A draft vision for Shelter Island 2030 that values the community’s “unpretentious way of life” is emerging, and members of the Town’s Comprehensive Plan Advisory Committee seem generally pleased. Meantime, the group is contending with how best to report the results of a community survey.
(CPAC volunteers also reviewed a draft framework for the Comprehensive Plan Update, which will presented to the Town Board at the end of the year-long process. Read more in this Gazette post.)
On Monday, the volunteers spent a portion of their monthly Zoom meeting reviewing the Shelter Island 2030 draft authored by the Town’s hired planning consultants. Here’s the introduction:
“In 2030, Shelter Island is a welcoming community with a diverse mix of year-round and summer residents from all walks of life. Residents and visitors enjoy an unpretentious way of life in the Island’s tranquil neighborhoods and attractive village* centers. Focused on the simple pleasures of the land and sea, quiet beaches and starry nights, good food, music, friends and family, our community is knit together by an ethos of neighborliness, toleration and mutual care.”
[*Editor’s note: the planners use the term villages throughout their documents, but do not mean separate municipal entities]
Presented by consultant Larissa Brown of Larissa Brown + Associates, the vision is a work in progress, subject to change. “It is intended to be aspirational,” Brown said. Much of it is organized in bullet points:
- We are a family-friendly and aging-friendly community, supporting families with attainable housing, year-round livelihoods and an excellent school, while seniors can find the services and housing choices that allow them to remain on the Island.
- A balanced mix of year-round and seasonal economic activities sustains our quality of life providing year-round livelihoods as well as essential goods and services. World-class internet access connects our community to the global marketplace of ideas and commerce. A revitalized Town Center with a public water system and improvements to the Route 114 corridor invite new businesses. A vibrant community of farmers, baymen, artists, artisans and others helps to preserve and celebrate our extraordinary environment and rich cultural heritage.
- We are a regional leader in environmental stewardship, balancing growth and conservation while pursuing sustainability and adaptation to climate change through excellent ecosystem management and a transition to renewable energy sources. Our open spaces protect the Island’s drinking water aquifer and prevent contamination of ponds and wetlands. Greenways link wildlife habitat and recreation sites in a continuous network, preserving the health of the entire ecosystem and enhancing outdoor recreation.
- Sustainable mobility choices, such as walking, biking and electric vehicles build from the Island’s small size to enable people to move freely and safely while minimizing pollution, noise and greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.
- Town government is responsive, transparent and accountable. Public facilities and services are resource-efficient, well-maintained, cost-effective, sustainable, and resilient. The Town maximizes long-term benefits through improved planning, enforcement, implementation and coordination between departments and volunteer committees.
“Shelter Island is committed to preserving the essential elements of our community’s unique heritage by managing the impacts of changing regional environmental, economic and social conditions and seeking innovative solutions,” the concluding paragraph states. “Through an intentional process of planning and implementation, we are renewing our commitments to one another — young and old, full- and part-time residents — and to our special environment.”
CPAC feedback
CPAC volunteers expressed general approval, and offered specific suggestions for additions, deletions and clarifications.
“You’ve done a good job capturing a lot of things,” said Petra Schmidt, but “we may want to consider the order of the bullets. I do really have a question about how realistic is the farming, given our water situation. I don’t really see Shelter Island becoming a real farming community.”
“I think it looks really good,” said Meg Larsen, who recommended changing public water system to potable water system. “Otherwise, you’re not going to get very far with this.”
Sean Clark could not attend the meeting as he was on late duty as a Shelter Island police officer, but Larsen said he suggested modifying world-class internet to provide a more specific benchmark.
Kathleen DeRose praised the work saying, “These things are really hard to write.” The draft finds a good balance, she said, between “being visionary” but not “being out too far that the public won’t follow you.”
Rebecca Mundy echoed the sentiment. “I was quite impressed. It flowed very nicely. This is like a dream place,” she said. “I thought, how do we get to some of these things. But you do have to be aspirational so we have some place to shoot for.”
She agreed that public water system should be removed.
The Comprehensive Plan Update volunteer project manager, Edward Hindin, said it makes sense to swap in potable as it doesn’t prescribe “how we get there.” Jay Card said he’d like to widen the statement about potable water to include places other than the Center where water supplies also are stressed.
Lily Hoffman said the vision statement reads well, but wondered whether it was too much of an “all-in” scenario — a compilation of the most significant actions that had been presented at the second CPAC visioning workshop, rather than the range of options that participants had contemplated.
“This isn’t necessarily all going to be completed in 10 years,” Brown said, “but it’s about where are we going.”
Jo-Ann Robotti also was unable to attend, but Hindin read comments she’d submitted by email. The report seems generic, she wrote, asking that it be made more “specific to Shelter Island in the first paragraph … perhaps something about the ferries providing unique access to the Island.”
Larsen suggested adding “scenic ferry rides” to the list of attributes in the first sentence, as in: “… land and sea, quiet beaches, starry nights and scenic ferry rides.”
Robotti also wondered about green initiatives. “We are aspiring to be a green community,” she wrote, “But we don’t say anything specifically about public transportation.”
Hindin described the draft vision as a rallying call for leadership by the committee. The purpose is for the group to express, “what we think from what we’ve heard and what we believe should guide the Island going forward.”
“This is what we think, this is what will guide our planning going forward, if you agree with it, terrific, if you don’t let us know and we’ll try to make some adjustments along the way,” Hindin said.
“As a vision, it’s not prescribing how all of this would get funded,” Brown noted.
A final draft will eventually be posted on the Comprehensive Plan Update page on the Town website.
Survey results coming soon
CPAC members reviewed a new synopsis of the as yet unpublished results of the community-wide survey that took place in February. The volunteers had soundly rejected a previous draft (it relied too heavily on graphic elements like word clouds to express the results).
A subcommittee has been drafting a new report, which consultant Peter Flinker of Dodon & Flinker presented at Monday’s Zoom meeting, briefly scrolling through on a shared screen. It includes this statement to clarify the role of the survey:
“The purpose of the survey was to identify key issues that the Comprehensive Plan Update should focus on, to gather information and ideas about the Island’s defining strengths and weaknesses, and to get a general sense of what is important to Shelter Islanders.”
“It was not meant to be a vote or referendum on the issues, but rather to clearly identify the range of issues that people care about so that nothing is overlooked as the planning process moves forward.”
At visioning workshops that took place after the survey closed, some participants objected that the questionnaire was distributed beyond the Island — links were widely shared in local media and by committee members via their personal networks.
However, the results show a majority of respondents reported close connections to the Island — 89 percent said they live on the Island for some or part of the year. Another 17 percent said they work here. Just 5 percent said they were visitors. Most respondents, 67 percent said, they’ve been connected to the Island for 20 years or more.
The wording matters
Some CPAC volunteers expressed concern about how the wording of certain questions may have influenced the responses. For instance, one question asked: “How important are the following to you and your family” with options to rank from Very Important to Not Important issues such as water quality, visual character, and housing cost, among others.
Flinker said the subcommittee recommended highlighting responses to such questions with this note for readers: “The results might be different if the question were asked ‘How important is each issue to people on the Island.'”
But DeRose cautioned against second-guessing in reporting the results.
“We’re basically saying, had we asked a different question, we might have got a different answer,” she said. “We have a clear consensus here about concerns about water and a couple of other things. And some things that there’s slightly less consensus about. But, please, let’s not create a question that we didn’t answer and say we should’ve asked that question. … I think it confuses things.”
Hoffman said she wants to include the note. “When I answered these questions, I was thinking of the Island as a whole,” she said, implying that others may have been answering strictly for themselves.
Then — in a display of how just how difficult it can be to avoid editorializing about responses — Flinker said “obviously, the wealthier people on the Island, people who already own their homes, are less concerned about housing than people who are struggling to pay for housing.”
But respondents didn’t say they were “less concerned” about affordable housing or that they’re “struggling to pay for housing”; they were merely asked “how important is it to you and your family.”
Schmidt noted that the survey provided direction for the committee and practical instruction on how to word questions in future surveys. “We can change methodology, get more clarity, do forced ranking, etc.”
The draft synopsis acknowledges that the survey relied on a “convenience sample” approach — open to all who wanted to respond. Absent current reliable statistics for local demographics (2020 Census results won’t be ready for some time), the consultants say it’s hard to determine the degree to which the survey respondents were representative of Islanders.
“This suggests that we be cautious in using the survey data to draw conclusions about the opinions of Shelter Islanders overall,” the draft report says.
Hindin said the draft synopsis would be re-tooled given the latest input, and that he hoped to post it to the website later this week.
Reaching those not yet heard from
The group also discussed efforts to attract participation from groups that have not been represented thus far in two well-attended public workshops held via Zoom. Meg Larsen and Sean Clark, for example, hosted an informal weekend gathering aimed at younger families that drew lots of new participants.
Hindin asked all 12 CPAC volunteers to think about how they might reach out to other under-represented groups with an interest in the Island’s future. Among those mentioned were senior citizens, school children, college age Shelter Island School alumni, summer residents, and members of neighborhood association, golf or yacht clubs, and more.
A two-day planning charrette is also in the works. On the first evening, participants would be invited for a sociable talk about the planning efforts to date — this might include a gathering indoors or outdoors, depending on social distancing guidelines in place at the time. The following day, they’d work in small groups to tackle a specific planning project, such as updating the area in the Town Center along the Route 114 corridor. Dates in June or July are yet to be determined.
If you have comments or questions about the Comprehensive Plan Update, forward them to the committee by email to cpu@shelterislandtown.us.
Follow our Comprehensive Plan Update coverage in these Gazette posts.
