By Tom Ayres , Senior Staff Writer
Amid ongoing discussions about the commission’s future role in town governance, the Woodstock Economic Development Commission (EDC) is recommending nearly $10,000 to fund enhanced “outdoor dining infrastructure” during the upcoming foliage season, as well as a printed and digital “wayfinding” brochure detailing the locations of public restrooms and parking locations within in Woodstock Village. The brochure would also inform visitors about the hours and locations of restaurants throughout the town.
The commissioners unanimously approved both grant proposals at the EDC’s regular monthly meeting on Thursday evening, Sept. 5, even as they engaged in a spirited preliminary discussion about possible changes to the commission’s future role, occasioned by recent joint deliberations by the Woodstock Village Board of Trustees and Town Selectboard. The two grant proposals put forward by the EDC for the rapidly approaching peak foliage season now move to the selectboard for final approval. The board will include the issue on the agenda for its regular monthly meeting on Tuesday evening, Sept. 17, by which time nature will have begun to paint its annual colorful display of fall foliage across the Upper Valley landscape, drawing many thousands of visitors daily to Woodstock.
Food infrastructure funding requested by trustees
In the introduction to a grant proposal to fund expanded food infrastructure for the 2024 foliage season, the EDC, Chamber of Commerce, and the Village Trustees expressed concern about the difficulty faced by visitors and residents in finding places to eat lunch in Woodstock Village, specifically on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday during September and October — Saturday due to the high volume of visitors; and Sunday and Monday due to the numbers of food services not open for business. The dates of specific concern included are Sept. 21-23 and 28-30; and Oct. 5-7, 12-14, and 20-21.
“To this end,” the grant application states, “the EDC and Trustees are recruiting both profit and not-for-profit food vendors. The goal is to have two to four vendors on The Gore [by the Norman Williams Public Library] and on The Green each day. This year is a test of what the village and town need for additional infrastructure resources during the five peak weeks of foliage to improve economic development.”
Speaking at the Sept. 5 EDC meeting, village trustee vice chair Jeffrey Kahn provided more insight into what the village governing body is requesting in terms of foliage food funding. “Basically, I think you all know about this, but we have a big problem with food for both visitors as well as residents during foliage, approximately for a good month, at least especially on Sunday, Monday, and to some extent, on Saturday,” Kahn said. “There is not enough food for complicated reasons — with staffing, with the number of food providers, and with lunch availability in particular. So we’d like to do an expansion here and have people on The Gore as well as on The Green, both for-profit and nonprofit. We’ve developed quite a good list of people who will be applying to be serving food. To accommodate all those folks who want food at lunchtime, we want to purchase picnic tables — six of them with umbrellas — to expand the ability for people to be comfortable having a place to eat during that time period,” Kahn stated.
“We also were interested in making sure that people have access to restroom facilities, so we have porta-potties in there for two weekends in October. We also need to expand the ability to pick up trash, especially on weekends when the regular trash company is not available, and we have to use folks from our own governmental group to do that, and that’s another expense as well,” Kahn continued. “It has been awful in the past to see all the garbage overflowing during that time period, so we need to do a better job at that, too. All of these are in this proposal.”
Kahn expressed concern about whether the trustees and EDC can get the town selectboard to give its final approval of the $7,000 grant allocation for food funding this foliage season, given the continuing discussions among elected and appointed officials in Woodstock about the future role of the EDC in town decision-making. “I think this request is completely in line with what the EDC was, in part, developed for. This is for community economic growth. It’s for the benefit of local community growth as well. That’s basically what this is about,” Kahn argued.
Reached by phone Tuesday morning, prior to the regular meeting of the village trustees, Kahn elaborated on his concerns and what he anticipates for backup planning if the town selectboard rejects the grant request for foliage food funding. “I’m hopeful that the selectboard will approve all of the funding and, if not, some of it,” Kahn said. “The purchase of the picnic tables in particular — it’s not an ongoing expense, but something we would benefit from every year. That’s something that the EDC has generally supported and I’m hoping that the selectboard does, too. As far as the other expenses are concerned, we will find ways to make sure that trash collection occurs in an increased manner on those weekends where it has been a real problem in the past. Whether we go forward with the porta-potties or not is an open question.”
The proposed budget appended to the grant application by Kahn and fellow village trustee Lisa Lawlor calls for $2,710 (including sales tax) for the purchase of six picnic tables with accompanying umbrellas; $1,125 for three hours each Saturday and Sunday during peak foliage for the removal of trash from containers on The Gore, The Green, and Village sidewalks; and $275 for a vendor stipend for overseeing opening and closing of the lunchtime food operations and caring for the picnic tables as needed. Lastly, the grant request includes $900 for porta-potty rentals for the period from Oct. 4-14; $1,000 for liability insurance for school-based non-profit vendors; and $890 for contingency funds that may or may not be used.
On Tuesday evening, the Village Trustees approved for-profit and non-profit outdoor food purveyor permits to proffer food and beverages on The Gore and The Green on selected days during peak foliage time for Sustainable Eats, Munchie Rollz, Squeals on Wheels, North Chapel, Trees and Seeds, Maria’s Kusina, and the Woodstock Elementary School and Prosper Valley School combined Parent-Teacher Organizations (PTOs).
Funding also sought for ‘wayfinding’ brochure
EDC Chair Jon Spector and Commissioner Greta Calabrese also asked the economic development body to endorse another foliage-related funding strategy: the development of both a printed and web-based “brochure” and app to assist autumn visitors in finding parking, rest rooms, and open restaurants in the community.
“The proposal for $2,900 is to produce the printed version — to produce 5,000 copies of the printed version, which would be available by roughly Oct. 1 for the month and would be distributed, I hope, at the information center and in any merchant and lodging property that wanted to do it,” Spector explained. “That figure includes the cost of putting a QR code on little eight-and-a-half-by-eleven posters and counter-top stands to hold the brochures,” Spector noted. “And at no cost, we will develop an app that has a QR code and allows restaurants in real time to identify changes to their opening and closing hours. Every restaurant will be contacted, given a login to the app and told, ‘Anytime you want to change your opening closing times, enter it and it will instantly be reflected on the website.’”
The proposed budget for the wayfinding initiative, compiled by Spector and Calabrese, includes $900 for 5,000 copies of the printed brochure; $150 for 50 brochure holders; $150 for 50 “mini-posters” with a special QR code linked to the web-based app; $800 for graphic design for the brochure; and a contingency fund of $900 to publish an additional 5,000 brochures if they are needed.
“I do have a question: what is happening next if they turn you down?” Lawlor queried, echoing Kahn’s concerns that the town selectboard might decide against the $7,000 grant for food provision during foliage season. “I don’t mean to be negative, but each of these requests could be turned down by the selectboard,” Lawlor offered. “Are there backup plans to cover this?” Spector responded by saying, “We would do the digital program — it doesn’t cost anything. I’ll print up posters with the QR code and give it to the merchants to hand wherever they can. Let’s just be positive — there has been one rejection in 120 grant requests to the selectboard.”
Whither the EDC?
At the outset of last week’s EDC meeting, Spector asked the commissioners to add a discussion he termed “Whither the EDC” to the evening’s agenda. There then ensued a conversation during which Spector offered insights into recent, annual “work plan” discussions that the village trustees and town selectboard had during special joint meetings on Aug. 28 and earlier in the day of Sept. 5. Some of those discussions focused on the roles of advisory bodies within the Woodstock town governance structure, including the EDC, Spector said.
The EDC chair noted that earlier that day, the combined governing bodies identified a draft set of four long-term objectives for the town, including “housing development, effective and efficient government, affordability, and climate resiliency.” Initiatives identified to achieve these objectives, Spector added, included the town’s purchase of the Woodstock Aqueduct Company and undertaking of capital projects related to it; upgrades to Woodstock’s main wastewater treatment plant; the merger of the Town and Village; and the redirection and condensing of advisory boards within town governance. The draft objectives and initiatives, Spector opined, call into question some of the key mission points of the EDC since the commission’s establishment by the selectboard and voters nearly a decade ago.
“It’s unclear how well the EDC’s priorities fit with the priorities the selectboard and trustees are discussing,” Spector noted during a PowerPoint presentation to the commissioners. The commission’s priorities, the EDC chair noted, include expanding the community’s workforce housing supply and childcare capacity, marketing Woodstock, rejuvenating the downtown area, and supporting and growing community events. Only two of these priorities — those related to housing and childcare — can be tied to the town leaders’ long-term objectives for housing and economic development, Spector argued.
The EDC chair said it was his personal opinion that there is a clearer connection between the commission’s current priorities and “the instructions the voters gave” when they okayed the creation of the advisory group nine years ago. Voters wanted the newly founded commission to “invest in the future health of Woodstock; fund economic and community development; promote the town to potential visitors, residents, and businesses; and fund special projects to benefit the community,” Spector pointed out. The present concerns of the trustees and selectboard, however, are focused on imminent and pressing infrastructure concerns facing Woodstock in the shorter term and not on the kinds of initiatives and long-term planning that have been at the heart of the EDC’s mission and grantmaking priorities in recent times.
“Jon, you’ve spent a lot of time sharing your opinion and I appreciate that. I will just get to the brass tacks of this,” EDC member Todd Ullman commented via Zoom at last week’s meeting. “The selectboard — not the current selectboard, but selectboards of the past — have failed the town. They’ve kicked infrastructure and other projects down the road for decades. I’ve been here for 30 years and the school and other capital improvements were never considered, never dealt with, never addressed. I think the selectboard now is fantastic and they’re doing a really great job to try to deal with the intersection of policy and public opinion.
“If you look at the Economic Development Commission as a business and go all the way back to the beginning,” Ullman continued, “you see things like flower pots in the village, and child care and TEDx — people can make a lot of arguments about the wisdom of those things. You see that the ROI — the return on investment of those things — is exactly what the voters wanted. What they wanted was to take some money and throw it at programs that have a compound interest for the town — that’s what we were tasked with and that’s what we’ve done with our volunteerism and certain areas of expertise.” Ullman added that he thought the EDC was “doing a really good job,” with the tasks assigned to it. “Can we do a better job?” the EDC member queried. “Sure we can,” he answered.
EDC Vice Chair Joe DiNatale, who has served on the commission since its inception in December of 2015, spoke up next. ”We can think of the EDC as being in its infancy and growing, learning, and doing things and making mistakes, as all infants do. We’re getting to that stage where the EDC has to make some changes, develop, grow and learn what the selectboard wants and needs from us. We should get together with [the selectboard] and with the trustees and hash it out and say, ‘Okay, this is our opportunity to ask, ‘What exactly do you want from us?’”
Spector said he will approach Municipal Manager Eric Duffy, Town Selectboard Chair Ray Bourgeois, and Village Trustees Chair Seton McIroy to explore the possibility of joint or separate meetings between the EDC members and the town governing boards to plot a path forward for the economic development advisory body in times ahead. EDC member Calabrese punctuated the discussion by offering her take on the evolving relationship between Woodstock’s elected officials and the commission.
“I personally think that the coordination that the selectboard and trustees are initiating is a really positive thing,” Calabrese commented. “I think it is great. I can’t think of a better word than coordination between the boards and receiving their feedback. I think that the smartest thing we could do right now is to keep going, but with those four priorities that [the boards] have outlined in mind. I think it’s a really easy thing; a lot of [the priorities] do overlap with what we’ve been working on, and if we can just continue going forward with those specific priorities, it’s kind of a no-brainer for me. We’ve been looking for guidance within our own group, we’ve been talking about what our priorities are, and they’re not that dissimilar,” Calabrese concluded.