by Danielle Frawley

The Town Plan Opinion Survey is nearly ready to be filled out by Shelburne residents. Planning Commission members went through every question at the last meeting to ensure that timely issues were raised, and that they would receive the most helpful answers to deal with Town issues: development in the village, planning on the Route 7 Corridor, and transportation connections. In the next few weeks the survey will be distributed as an insert in the Shelburne News and will be available online and in hard copy. To make certain the survey format is appropriate the commission worked with Becky Jewitt of the Windward Group and other experts to put together the survey. A statistics' class at UVM will analyze the answers from the survey and give the Planning Commission all data.

Town Plan input
In line with Town Plan discussion was input from the Historic Preservation and Review Commission (HPRC) for the Town Plan re-write. Long-time board member Dorothea Penar said the commission would like to educate residents about what the HPRC actually does.

"The HPRC gives you a tool to differentiate us [Shelburne] from other towns," explained Penar. "It does not mean that the Town has to look like a museum, historic preservation and review makes Shelburne more authentic and unique [as compared to other towns]."

One comment by Planning Commission members was that the "significant views" the HPRC mentions in their section of the Town Plan should somehow be mapped out. Currently, there is a Scenic View Map. Commission members suggested that either the significant views be updated on that map, or a new map be created. Currently, the Town has no jurisdiction over where solar panels are placed. Commission member Daren Jorgensen thought that if significant views could be defined on a map it would give the Town some kind of foundation to disagree about the placement of the panels.

Regional Plan update
Charlie Baker with the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission (CCRPC) was at the Planning Commission meeting to show the commission the first draft of an updated regional planning map. The map includes all of the municipalities in Chittenden County, and has them divided up into planning areas: center, enterprise, metro, rural, suburban, and village. The CCRPC has defined each area and municipalities in Chittenden County vary. The majority of Shelburne was mapped out as suburban, with a small portion defined as village.

Suburban planning areas are defined as "areas near a center planning area, metro planning area, village planning area, or enterprise planning area where local zoning authorizes future development to occur at compatible scales, densities, and uses with existing development.
Village planning areas are defined as "areas where local zoning authorizes a variety of future residential and non-residential development at densities and scales in keeping with the character of a Vermont village.

Commission members thought that a third district should be added to Shelburne: an enterprise area to define the Commerce and Industry South District, as well as Harbor Industries and Pizzagalli Construction.

Enterprise planning areas are considered "areas where local zoning authorizes a future concentration of employment uses that attract workers from the county and multicounty region.
Baker took down the commission's comments, and will go back to the CCRPC and make changes and come back to Shelburne with an updated map.