Comprehensive Plan adopted by town board

By JEFF MORRIS

After a long and exhaustive process, the town board voted Tuesday to adopt both a negative declaration about the environmental impact of the new town comprehensive plan, and the plan itself.

The plan, titled “Bedford Together,” marks the culmination of years of forums, committee meetings, hearings and reviews to update the previous comprehensive plan, which was adopted 22 years ago, in 2003.

Beginning in 2020, six subcommittees met and developed reports, which were later used as the foundation for many of the aspects of the plan. The planning board, led by Chairperson Deirdre Courtney-Batson, was in charge of plan development, while Director of Planning Jesica Youngblood, who joined the town in 2022, was responsible for shepherding the project to the finish line. She facilitated a restart of the process with the formation of a Comprehensive Plan Advisory Committee in February 2024, which met in March, April, June and September of that year.

After collecting and synthesizing the results of a townwide visioning survey and continued community engagement, CPAC developed a preliminary draft and hosted three public input sessions during October and November in 2024. The Draft Comprehensive Plan was introduced at the town board’s Feb. 5 meeting this year, and was the subject of an initial public hearing on March 4, which was continued on March 18. It was then subject to environmental review by the town board.

Having already gone through parts one and two of the environmental review, the board did not spend time going through part three at this meeting. Youngblood provided a list of all the changes that had been made to the draft plan as a result of comments made in person and in writing during the hearing process.

Youngblood highlighted some of the changes, including the addition of language regarding the town’s Climate Action Plan, which was appended, and language emphasizing preservation and usage of dirt roads. She said there were modifications meant to address questions the public had regarding verbiage about renewable energy, solar energy and battery storage systems.

“The biggest add is, there is a full appendix now at the end of the document,” said Youngblood. “The end of the document really goes through showing that there had been a long-term commitment to soliciting public feedback.” 

She said included in the appendix are all the original 2020-21 subcommittee reports, all of the CPAC summaries and meeting presentations, the vision survey and results in English and Spanish, stakeholder questionnaires, any online engagement in English and Spanish, workshop summaries, memos, referral letter from the county, and the Bedford Climate Action Plan. 

“All of that has been updated, so the document is a little bit bigger than before,” Youngblood said. She added many hands had touched the project, which was a multi-year process that had a couple of starts and stops, “but really within the past year and a quarter we have gone through the whole thing” which resulted in hundreds and hundreds of public comments.

Supervisor Ellen Calves said she was happy to see the changes that were made, which she said were well reflective of the comments they had heard during the public hearings.

“This is just a planning document, it doesn’t actually change any laws or zoning at this point,” she noted. The board then quickly voted in favor of adoption.

“I’m very grateful to everyone who participated in the process,” said board member Stephanie McCaine. “I think we’ve really come to a good place that we can really be proud of, and we can look forward to the future here being as bright as ever.”

Board member Andrés Castillo also thanked Youngblood and the members of CPAC and the advisors who worked on the plan. “I think it truly reflects the will of our town,” he said. “Our town has never been more diverse, and I really think that this balances what seems to be competing priorities — but really they all coalesce and come together into this vision. There are some pressing issues that our town is facing; I think chief among them is affordable housing, and this is a really great step towards addressing the issue of affordability, and also continuing to revitalize our commercial districts. Just making Bedford even better than it already is, and I’m just really excited to dig in and implement this vision.”