Mount Ascutney Regional Commission

This chapter of the Regional Plan documents existing community utilities and facilities, evaluates their support for planning goals, and identifies priority investments for the Mount Ascutney Region. It focuses on several key areas: public water and sewer infrastructure, broadband internet access, solid waste management, health and safety resources, educational facilities, childcare services, and recreational opportunities. The overarching goals are to meet the current and future needs of the region's communities, maintain its historic settlement pattern, and promote economic vitality by improving and expanding essential public services and resources.

This Regional Plan, specifically Volume 2 on Transportation, serves as a comprehensive roadmap for transportation decision-making within the Mount Ascutney Region. It outlines goals to prioritize the maintenance of existing infrastructure, foster a diverse economy and high quality of life, ensure safe, equitable, and energy-efficient multimodal movement of people and goods, and build climate-resilient transportation systems. The plan emphasizes promoting diverse travel choices, sound land use planning to minimize highway expansion, and achieving zero traffic fatalities and serious injuries. It addresses regional trends such as an aging population, rural character, and funding challenges, while incorporating federal and state policies on safety, climate change, and equity.

This chapter of the Regional Plan outlines a comprehensive strategic direction to address housing needs within the region, with targets extending through 2050. The plan establishes nine primary housing goals focused on ensuring safe, sanitary, and available housing for all residents, maintaining existing homes, and streamlining the construction of necessary housing types. Key strategies include increasing public awareness, supporting economic health through smart growth, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, and achieving affordable housing goals. It details regulatory reforms, prioritizes development in compact centers with infrastructure, promotes mixed-income housing, bolsters safe housing programs, and encourages innovative construction techniques to meet regional housing targets for low-income, moderate-income, and workforce housing.

The Mount Ascutney Regional Commission's Regional Plan (2026) aims to provide a guiding framework for coordinated land use planning and regulation within its member towns. The plan emphasizes maintaining the region's settlement pattern of compact centers surrounded by rural countryside, while proposing policies to enhance community resilience against climate impacts, promote energy efficiency, and facilitate increased housing production. Key strategic goals include supporting a vibrant economy, avoiding sprawl, maintaining viable farms and forests, encouraging energy conservation and climate adaptation, promoting flood resiliency, protecting sensitive ecological resources, and providing essential community infrastructure. The document outlines eleven specific land use classifications to achieve these objectives.

This Regional Plan for the Mount Ascutney Regional Commission outlines strategies for the preservation and enhancement of the region's cultural, historic, and aesthetic resources. It prioritizes acknowledging and integrating indigenous knowledge and heritage, protecting significant historic sites and cultural assets, and fostering a shared sense of community pride. The plan also focuses on balancing land uses to maintain scenic landscapes and open spaces, ensuring the protection of environmental integrity, and addressing issues such as light pollution.