Dear Editor,

Townspeople and town staff are working on Envision 2030, which was formed to give direction to concrete planning priorities which will appear in the next Comp Plan. This vision has been guided so far by 60 electronic surveys submitted via the town website by the public, thirty town staff and committee members survey responses, and dozens of other individuals who have weighed in throughout the process. While the electronic surveys were very valuable in identifying a number of common points of interest within our town, some key questions have yet to be discussed.

As a member of four subcommittees on the Envision 2030 committee, I’ve found that the collective vision of the group is still very much a work in progress, as the committees begin to collate more town input and determine goals and objectives that have been suggested. (Town Hall estimates as many as 200 comments, surveys, and participants to date, some of them from the 1600 plus registered voters in Nederland, some received from among the thousands of other stakeholders near Nederland.)

The Board of Trustees will review a group of statements from the committees, along with a copy of the last Envision statement (2020) for inclusion for 2030 on June 15th. On Tuesday, July 6th they will consider adoption. I’m encouraging the board and the committee to adopt any language as provisional, so that broader public outreach which will take place in the fall can be reviewed and factored into a truly unique, unambiguous document.

The key question as yet unasked, and so unanswered, appears to be: Growth and development - where, how big, how fast, starting when, and for whom? Now is an excellent time to follow along the town process, and participate and help guide frank, targeted and open discussion about growth. Some questions that would help frame goals and objectives, especially for the housing subcommittee, would be: What is our ideal size when it comes to population, area? Ancillary question - how will growth affect our temperatures in Nederland? Do we want growth along and beyond the scale of the inactive annexation map that was brought to the public by the mayor in 2019, despite its contradiction of the intentions of the current Comp Plan and IGA restrictions? Do we want to focus on growth in the downtown area? Do we want to revisit pending or previously submitted development ideas by using a process involving a vote of the people? At some point, will we need to distinguish a cutoff point for water taps, and should that information be clearly available, and what must be done to maintain Nederland’s water rights?

Questions like these have not yet been discussed by the full committee. This dialog will presumably be part of evaluating and finding common ground for goals and objectives across committees, which is scheduled for this fall. Now is the ideal time for the public to take the time to evaluate where we are in the Envision 2030 process and to indicate preferences for future discussion and goals to guide committee members in their discussions.

Please go to nederlandco.org for information on board packets and the Envision 2030 process and weigh in on what should define our community for the next ten years and beyond.

May Jarril
Nederland