Comprehensive Plan Committee to gather Amenia residents’ views

Comprehensive Plan Committee to gather Amenia residents’ views
Amenia Town Hall
Photo by John Coston

AMENIA — Following an initial presentation by planning consultants, the Comprehensive Plan Review Committee decided at its meeting on Tuesday, April 8, that the logical first step will be to invite broad public comment through a community-wide meeting likely to be scheduled in June.

“It’s about the engagement of the public,” said Tiffany Zezula, Deputy Director of the Land Use Law Center at Pace University in White Plains, as she reviewed the process involved in helping the town to develop comprehensive planning objectives and steps toward meeting those objectives.

The town is undertaking a review and update of the comprehensive plan, last updated in 2007. Experts usually recommend such updates every few years, Zezula said.

“We will work to convert public input into planning lingo,” Zezula said, describing the coordination between the Pace University center and Nexus Creative Design of Mt. Kisco, with specialty in community planning.

“Planning is one of the most important goals of local government,” Zezula said, noting that changes in local legislation and particularly local land use regulations need to agree with the comprehensive plan and its goals, objectives and strategies.
“The comprehensive plan gets used; it is your instruction manual,” Zezula said.

Modern planning has evolved, Zezula pointed out, from a silo approach of distinct issues such as housing, transportation, and the environment, to a more interrelated understanding of such topics and how one affects another.

Promoting public engagement will be the role of Nexus, as described by Anastasia Guadron, Principal in the Community Planning arm of Nexus. She reviewed various methods of widening community input, including input meetings, surveys and additional ways of “widening the net.”

A suggested calendar for the information gathering aspect, outlined by Zezula, might see a branding of the project and spreading the word happening from April to July, with public engagement sessions scheduled in June.

Other engagement tools such as surveys and pop-up info booths at town events provide options that could be initiated in June and July. August becomes the target month for town goal refinement.

Latest News

Juneteenth and Mumbet’s legacy

Sheffield resident, singer Wanda Houston will play Mumbet in "1781" on June 19 at 7 p.m. at The Center on Main, Falls Village.

Jeffery Serratt

In August of 1781, after spending thirty years as an enslaved woman in the household of Colonel John Ashley in Sheffield, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Freeman, also known as Mumbet, was the first enslaved person to sue for her freedom in court. At the time of her trial there were 5,000 enslaved people in the state. MumBet’s legal victory set a precedent for the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts in 1790, the first in the nation. She took the name Elizabeth Freeman.

Local playwrights Lonnie Carter and Linda Rossi will tell her story in a staged reading of “1781” to celebrate Juneteenth, ay 7 p.m. at The Center on Main in Falls Village, Connecticut.Singer Wanda Houston will play MumBet, joined by actors Chantell McCulloch, Tarik Shah, Kim Canning, Sherie Berk, Howard Platt, Gloria Parker and Ruby Cameron Miller. Musical composer Donald Sosin added, “MumBet is an American hero whose story deserves to be known much more widely.”

Keep ReadingShow less
A sweet collaboration with students in Torrington

The new mural painted by students at Saint John Paul The Great Academy in Torrington, Connecticut.

Photo by Kristy Barto, owner of The Nutmeg Fudge Company

Thanks to a unique collaboration between The Nutmeg Fudge Company, local artist Gerald Incandela, and Saint John Paul The Great Academy in Torrington, Connecticut a mural — designed and painted entirely by students — now graces the interior of the fudge company.

The Nutmeg Fudge Company owner Kristy Barto was looking to brighten her party space with a mural that celebrated both old and new Torrington. She worked with school board member Susan Cook and Incandela to reach out to the Academy’s art teacher, Rachael Martinelli.

Keep ReadingShow less
In the company of artists

Curator Henry Klimowicz, left, with artists Brigitta Varadi and Amy Podmore at The Re Institute

Aida Laleian

For anyone who wants a deeper glimpse into how art comes about, an on-site artist talk is a rich experience worth the trip.On Saturday, June 14, Henry Klimowicz’s cavernous Re Institute — a vast, converted 1960’s barn north of Millerton — hosted Amy Podmore and Brigitta Varadi, who elucidated their process to a small but engaged crowd amid the installation of sculptures and two remarkable videos.

Though they were all there at different times, a common thread among Klimowicz, Podmore and Varadi is their experience of New Hampshire’s famed MacDowell Colony. The silence, the safety of being able to walk in the woods at night, and the camaraderie of other working artists are precious goads to hardworking creativity. For his part, for fifteen years, Klimowicz has promoted community among thousands of participating artists, in the hope that the pairs or groups he shows together will always be linked. “To be an artist,” he stressed, “is to be among other artists.”

Keep ReadingShow less