Andover’s Master Plan subcommittee of the Planning Board met on October 14, to finalize the public opinion survey going out to Andover residents in November. You can participate in this survey by scanning the QR code shown in this article, or on the postcard delivered to every Andover mailbox, or by picking up a hard copy of the survey at the Town Offices.
The survey seeks to gather public opinion about what features of Andover you think should be protected and preserved, and what types of development and progress you would welcome. The range of survey questions asks townspeople to describe the relative values they place on Andover’s natural and historic character, community services and infrastructure, recreational and cultural opportunities, business development, housing options, and rate of development. These are complex questions, and the Master Planning committee, chaired by Jacob Gilman (jacob.gilman02@nullgmail.com), has spent many hours designing a survey that will give residents a chance to describe their preferences in detail.
It is important to understand that Town revenue comes almost exclusively from taxing our private property. It’s the only way rural New Hampshire towns can pay for things like road maintenance, snow removal, public schools, fire, police, and town services.
As we look to our future, we need to know how Andover residents would balance the trade-off between increasing the number and size of Andover’s future taxable businesses and industries (which would, to some degree, relieve the Town’s heavy reliance on property taxes on our homes) on one hand, and preserving “the way it’s always been,” which we all find familiar and comforting aspects of our hometown.
It is not a simple choice of one single thing versus the other, of progress versus conservation, which is why we need as much detailed feedback from as many townspeople as we can get, as soon as possible. Consequently, the survey is not very short, but the time and thought you contribute will make a lasting mark on our town decades into the future. It’s absolutely worth your effort!
Please watch your mailbox in November for a postcard with the link to the online version of the survey, or go to (andover-nh.gov), or stop by the Town Offices to get a paper survey that you can fill out and hand in.