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Date: 11/22/2021
NORTHAMPTON – The city of Northampton recently received a community planning grant from the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development (EOHED) to update their 13-year-old Sustainable Comprehensive Plan.
With the grant, the city will merge other more recent plans into one document including, the 2021 Climate Resilience and Regeneration Plan, the 2018 Open Space, Recreation, and Multiuse Trail Plan; and the 2017 Pedestrian & Bicycle Comprehensive Plan.
According to state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, the plan is to have “real robust” community participation and engagement in how the document proceeds. She said she is looking forward particularly to how the community engagement goes given that there has been a lot of people in Northampton who have suggested better bicycle infrastructure within the city.
In 2008, the Sustainable Northampton Plan was created, in part, to fulfill requirements set out by Massachusetts General Law-which requires cities and towns to develop master plans in a comprehensive manner. This comprehensive plan is designed to provide a basis for decision-making regarding the long-term physical development of Northampton. One purpose of the state Zoning Act that requires such a plan is to encourage the most appropriate use of the land.
“We have four separate plans that are all really part of the city’s comprehensive plan, so we’re mostly trying to make it more accessible for the public,” said Wayne Feiden, the director of the city’s Planning & Sustainability department. “We don’t want plans to be sitting on the shelf for only staff members and boards. We want the public to see them.”
The grant, which amounted to $75,000, will allow the city to delete any overlaps, update any graphics, and make the pages of their plan shorter. The merge is non-substantive, according to Feiden, but with a merged document, the city can pursue more substantive projects over the next couple of years-including bringing in an historical preservation element.
While many plans are still in the early stages, Feiden said that implementing the city’s climate action plan is an important aspect of the merge. “Having a climate action plan change from being a free-standing document to being integrated into the overall document is important because we’ve done a lot of work on that,” said Feiden, adding that there is separate money to be used for a historic preservation plan as well. This plan will not be addressed until 2022, but the merging of the documents sets the base for that to happen.
“We also need to do more data collection,” said Feiden, when speaking on the climate action plan. “In 2008, we talked about climate change, but we didn’t talk about it nearly as much as we do today. So, that’s one of our key motivations, is putting climate in front and center in everything that we do.”
According to Sabadosa, the state of Massachusetts awarded $1 million of grant money to communities across the Commonwealth. The funds were divided across 16 different communities. Most towns and cities received $75,000, while some others received $50,000 depending on their situation.
Northampton conducted a public hearing on the merging of the documents during their Nov. 18 City Council meeting. Reminder Publishing will have more on that in the Dec. 2 issue.