Thinking was creative March 20 when Wiscasset comprehensive plan committee members and others mulled how to get the most out of public workshops to help inform the plan. Ideas included attendees’ placing stickers on maps to show parts of town they like and parts that could be improved; and receiving play money to put into empty pretzel boxes representing education, transportation and other topics. 

 

A workshop-goer could spread their “planning bucks” among the boxes or place them all in one, if that’s where they think the town should invest in planning, Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission Executive Director Emily Rabbe said. “So we’re going to be eating a lot of pretzels,” she said to laughter. 

 

Participants said the workshop exercises would engage people, and quantify opinions; if attendees used red, yellow and green stickers to show their views, a bunch of green ones, for example, on a statement would mean all those people strongly agreed with it. And if people want to, they can share why they felt that way, Rabbe said. 

 

“We want to try to get meaningful, but also measurable feedback (by) having people get up out of their seats, being able to provide feedback in kind of fun, interactive ways, but it also provides us with a measurement,” Rabbe said. “Rather than only hear what people are saying and try to translate that into something how we interpret it, also having feedback that is quantifiable.”

 

Some of those activities could also work at a manned table at Wiscasset Art Walk and other events, to reach even more people, participants said. 

 

When they eyed scheduling certain topics into workshops together – possibly waterfront with natural resources and climate change – Caussaundra Rose of Wiscasset’s Climate Action Team said that topic overlaps with others such as transportation, clean energy, education, economic development and town buildings. “I’d expect climate change would probably come up in multiple workshops ... so I wouldn’t necessarily silo it in one workshop ... It just is unfortunately one of these big subjects that touches on a lot of potential areas of the comprehensive plan,” Rose said.

 

Anne Leslie called that a really good point. Maybe climate change could be part of a workshop, but also be included in questions asked at other workshops,

Selectboard and Comprehensive Plan Committee Chair Sarah Whitfield suggested.

 

The committee meets next at 6 p.m. April 17 at the town office and over Zoom, when they will keep planning the first workshop. They tentatively set it for 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, May 11, at Wiscasset Community Center if it is available.

 

Plans called for the public survey to open soon. March 20 meeting participants discussed possibly including a way for survey takers to enter a raffle.