When it comes to growth in town, should we be a community that promotes converting green space to single-family home neighborhoods, or should we focus density in downtown and other already populated areas? Should our economic development lean more towards industrial and manufacturing or should we focus on developing smaller office space? Should we prioritize the production of multi-modal transportation systems, or focus on paving the streets? How much of our past should we use to help shape our future?
These and many other questions are what we need to answer, not as a group of individual boards, committees and stakeholders but as a town.
Shortly after I came here in 2013, I realized that our community has the talent and energy to move us in any direction we want, and do it expeditiously. But what we needed to harness and focus our resources was a common focus, a common idea of what that direction was. What we needed was a vision of what the Town of Ashland can and should be and a strategic plan to map out how we get there.
I am not alone in my observations. With the support of the Board of Selectmen, in early 2016, I proposed putting together, with the help of the community, a strategic plan for the town. A strategic plan should be the backbone of the town’s decision-making process, at board and committee meetings and at town meeting itself. To help me with this plan, I have assembled an advisory group that represents a diverse cross-section of this community. We call this initiative Ashland Focus 2035, as it will be designed to guide us over the next 15 to 20 years.
Values, Vision, Goals
Our first step is to start off with a sense of what values we want to espouse as a community (Values), a broad vision of what the Town of Ashland is in 20 years (Vision), and the subject areas we will need to accomplish to get there (Goals). At this stage, we are not focused so much on specific policies or action items but are trying to define the bar against which those policies and action items are measured. Think of a driving analogy: this first step is to determine the destination we are trying to get to; future steps are determining the best route to take to get there.
Of course, to have a true community vision, you need to give the entire community the ability to provide input. That is why we have set up a process to communicate with the public and give them an opportunity to help shape the plan through their input.
To start this process, we reviewed hundreds of pages of public input from previous Ashland planning efforts. We decided to start this way because you as a community put a lot of your valuable time into these planning efforts and we want you to know your voices were heard. The amalgamation of this input manifested itself in a draft “Values, Vision, and Goals” statement that reflects the desired character of the community, highlighting the strengths that we currently have as well as those that we want to build.
Community Outreach
Now our job is to reach out to the town to make sure that these Values, Vision, and Goals are still an accurate reflection of the community’s feelings. This outreach will consist of reaching out to civic groups and boards and committees to discuss the findings and get feedback. We will also go out into the neighborhoods, meeting with people in each precinct to get their take. Residents are also encouraged to submit feedback to me directly or email their feedback to our designated email address, AshlandFocus2035@ashlandmass.com.
We have also established a page on the town website dedicated to strategic planning. This page will include drafts of working documents, previous plans, and other ways to provide feedback. We will also use the webpage as a way to communicate our progress.
We anticipate holding one or two larger community meetings in the spring to help bridge the Visioning stage and the Strategic Planning stage. Once we have given the community an opportunity to provide input and revise the Values, Vision, and Goals document accordingly, we will then move into those specific objectives necessary to move towards the vision and goals. For example, do we need to make zoning changes to better reflect the direction we are going? How do we set out building sidewalks that well help us meet our goals of alternative transportation options and connecting key points in town?
For our strategic planning to be successful, it is important that we get your input to develop the right questions. The lack of a cohesive plan is a common refrain I hear from many people in town. Now is your opportunity to become part of the solution, and more importantly, chart the course for the Town’s future.
Issue Date:
March, 2017
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