Reporter editorial: Your voice can influence town development

A very dedicated and hard working group of Islanders — full- and part-timers — led by Project Director Ed Hindin and Massachusetts consultants Peter Flinker of Dodson and Flinker in Florence and Larissa Brown of Larissa Brown & Associates in Cambridge — have spent months helping to update a previous Comprehensive Plan to guide development of the town.

They have studied the 1993 Comprehensive Plan and another that was attempted but never adopted in 2008 and were guided by the two consultants and Councilmen Mike Bebon and Albert Dickson about what areas such a plan should include.

Early on, Ms. Brown told them the most successful Comprehensive Plans weren’t those that were laid down by outside professional consultants but bubbled up from the community reflecting the uniqueness of the community.

They took that advice seriously and began reaching out to the community individually about what people wanted in a plan meant to guide development for at least 10 and very possibly more years.

The next step was a survey of a draft called Shelter Island 2020, a look at where the town is now. To determine where you’re going in the future, you need to understand where you’re starting in the present.

The survey about the present status of the town along with the draft has been live online for a couple of weeks and respondents can continue to access that survey through today, March 12.

If you haven’t taken time to respond, the survey is available on the town website under a tab marked Comprehensive Plan. Hard copies are available at the Shelter Island Library and Senior Center and at some businesses. Take the time — just a brief few minutes of your day — to take that survey.

On March 18 between 6 and 8 p.m. a virtual forum via Zoom will allow the public to weigh in so ideas can be incorporated into the final Comprehensive Plan.

The virtual workshop will help identify the Island’s strengths and weaknesses and focus on opportunities and threats posed by ongoing local, regional and global changes.

What the Advisory Board wants to hear from participants is what they see as imperatives that must be in the new plan and challenges to overcoming threats in order to take advantage of opportunities.

Details on accessing the March 18 session will be posted on the town website on March 18.

Town Board members have pledged this Comprehensive Plan won’t just be a document that sits on a self, largely ignored. It will be an ongoing reference point so that issues the town confronts will be judged in line with what town residents have said about how they want to see their town develop.

If you fail to participate, the town could well develop in ways that won’t please you.

Now is the time to make sure your voice is heard and to lobby for your ideas so Shelter Island will be all it can be in the future.

Ground rules for political letters this election season

Island political parties have been selecting candidates and with that comes another early start to the election season.

With that in mind, we’ve also dusted off our biennial editorial about rules for the town election season a little early.

We ask those who seek office to stick to the issues and abide by our general letters policy, which limits individuals to two letters per calendar month. That also means keeping letters to under 400 words and understanding that they will be edited as we deem fair and appropriate.

Aside from a single introductory letter from each candidate, this isn’t the place for self-promotion and resume dumping. We ask that any additional letters or OpEd submissions focus on a single topic or event and that you weigh in only once on any given topic.

You should expect that we will allow your opponent to respond in a subsequent letter or Prose & Comments piece, with no additional back and forth beyond that. We also will not allow a single candidate to hijack our opinion pages with repeated editorials or letters, so choose your words wisely.

For letter writers who do stick to the issues and call out officials or others — including their opponents — on their actions or positions, remember to keep it civil.

We live in a small town and today’s adversaries can be tomorrow’s friends and neighbors. That’s not a prohibition against tough criticism, but it is a ban on nasty personal attacks.

Also, if you belong to a local political committee or work for someone already in office, we ask that you identify yourself as such. If you forget, we’ll do it for you.

We also ask that political advertisements from fringe committees be submitted with the name of a sponsoring individual on them. Our readers deserve to know who is behind a certain campaign.

Lastly, we ask you to keep in mind that we will not publish political letters in print beyond the Oct. 21 edition — with the exception of allowing a nominated candidate to address a claim made against them in that week’s paper. We reserve the right to allow online-only submissions beyond that date, but will limit them to special circumstances and newly raised issues.

We wish each of the candidates good luck as their campaigns get underway.