MARION — Planning Board candidate Alanna Nelson moved to Marion in 2019, and says she’s ready to start giving back to the town.

“I’m sort of a community-minded person,” she said. “I like it here, and I wanted to give back.”

Nelson, who says she moved to town for the sailing, works in marketing, and has a master’s degree in tourism marketing.

But, as a felt artist, she said, “Arts marketing, I guess, would be my specialty.”

But before she came to Marion, Nelson cut her teeth in government working in Washington State as a water quality financial assessment planner. She said that experience could be similar to the Planning Board, weighing arguments and comments on development plans.

“Once again, you had to look at different perspectives,” she said.

She noted that, in Washington, she had to weigh the issues of the day and the wants of the residents.
“And then there’s the financial reality,” she said.

Nelson said she thinks her tourism planning experience could be of use, as well.

“We are a tourism community, in a lot of ways,” she said, qualifying, “there’s a very strong sense of place here.”

Nelson said she thinks the biggest issue the Planning Board faces is “inflow and infiltration” of the water and sewer system — the catch-all term for water that does not need to be treated flowing into the sewer system and using expensive sewage treatment capacity.

“There’s no free money for that,” she said. “Knowing how much real space we have in that sewer system is important.”

Nelson said that, if she had $1 million to spend in town, $920,000 of it would go toward fixing inflow and infiltration, and the other $80,000 would be used to start a loan fund for residents who have a hard time keeping their water and sewer connections “up to speed.”

Noting that plans for several large housing developments are already before the board, Nelson said it’s important to cater to more than just the 55-and-up population.

“Anything that’s developed at density should be focused at universal design,” she said.

Nelson said part of the reason she — and, she believes, the other four non-incumbent candidates — decided to run was the limitations the board has faced with its current vacancy.

“I think it’s one of those things that happened and we all learned from it,” Nelson said.