SOUTHWICK — After two years of effort by the Master Plan Advisory Committee to develop what it called a “blueprint” for the town to thrive over the next 20 years, the Planning Board will decide soon whether to make it official.
“They did a very thorough review, chapter by chapter, of the plan’s draft,” Town Planner Jon Goddard said on March 26, referring to the Planning Board, which will discuss the plan again Tuesday, April 9.
The Master Plan committee, with assistance from the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, released the “Southwick Vision 2040” plan last November and then disbanded. The plan included eight chapters to help guide town officials not from where the town is today, but “rather how we imagine the town will be in 2040.”
The eight chapters are: land use; housing; economic development, historical and cultural resources; open space and natural resources; transportation; public services and facilities; and climate change and sustainability.
Once it was released, the Planning Board conducted public hearings on it starting in December and working through the 137-page document to make revisions. Goddard said most of the revisions were related to some of the details of the 150 recommendations in the plan the board considered “onerous.”
He used an example involving the chapter on open space and natural resources and the master plan’s recommendation that the Planning Board “create and implement a dark skies bylaw,” that would preserve and protect the natural darkness of the night sky.
Goddard said the board didn’t remove the recommendation but revised the language to amend with this and others from “create and implement” to “shall create and implement.”
One of the issues that has yet to be decided is the implementation committee: how many members it will have and whether it will report to the Select Board or Planning Board.
In late January, the Planning Board decided, after some debate, that the implementation committee should be appointed and established as a subcommittee of the Planning Board, with the goal of it becoming a permanent town committee at some not yet decided upon point in the future.
The board also recommended the implementation committee have five members, one member from the Planning Board, another member from the Select Board and three residents.
Planning Board member David Sutton suggested drawing from former members of the Master Plan committee during that meeting.
“It’s a logical place to get them from. The process has come [too much of] a long way to have a bunch of fresh faces,” he said.
When the Select Board discussed the implementation committee during a meeting in early February, board Chair Doug Moglin agreed the committee should comprise five members, but wanted it under the authority of the Select Board.
He said many of the Master Plan recommendations “fall outside the purview of land use … [and] we are the appointing authority.”
During the Select Board’s meeting on March 25, Moglin said he and Planning Board Chair Michael Doherty hosted a “summit” to iron out the differences.
Doherty, who attended the meeting, agreed that five members was the right number for the committee.
He also said the two discussed who would appoint the resident members. Doherty said they discussed letting the Select Board appoint one, the Planning Board appoint one, and a two boards work together to appoint the third resident.
Moglin said the appointment of residents was detail that had yet to be worked out.
Doherty also said that the implementation committee should be set up under the Select Board “to get it going” and to revisit the issue “down the road” if the committee should be made permanent through a Town Meeting article.
At last week’s meeting, Select Board member Diane Gale again asked about the mission of the implementation committee.
“Did you have discussion on what the charge and duties, and responsibilities and authority [the committee would have]?” Gale asked Moglin about his discussion with Doherty.
“We didn’t go into a lot of detail about that,” Moglin answered.
However, he said the implementation committee, in his opinion, was to “complement, assist, or shame boards or committees that aren’t working toward the goals of the Master Plan,” he said, adding he used “‘shame’ lightly.”
He said, however, if a board or committee “is off the reservation” and “is being inconsistent” with the goals of the Master Plan, the people need to look at the appointing authority of the wayward board or commission, or the voters need to look at the people who are elected to those board and commissions and put people in place to follow the goals of the plan.
Gale said she wanted to emphasize that whoever serves on the implementation committee would not be policing the town’s boards and committees.
Moglin said the Select Board would take up the issue at the April 8 board meeting.
