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Date: 12/15/2021
WESTHAMPTON – Last year, town officials secured a planning grant from the state’s Municipal Vulnerability Program (MVP). This year the town won an action grant to bring the plans to fruition.
MVP helps cities and towns address and prevent climate-related problems. The grant awarded to Westhampton this year totals $237,516. According to Selectboard member Teri Anderson, the funded work will address four main efforts.
“These priorities were identified in the planning process, last year, along with other infrastructure actions that the town wants to consider,” Anderson said. “We felt tackling the visioning and long-range planning ... should be the first step in climate change action, to make sure the community is on the same page, as far as priorities and setting our overall vision for what we would like the town to look like for the next ten to twenty years.”
The first funded priority is a Master Plan for the Westhampton community. That work will begin soon and take a good part of the two years allowed for completion of projects. Anderson said the town couldn’t afford to write a Master Plan and this will be the town’s first.
“The cost of developing our own Master Plan, we wouldn’t be able to do it without this grant,” Anderson said. Sustainability and climate change will inform the document. “We’re looking to finish up the Open Space and Recreation Plan by the end of this fiscal year, June 30, 2022. The Master Plan will take longer.”
A rewrite of the town’s Open Space and Recreation policies is the second priority funded by the action grant. One of the four consultants funded, Conservation Works, a local organization, will assist with updating the town’s Open Space Plan.
Youth engagement is a priority of the MVP program and figures in Westhampton’s grant. The Cooler Communities program, fielded through the Grinspoon Foundation, leads students to create projects that teach sustainability and how to soften climate impacts. The MPV grant will underwrite a program that takes place in the high school of the Hampshire regional district.
Anderson said, “That will culminate in student projects next spring, with the hope of educating the public around climate change impacts, and asking them to take their own action toward sustainability.”
Social equity is another priority of the MVP program. Social equity helps communities become more diverse, which increases social resiliency, a consideration in times of difficult social transformation.
Human in Common, an organization that stages workshops on racial issues, will sensitize residents and staff to the need for equity and inclusion of under-represented groups.
“We’re working on developing the content,” Anderson said. “It’s a basic introduction to community inclusion, and introducing board members and town staff to concepts that will make our community more welcoming and inclusive for all people.”
Anderson told Reminder Publishing that infrastructure and other needs were also identified in the process of preparing the MVP grant application. Drainage and erosion control, and the repair of culverts, are areas of concern for the future.
“After we finish this phase of the grant, we’re eligible to apply for more grants for energy improvement (and) open space protection,” Anderson said. “We identified some priorities in the planning process (and) we would hope to apply for some hazard mitigation money to do some infrastructure Improvement.”
Anderson also said a Master Plan, and the other documents receiving an update under the action grant, are necessary for the town to apply for other grant programs, down the road.