Rockport engages high school students for help in shaping the town’s future
ROCKPORT — Last month, a Rockport Select Board member and the vice chair of the Comprehensive Plan Committee gathered with the entire student body of Camden Hills Regional High School, in the Strom Auditorium to make a specific request: Think about, and share, visions for the future of Rockport.
It was an outreach of the 2022 Comprehensive Plan Committee, “Rockport Forward”, which is a volunteer-led municipal effort to update the town’s 2004 Comprehensive Plan. Those plans provide specific guidance to town officials and volunteer committees as they govern, advise and regulate activities that affect the town and its citizens.
This latest comprehensive plan update is the fifth such iteration for the town, with the first one written more than 50 years ago in 1971.
In municipalities across the state, comprehensive plans are the result of Maine’s earlier statutes governing land use and the 1988 Planning and Land Use Regulation Act, which stipulated that all Maine cities and towns prepare a plan to manage future growth.
Comprehensive plans are the basis for the development of a zoning ordinance and municipal land use controls that guide the physical and fiscal development of the municipality. State law states that a zoning ordinance must be "pursuant to and consistent" with a comprehensive plan.
The Rockport Planning Board wrote the following in 1971 when its members produced the Rockport Town Plan, the first in a series of now five comprehensive plans: “In the last two or three generations, the Town of Rockport has undergone a dramatic transition from a coastal industrial community to the community we know today. All that has transpired has been the result of a succession of events not strictly within the control of the citizens of the community. Happily, those events have produced the very beautiful community which now exists.”
Over the past year, the 2022 Comprehensive Plan Committee has initiated another introspective look at Rockport, asking citizens for their opinions on how the town should move forward into this century. The committee has held meetings in venues across the town, and has created an online survey.
By engaging high school students, the committee members are drawing the younger generations into the conversation.
“You are important to us,” said Comprehensive Plan Vice Chair Marsha Steinglass, who along with Select Board member Mark Kelley, spoke to the high school students Oct. 14. “Your ideas and input are invaluable. We are asking for your ideas about what you would like to see in Rockport over the next decade regarding schools, businesses, facilities, protection of natural resources, housing and more.”
The students listened attentively, said Steinglass.
