Town Administrator Michael Gagne met with the members of the Mattapoisett Marine Advisory Board on April 30 to ask for its assistance in spearheading two large projects.
The first is a coastal zone management plan.
“I’d like you to be the lead group to get this pulled together,” Gagne told advisory board members. He went on to tell them with whom the group will need to work over the course of the next year in order to write a plan the state will accept.
Gagne said that at the upcoming town meeting, the warrant has an article to hire a professional grant writer to secure monies needed in this effort, as well as a consultant to help craft a harbor plan that can stand up to state and legal scrutiny.
Other agencies and boards, Gagne said, with which the MAB will need to liaise are the Planning Board and SRPEDD. He told them that SRPEDD personnel have the expertise to help guide them through the process of writing a coastal zone management plan.
Gagne pointed to recent pressures placed on the scenic harbor, a harbor that would be best served by having a local enforceable harbor plan. He handed out the plan that New Bedford and Fairhaven had put in place several years ago as a guide towards beginning to outline such a plan for Mattapoisett.
“A harbor plan would allow the Town to develop their own language for Chapter 91 projects,” said Gagne, such as private docks and piers.
He also asked the board to come out in support of various waterfront-related warrant articles that will help the town make necessary repairs to the historic wharves.
And Gagne didn’t stop there.
He also asked the board to begin a review of waterside rules and regulations that, in his view, were out of date and in need to improvement.
On this project, he said the board would be working with Town Counsel John Goldrosen of Koppelman and Paige. Gagne passed out copies of the current rules and regulations that Goldrosen had edited. There was a good-natured collective groan when the members saw the amount of “red ink” they were faced with improving. Gagne provided them with a copy of legal guidelines for preparing a new document. He thanked them on behalf of the selectmen for taking on these two challenging but important projects.
Chairman Alan Gillis said they would most likely break up into subcommittee groups to tackle these projects.
Also present was Harbormaster Jill Simmons who shared that Adam Perkins, a local teen and Boy Scout, had completed his Eagle Scout project. Simmons said the kayak rakes for the Town Wharf area that he had built would be installed in the coming week.
The next meeting of the Mattapoisett Marine Advisory Board is scheduled for May 28 at 7:00 pm in the Town Hall conference room.
By Marilou Newell
