Chester boards meet to kick off Town Plan revisions Planners want public input early and often

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2026 Telegraph Publishing LLC

With work on a new Town Plan just getting under way, last week the Chester Select Board hosted a meeting of several of its appointed boards to share their thoughts on the plan and the process to rewrite the current version. In Vermont, any town that has zoning is required to have a Town Plan, and that Town Plan must be updated every eight years.

The deadline for the new plan is May 2028. In addition to the Select Board, in attendance were members of the Development Review Board and the Planning, Housing, Economic Development and Cannabis Control commissions.

Town Manager Julie Hance briefly introduced the meeting, saying that there have been dramatic changes since the last plan was adopted in early 2020 and the purpose of this meeting was to get everyone on the same page. Hance told the 20 people assembled around the tables that the evening was all about discussion.

Planning Commission Chair Hugh Quinn took the helm of the meeting and walked the participants through the results of a demographic study showing that Chester is getting older faster than other areas of Vermont. The study also looked at commuting patterns for Chester’s workers, income compared with housing costs and declining school enrollment.

With all the cheery information in hand, Quinn recounted the results of the commission’s  SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis. There were a number of suggestions for adding to or subtracting from the findings.

The meeting then turned to the structure of the Town Plan, many elements of which are mandated in state law. With the initial focus of the commission’s work in bold, these are:

• Future Land Use
• Transportation
• Utilities and Facilities
• Rare Natural Areas, Scenic & Historic Features
• Education
• Energy
• Economic Development
• Housing 
• Flood Resilience

Quinn asked the board not to “problem solve” but simply to react to the statements under each of the five topics in bold. Most of the statements are from the current town plan.

All of this is early days for the plan, but over the next 23 months, the Planning Commission will be working on these areas. Quinn said the commission wants robust public input during the process rather than at the end when these volunteers have worked many hours on the plan. The Telegraph will be following the progress of the new Town Plan. Here are other ways to stay on top of it.

The Planning Commission meets on the first and third Mondays of each month at 6:30 p.m. at Town Hall and remotely via Zoom.

The current Town Plan can be found here.  

A video recording of the meeting can be seen here.

The slide deck used during the meeting is here.