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Williamstown Reviewing Portions of Master Plan
By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
02:47PM / Wednesday, November 16, 2016
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Community Development Director Andrew Groff said a draft of the revised Open Space and Recreation Plan is available for review on the town website.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Board of Selectmen on Monday discussed the town's 14-year-old Master Plan and efforts to revise it on a piecemeal basis.

Community Development Director Andrew Groff was before the board with a brief presentation about the draft of a revised Open Space and Recreation Plan, one of a half-dozen components of the Master Plan.

The commission is accepting comments on the plan, visible on the town's website, through the first week of December, Groff said.

The Open Space and Recreation piece of the Master Plan was last revised in 2005, but the commission started its review three years ago with help from the Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation and students in Williams College's environmental studies program, he said.

"One of the student groups did survey work and focus groups, really focused on the recreation side of the plan," Groff said. "The second group did a scientific analysis on the resource protection needs.

"Those two reports were taken by the Conservation Commission, informed by the Economic Development Committee process and the Spruces Land Use group."

An ad hoc committee drafted the revised Open Space and Recreation Plan, which the Con Comm hopes to get approved at the local level later this year for submission to the commonwealth, Groff said.

Boston offers a financial incentive for having an updated Open Space plan.

"If you have an approved and up-to-date plan … you are eligible for Department of Conservation and Recreation grants for parks improvement," Groff said. "One of the big hopes is we can focus on parks improvements in the future through grant funding."

The town's recent acquisition of the land at the former Spruces mobile home park presents an opportunity to use the flood-prone Main Street parcel for recreation, but it would be a costly endeavor for a town that just began payments on a major renovation and addition at Mount Greylock Regional School and is in the process of addressing deficiencies in its police and fire stations.

Groff said he has presented the draft Open Space plan to the town's Planning Board and plans to make a similar presentation to the Zoning Board of Appeals on Thursday. In the meantime, the town has set up a special email account to receive comments from the general public on the proposed plan: osrp@williamstownma.gov.

As for the full Master Plan, the 2002 revision came at the end of a three-year process that started with a committee of 20 local residents. In addition to the Open Space component, the Master Plan includes sections on economic development, housing, transportation, cultural and historic resources, land use and municipal finances, services and facilities.

"To do the Master Plan as one big thing is a controversial chore," Groff said.

And, unlike the Open Space section specifically, an updated Master Plan brings with it no potential financial benefit, he said. The commonwealth encourages towns to revise their plans from time to time, but there is no specific mandate to do so.

That said, Williamstown's Planning Board in 2013 reviewed the then 11-year-old Master Plan to look at whether its "action plan" had been acted on. The Affordable Housing Committee and Planning Board are both looking into studies that would inform an updated housing plan for the town. And the Economic Development Committee report submitted last December has been discussed as a replacement for the Master Plan's economic development section — although the town has not taken that step.

"This approach of getting [to an updated Master Plan] with more targeted reports is probably more productive," Town Manager Jason Hoch told the Board of Selectmen.

Part of the Economic Development Committee's recommendations included a review of town processes both by staff and boards. As part of that process, the board on Monday received a report from the Conservation Commission.

A letter from Con Comm Chairman Henry Art noted that the commission is charged with administering the natural resource protection laws of the commonwealth. And Art indicated that rather than being the road block that some perceive the Con Comm to be, it in fact found 95 percent of projects to be non-jurisdictional (i.e., not requiring a costly Notice of Intent process) from 2010 to October 2016.

In the same period, the Con Comm received 38 NOIs and approved all of them with conditions, Art wrote.

"The end result is that if a project received a positive [request for determination of applicability] and went through the process of submitting an NOI, it was approved," he wrote.

"We feel that the Massachusetts [Wetlands/Rivers Protection Act], and our administration of it, in the long run, saves time and money for both the applicants and the Town of Williamstown," Art added. "The process ensures environmental quality, reduces nuisance, and, by 'doing it right' the project is less likely to have to be 'done over.' Most importantly, the environmental quality that is preserved and enhanced is likely to be a crucial economic driver as the entire region moves forward from our industrial past."

Selectman Jeffrey Thomas, who chaired the EDC, questioned whether there might still be room for the Con Comm to make its process more user-friendly to applicants.

"My interpretation of the letter was: We don't see any need for changing our processes," Thomas said. "I guess I wanted to note to this committee, that I think we hoped there might be some ideas for streamlining processes of all committees and boards."

Hoch pointed out that the Con Comm appears to be serving the applicants who come before it.

"If you look at the the statement the Conservation Commission made about the experience of the applicants, they note the collaborative approach … and note a high degree of satisfaction," Hoch said. "The collaborative approach is something they're trying to do for large projects in the future."

Board Chairman Andrew Hogeland and Selectman Hugh Daley suggested that the Con Comm collect data on the time it takes for applicants to get through the approval process and see whether the commission can identify any reasons for potential delays to see if the process can be speeded up.

"What I would take away is it would be nice to get a report like this every year," Daley said. "The missing stat in here is time of completion."

In other business on Monday, Hoch reported that the attorney general's office in Boston told the town it needs until early December to review the Waubeeka Overlay District bylaw that passed at annual town meeting in May.

And the board held an executive session at the end of Monday's meeting to discuss the acquisition of property. The session was related to an executive session of the town's Public Safety Building Study Committee held earlier Monday evening, Hogeland confirmed. Hogeland, who also serves on the Public Safety Building group, declined to say whether the property in question is one the PSBSC has previously discussed in open session.

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