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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2000-04-18-MGWG-min.pdf Thursday,April 20, 2000 minutes for 4/18 meeting Page:1 Subject: minutes for 4/18 meeting Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2000 14:39:27 -0500 Lexington 20/20 Managing Growth Working Group Meeting Minutes Date: Tuesday, April 18, 2000 at 7 pm Location: Room 111, Town Offices Attendees: Maryann McCall-Taylor, Gary Fallick, Josh Murray, 2 +J Karl Kastorf, Tom Harden, John Frey, Ione Garing, Mike Hanauer, 12 vol{S d� Larry Belvin, Lee Sinai, Suzanne Caton, Fred Merrill, Jerry Moloney, Marianne Lazarus, Ed Vail Meeting was called to order at 7 pm by chairperson Tom Harden. Tom Harden proposed the following agenda, which was accepted: —1. Volunteer scribe ,. Approval of previous minutes 3. Media contact volunteer 4. Review of schedule and deadlines 5. Public outreach plan 6. Discussion of vision/goals Agenda Item 1. Scribe: Suzanne Caton Agenda Item 2. Minutes of 3/16/00 as amended and resent on 4/8/00 were approved. Minutes of 4/6/00 were approved. Agenda Item 3. Tom Harden explained that the Lexington 2020 Steering Committee has asked the Lexington Minuteman to cover the progress of 2020 as the visions come together. The Minuteman editor asked for a list of names of Work Group contacts for additional information. Tom Harden asked for a volunteer to act as a media contact for our working group. Mike Hanauer volunteered. Suzanne Caton will let Monica Tutushka know that Mike is our contact person. Agenda Item 4. _om Harden listed the following schedule & deadlines: mailbox:/Macintosh%2OHD/System%20Folder/ Preferences/Netscape%20Users/ -Thursday,April 20, 2000 minutes for 4/18 meeting Page:2 April 26 Group meeting with Planning Board. Probable location and time: 8 pm, Selectmen's Meeting Room, Town Offices May 1 Deadline for exchanging draft visions and goal matrices with other workgroups May 4 Next regular working group meeting. Location and time: 7 pm, Room 111, Town Offices. May 9 A joint Work Group meeting will be held with members of all 6 workgroups to discuss each others' visions and goals and share thinking May 17 Draft Work Group reports are due to the Steering Committee Early June Review of all Work Group draft reports by SC and CPG and feedback to the groups will be completed June 12 Deadline for submission of final Work Group reports Week of June 12 Final meeting will be scheduled the week of June 12. This will be a joint CPG-Work Group meeting. .sue to the tight schedule for delivering documents and the expected continued work after May 17, Tom Harden suggested that this working group set up additional meetings. After group discussion, the following additional meeting dates were agreed to: Tuesday, 5/16 Tuesday, 5/30 Tuesday, 6/6 . Marianne Lazarus volunteered to contact the Town Offices to arrange for these meetings. Karl Kastorf noted that historically, we have needed 2 weeks to review group documents, which means that we need to have a draft of goals by 5/4. Fred Merrill told the group that all the working group reports will be combined and synthesized, then presented to the whole town during the summer. Agenda Item 5. The group discussed our public outreach plan. Larry Belvin mentioned that the public meeting that the Transportation working group organized attracted only one person from the general public. iom Harden suggested that our meeting with the Planning Board could be our group's public outreach activity. He then asked m ai I box:/Macintosh%20H D/System%20Folder/ Preferences/Netscape%20Users/ •Thursday,April 20, 2000 minutes for 4/18 meeting Page:3 Fred Merrill for suggestions about how the meeting should be handled. 'gyred suggested the following: We should brief the board on the work our group has done so far. We should summarize what we are doing, what we consider the top issues that have come out of our group discussions, what are-the issues that we can and can't agree on. 2. We should get an update from the Planning Board on what they are doing currently. Fred mentioned that they are working on the land use element of the Comprehensive Plan -- analysis of underdeveloped land in the Town at the micro level. Fred expressed the opinion that the goals that we are developing should provide direction to the Planning Board's work in the future. Our goals should provide policy guidelines for the Board's future efforts. It was agreed that we should try to give Maryann McCall-Taylor a copy of our goals document before the meeting date so she can add it to the packages given to the Planning Board members before the meeting. Karl Kastorf will send her a copy of the document. Several group members expressed the opinion that the Planning Board needs to finish the Comprehensive Plan within a reasonable time frame. Group members asked Fred what he felt the Board needed to finish its Comprehensive Plan work -- more resources, time, and money were mentioned. Terry Moloney asked Fred Merrill whether we can ask the Planning Board nor information on what methods might be available to Lexington to stop (or manage) growth. Fred replied that the Planning Board does not address how to stop growth, only how to manage it. However, Fred encouraged the group to bring up these types of issues at the meeting. Tom Harden asked the group whether they felt that the meeting with the Planning Board fulfilled our public outreach requirement. Several group members expressed opinions that the meeting was not enough. Larry Belvin said that he was willing to knock on doors to get further feedback on our goals. Jerry Moloney expressed the concern that we need more feedback from the rest of the community. John Frey suggested that neighborhood associations should be contacted as a possible source of feedback. Tom Harden noted that we are short on time to make this type of contact and then fold any feedback into our report. He suggested that those interested in organizing more outreach activities should form a committee to discuss options and bring suggestions to the next group meeting. Larry Belvin agreed to chair the committee. Anyone who would like to uggest further outreach activities should contact Larry. Mike Hanauer noted that he believes that we, the members of the working mailbox:/Macintosh%20 H D/System%20Folder/ Preferences/Netscape%20Users/ Thursday,April 20, 2000 minutes for 4/18 meeting Page:4 group, provide the grass roots opinions of the community and that the CPG will also provide diversity as they review our reports. Agenda Item 6. To start the discussion of our goals, Tom Harden asked group members to list the issues that needed to be discussed. The following issues were suggested: 1. The conflict between no growth and managed growth 2. The need to add a sustainability objective to Goal 6 Marianne Lazarus expressed the desire for the group to address the results of actions taken as part of our goals. The group decided that our vision statement should assume certain outcomes, which would then allow us to work back to the goals and actions -- not try to forecast the results of actions. The group discussed what "managed growth" means versus "no growth. " John Frey suggested that perhaps we should be talking about "change" rather than growth. Maybe we should not say "no growth" but rather allow more density in some areas, less density in others, to try to improve the quality of development, and end up with a better town than we started with. Tom Harden and Jerry Moloney brought up the concept of "filters" that we can define that would make sure that the kind of growth we want occurs. Tom reiterated that we need to focus on how we want the town to look in 20 years. Mike Hanauer explained that when he talks of "no growth, " he is talking 'bout growth within various frameworks (amount of population, traffic ✓olume, water usage) -- we must figure out how to find solutions to growth problems within the frameworks. The group started discussing objective 1.2 from the draft goals document. Several people objected to the suggestion that all development on previously undeveloped land should stop. Karl Kastorf moved that we remove objective 1.2 from the goals document. Lee Sinai seconded the motion. There was further discussion, including suggestions that we merely modify the content of 1.2 to fit it into objective 061 PretLi': 1.1. A vote was taken on the motion, and it was passed 9 yes votes to 4 no votes. Att dVeu.'S Lo u e to Further discussion about issues related to undeveloped buildable lots (pApattt, t) indicated divergent opinions within the group and no consensus was reached on how Pt these issues should be treated in our report. Mike Hanauer read his proposed objective to be added to goal 6. This objective referred to implementing sustainability at the town level. Karl Kastorf noted that he does not understand what sustainability is, which tarted a group discussion of whether a specific objective related to justainability should be included in the goals document. Tom Harden and others stated mai lbox:/Macintosh%2OHD/System%20Folder/ Preferences/Netscape%20Users/ Thursday,April 20, 2000 minutes for 4/18 meeting Page:5 that they think that the content of Mike's sustainability objective is covered in the existing -foals already. It was also suggested that the goals of sustainability _Light be explicitly discussed in the text of the report, without adding an objective devoted to sustainability. At the end of the discussion, a vote was taken indicating support for including the concept of sustainability in our final document. Eight members voted in favor, 2 members voted against, and 3 abstained. Mike Hanauer expressed the feeling that his request to add an objective about sustainability to our document was unfairly denied, given that other members were able to add objectives without any hindrance. Since several members of the group have not seen the contents of the objective, Mike agreed to send the exact wording of the objective he wants to add to the members of the group via email before our next regular meeting. The meeting was adjourned at 9:30 pm. mailbox:/Macintosh%20 HD/System%20Folder/ Preferences/Netscape%20Users/