Committee Chair Jeff Roy providing an overview with use of a PowerPoint presentation similar to that used for the Town Council meeting Jul 17, 2013
Document link here
http://www.franklinmatters.org/2013/07/live-reporting-master-plan-committee.html
Chris Vericker steps in to lend a hand with the section on Housing. Chris had led the work effort by that subcommittee.
Jeff Roy resumes the presentation on Natural, Cultural and Historic resources
looking to get a performance venue in the downtown area to help draw people and provide some business opportunities
the Master Plan leveraged work by the 2008 Open Space and Recreation plan, incorporating those recommendations and adding to it
leverages the School Dept Strategic Plan within this plan. This plan is updated every 5 years.
Comments open until Aug 16th. Those submitted will be reviewed and incorporated as necessary before the Sep 18th meeting with the Town Council. The document should really be an open around a living document
http://www.franklinmatters.org/2013/08/this-is-going-to-be-living-document.html
I stepped up as first commenter thank the committee for their work, this was a great effort by a bunch of volunteers. I raised the use of "in fill development" what does it mean?
Beth Dahlstrom - the term is meant to refer to developing within and on existing developments rather than developing open space.
Second term for definition is "workforce housing"
Jeff Roy - answered that the term was meant to cover broad usage around affordable housing.
This lead to my recommendation to add a glossary and improve the overall accessibility of the document. You can link within the doc from the term to the glossary.
Councilor Judy Pfeffer also commented on the use of "workforce development" looking for clarification on the term. She also objected to the recommendation of "increased funding for the Schools". As a Town Councilor, their challenge is to provide equitable all Town departments and the plan should pick one over the others.
Dennis Grillo - As a developer, the key issues should be making it affordable to business in town. I am not against any of it. I am not really sold on green energy. green energy supplies about 2 % of our tax dollars on failed projects.
Chris Vericker - This is not a spending plan, this is a guideline for the Town to use in planning.
Jeff Roy - that is what this plan is all about. If we are going to grow, we have to grow smartly. They should be considering these details. one of the struggles for a community like Franklin in achieving green status, we are already doing so much in this space that we can't easily achieve this status.
Dennis Grillo - What green costs to produce and what the return is, think about the return on the dollar. Money is easy to spend. It has to make sense.
no other comments or questions so the meeting is officially closing
