The community’s collective vision for South Berwick’s future, including direction on land use and economic development to support that vision, will be presented to the public Nov. 12 after two years in the works.
The town’s final Comprehensive Plan will be presented at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at a joint public hearing with the Comprehensive Plan Committee and the Town Council.
The highly detailed 200-page plan, recently reviewed by the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development and found to be in compliance with state requirements, has two final steps: the mandatory public hearing and adoption by the Town Council.
Raegan Young of the Southern Maine Planning and Development Commission, lead consultant on the deliberations that produced the plan, has encouraged South Berwick residents to look at the document before the hearing to be aware of the topics that will be discussed.
Included in the plan are goals, and strategies for meeting those goals, in such areas as the economy, land use, housing, arts and recreation, and public facilities and services.
The plan also includes an inventory of the town’s natural resources, including watersheds, ponds and wetlands.
Young, at the Oct. 8 Town Council meeting, praised the hard work of the committee that developed the plan, particularly for the consistency of membership since April 2022.
“We work with a lot of great committees, but this was a very dedicated core group that stayed” for the full two years, she said.
One of the first elements of the process was a community survey that 1,100 town residents participated in.
In crafting the plan, the committee held four focus groups covering topics that surfaced as top priorities for residents: conservation and natural resources; land use and housing; economic development; and arts, recreation and downtown revitalization.
Young made a point of saying 200 to 300 returned surveys is a typical response rate, while the number returned by South Berwick residents was exceptional.
Councilor John James, asking how many surveys were completed as hard copies versus online, said he was “trying to judge what works best as far as trying to get things out to the town.”
Hearing that roughly 600 came back as hard copies. James said, “For us in the future, it’s worth the cost of sending out (mailing) a survey if it means we’re going to get another 50%.”
Links to the plan, the survey results, and more information can be found on the Comprehensive Plan Committee’s page on the town website.
