Town Plan Update 2023-2025The Town of Bennington is in the process of updating its Town Plan as required by State statute.
Building on Bennington's recent diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives the Planning Commission and Selectboard decided that the updated plan should better integrate values of equity and inclusion across the topics it addresses. The plan update has been divided into two phases, with Phase 1 focused on reaching the broadest number of community members, especially locally marginalized people, to provide input for the plan.
The Bennington County Regional Commission (BCRC) has been engaged by the town to assist the Planning Commission in doing this work. Initial Funding to pay for the phase 1 public engagement work was obtained through a municipal planning grant and additional funding is being sought to cover phase 2, the drafting of the new plan based on community input from phase 1 and updated demographic, economic, public facilities, energy, and natural resource data.
Town Plan Update - DEI-informed (Re)Vision - Phase 1: Community Engagement
The first step is to do community outreach and engagement to ensure as much public input as possible to inform the work of updating the town plan.
A public meeting was held on November 9, 2023, to solicit input on a draft engagement plan. Based on Planning Commisison and public feedback from that meeting, BCRC will move forward on engaging the community in the coming months through a variety of meeting types, a survey, and other activites. A recording of the November 9th meeting is available below as well as a comment form for you to share your thoughts. Stay tuned for news about upcoming public engagement events and activities.
Materials Related to the Town Plan Update
- Current Town Plan
- Abundant Sun Presentation: Just Strategic Planning
- Summary of DEI Recommendations
- Recording of November 9, 2023 meeting
- Slide Deck from November 9, 2023 meeting