OXFORD – As part of a joint effort between the Town and Village of Oxford to lead residents into a promising future, local leaders and community members are reaching out to town and village residents for input as they carry on the Oxford vision planning project.
The project has officially been underway for months. In May, a Community Design Advisory meeting introduced a process that called for three vision planning meetings to be held throughout the summer to gather community insight on the future path of Oxford. The goal is to create an updated plan to be utilized by town and village officials in making decisions that affect residents.
The SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry Center for Community Design Research was hired by the two municipalities for $10,000 to head the process. Data will be reviewed, analyzed and used to set goals, and goals will be used to create strategies which may ultimately lead to a new comprehensive plan further down the road. The third and final vision planning meeting will be held at 2 p.m. and again at 7 p.m. on Aug. 7 at the Oxford Primary School.
“The survey has been just one more tool used in the vision planning process. At the end of this process, we don’t want anyone to say they didn’t have an opportunity to participate in the future direction of the community,” said Oxford Mayor Terry Stark. Stark also noted that while surveys have been available for several weeks, few have been completed and returned to the village office, leaving village officials searching for more ideas and concerns from residents. “You can’t expect that the village board and the planning board always know what’s best,” he added.
Stark went on to say that the village was prepared for some of the responses seen in the survey thus far. Village officials have already applied for main street grant funding through New York State in anticipation of a demand for increased vitality of the downtown business district, said Stark. Other residents’ concerns surrounding absentee landlords and the desire for improved sidewalks weren’t as expected but are under examination, he added.
Plans are to continue the process until there’s enough data to properly analyze survey findings. Said Stark, “The more input we get from he 4,000 people living in the Town and Village of Oxford, the better ... We’re going keep it up as long as it takes until we have a good size statistics database to work with.”
Stark said that while the survey has been slowly getting responses, the problem is that feedback has been skewed more toward village residents. The survey team is commanding more outreach for town residents.
“I’ve tried to go into it with an open mind and listen to what people have to say,” said Town Supervisor Lawrence Wilcox, noting that some issues, including gas drilling, are more critical for town residents. “I think a big concern with that is people want to preserve what we have ... Their feelings are important for any decision we make and unfortunately, a lot of people aren’t speaking up.”
So far, more feedback has been offered by younger generations of Oxford town residents, according to Wilcox. “We have a change in the makeup of the population that live in Oxford,” he said. “Unfortunately, the age-old residents are often the ones that don’t respond to the surveys.”
Both the township and the village are continuing efforts to promote and distribute surveys in the coming weeks. A copy of the survey is available at village and town offices, or online at www.oxfordny.com/government.