The SRPC Regional Impact Committee (RIC) reviews the preliminary report on the Hard Rock Development project in Barrington during its Jan. 10 meeting. ( SRPC Photo)
Planning
On Wednesday, Jan. 9, principal regional planner Kyle Pimental met with a subcommittee of members of the Dover Conservation Commission and the Open Lands Committee to review the Open Lands Committee's criteria rating sheet for land conservation projects. With Kyle’s assistance, the subcommittee will consider recommendations to update the scoring criteria to include climate change impacts and new water resources data developed by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) as part of 2016’s A Supplement to the Land Conservation Plan for New Hampshire's Coastal Watersheds . T he subcommittee discussed a variety of climate change impacts, including vulnerability to sea level rise and salt marsh migration. The new data from TNC addresses flood storage and mitigation, pollutant attenuation, and public water supplies.
 
The criteria rating sheet will be updated over the next several months and eventually adopted by the Conservation Commission as an internal guiding document. The sheet is an important planning tool because the scores it leads to help Dover prioritize the most valuable land available for conservation.
 
Visit the Dover Open Lands Committee Facebook page and the Dover Conservation Commission webpage for more information on their work.
Pieces of Interest

Transportation
Shayna Sylvia, communications and outreach planner, attended a meeting of the events and challenges subcommittee of Commute Smart New Hampshire (CSNH) on Monday, Jan. 7. The subcommittee is one of two formed at CSNH’s first statewide meeting, in late December 2018. The other subcommittee will work on related performance measures.

CSNH is a partnership of the state’s nine regional planning commissions and specific transit agencies working in collaboration with other transit providers, state agencies, municipalities, businesses, and public health organizations. It was formed through the rebranding of CommuteGreen New Hampshire in 2015 to promote sustainable transportation in the Granite State. The rebranding was funded by the NH Charitable Foundation.

The Community Transportation Alternatives Program through the NH Department of Transportation awarded CSNH funding in December to support transportation demand management services and activities as well as rideshare coordination across the state. The New Hampshire Office of Strategic Initiatives (OSI) also provided funding for these efforts.

The events and challenges subcommittee is responsible for one of those activities, a statewide commuter challenge to be run in the spring. At Monday’s meeting subcommittee members heard from a seasoned challenge leader , CommuteSMART Seacoast manager Anne Rugg, who spoke about a similar effort, the B2B commuter challenge . 2019 will mark the fifth time the B2B challenge will be run.

CommuteSMART Seacoast is a transportation management association funded through mitigation dollars from the Spaulding Turnpike Newington–Dover project. It has a role similar to CSNH’s, but is active strictly in and around the New Hampshire seacoast.

Following the call with Anne, subcommittee members discussed challenge logistics, branding, and outreach. A summary of the meeting will be brought to the full CSNH committee at its Jan. 17 meeting.

For more information contact Shayna at 603-994-3500. 
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Pieces of Interest

Economic Development
SRPC’s Regional Impact Committee (RIC) met on Thursday, Jan. 10, to review an application for a proposed sand and gravel excavation project in Barrington. SRPC staffers James Burdin and Stefanie Casella focused on identifying regional impacts to or from transportation and access to the site, noise, hazardous materials/substances, ecology, public health and safety, facilities, scenic and visual character, and housing population and growth.

Under state statute, regional planning commissions are given the opportunity to provide input on projects declared to be of regional impact and to provide a forum for abutting communities to do the same. Members of the public, town officials, the applicant, and the applicant’s representative were all given an opportunity to weigh in on the proposed project, which had been declared a project of regional impact by Barrington’s planning board at its Oct. 16, 2018, meeting.

Information collected during the RIC meeting will be documented in the meeting minutes and included in the final report, which was passed unanimously by the RIC contingent upon the changes discussed during the meeting. It is important to note that SRPC does not approve or deny planning applications, and the RIC is limited by statute to providing testimony as an abutter.

Visit the SRPC website in the coming weeks to see the final report. Meeting materials from the Jan. 10 meeting can be found on SRPC’s Google Drive .
Pieces of Interest

Strafford Regional Planning Commission | 603-994-3500 | srpc@strafford.org | www.strafford.org
January 11, 2019