On Thursday November 6, all New Haven community members are invited to gather at the Town Hall for a free community dinner and the opportunity to be an active participant in sharing and developing ideas for the future prosperity and quality of life of New Haven.
This event is the first of three steps in the “New Haven Comes Together” process facilitated by the Vermont Council on Rural Development (VCRD). In the first meeting the community will brainstorm ideas for the future. In the second, attendees will choose top priorities. In the third, community members will build action plans with help from experts and create local task force groups to implement them. All community members – residents, business owners, those that work in town, youth and students, and anyone who cares about New Haven – are invited and encouraged to join the process to shape the future of town.
Attendees of the November 6 event will participate in forums to discuss what is working well in town, challenges, and opportunities for action. The forum topics were chosen by a representative group of community members with many different perspectives.
VCRD will facilitate the discussions taking place from 4:30-8:30 pm in the Town Hall and Town Office. Community members will be joined by a Visiting Team of state, regional, federal and non-profit leaders who will listen, share reflections, and support the community as they begin this work. All community members are invited to join any of the following sessions that they are interested in:
4:30–6:00 pm – Infrastructure: Fire Station, Emergency Shelter, Public Safety
4:30–6:00 pm – Future of Beeman, Youth, and Families
6:00–7:00 pm – Free community dinner catered by the Village Green Market, with live music
7:00–8:30 pm – Affordability
7:00–8:30 pm – Community Center: Depot, Library, Community Engagement
There will also be a separate, online Zoom forum at 7pm covering all four topics for those who are not able to attend in person. Login details can be found at bit.ly/NewHavenTogether.
Childcare will be provided during the forums. If you need a ride to the event, call Mark Cahill at 608-341-0853 to coordinate. For interpretation or other accommodations, contact Alyssa at [email protected] or 802-222-6896.
Community members can also share their ideas through an online survey. A link to the survey and more details about the process can be found at bit.ly/NewHavenTogether. Steps two and three will take place on December 11 and January 15 when community members will come back together to champion action ideas, set priorities, and sign up for task forces to take action on each priority. A team of technical and financial resource providers will join the final step to help the new task forces as they create action plans.
Alyssa Johnson, VCRD’s Community Visit Program Director says, “This process is an opportunity for New Haven community members to come together, share ideas for the future, set common directions, and access support and resources to accomplish their goals. We are looking forward to working with New Haven in the months ahead!”
The New Haven Selectboard invited the Vermont Council on Rural Development to conduct this Community Visit process. VCRD is a non-partisan nonprofit helping Vermont communities develop their capacity for a prosperous and sustainable future. In the past 28 years, VCRD has facilitated community processes with over 90 communities across the state to bring residents together to share ideas and move toward common solutions.
“New Haven Comes Together” is funded with support from the Northern Border Regional Commission, Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development, Vermont Community Foundation, National Life Foundation, Lintilhac Foundation, Wisdom Connection, and VCRD supporters and donors.
For more information, visit bit.ly/NewHavenTogether, or contact Alyssa Johnson at VCRD at 802-222-6896 or [email protected].
Vermont Council on Rural Development
The Vermont Council on Rural Development (VCRD) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the support of the locally-defined progress of Vermont’s rural communities. VCRD is a dynamic partnership of federal, state, local, nonprofit and private partners. Actively non-partisan with an established reputation for community-based facilitation, VCRD is uniquely positioned to sponsor and coordinate collaborative efforts across governmental and organizational categories concerned with policy questions of rural import. The organization has facilitated community prioritization processes with over 90 towns, resulting in hundreds of locally defined projects including new childcare centers, wastewater infrastructure, downtown redevelopments, and much more.