ROCKLAND – The Rockland Comprehensive Planning Commission wants your input. It will be holding public workshops in the Rockland area as its members seek the public's opinions to help shape the Comprehensive Plan and determine where they would like Rockland to look like in 10 years.

You're most likely familiar with Rockland's Planning Board and not the Comprehensive Planning Commission.

The comprehensive plan is mandated by the state. It is a land use plan and creates the policy the city leaders will look to when they go to create laws and ordinances, but it is dictated by the community.

The Planning Board reviews building permits and some zoning issues outside of what the comprehensive plan includes.

Julie Lewis who chairs the Comprehensive Planning Commission, said people who attend the workshops frequently confuses the two.

Jim Kallock, commission member said the last time the Comprehensive Plan was updated was 2002.

"Parts of it were revised in 2012 and 2015," he said, "but we are writing it from the start. We're taking every chapter and rewriting it for what the citizens of Rockland want the city to be."

Kallock said that is why the public workshops are so important because that is where the community is getting its information.

Lewis said there are 14 chapters in the plan and that is adding chapters to the 2002 plan.

"Looking at the inventory we realized we didn't have a water resources chapter," she said. "Hazards and mitigation was another and forestry which we broke out of agriculture to make it more relevant."

Lewis said they are not only communicating with residents, but other committees and businesses to find out what they have that's overlapping and what needs to be created, or included.

Of the seven members on the committee, they each take a chapter or two or three to work on.

Lewis said one chapter which is transportation; it is emerging the need for a regional transportation system.

"It's expensive for people who need to ride in cabs," she said. "Another thing is the need for more bike lanes and not just on the main streets, but streets where people who need to ride bikes are cycling."

Lewis said the plan is tied to state money and the state will withhold monies to the city if it is not done. She said they basically want a future land use document.

The Comprehensive Planning Committee is holding a series of public workshops around Rockland to enable the public ease of access to the committee to express their views on where Rockland needs to be in ten years.

The first workshop was at the Flanagan Community Center on October 19.

A second was held October 26 at the American Legion Hall at 6:30 p.m.

A third public workshop will be held on November 2, at the Sail, Power and Steam Museum also at 6:30 p.m.

November 9 the public workshop will be held at the Littlefield Baptist Church at 6:30 p.m. And the last scheduled public workshop will be held November 15 at the First Universalist Church on Broadway at 6:30 p.m.

Lewis noted that the workshops were scheduled in residential neighborhoods to make it easy for people to attend. They are welcome at one or all the meetings.

The Comprehensive Planning Commission hopes to have the plan completed by March or April of 2018 and continue its public workshops as well as keeping the city council apprised of the progress.

The plan will be placed on the November 2018 ballot for voter approval.