BUSTI - One more step has been taken to complete the town of Busti's comprehensive plan.
The community profile for the comprehensive plan is done and available online at www.townofbusti.com. Todd Hanson, Comprehensive Plan Committee chairman and town councilman, said the profile is a summary of where Busti started and where it is today. The 45-page document also includes charts, maps, information about trends and town overviews.
''The purpose of which is to give you a good all-around perspective of the people, places and things that makes up the town,'' Hanson said. ''In planning for the future, it would be hard to plan goals and objectives if we don't know where we are today or in what direction we are currently heading. If we are to steer in a positive direction, we need to decide what the challenges are, what priority we need to give them and what we need to do to head in that direction.''
Hanson said the comprehensive plan will lay out plans in an organized fashion over periods of time. The plan allows town officials to apply for more funding and grants and helps Busti officials make decisions by seeing how those decisions and options could affect the town.
''There are many items that need to be addressed and hopefully when the whole plan is complete we will, with the town's input, have laid out some specific short-term and long-term objectives that will help keep us going in a positive direction,'' Hanson said.
Hanson said the next step in the process is to identify specific issues and ideas. He said public meetings will be held early in 2013 to get people's opinions.
Some public meetings were already held in August 2011. Committee officials have also conducted a public opinion survey, held focus groups and conducted research on population, housing and other key community characteristics.
''We already have a wealth of information and insight from the community that was gathered and will be addressed in the framework already,'' Hanson said. ''The comprehensive plan is meant to be an ongoing work in progress and will be reviewed on a regular basis to judge our progress and make changes as needed.''
The community profile was prepared by Small Town Planning Services.
Don McCord, Small Town Planning Services owner and county planning and economic development senior planner, was hired by town officials to be a consultant on the comprehensive plan. McCord has also worked on comprehensive plans for Bemus Point and North Harmony.