BITS AND PIECES

A Weekly Update from the Strafford Region

Planning

On Thursday, Sept. 8 SRPC senior planners Shayna Sylvia and James Burdin and regional planner Autumn Scott met to discuss engagement activities and approaches for an upcoming master planning forum to be held by the Town of Strafford in November.

SRPC is currently assisting both Strafford and Barrington on various chapters as they update their respective master plans, and is currently in various stages of outreach. Strafford has launched their online survey for those with connections to Strafford, and Barrington will launch theirs in early October. 

Barrington will be updating their Transportation and Land Use chapters, and Strafford will be doing a light update to all chapters of their master plan.  

Learn more about SRPC's master planning services on the SRPC website. 

Transportation

In the Strafford Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) realm, SRPC’s Policy and Transportation Advisory Committees are reviewing candidate projects for the State Ten-Year Plan. Committee members have weighted project scoring criteria and will be spending the next several months reviewing and scoring candidate projects. 

SRPC will initially be submitting seven projects to the NH Department of Transportation (NHDOT), for preliminary engineering review: 2 in Somersworth, 2 in Lee, 1 in Durham, and 1 in Newmarket. SRPC’s on-call engineers at VHB will be developing designs and cost estimates for each of the projects. 

SRPC staff also recently got news that NHDOT will be facilitating a Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement program (CMAQ) funding round in the near future. The last round was in 2019. CMAQ funds a range of projects that reduce traffic congestion and improve air quality. including public transit projects, road improvements like roundabouts, and bicycle and pedestrian paths. 

These projects require additional data collection and analysis to determine their air quality benefits. Communities or entities with project ideas should contact senior transportation planner Colin Lentz soon to develop project ideas. 

Economic Development

On Sept. 9, GIS planner Jackson Rand and senior communications and outreach planner Shayna Sylvia met to discuss SRPC’s Arts and Culture map viewer. This resource was launched in June and is meant to be a very broad inventory of sites, events, and locations that have any importance to local arts and culture.  

To grow this resource, SRPC is asking for your help in adding new sites to the inventory! You can do so via a form built into the map viewer application, and while your there check out awesome art and culture events and destinations near you!  

September 9, 2022