Comprehensive Plan Not Expected to Be Done This Year

Aug 10, 2023

BAR HARBOR—The town’s comprehensive plan’s timeline for the next few months was discussed at the Comprehensive Planning Committee meeting on August 9, and it looks as if the plan will not be done in 2023.

“Steve (Whitman) and I met with staff and chairs and we developed a timeline for the next few months,” Liz Kelley of Resilience Planning said. “It feels like we’re at a turning point in the project now that we’re getting closer and closer to a final draft (of the vision) and the future land use strategy.”

The group discussed the goals listed under each month from now until December. In September and October, the group will meet with the Planning Board. Finding out if the Comprehensive Plan goals are aligned with the Planning Board would be helpful, many members expressed.

Comprehensive Planning Committee member Misha Mytar asked of the timeline, “Does the arrow keep on going on forever?”

“We can put dates out there, but we want to see if we can nail this,” Whitman (also of Resilience Planning) said. “If we can start writing by the end of 2023, by February we have a pretty solid draft.”

It took more time in May to do additional outreach, Whitman said, which extended the timeline, which was an agreed upon action though it the process was originally predicted to end in December.

Planning Director Michele Gagnon said it’s about getting the plan right and staying on budget. Resilience Planning are the consultants for the project. Their contract was extended in December 2022 to allow the committee to gather more public input, data, and to work on the plan for a longer period. That extension also came with an additional $100,000 from the town’s budget. There was no solid discussion yet about if additional funds would be requested.

Mytar said the September meeting with the Planning Board makes sense, but to get to the joint meeting in October, the staff will make a draft but the group won’t have time to peruse it with discussion themselves. Whitman said that would extend the project another month beyond the current timeline. Mytar said she doesn’t want to prolong the process any longer.

“We want to see how the stories are coming together,” Whitman said, but the details get sorted during the implementation over the next decade.

Kelly also said that it can take a while for the state to approve a comprehensive plan so they are going to reach out to state representatives and establish a relationship with them to try to make that approval process go more quickly once it has begun.

DRAFT VISION

There is an updated draft version of the vision, which Steve Whitman said reflected the discussion at the last meeting about potential missing pieces. The vision statement presented August 9 was still a draft and was looking for new edits or perceptions.

Comprehensive Plan member and Planning Board Secretary Elisa Chessler said that the plan tends to leave out people and often the retirees, and an option for people who don’t work, which she’d like tweaked in the vision statement if possible. Other members spoke about how the town’s infrastructure has to support year round and seasonal needs because if it’s just the year-round community, it won’t be enough. There was also some wordsmithing around the phrase “impacts from tourism” and the potential substitution of “cultural” for “historic.”

Parks and Recreation Chair and Comprehensive Planning Committee member John Kelly also suggested adding a glossary to help with terms like “affordable housing” and what those terms mean.

“John, I would be shocked if we don’t have a glossary,” Whitman said.

The last plan was in 2007. The plans are meant guide the town’s priorities and goals for about ten years from its start date, Gagnon has said.

The consultant has been working for comprehensive plans up and down the coast of New England and has never had to ask for money before, Gagnon said. She added, “This has been a really great partnership and they are doing a lot of good things. Bar Harbor is absolutely unique. It is not like any municipal towns they have seen: coastal or not coastal, resort or not resort.”