Sears Island Scoping Meeting
1/23/06
An initial “Sears Island Scoping Meeting” was held on January 23, 2006 for the purpose of designing a stakeholder/public participation process to consider future uses for Sears Island and to develop a consensus plan for those uses. The consensus plan and recommendations will be presented to the Governor, the Joint Standing Committee on Transportation of the Maine Legislature, and the Town of Searsport for consideration.
During the Scoping Meeting, agreement was reached to hire a facilitator for the Sears Island Planning Initiative. A selection committee was formed from representatives of an array of interests. A draft Request for Proposals (RFP) was publicly distributed and the selection committee made modifications to the RFP, which was then published. The committee received a strong response to the RFP.
The selection committee has made a final decision based on a careful review of the responses and scoring of the proposals as set forth in the RFP and has selected Gosline and Reitman: Dispute Resolution Services. Working with them, the committee will move expeditiously to set up an initial meeting in May (likely the third week and likely in the Searsport area).
The initial meeting will be hosted by the steering committee as initially described at the January 23rd meeting. The focus will be on detailing the process as it moves forward. All interested parties will be informed of the meeting and will be welcome to attend. More detailed information will be published in the next week describing the planning process and how members of the public can be involved and gain up-to-date information.
Meeting Summary
