Town plan under review

SALISBURY — Salisbury Planning and Zoning Commission met Monday, Oct. 7 to revise and incorporate public comments into the draft of the ten-year Plan of Conservation and Development (POCD), which is due to update this year.

Over the course of the three-hour meeting, P&Z meticulously combed every page of the 121-page document, addressing stylistic and formatting concerns alongside input gleaned from the public engagement meeting held on Sept. 30. At that meeting, the Commission fielded comments from the public on a draft of the document, both from a live audience and from written letters submitted prior to the workshop.

P&Z Chair Michael Klemens expressed his gratitude to the community for its participation in developing the document: “I’m very pleased with participation both at the public engagement meeting and through the written comments,” he said. He emphasized that the public commentary was very helpful in developing the draft to send out for review.

The POCD is “an advisory framework to address long-term community needs consistent with the Growth Management Principles of the State of Connecticut’s Conservation and Development Plan,” as per the Salisbury town website. Salisbury’s last POCD was approved in 2012, and Connecticut state law required municipalities to update the plan every decade. Due to Covid-19 related concerns, the town was granted until the end of 2024 to complete document, a deadline the commission must meet in order to ensure discretionary state funding.

P&Z submitted the edited document on schedule to the Northwest Hills Council of Governments and the Salisbury Board of Selectman for a statutory 65-day review period.