MATTAPOISETT — Regional planners asked what the town’s priorities should be for the coming years, and residents answered, weighing in on economics, transportation, communication, community, housing costs and culture should be like in town. 

After starting an online survey on the topic, planners from the Southeastern Regional Planning and Economic Development District spoke with some residents at a “discovery workshop” on Aug. 26 to collect personal and anecdotal evidence. The priorities will be used to develop a Master Plan, which lays out all of the town’s visions and goals as dictated by its residents, so officials can enact them. 

Though the input process is just beginning and will take 18 to 24 months, planners already have 70 responses to the survey, and have scheduled another workshop on Saturday for verbal feedback. 

Planner Grant King was pleased with the turnout for Thursday, saying that it “bodes well for the project.” 

Participants discussed their hopes for town in terms of

One participant said she liked the idea of small businesses or pop up businesses in the Village.   

Others, like Donna Shea, called for more development of Route 6 to make shopping more walkable and create more of a community, Town Wharf-type feel rather than “a stretch of asphalt,” as Shea called it.   

King also said that a recent study of options to reconfigure Route 6 was largely confined to state-approved options. He said that the eventual outcomes do not have to be similarly limited, and could be more creative and suited to residents’ ideal needs, although “the town would have to take ownership of all of Route 6 in town, not only to maintain it but the insurance liability.” 

When it came to transportation, attendees wanted more chances to cross Route 6 safely, sidewalks to make heavily-travelled roads like Mattapoisett Neck Road more accessible to bikers and pedestrians, and more consistent speed limits. 

Planners and residents also discussed areas of town at risk of being cut off due to flooding in a major hurricane. They include Point Connett, Mattapoisett Neck Road, Harbor Beach and Antassawomack.  

King and other SRPEDD planners also asked whether people felt a sense of community. Residents said maybe within neighborhoods, clubs and churches, but otherwise no. They also acknowledged that the first session participants did not include any parents of school-aged kids or high schoolers, to share their perspectives. 

Shea felt there was a general lack of a communication and said she missed the last election. Several people found the town’s website outdated or difficult to navigate.

When it came to housing, several seniors said their peers want to age in place, but lack the housing to do so. 

Planning Board member Nathan Ketchel said there is an affordability gap in town for younger professionals, where a house that is under the median sale price for town requires two people to work full-time just to finance it.  

Steve Smith said that he thought there had been “an attitude shift about that in the last 10 or 15 years” that left people “more receptive to different types of housing.”

One option participants and planners discussed were “granny flats,” where kids or parents move in and be on the same property in different units. However zoning and sewer currently make this challenging, participants said.  

When it came to conserving land, one participant pointed out that the town lacks a local wetlands bylaw. Most of the protected land in town has been bought outright by conservation groups, but King thought there might be other options for conserving land. 

Participants seemed more interested in the quality of the preserved land. Mary Briand said that though there has been an effort to preserve Goodspeed Island Road, the water quality there is actually quite low. “What good is that, having the open land, if it’s basically an open belly pit?” she asked, rhetorically.  

When it came to culture, participants largely agreed when Marilou Newell classified the town as “a historic shipbuilding town.”

Smith said that finding cultural events sometimes required traveling beyond Mattapoisett’s boundaries. Some residents seemed fine with that given opportunities to see culture in Marion and New Bedford, while others wanted to see cultural spaces in Mattapoisett. 

SRPEDD will host a second discovery session via Zoom on Saturday Aug. 29 at 10 a.m. Interested participants can also fill out a survey on their preferences. The survey includes video tutorials that show how to do some of the less familiar parts.