Commission Begins Islandwide Planning

Three-Year Initiative Starts in January as MVC Updates Comprehensive
Plan with Eye Toward Deep Study of Issues

By IAN FEIN

The Martha's Vineyard Commission will kick off a three-year
Islandwide planning effort in 2005, hoping to develop a comprehensive
set of guidelines by which the commission and individual towns can
manage future growth on the Vineyard.

"It's long overdue and it's needed
desperately," said commission member Nathaniel Orleans, who
introduced the idea last spring.

The commission's enabling legislation requires that it serve
as the planning agency for the Island. But Mr. Orleans and other
commission members say that in recent years the commission's
extensive review responsibilities have eclipsed its planning efforts.

"For the last 15 years the commission has not, in an organized
fashion, taken a look at the Island as a whole on a comprehensive
basis," Mr. Orleans said.

The commission's last comprehensive plan - the
Martha's Vineyard Regional Island Plan - was written in 1991
and is now largely out of date.

With the new planning effort the MVC hopes both to update the Island
Plan and make it more complete, delving more deeply into key issues and
identifying links between them.

"We need to look at the issues we have to face and what the
relationships are among those issues," he explained. "We can
talk, for example, all we want about affordable housing. But we have to
remember that it has an impact on other areas, such as transportation,
economic development, the environment - you name it."

A preliminary list of topics that the plan will address includes:
growth management, housing, economic development, water quality,
transportation, open space and natural resources, cultural resources,
public services and infrastructure.

The MVC wants to draft a background document for each topic,
explaining its historic and geographic context, noting the current
status, projecting a future scenario and presenting ways that similar
communities have dealt with them.

The commission would then work with the Island towns to identify
objectives for each topic and develop policies to achieve those goals.
Once adopted as the official regional plan, the objectives and policies
would provide a road map to the towns and the commission regarding
regulatory decisions.

"It would be like a toolbox of potential strategies for each
issue, so that towns will have an opportunity to choose the strategy
that they feel best fits their character," Mr. Orleans said.

Much of the information to be included in the Islandwide plan has
already been gathered by previous planning studies, but never has it all
been assembled into one comprehensive document.

The first year of the planning process will be spent mostly
collecting all the data already available. The commission can then
determine what additional information is needed and commence research on
topics that may not have been adequately studied such as the Island
economy.

In its draft budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which has not yet
been approved, the commission envisions spending an additional $120,000
on the planning process. The commission wants to raise two-thirds of
that - or $80,000 - from grants and contributions before
asking the six Island towns to cover the remaining $40,000 in costs.

MVC representatives will meet with Island selectmen and other town
boards in January to introduce the planning effort and try to rally
support.

"A lot of its success is going to depend on what kind of
cooperation we're able to solicit from the towns and people across
the Island who are interested in seeing this done," Mr. Orleans
said.

The completed plan would not be subject to town approval, nor would
it bind the towns in any way. The commission wants the plan to reflect
the opinions of residents and leaders of each town.

"The plan will not have teeth in it in the sense of having an
enforcement code," Mr. Orleans explained. "But we all hope
that it will have enough common sense and agreement in it that
it's something the towns will go ahead and do as they see in their
best interests."

To develop a regional consensus, the commission will try to enlist
the involvement of town governments, community organizations and the
general public through outreach efforts.

However, Mr. Orleans expects the planning effort will be met by some
opposition.

"There are people on the Island who are not enthusiastic about
planning - whether it be planning for their own towns or the
Island as a whole," he said. "They feel more comfortable
dealing with issues on a case-by-case basis, which is not unusual, and
in some cases understandable. But we need this comprehensive plan.
We've already waited too long."