Williamstown Planning Commission Minutes

September 17, 2008

Town Hall

Present: Art Kramer – Chair, John Taylor, Paige Emory, Al Day

Clerk: Deborah Palmer

Art called the meeting to order at 7:00 PM.

DISCUSSION ON TOWN PLAN:

At the meeting on October 8 should have a finished copy and on November 12 Chris will be back to discuss changes he made to the Town Plan. This meeting was to discuss ideas on the Plan.

- Don’t name specific things but generalize

- Identifying factors i.e. gun range; naming people

- Plan too general

- A lot of history/too much fluff and not enough meat

- Use general terms and then build on it such as noise, runoff etc.

- Needs more definition, check statistics, find documents that verify information and add more data

- Need guidance from community for writing of Town Plan – set up informational meetings

- John will work on the Municipal Planning Grant

- Need to have an open rapport with Selectboard and Town Manager, need to get Selectboard on

board with Planning Commission

- What would the Grant be used for?

- Surveys to Towns people

- Printing of draft document

- Community meetings, consultant

- Utilize TV – Videos?

- Online survey and advertise in paper

- Collection of data

- Expand involvement with the writing of the Grant and Plan (PTA, church, school, committees,

businesses, fire dept)

- Maybe energy being the center piece of plan

- Five years of traffic stats would be good for plan

- Define the Village area and make it separate

- Alternative Energy, Crime and Village area need to be part of the town plan

John will contact Chris and then e-mail Art and Paige. John will work on the Grant application.

There was no further business and the meeting adjourned at 8:35 PM.