The CPC’s main goal for first year is to develop an understanding and a statement of needs in Belmont.
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Therefore, the committee is working quite carefully to reach out to the entire town and access taxpayers’ desires for what needs to be funded.
…“We need to hear from the residents first on what the community wants (before finalizing the criteria list and application process),” said member and former selectman Anne Marie Mahoney.
The committee discussed the idea of using the percentage of the Community Preservation funds earmarked for administrative costs for help either building a website, taking notes at the meetings and putting together surveys to obtain feedback and thoughts from residents.
The big things that have to get done in the first year is a community preservation plan and definining the application process. It looks like Belmont wants to finish their plan first before doing their application. They are also talking about a web site.
Here in Middleboro, we put up this web site right away – at zero cost to the Middlebor Taxpayer as a place to share information immediately. We are viewing the application process and community preservation plan as two entirely different endeavors. We created a subcommittee to draft an application process after discussing it at several meetings. We are also working on our community preservation plan.
To create the plan, we will eventually hold public meetings. As a starting point for the plan we are leveraging the hundreds of thousands of dollars the town has spent creating studies and plans such as the town Master Plan, Community Development Plan, Open Space Plan, Historic Plan, Affordable Housing Plan, and the Parks plan. As these documents become available we are posting them on our Documents page. Once we have thoroughly reviewed all these documents, we will hold public meetings and start drafting a community preservation plan.
It is interesting to see what other towns are doing with CPA to help guide our own efforts.