Keene town board member Teresa Cheetham-Palen, left, and Carolyn Peterson were the Keene Strategic Plan coordinators. (Provided photo — Naj Wikoff)

Nineteen years ago, the town of Keene developed a strategic plan filled with essential aspirations. Some were fulfilled. Others were pursued and never quite accomplished.

Two years ago, Supervisor Joe Pete Wilson Jr. and town board members agreed the 2001 plan should be reviewed and updated. To that end, a volunteer steering committee of 12 was established and led by co-chairs Kristy Farrell and James Bernard.

Forgoing an outside consultant to facilitate the process, as had been done previously, the board and committee decided to survey the residents to determine their top five priorities.

The thinking was an all-volunteer effort combined with a sharper focus might result in a set of more widely embraced and pursued recommendations. Once the priorities were identified, the initial planning team was disbanded.

A second nine-member, all-volunteer issue-driven steering committee was selected that features many from the founding committee and several new faces. Carolyn Peterson and town board member Teresa Palen agreed to coordinate the planning process.

Fritz Sabbow was head of the Short-Term Rental working group for the town of Keene’s planning effort. (Provided photo — Naj Wikoff)

“The blueprint for how we did this master planning is in the DNA of this community,” Wilson said. “Examples include the broadband effort which brought high-speed internet to all homes with children. There was the recovery from Hurricane Irene and the expansion of the Keene Valley Library. Most recently, Keene Clean Energy Team’s focus on reducing energy and pollution has resulted in considerable cost savings for the town. Those are all examples of this community taking on volunteer efforts, fundraising and other contributions to accomplish big, big, big projects that strengthen and improve our community.”

Nearly 70 volunteers stepped up to serve in one of five working groups: Achievable Housing, Short Term Rentals, Seniors and Healthcare, Preschool and Full Child Day Care, and Hiker Parking and Recreational Infrastructure. Unveiling the results in two public forums, April 26 and May 3, the planning committee gathered the comments and submitted the final plan to town board for its review and hoped for adoption.

“The plan represents a lot of work by a lot of people,” said Peterson, co-chair. “The leaders of the groups worked extremely hard pulling together the meetings, setting the agenda and guiding the gathering of background data.”

Each working group set its agenda and mode of operating as best suited to their participants’ skills and time availability. The Hiker Parking and Recreational Infrastructure group’s effort worked in parallel with the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s initiative to reduce overflow at popular trailheads in Keene. While these two efforts did not collaborate, Keene’s recommendations were forwarded to the DEC by residents who worked on both committees.

Peter Slocum, chair of the town’s committee, said the state has a huge impact as it owns so much of town land and can set speed and parking restrictions within the hamlets, as their main street is a state highway. Still, many local enhancements have been identified, ranging from creating a safe biking corridor between Keene and Keene Valley, lengthening the popular Valley Trail, and making improvements to the town trail up Blueberry Mountain.

Keene Supervisor Joe Pete Wilson Jr. (Provided photo — Naj Wikoff)

The group addressing short-term rentals decided, after reviewing initiatives across the country, that the one that closest met their needs was Lake Placid’s. While not perfect for Keene’s needs, many concerns and challenges were similar.

“After a lot of research and reviewing many communities, we found that looking in our back door and seeing what was happening with Lake Placid best suited our situation,” said chair Fritz Sabbow. “They went through a significant effort to mitigate the issues.”

Sabbow’s team recommended that the town review and compare Keene’s short-term laws and ordinances with Placid’s, along with putting into process a manner of paying for any regulations desired such as acquiring Host Compliance software used by Placid and other communities. Their goal is to have Keene upgrade its short-term rental policies before the summer season begins.

“Strategic planning gives people a voice, an opportunity to be part of a process, builds community and helps us steer our future,” said Katharine Brown, who led the Preschool and Daycare section. “Through our working group I learned how desperate people are for child care. I didn’t know it was quite so bad. Our survey of people from throughout the region include such comments as, ‘The lack of child care impacts our decision to grow our family.'”

No less a problem is housing for lower and middle-income families. Housing stock that’s being used solely for short-term rentals or being flipped for sale to high income, non-resident people is reducing places for people to live. This shortage results in reduced opportunities for teachers and others to live in Keene, including young families attracted by the school’s reputation. These shortages, in turn, results in fewer potential volunteers for the fire departments and other service agencies.

“Housing is not just our problem,” said Melisa Eisenger. “Other towns like Chestertown, Elizabethtown, Jay, Placid and Wilmington have shortages. Keene’s desirability is driving out people’s ability to live here. Most often, people who can live here have parents who lived here and gave them a piece of land. But for people whose parents don’t have a lot of land already, they can’t stay. It’s not just a problem of welcoming new blood into the town; it’s also keeping out those who already live or grew up here.”

Solutions represent cooperation, collaboration and mutual understanding between seasonal and year-round residents, as all care passionately about the town and have a long track record of working together. Even though the plan is not yet approved, some agencies like Little Peaks, are already mining the ideas to guide their efforts.

“This plan represents a guide and road map,” said co-chair Palen. “It provides direction and goals for the good of the community. Having a plan in place is useful. For instance, yesterday the papers announced the $750 million in economic development funds. If you want to see if anything you want fits into that fund, you have to have a developed plan. You have to be able to go to them and say, ‘Look, our community has already identified these needs. We have a direction we want to go.’ That helps you if you want to attract grant money.”

The good news is that, once approved, Keene has many volunteers willing to help implement the strategic plan as they want to see concrete results for the efforts. As part of that, the Keene and Keene Valley fire departments are urging a follow-up initiative to address the challenges of recruiting and retaining new volunteer fire and emergency medical service volunteers, and, no surprise, some strategic planning members have signed up for that as well.