What would you like to see at Mason Station? Dec. 12, Wiscasset Comprehensive Plan Committee Chair Sarah Whitfield gave fellow committee members that example of “relevant (to) right now” questions they could ask in the town survey she hopes will open in late January. She said Wiscasset’s economic development director, Aaron Chrostowsky, gave her the idea to include in the survey some questions that laser into topics. 

Whitfield said instead of the 2021 survey’s asking how people value each of the schools, “could we ask ‘What would you like education to look like in Wiscasset?’”

Member Anne Leslie agreed that question “gets more at how people are feeling ...” She also said “provocative” questions like that sometimes get people engaged and could get them wanting to go to the public workshops the committee plans to schedule. 

Chrostowsky has helped with other towns’ comp plans and can help write and review this one, Whitfield said. “So that will be awesome.”

“Yeah, that’s wonderful,” Leslie said.

The single-resident occupancy (SRO) apartments commonspace plans to propose for upstairs at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church on Hodge Street came up. Senior Warden Jon Young has said dormers facing Hodge Street will be individual ones, “so that they fit in architecturally with other buildings in the neighborhood.”

Leslie said, as she and fellow committee member Peter Eaton work on the comp plan’s historical chapter, “There’s this intersection, of everything that’s gone on about St. Philip’s, with our chapter. It’s sort of laid bare the fact that nothing is protected in the village.”

Eaton suggested maybe having an ordinance to have a committee to oversee the village from a historical view. Whitfield noted Wiscasset had a historical preservation commission and got rid of it, but if Eaton wanted some specific ordinance change, he could propose it to the selectboard, which, if it thought the idea made sense, could have the ordinance review committee draft it, and a process including a public hearing could occur.

Leslie said the comp plan committee’s survey could be a starting point to gauge interest in preservation. “And if the survey comes back that they care a lot (about preservation), that will give more weight to efforts to try to protect the asset.”

Chrostowsky advised against one idea of Eaton’s, for a committee to advise the planning board. That would appear antagonistic, Chrostowsky said. “And I think ... you just don’t want to go down that path.” Working hard to educate people on the local history can help them see its importance, Chrostowsky said. For example, the “Museum in the Streets” self-guided tour in town does a “wonderful job ... I think somebody needs to kind of promote that,” he said.

Leslie concurred. “We who care have to build support, and appreciation and enthusiasm, because ... an ordinance will never pass unless there are enough people who say ‘We really care about this, and we’re willing to commit to some kind of preservation standards.’”

Both the survey and the comp plan committee’s planned public workshops on each chapter can help show the committee what is important to townspeople, Whitfield said. She hopes the public input will be illuminating on each topic the plan covers, “in terms of what the majority of the town wants,” she said.

Some meeting participants described the 2021 survey as unwieldy with its multiple choice responses and some things it asked about, like how much people value road signs. “I would hope most people value road signs. But I don’t know why that’s relevant to a comprehensive plan,” Whitfield said.

Like the last survey, this one can go online and have hard copies at the town office, Wiscasset Community Center and possibly elsewhere, Whitfield said. She wants to make sure the survey gets at what people want not only downtown, but throughout town. And Eaton wanted to make sure seasonal residents would take the survey. She will put it on Facebook, Whitfield said. A lot of seasonal residents are on social media, she said.