Changes, Changes, ...
Close your eyes for a minute and go back thirty years. The top recording artists are Elton John, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder and Peter Frampton.
Barry Manilow is writing the songs that make the whole word sing. Tommy Heinsohn’s Celtics are at the top of the NBA. The war in Vietnam is finally over,
at least for us, though those awful pictures from the rooftops in Saigon are still fresh in our minds. Two geeky guys in California have built a little desktop computer
in their garage and named it after a fruit.
Where were you, thirty years ago? What was important to you? What did you worry about? What did you hope for? What was your vision of the future?
Now open your eyes. Thirty years on, how much of what was central to you then is still important now? How much has changed? What would your life be like if
you hadn’t changed at all in thirty years?
Thirty years ago Amherst was a small town in the middle of huge changes. In less than ten years we had had to build two entirely new schools to accommodate
our growing population. Our farms were disappearing and our open space was sprouting houses. Against that background, Amherst undertook the creation of a
Master Plan. Fifty citizens worked on the sounding board, hundreds of others participated in the surveys and discussions. Over the course of several years the
Town developed and adopted a Master Plan, a document that laid out the vision of that community for the development of the Town, a document that has been the
underpinning of our land use ordinances ever since. Every ten years we have updated the demographic information in that plan, but the foundational document
remains essentially the same.
Obviously, Amherst has changed dramatically in thirty years. Our Master Plan says we want to preserve our rural character, but the requests that come before the
Planning Board, the Selectmen and the School Boards indicate more and more that we are in fact a suburban community. The Planning Board believes that it is time
to go back to the Town and ask those questions again. Who are we, what is important to us, what do we want to preserve and what would we like to work on? We
don’t think that seven people sitting around the table in Town Hall should make those determinations.
- Sally Wilkins
Links
Amherst Master Plan FAQ
Amherst Master Plan History
Elements Overview
Element 1: Community Vision
Element 2: Population and Housing
Element 3: Economic Development
Element 4: Natural Resources, Open Space, & Recreation
Element 5: Cultural & Historic Resources
Element 6: Public Services & Facilities
Element 7: Transportation & Circulation
Element 8: Land Use
Element 9: Implementation
Amherst Town Web Site
New Hampshire Revised Statutes Online
New Hampshire Planning and Zoning Statutes
Amherst MP Discussion Site
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