Grace DeSantis with Barton & Loguidice speaks at the Mayville/Chautauqua comprehensive plan kick off meeting. P-J photo by Gregory Bacon

MAYVILLE — The local governments of the village of Mayville and the town of Chautauqua are working together to map out how the community will look over the next several years.

A public informational meeting was recently held for the town and village joint comprehensive plan. Along with local officials, community stakeholders and the general public was in attendance.

Grace DeSantis, a community planner with Barton & Loguidice, served as the coordinator of the meeting. Her firm has been hired by both the town and village to apply for grants for the comprehensive plan.

Officials note a comprehensive plan is one of a municipality’s most important documents. It establishes a baseline of where the town and village priorities have been, identifies the community’s future vision, prioritizes local and regional policies and action items, and gives context to future decision-making on public and private investments in our community. Through this framework, the comprehensive plan assists the community in achieving its future vision for smart growth, environmental stewardship, and economic development.

Town Councilman Scott Cummings said it takes a while to create such a document. “It’s going to take us a year, year and a half probably to get through this, but we need to put the time in to do it right and we’ll come out with a really good plan that we can use in the future,” he said.

Officials noted by developing a joint comprehensive plan, the town and village will be well-positioned to identify opportunities to further coordinate services and programming and promote development patterns that complement and benefit both communities.

Desantis the comprehensive plan can be used to create policies and promote certain types of development. “Having something like this in place can really help decision makers when it comes to things like zoning updates. It can also be really helpful to have on the table in front of you when you are deciding what types of development applications would be desirable by the community or not,” she said.

DeSantis added that comprehensive plans can also help officials make decisions on issues like shared services or staffing levels. “It can really be a guide to help government, not only more efficient, but also responsive to the community members as well,” she said.

Mayville and Chautauqua talked early on about having separate comprehensive plans, but in the end decided to move forward together on a single plan, having separate sections on the village and the town. DeSantis said there’s benefits to that decision. “It can be more efficient, you’re working with two communities at the same time, and your cost sharing is more efficient and effective process overall,” she said.

The next step is for a community survey to be filled out on line. “We want to know what do you precede to be the assets of this community, what are your concerns, what do you want to change, what do you want to see preserved, so that we can get a general idea of what those key opportunities and threats are,” DeSantis said.

Because the goal is to have as many town and village residents fill out the survey as possible, officials talked about the best ways, including mailing out postcards to advertise the website survey, having paper copies at places like libraries and community buildings, and having paper copies sent to Amish families that reside in the town.

Cummings said he wants to see strong participation in the survey and also in the creation of the plan. “I don’t want to see the town or the village boards being the only ones driving this. We want to be there and be a partner with the people in the community and let the community be the driving force behind this,” he said.

The survey link is available on both communities’ website, townofchautauqua.com and villageofmayville.com. It will likely be available for several weeks, wrapping up sometime before their next meeting which is tentatively scheduled to be held in January.