2000-04-06-MGWG-min.pdf - Laserfiche WebLink

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• Businesses should be asked to offer transportation plans. (Fred Merrill pointed out that a town Transportation Demand Management Policy was implemented two years ago, and put to use in the development of the new medical building on Hayden Ave.) • Regional agreements on transportation plans are needed • Reiterating our earlier decision about Hanscom: we should be dealing with it in terms of its elements--traffic, noise, pollution, etc. There was a report from John Andrews about the Community Preservation Act which is currently before the state legislature and handouts: "4/6/00 [memo] To Managing Growth Working Group, From John Andrews" (one page) and "Legislative Update" reprint from MACC Newsletter, Late Winter 99-00 (one page). This legislation, if passed, would enable towns to create and fund local community preservation measures like land banks funded with real estate transfer taxes, but John reports that real estate interests have squashed it. Fred Merrill invited us to meet with the Planning Board at their regular meeting on April 26 (time and location to follow--Glenn Garber, please note), using this as an exercise to practice our outreach skills. In preparation for this, we should read the documents about the comprehensive plan posted by the Planning Board on the town web site. A handout about this was provided (which has since been corrected: the web site address is: httn://patriot.ci.lexington.ma.us/Planning/CompPlan.htm). The item on tonight's agenda on public outreach was touched only briefly: Ed Vail was at a CPG meeting at the time of our meeting and was expected to come back to us with feedback on ideas previously proposed. The major topic of the meeting was work on the Goals document. Karl Kastorf presented his work, the 11-page handout "Goals for the Year 2000 [sic], Draft 3, April 6, 2000." Karl explained how the document evolved from the complation of individual submissions of goals presented at the previous meeting, eliminating duplications and grouping ideas into eventually six "goal areas" which then put more focus on the Objectives section of the proposed matrix. His intention was to make a readable document that would influence opinion. A first look at the draft document raised the following discussion points: • The goals in the draft are not now numbered in priority order, but rather in the order of the number of submissions, greatest to least. It might be preferable to arrange them in another order, perhaps "logical" order. • The inclusion of a goal about traffic was questioned, since another work group is dealing with this, but we restated our decision that our view of traffic might be different than that of the transportation group, and it was worth including since it has such a large impact. • Goal 1 and Goal 4 repeat the wording of "natural," "buffer," and "recreational" applied to open space; perhaps this should be changed or supplemented to "natural," "developed," "buffer." • Goal 4, "Enhance the physical character of the town and its neighborhoods," some felt should be rephrased to address the "built up" character, to enhance the idea of neighborhoods, and to give more emphasis to "pedestrian" character.