Hilltown CDC sets series of planning meetings

By OWEN BOSS
Staff Writer

Over the next four weeks, residents of the seven Hilltowns will have a chance to come together for public meetings aimed at setting priorities for community projects, acquiring grant funding to support them and gathering input from local residents.

Town officials from Chesterfield, Cummington, Goshen, Plainfield, Westhampton, Williamsburg and Worthington, will enlist the support of Community Development Corp. representatives to complete their town’s Community Development Strategy which is a seven-page document that summarizes the town’s planning efforts and outlines its goals.

Andrew Baker, the Hilltown CDC’s executive director, said completing each town’s community development strategy document will take several meetings and residents are strongly encouraged to attend. The first meeting, Baker said, focuses mainly on gathering public comment from residents looking to showcase a particular project. At a second, follow-up meeting a few weeks later, Baker said each town’s Board of Selectmen will review public input and decide which projects should be included in the final document.

“This is a way of saying here in these seven pages are our goals and here is our priority list of what we want to accomplish in the next three to five years,” Baker said. “And the projects don’t have to be necessarily block-grant related, they can be pretty much anything a resident wants to see officials do to improve the town.”

Baker said an annual update of a town’s development strategy is required to qualify for the state’s block-grant program.

“One other important piece of these meetings is that if someone wants to participate in block grant fuding, we need to first gather information about the town’s bonus points,” Baker said. “In order to get bonus points, which can be essential to getting a project funded, the town has to show evidence of another initiative that had been done without the support of block grant funding.”

Examples of such projects, Baker said, includes the construction of a new library in Westhampton and a home under construction for an injured Iraq War veteran.

For more information about the CDS review process or to request a copy of your town’s CDS document, residents are encouraged to contact Baker’s Hilltown CDC’s office at 413-296-4536, ext. 18 or visit the organization’s Web site at www.hilltowncdc.org.

The meetings begin Monday with one in Chesterfield at 5:30 p.m. in the Town Offices, 422 Main Road.

Others are: Worthington, Tuesday, 7:30 p.m., Town Hall, Huntington Road; Williamsburg: Thursday, 7:30 p.m., Town Hall, 141 Main St., Haydenville; Westhampton, Tuesday, Oct. 26, 7:30 p.m., Town Hall, 1 South Road; Plainfield: Tuesday, Oct. 27, 7 p.m., Town Hall, 304 Main St.; Cummington: Thursday, Oct. 29, 7 p.m., Cummington Community House, Main Street; Goshen: Monday, Nov. 9, 7 p.m., Town Hall, Main Street.

Owen Boss can be reached at oboss@gazettenet.com