2021 Comprehensive Plan Implementation Oversight Committee annual report
The Comprehensive Plan Implementation Oversight Committee is responsible for monitoring the Town’s progress implementing recommendations from Belgrade’s 2014 Comprehensive Plan. We provide the Selectboard with an annual progress report and recommendations for the plan’s implementation.
This past year, the Committee assessed the Town’s progress in implementing recommendations from the Farming and Forestry, Public Services and Management, and Transportation chapters. The Committee also reviewed the status of the recommendations related to improving compliance with the Town’s various land use ordinances and providing a “level playing field” for landowners, developers and contractors who are to comply with these ordinances. Here is a summary of this past year’s key findings:
- Most plan recommendations regarding delivery of public services and the management of Town government have been completed or are well underway.
- Most Town boards or committees post their agendas and minutes, consistent with the plan’s goal to increase public access to Town proceedings.
- The plan contains 14 recommendations calling for improving compliance with land use ordinances. Our efforts to quantify the status and improvements in compliance rates were hampered by the lack of any record keeping. We relied instead on interviews with Code Enforcement Officer (CEO) Gary Fuller, and his personal assessment and best estimates. Additional funding approved by the 2018 Town meeting for the CEO allowed for the inspection of all developments permitted by the Planning Board and all citizen complaints received – clearly an important step forward. Regarding compliance rates, the CEO’s best estimate for the Town’s Shoreland Zoning and Commercial Development Review ordinances is that only 50 percent of all projects comply with each ordinance.
Based on these findings, we made the following recommendations to the Selectboard:
- Those Town boards and committees not yet doing so should be required to maintain as public records both meeting agendas and minutes, and post to the Town website.
- The town manager and CEO should develop and implement a simple record-keeping system to measure yearly compliance rates and year-to-year improvement, and to identify specific areas of non-compliance so solutions can be focused on the worst areas.
- The CEO should follow up each inspection with a letter documenting his findings and any needed remedial measures. Letters should also be provided to landowners whose projects comply as positive reinforcement.
The committee’s full report to the Selectboard is posted at townofbelgrade.com/compplancommittee. Our thanks to all who assisted us this past year.
Respectively submitted,
George Seel, Chair; Mary Vogel, Vice Chair; Michael Donohue, Kimberly Dallas, Patrick Donahue, Kathi Wall