November 25, 2002

On November 25, more than 50 residents gathered at the Scarborough Middle School to review a draft of the Vision for Scarborough’s Future. Consultants for the Town, Planning Decisions of South Portland and Terrence J DeWann & Associates of Yarmouth, presented the Vision slideshow. Afterwards, participants broke into small groups and discussed their reactions to the Vision for Scarborough’s Future. Their responses are listed below.

Participants first identified what they liked and disliked about the draft Vision. Next, participants were asked to suggest what was missing from the draft vision slideshow. Finally, the groups formulated summaries based on discussions.

• Likes
• Dislikes
• What is missing
• Summary

Likes:   [top of page]

• Consideration of pedestrians
• Well organized
• Fair summarization of issues and concerns
• Non-biased
• Same themes in different neighborhoods
• Recognize uniqueness of the neighborhoods in Scarborough
• Accurately portrayed ideas of initial meetings (bike trails and walking paths that connect most areas)
• Community center as a place to be used by people of all ages
• Protection and preservation of marshes and beaches/rivers/farms/historical landmarks
• Strategic view (planning for 20 year vision)
• Unified desires (consensus building)
• Regional focus (five villages) and linking neighborhoods
• Cleaning up Route 1
• Preserving natural resources
• Rural character preservation
• Historic building preservation
• Public buildings should be used for broader public use
• Importance of trails stressed
• Importance of preservation of natural resources
• Importance of preservation of farms, open space
• Overall – comprehensive by neighborhood
• Broken out by neighborhood – showed diversity
• Outcomes had some commonality
• The mention of beautifying Route 1
• Clearly preservation is a priority
• Fairly accurate reflection of the town (recreation, bike and walking trails, historical, preserving environment, reflection of economic needs, beautification of Route 1)

Dislikes:   [top of page]

• Certain points were ignored (Great American Neighborhood)
• “Labeling” issues leading to answers
• Lack of Town participation
• Focused on the uniqueness of place, but not the people
• Human character doesn’t come out in this program (long-term residents, newcomers, young families, youth voices
• No mention of library, non-profits, service agencies, nursing home, assisted living, CASA, Sweetser
• No solutions offered
• It would be good to capture some of the ideas that people have come up with at the meetings
• Left off too many of the controversial issues that were brought up at the meetings
• Fears/challenges are missing
• No industrial plan (Haigis Parkway)
• Division of town by marsh and Turnpike
• Lack of specific numbers
• Did not address water and sewer expansion
• Improve roads
• Why does the contractor get so many advantages?
• Why is development only benefitting the contractors?
• Why is there a specific focus in each village? Shouldn’t we have a common theme?
• Resources are being chewed up by this process, we need to do something now
• Need to specifically address recycling, fishing and farming, tradition of hunting in rural areas
• Special interest group recapping
• No summary statistical data to help us summarize
• Major gripes are not being discussed
• Not enough emphasis on sidewalks
• Need consistency of policy (for example, sidewalks from high school to tennis courts but not library)
• No discussion on greenery (need more trees, corridors for animals to find their way, landscaping)
• Not in my backyard attitudes
• Town Council – create consistency in beautifying Route 1; Citizen’s Advisory Committee (representative from each neighborhood to advocate for each neighborhood); YMCA could meet the needs of a common area for meeting (teen center, senior center, pool)

What is Missing?   [top of page]

• Clear choices
• Examples of past plans from similar towns in United States
• Guidance/leadership from the planners
• Numbers (what percent of town would use the facilities that are projected?)
• No mention of public transportation
• Not sufficient discussion of schools, library
• Not enough specifics about housing
• Nature of whole community, not just specific neighborhoods
• Not comprehensive view of community as a whole
• What draws us together?
• Do we wants arts? Restaurants? Gather around community?
• What are our priorities?
• Library, school, public-transportation
• Sense of Scarborough as a whole as opposed to individual neighborhoods
• Housing options
• Type of town center wanted
• Kinds of commercial development
• What type of intown shopping
• Ideas for Route 1
• How to help people preserve private land
• Environmental education in schools
• Sidewalks
• Social service special group discussion, non-profits, Sweetser, MMC, library, Maine Network of Non Profits
• Mention exploration of development versus preservation
• Make sure the voices of the people can be heard
• Comps – how do other areas resolve these issues successfully (Cape Cod)
• What percent of the population to these meetings represent? How can we reach more people?
• Preservation of historical
• More mention of affordability

Summary:   [top of page]
During a discussion that summarized all of the groups’ reactions to the draft vision slideshow, participants made the following points:

• Too many fears are missing; not enough controversial issues and no solutions; core of the issues are not being discussed; no “bad” picture; lots of historic places and buildings are being destroyed
• No Town-as-a-whole vision; what are the priorities; no schools/library mentioned in neighborhoods; need more talk of scarborough as a whole; community gathering spaces (don’t need to be buildings)
• More examples of what worked in other communities
• Quantify the information; seemed too subjective; this seems to be a flaw in the presentation; we need middle point between development and preservation
• Need more on social/cultural issues; need more on people, old-timers, school students; too much focus on places
• Need more numbers (bike trail, how many people would use it)
• More detailed feedback on interest groups
• Infrastructure needs for comprehensive planning (what’s their capacity)
• Need more community-wide information
• If consensus, what are the forces working against this consensus; I worry about “special interest” groups running the government; we need to know more about where these groups differ with residents
• Need more on social-service interests
• Need more on comparisons between Scarborough and other communities
• Very geographic town, can’t ignore that
• Can’t fix Route 1
• Connections need to be added between sidewalks
• Public transit
• Some of this has already been done; that information needs to be used as part of this process
• Spell Haigis Parkway correctly
• Land use pie-chart to get people to choose between commercial and residential
• Design standards need to be implemented
• Will the presentation be neutral? Will we have choices between trade-offs?
• Want to see listing or note on things we don’t agree on
• Reports don’t seem to do anything, don’t seem to be implemented
• Only talking to people interested in coming out, not statistically valid
• Need to know what is going on in neighboring towns
• We intentionally did a thorough process; it is part of the planning process; we have done things