The Borderlands Project recently selected the towns of Killingly, CT and Exeter, RI as the two towns for the Village Innovation Pilot. They were selected from a pool of 12 towns that applied (out of the possible 20 Borderlands towns).
The Pilot is a strategic planning initiative that will examine ways to conserve critical lands by channelling new growth into existing or planned village centers. Killingly and Exeter expressed a strong interest in working through this challenge as part of the Pilot.
Both towns are currently putting together local teams to help guide the Pilot at the local level. These groups will work with Pilot staff and the Pilot's bi-state Advisory Group to help shape the Pilot process in the coming months.
The first phase of the Pilot will be a robust visioning process where we hope to learn from the community members what qualities and places are most important to them to protect and enhance and what challenges they see facing their town in the future. We hope to kick off the visioning work in early 2008.
While the two towns will be going through this process seperately, we plan to provide opportunities for the two to learn from each other as well as share lessons learned with the larger Borderlands region. We'll be posting information regularly to the Borderlands website and plan to hold several regional sharing events throughout the course of the Pilot.
For more information on the Pilot and to find out how you can get involved in Exeter or Killingly, go to http://www.borderlandsproject.org/index.asp?col1=villagepilot.asp.
Ariana McBride, Economic Development Planner, RI Economic Policy Council