A Community Discussion About Our Future

We’re Planning a Party!

We’re planning a party and we want you to come.  At least that is the way your steering committee is looking at our task.  We want an event that will be both fun and productive for you and the town.  For those new to this topic, “New Boston Speaks is a day and a half of open discussions for residents to speak their mind and identify concerns and issues affecting New Boston.  Discussions will focus on prioritizing town goals and creating solutions.  The outcome of New Boston Speaks will be an action plan for our town’s future.”  For this effort to work, we need a good turnout of concerned New Boston citizens.  It will be held on April 2^nd and 3^rd.  Mark your calendars now, and plan to bring your neighbors! 

Here is the steering committee that is organizing the event:

I hope you’ll see people you know in the list, maybe a friend or neighbor.  We have a good mix of people; some new to town and some long time residents, some young and (if you include me) some old, some with youngsters and some without, some working and some retired.  It’s a pretty good cross section of our town and that’s what we need to make this work.  At the actual event on April 2^nd and 3^rd, we need representatives from the entire town.  The combination of large and small group discussions will allow us to bring up those topics that need to be discussed as we move ahead. 

What will you get from committing a weekend to the town in which you live?  You’ll have a chance to be involved in guiding our future and improving the sense of community that we already have.  The reason we chose the gazebo as our logo was that it represented the volunteers that have made this town work so well.  We want to update a project list and get going on new ideas, involving more people.  It could be an immediate activity like helping with a proposed skateboard park, or a long-range goal such as planning for a future town building or an added town forest.  Another outcome will be a report of all our discussions and an action plan, all of which will be given to the Planning Board to be considered in the updating of our town Master Plan. 

Bring your Ideas 

The Steering Committee just planning the party - there is no predetermined list of items for discussion, no hidden agenda.  My comments above are just meant to be examples, not necessarily things we need to address right now.  We want this to be as free and open a discussion as we possibly can have.  The timing works out well.  It will be after the town meeting so there won’t be any political pressure to advance one idea over another.
 

To achieve that open and wide-ranging discussion, the UNH Cooperative Extension team will be here to start us off with some general topics on Friday night that will allow addressing the issues you want to discuss.  This is the same approach that they have successfully used in over 50 New Hampshire towns.  We’ll select Saturday’s discussion topics by voting on the results of Friday night.
 

You’ll have received an invitation in the mail by now.  Please respond by March 17^th so we can plan the food, childcare and transportation that will be required.  You can mail your response or drop it off at the town hall Planning office.  More information, including Frequently Asked Questions, History, etc., is available at the website www.newbostonspeaks.org
 

Remember, Time Spent on New Boston is not Wasted!

Ken Lombard
New Boston Speaks Steering Committee Member
www.newbostonspeaks.org