The riverside trails at Wagon Hill Farm. (Photo courtesy of the Town of Durham/NHDES)
Planning

On Friday, Sept. 11, SRPC met with NHDES staff to discuss our proposal “Building Coastal Resilience by Building Equity in Dover.” The project’s goal is to engage Dover’s communities in climate change planning conversations and diversify community input to strengthen the City's resilience to climate change. Funding support for this project comes from a 2020 NH Coastal Resilience Grant, in conjunction with the City of Dover. This project is an important step in implementing Dover’s 2018 Climate Adaptation Chapter, a NOAA Project of Special Merit.  

The scope of this project involves engaging populations that, due to pre-existing social, economic, and physical conditions, could be more affected by climate change, and inviting them to participate in discussions on how climate change has and will affect them and how they would like to be engaged in climate adaptation planning. Going one step further, the study will utilize and equity lens to analyze if and how climate adaptation projects and policies differently affect populations by reviewing climate policy and discussing possible unintended outcomes for select populations.  

Next steps will be to work with DES to prepare a contract for Governor and Council and NOAA approval. Project launch is anticipated to be January 2021.  

For more information, contact Kyle Pimental.  

Pieces of Interest
Transportation
On Wednesday, Sept. 9 regional planner Stefanie Casella checked the pedestrian counter that was set on Aug. 20 on the trails at Wagon Hill Farm. Strafford MPO owns three of these devices, which can be set to count pedestrians and bikers; even differentiating between the two if set a certain way. Pedestrian and bicycle counters have been set at the Dover Community Trail all summer. Wed will soon have similar data to share with the Durham Recreation Department. 

Other municipalities interested in setting pedestrians counters in their community can contact Stefanie. We highly encourage communities planning future bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure improvements to reach out to SRPC staff. Counts can be set up to collect valuable data and help support funding applications. Communities have also used these counters for local events to get a guesstimate of how many people attended. 

Pieces of Interest
Economic Development
On Thursday Sept. 10, Rachel Dewey, data analyst, presented at the Regional Planning Commission (RPC) Executive Directors Meeting. She shared information on SRPC’s ongoing data analysis efforts to support the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) and Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP) updates this year. This spring, SRPC staff identified roughly 50 socio-economic metrics to discuss in various planning documents. These metrics include demographics such as age and race, and economic indicators such as income and employment.  

SRPC staff decided that whenever possible, it would be useful to see 5-year trends, along with maps or tables with the most recent year of data, to understand each of these metrics. Rachel is working on automating the process for downloading and analyzing data published by the Census Bureau. This new automated tool will enable staff to prepare the data for these metrics quickly, consistently, and accurately.  
 
Contact Rachel Dewey for more information.

 Pieces of Interest


Strafford Regional Planning Commission | 603-994-3500 | srpc@strafford.org| www.strafford.org
September 11, 2020