Statement of Vision for the Avon Hills by Initiative Participants

I hope nothing will change in the next 100 years, but people are going to want to settle in this area; they want to be here. How can we allow for this without drastically changing the Avon Hills landscape, how can we avoid fragmentation? We need a vision to provide everyone with information, and provide options and solutions to all farmers and landowners—solutions that are also realistic.

Keep farms separate from housing development, preserve woodlands and bogs, and put housing developments in proper areas.

The land should look the way it does now one hundred years from now. I’d like to see it stay just the way it is.

Cluster or minimize the spread of development, control the density in certain areas, and maintain pristine areas.

Preserve the uniqueness of the area, share the uniqueness with others, and balance this with the reality of generational land transfer.

Value is not correlated to price, but rather importance. It is important to change perspectives away from strictly price. We have to define value and what is important to the community. We need a vocabulary to talk about that and strengthen that.

Change is inevitable. We have a sense of change over time. The current political climate values the environment. We must capitalize on these values. Maps with a regional focus provide a better way to discuss development in order to sustain the cohesive community vision and avoid pressures from developers. We have a pretty good idea about what ought to go where.

I’d like to see more stewardship: a view of the farm as part of the ecosystem and a value passed down through the family. What are the options to continue these traditions?

A different focus of development, a regional focus from the ground up using bioregional planning regions, planning based on ecology, watersheds and other natural phenomenon, that provide more flexible ways of development. We value what we measure, and so we ought to measure what we value; give it reality and give it a constituency.

I’d like to have this place look pretty much the way it does today one hundred years from now, but with establishment of corridors between fragmented areas, and adjustments in land use, although in general there’s good management of land in the Avon Hills. We will have more people, and how to deal with that is important.

The Avon Hills Team October 2003-June 2004