JANUARY, 2010 UPDATE ON COMPREHENSIVE PLAN

January 9, 2010
Dear Neighbor,
Happy New Year from the Comprehensive Plan Committee for the Town of Copake. We hope that this year will bring good things for you and your families, and also for our town.
We last sent out our first e-mail on December 13, 2009. We have continued to update our e-mail
list since that time, so hopefully this e-mail is reaching even more of you. We will be sending monthly e-mails, detailing our progress and in some cases eliciting further information from all of you.
NOVEMBER VISIONING WORKSHOP
As you know from our December report , we had our first town wide meeting in November.
That meeting was well attended. It was facilitated by Margaret Irwin, who is our consultant.
It represented the beginning of a town wide conversation about the future which we hope will continue through the months to come.
SURVEY RESULTS
Those of you who attended the November meeting know that our survey results were unveiled at that time. But the results are available now, online. In order to access the results, go to the Copake website, at http://www.copake.org/ Go to the Comprehensive Planning Committee link on the right hand side. When you reach our page, you will find many details about our Committee; if you want to see the survey results click on “Survey Results” on the left side of the page. Our member Charles Dodson has organized the results into several sections. You may read a summary of the results. Additionally, the survey invited comments and we received close to 5000 such responses. If you wish to read or download these comments, they are available
on the website as Adobe PDF files. (If you wish to view the survey results in a different format, you may also go to http://tinyurl.com/2009copakesurveyresults)

FOCUS GROUPS
In August we began to meet with groups of individuals in the town who had particular interests, needs or perspectives. The focus groups have included farmers, businesspeople, trades people, artists, individuals involved in the tourism and hospitality, representatives of not-for- profit groups, and members of our ambulance squad and fire department. We have a few groups left to meet with, including young people and the Copake police.

INTERACTION WITH NEIGHBORING TOWNS
This week, on Tuesday January 12, 2010, we will be meeting with representatives from the Comprehensive Plan Committees of both Ancram and Hillsdale. We are interested in learning about their work in comprehensive planning. We also want to explore whether there are certain issues confronting all three towns which might best be addressed through consolidated efforts.

PLANS FOR THE SPRING , SUMMER and FALL
We will continue to meet twice a month, at 7:30 p.m. on the second Tuesday and third Thursday. All of our meetings are open to the public.

Now that we have concluded most of our Focus Groups, and listened to the voice of Copake through the survey and the November meeting, we will begin to work on the actual Comprehensive Plan. In doing so, we will do our best to write a plan which will reflect your collective views. As we encounter issues where we think we need more input,
we will reach out to you via these e-mails.

We will be having another Town meeting in early summer. By that time we will be ready to present some of our ideas and hear more of yours. The actual plan will be drafted we hope, by the latter part of the summer. There is a review process required by State law, but eventually the Plan will be submitted to the Town Board for its approval.

During the months to come we will communicate with you through these monthly e-mails, and we welcome your responses. You may also keep track of our progress by reviewing our agendas and the minutes from our meetings which are posted on our website.

Thank you for your interest in our Committee, and we look forward to keeping in touch with you as our process unfolds. We hope that 2010 will be a great year for you—and for Copake!

Jeanne E. Mettler, Chair
Rus Davis
William F. Kiernan, Jr.
Marcia Becker
Dr.George Beneke
Frank Peteroy
Charles Dodson
Roberta Roll
Harvey Weber
Dan Haas


PS We are continuing to work on our e-mail list. If you got more than one copy of this, please let us know and we will correct that next time. If you know of someone who did not receive this e-mail and would like to get our reports, please tell us. Finally, if you do not wish to receive these monthly e-mails, please do tell us!

Also, if you missed our December update, or the November meeting, go to our website. The December update is available there now, and a Summary of the November meeting will be available later this week!