical Natural Areas

Sheila Jordan, Open Space/Wetlands/Critical Natural Areas

Peter Olney, Economy, Land Use

Carol White, Water Resources, Education

Some additional people are not yet part of subcommittees largely because they are or have been away:

Wayne Dyer

Stephanie Martin

Malcolm Rice

Tad Runge

Jane Scifres

Al and Vail Traina