Comprehensive Plan committee mapping future steps: Will make community outreach for input

Put a group of intelligent, hard working and dedicated people in a room and watch them “make the sausage.” It gets messy — you may not be fascinated by how the sausage is made — but the end result in this case was positive.

The Comprehensive Plan Advisory Committee and Task Force Monday night began drafting the structure that will guide creation of “a functional working document.”

A municipality’s Comprehensive Plan dictates policy on multiple fronts, including development, land use, transportation and housing. In 1994, a Comprehensive Plan was adopted by a Town Board resolution. A seven-month effort of discussion and research in 2008 produced an update to that plan, but the board rejected it.

Committee members hope it will become a map for determining Shelter Island’s future, according to Task Force member and Councilwoman Meg Larsen.

The hour and a half discussion dealt with issues and crafting a vision statement. Given that the 10 members of the Advisory Committee were all involved in the initial effort to write a fresh Comprehensive Plan, they have strong opinions from numerous meetings and outreach to the public. No one in the room was shy about expressing contrary opinions such as those who thought commercial development is not an issue for the Town.

In the words of one member, commercial development needs customers and some businesses have failed while others barely survived through the pandemic.

Sean Clark noted that in years past there were more commercial businesses than today.

Changes in some businesses have resulted from new ownership, but unlike areas farther west on Long Island, or on the North and South forks, there’s unlikely to be types of businesses looking to open on Shelter Island that would be detrimental to the environment or pose other problems.

Some members didn’t like a reference to “Hamptonization” of Shelter Island, believing it unnecessary to use that term. There’s concern about large houses, but some thought that could be controlled with zoning enforcement.

To get the structure and some basic language further defined, members agreed to a meeting on March 14 to try to finish that effort so they can move with outreach to the community and filling in segments of the report they will eventually submit to the Town Board.

Plans call for ongoing meetings with the public to ensure voices from all segments of the community are heard and a consensus established that a new plan is a product of the many, not a few.

Everyone agreed to a detailed index to help current and future Town Boards to easily access relevant sections of the plan as they considered legislation and policies.

Following the March 14 meeting, another session will be held two weeks later to begin planning outreach sessions and starting to develop sections of a the new plan.