Smart Communities Network

Integrated Land Use Strategies * Efficient solar design, enabling the community to attract businesses engaged in solar power and other renewable resource fields. * Tree-lined biking and walking paths throughout the community will reduce auto use and air pollution. * Narrower streets with shade trees will help create livable neighborhoods and result in a cooler microclimate. * More efficient lot layouts will encourage social interaction, and allow conservation of large natural areas for wildlife. * Convenient markets, offices and parks will allow residents to shop, work and play near home, reducing the costs and side effects of auto dependence. * architects and builders will require technical and market support * Promote sustainable development to the general public, while committed designers and builders will receive high quality training and technical assistance to meet the rising demand for sustainable technologies. * Advanced telecommunications will enable residents to "tele-commute" to work. * natural filtration and constructed wetlands to improve water quality and minimize the use of scarce water resources for irrigation. * feature bike paths and walkways leading through parks and nature areas. * a full range of attached and detached residences and parks, parkways, public transportation, schools, churches, libraries, a recreation center and a "walkable" neighborhood scale. * local employment centers to encourage residents to work and live in the same community. * looking for alternatives to road de-icing salts. * working with local official to help protect life and property from wildland fire. * working to increase the availability of affordable housing. * examining the impact of development along shorelines. * evaluating the need for additional recreational facilities.

Growth Control Strategies * All human development should be blend carefully with the topography and vegetation, preserving greenery, rock formations, and natural and scenic views. * Tree lines and specified species of shade trees should be planted and continue to proliferate. * More green space should be created between streets and sidewalks and between sidewalks and buildings. * The "village" concept in which pastoral lands gradually should give way to residential areas which in turn blend into commercial centers should be preserved. * Commercial, social and civic activities should be concentrated in the town core. * Downtown development should be pedestrian-oriented and human in scale. * Prevailing "suburban" development patterns in which buildings are sited to accommodate the automobile should be discouraged. * An efficient and safe park-and-walk environment should be maintained. * A network of sidewalks, walkways, and bicycle paths should connect all parts of town. These pathways shoukd link Town with Village, residential areas with recreation, commercial, government and essential services. * Parking areas should be attractive and well-integrated into the walkway system. * Strict controls on land subdivision and lot sizes, and prevents development in certain areas. * Create a land trust to permanently protect farmland and environmentally sensitive areas. * Cooperative wetlands restoration projects * Set out the development of a recycling program * Establishing an alliance that functions at the local, county, and regional levels. * Establishing an expanded, coherent, well-maintained, and linked regional open-space system consisting of parks and greenways, historic sites, working rural landscapes, natural habitats, stream corridors, woodlands, and wetlands. * Promoting compact, environmentally sensitive development that reduces the consumption of energy, land, and other natural resources and supports the viability of existing town centers. * Establishing a strong regional constituency, including urban, suburban, and rural populations in support of the above goals and for the purpose of improved coordination and communication across the region.

Agricultural Land Protection * Stopped strip development * Designed a land conservation plan for permanent preservation as a non-developable tree farm; * Deed restrictions protected sensitive wildlife habitat on the land. * To satisfy the need for housing, two affordable homes using traditional architecture were built for two local families. * The Clean and Green Act, established in 1974, is designed to preserve farmland, forest land and open space by taxing land according to its use as farmland rather than its market value and its potential use for activities other than agriculture.