As Wiscasset’s comprehensive plan committee on Thursday night, Feb. 15 honed questions for an upcoming survey, participants also pondered who should be able to take it.

The draft survey asks how long the taker has lived in Wiscasset; that question’s multiple choice answers include an option to state the person does not live there. And Chair Sarah Whitfield said she would like Wiscasset business owners who do not live in Wiscasset to be able to take the survey. 

“But do we want random people that don’t live or have a business here filling it out? Is that going to skew our results,” Sherri Dunbar asked. 

“I think we can separate them when we have the results, if we want to,” Whitfield said. Besides the question about how long the person has lived in town, plans in the draft survey refer respondents to a map Whitfield said will how the town in four parts, based on streets; respondents would then indicate which of the four they live in; this question, too, has an option to state the person does not live in Wiscasset.

Ways discussed to get the survey to people included Wiscasset Area Chamber of Commerce, the schools, Wiscasset Community Center, the town’s website at wiscasset.org and the town’s message service textmygov, a newspaper article, churches, the yacht club, Facebook, Instagram and possibly businesses. 

The committee hoped to have the survey open March 1. Participants discussed running it until the end of May, when seasonal residents have returned, or possibly through June 11, when Wiscasset does its annual town budget and other voting at the polls. “That is one of our biggest turnouts in terms of elections, so I think we could get a bunch more people to fill it out,” Whitfield said.