Wiscasset’s comprehensive plan committee next month will consider surveying townspeople again. Members touched on the idea Aug. 9, in a meeting Chair Sarah Whitfield said was the first since last summer. The panel started work in July 2019 on the next 10-year comp plan, restarted work in February 2021 and made progress for over a year, according to Wiscasset Newspaper files.

Whitfield said the pandemic contributed to the delay, as did her not knowing, when she took over as chair, that months later she was also going to become chair of the selectboard. “But I’m excited to get going again,” Whitfield told the meeting at the town office and over Zoom and YouTube.

Of 13 planned chapters for the next comp plan, “nine at least have (had) some initial updates or have been in process, so (we are) not starting from scratch. So that's great,” Whitfield said. And she said the committee will have Wiscasset data from the state that is only a few months old.

That information, from traffic counts to protected plant and animal species, will help the committee answer questions on a checklist the state offers as “Cliff  Notes” to writing a comp plan, Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission’s Emily Rabbe said. She said the state requires a comp plan every 10 years, but has not held Wiscasset to that due to the pandemic and the time a plan can take a town. Given the committee’s prior work, the plan could take more like 12 to 18 months than the two years they tend to take, she said.

A comp plan is a lot of work and can feel a little overwhelming, especially at the kickoff meeting, but this is a “huge opportunity” for Wiscasset to consider what it wants for its future, Rabbe said. And this is a “really exciting” time for Wiscasset, with a “robust” broadband committee and with other committees focused on the waterfront and on climate change, all of which can help inform the comp plan, she added.

Through those groups, the town is already envisioning the future, so invite them to be part of the process, Rabbe said. “I think that you’re going to be very successful ... because you’ve already been really doing this work. It’s just taking all of these (groups) and then coming together to put together one document.”

Whitfield concurred. “And I’d really like to involve a lot more people,” whether through a survey or discussion, she said. “This I’m hoping will be the committee that really draws in a very large swath of different perspectives” from around town. “Because otherwise it doesn’t reflect the whole community.”

The last of about 215 responses to the 2021 survey was received in early 2022, Whitfield said. If the committee does another, it could be shorter and would “reflect how things have changed,” she said. “And we have new people in town, too,” Heather Jones observed.

Sept. 13, the committee will mull a survey and start assigning members to chapters of the plan. The committee will also consider rotating the chairmanship, like Rabbe said Nobleboro did. “Yeah, kind of loved the rotating chair (idea),” Whitfield said smiling.