As Labor Day passes, those of us remaining on the Island begin to transition from the fast pace of summer to the more measured rhythms of fall. For many of us, it is a time to take a deep breath, reconnect with our community and pick up the projects that we set aside in May.

The Tisbury planning board has chosen this time to convene community members to participate in a planning process that we call vision planning. This process will enable everyone who attends to look broadly at the town and gain a better understanding of the nature and importance of relationships within and between neighborhoods and between natural and built environments.

In the past the planning board has conducted surveys and developed draft plans. Nonetheless, Tisbury does not have a current master plan to guide local decision making or to inform public policies. Tisbury has zoning regulations based on the town’s historic land use patterns. These regulations may not adequately reflect the citizens’ aspirations for the future or their concern for the town’s historic scale.

As the year-round home port of the Steamship Authority, our town already serves as the gateway to the entire Island, facing all the challenges that this service creates for us. And in the near future our elected officials may need to make critical decisions to protect environmental resources, address the scale, scope and location of community infrastructure while responding to projected steadily rising sea levels.

Given the complex interrelationships between the natural and built systems, we may no longer be able to address individual issues or proposed projects in isolation. The members of the planning board believe that the town needs to produce a clear set of policies, plans and actions for guiding growth and to identify specific strategies that would secure support for projects that will improve the town.

As a first step in this direction, the planning board will sponsor multiple sessions of two citizen workshops intended to foster dialogue among the participants. The objective will be to identify shared community values, discuss citizen concerns, consider our town’s special strengths and then begin an attempt to spell out a shared vision for the future within the greater context of the Island.

Activities in the first workshop will encourage participants to describe how they use and value the community, identify and discuss challenges and opportunities, and begin to draft some planning parameters for the town.

The second workshop will present the findings of the first workshop to the participants, who will then try to agree on how to prioritize issues and consider alternatives by which those issues might be addressed. Together, the two workshops will result in a vision plan and implementation strategy to address priority actions and guide local decision making.

Each of the two workshops will be offered at three different times to accommodate various schedules. The first workshop is scheduled at the following times and locations: Tuesday, Sept. 30, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Tisbury Senior Center; Friday, Oct. 3, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Vineyard Haven library; and Saturday, Oct. 4, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Tisbury emergency services building.

The second set of workshops will be held in early November.

Tisbury residents have a big place in their hearts for this town, its history and traditions. The vision planning process can be an expression of our belief in Tisbury’s future. We urge the Tisbury community to participate in this process and play an active role in articulating a vision of our town’s future development.

Cheryl Doble is a member of the Tisbury planning board and coordinator for the town visioning project.