This plan is about you — your community — and it’s critical to know what you think of it.”

Jim Riordan, senior project manager at Weston & Sampson

PORTSMOUTH — Armed with blue stickers and their own convictions, about 30 residents made their voices heard on the town’s draft Comprehensive Community Plan (CCP) during a public workshop at Portsmouth Middle School last week.

The April 3 workshop marked the first time when all 12 completed draft elements of the plan — covering topics such as land use, economic development, housing, recreation and more — were presented together publicly. (The entire plan can be viewed on the town’s website at www.portsmouthri.com.)

The comprehensive plan “sets forth a shared vision for the community — what we aspire to be in 20 years,” Town Planner Gary Crosby told the sparse turnout inside the school’s Little Theater. “And it lays out a specific plan that, if we follow it, we can achieve this shared vision.”

Although all municipalities in Rhode Island are required to have their CCPs updated every decade, Portsmouth’s hasn’t been revised since 2002 — and only then with a few amendments.

“Most of what we see in this plan dates back to 28 years ago. It’s time we update the plan,” said Mr. Crosby. 

Around the time he became acting town planner in 2012, Mr. Crosby said he started deconstructing the entire plan. “It very quickly became evident that we would really have to do a complete rewrite of the plan,” he said.

The resulting draft plan is the result of months of work by Mr. Crosby, the Planning Board, the Citizens Interested in the Comprehensive Community Planning Process Committee and other residents. The town also hired Weston & Sampson, of Reading, Mass., to help put the plan together.

“This is the first opportunity to present a completed plan to a wider audience, and it really kicks off the public comment process,” he said.

The individual goals and elements of the plan weren’t written in a vacuum. “A true comprehensive community plan has to cross-talk between all the different goals and elements,” said Mr. Crosby. In addition, a municipality’s CCP must also work together with neighboring communities, he said.

“This plan is about you — your community — and it’s critical to know what you think of it,” said Jim Riordan, senior project manager at Weston & Sampson.

The next step, said Mr. Riordan, will be a series of Planning Board hearings on the document, followed by a review by Statewide Planning, then Town Council hearings before it’s adopted locally, hopefully this summer. Statewide Planning will conduct a final review this fall, he said.

“I’m quite hopeful we’ll have one of these by Christmas for the new plan,” said Mr. Crosby as he held up a Statewide Planning certificate that ratified the current plan.  

Gallery session

The highlight of last week’s workshop was the gallery session, in which the 12 CCP elements were displayed on boards around the auditorium. Each element featured one or more goals, followed by corresponding policy statements on how to achieve them.

For example, one goal of the “Housing” element stated, “Guide future housing development that is in character with that of Portsmouth in general and that of individual neighborhoods in particular.” A policy statement under that goal read, “Promote opportunities to integrate affordable housing into existing neighborhoods.”

Participants roamed from station to station, reading the policy statements and affixing blue stickers to either the left (“agree”) or right (“disagree”) column for each one.

“These policy statements are really the goal of tonight’s workshop,” Mr. Crosby said. “These policy statements tell us how to approach unforeseen items. It really is a guide to future action.”

Participants overwhelmingly indicated their support for each element’s policy statements as presented. In fact, not one policy statement for any of the elements ended up with more “disagrees” than “agrees.”

Still, not every statement was unanimously received. 

The land use element, which drew a steady crowd and required two boards because it had 18 different policy statements, had its share of dissenters. A policy statement supporting limited commercial and residential development along the “West Side” of town “as part of mixed-use development projects only” was opposed by six people. 

Another five people disagreed with the statement, “Encourage in-fill development and re-development of vacant and underutilized parcels, especially those with adequate infrastructure and ready access to public parks.” 

Under the “Services & Facilities” element, several people disagreed with this policy statement: “Advance efficient and environmentally sensitive programs and practices to manage stormwater runoff and on-site wastewater treatment to mitigate adverse impacts on receiving waters.”

For the “Agricultural Resources” element, not everyone agreed with a policy statement that concluded the town should “continue to work with land trusts, nonprofits and other appropriate partners to target prime agricultural property for preservation.”

Still, there were far more blue dots affixed to the left-hand columns. 

Comment period continues

While he would like to have seen more people attend the workshop in addition to “the usual suspects,” Mr. Crosby said the meeting was a good start to the public comment period. There will be plenty of other opportunities, he said, for residents to speak out on the plan in the coming months. Or, as he put it, “to stick blue dots” on it.

“This is not my vision, this is not any one Town Council member’s vision or the Planning Board’s vision or any one citizen’s vision. It’s a shared vision,” Mr. Crosby said. “We want your help in creating that vision and fine-tuning what you see here, or completely rejecting what you see here.”