Planning commission begins process to update Stowe’s town plan

At a meeting March 4, the night before Town Meeting Day, the commission took some initial steps in a process for Stowe to potentially adopt a new plan in 2026.

This early planning involved a particular focus on the plan’s first three chapters on the planning process as well as establishing a sense of community and a sense of place.

At its meeting two weeks later, the commission discussed Town Meeting Day feedback and discussed whether changes to the format of the plan were necessary. There was a proposal to make the plan more accessible by relegating historical data and other data-heavy information to an appendix and adding an executive summary.

Chair Mila Lonetto supported this idea, while Neil Percy advocated for keeping the structure the same, but reminded the board that the document needed to articulate where Stowe is as a community and where its wants to be.

Act 47, or the HOME Act, which required the planning commission to revise Stowe’s zoning bylaws, mandated the expansion of where new construction can take place in Stowe based on the availability of town water and sewer.

While the zoning law changes attempted to carve out some exceptions to these requirements, commission members acknowledged that the new town plan needed to take the new reality of Stowe’s density capacity into consideration.

The commission also laid out a long list of municipal, cultural, business and hospitality organizers they would get input from throughout the process of crafting the plan, along with the various new sets of data to include.

So far, the commission has completed the first two steps of a 10-step process. The next step will see planning commission members take on different elements of the plan and act as liaisons.

Rebecca Stone, a Middlebury-based municipal planning consultant hired by the town, will be present at the April 1 meeting and assist with community outreach around the town plan’s development.

The commission will spend a great deal of time listening and soliciting feedback from a range of parties invested in some way or another in the town plan through spring, summer and fall before developing the plan in earnest in 2025.