By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — The status of a master plan for town parks — the first in more than three decades — was reviewed Monday by the Parks Advisory Committee, which also welcomed two new members, including a new chairwoman.

There were three responses to a recent Request for Proposals, or RFP, for a firm to complete the master plan, Jennifer Fava, director of the Parks and Recreation Department, told the committee. 

The master plan will involve a multi-step process and is expected to take about a year to complete once one of the three firms that bid on the RFP is hired for the job, she said. 

“The goal is to establish priorities … to give us direction over the next 10 years,” Fava said. The last master plan for Parks and Recreation Department was done in 1992, she added.

Putting the plan together will include taking an inventory of the town’s parks and recreation facilities; assessing how those facilities are used; studying maintenance needs and community needs tnot being met currently, among other factors.

 A “SWOT” analysis — which identifies an organization’s strengths, weaknesses and outside threats — will also be done by the firm chosen to complete the plan, according to Fava.

“We’re asking for quite a lot,” she said.

It is important that the process for putting together the master plan is public, and that it is clear why certain improvements or upgrades are completed before others, said Velma Heller, the new Parks Advisory Committee chair, a former moderator of the Representative Town Meeting and newly appointed to the panel. 

Caleb Thayer Fox is another new member of the Parks Advisory Committee.

“It is very important to have some clear parameters — why this facility before something else … to have standards to be fair to everyone,” Heller said. 

Fava agreed, saying there will be “public engagement” in the planning process, including opinion surveys, “charrettes,” or brainstorming sessions, where ideas are shared, and other opportunities for public feedback to help formulate the master plan recommendations.

The town is asking the study firm to focus on about 25 parks and recreation properties, producing schematics on ideas for improvement of about 10 of those sites, Fava said.  

Longshore Club Park, the town’s largest recreational facility, however, will not be part of this townwide master plan because a separate Longshore Park Capital Improvement Plan has been in the works for more than two years.

The Parks Master Plan process will be funded by American Rescue Plan Act pandemic-era funds. “The plan is not to have Westport taxpayer money to be spent on this plan,” Fava said.

A timetable for the planning process calls for selecting one of the firms bidding on the RFP in the next few weeks. Funding then must be approved by other town bodies, likely in May and June. The firm hired for the study likely will start working on the plan over the summer.

Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman and has taught journalism at New York and Southern Connecticut State universities.