This is a service / maintenance or supply contract in Williston, Vermont. Contact the soliciting agency for additional information.

Interviews conducted: Week of May 30 - June 2, 2023 Consultant selection by: June 16, 2023 Project Work to begin: July 1, 2023 Complete project on or by: December 31, 2024 Please expect a confirmation email upon receipt of the proposal by town of Williston. If you have any questions about this project or the RFP, please address them in writing via email to Matt Boulanger. We will respond to all questions in writing within seven (7) days. Both the questions and responses will be shared with the other consultants. Overview The Town of Williston seeks planning consulting services to lead a robust public engagement process for Williston's 2025 Town Plan that includes a broad array of methods such as in-person/virtual events, an interactive website, surveys, activities with school classes and popup engagement at community gatherings. Broad and deep public engagement on the new Plan is critical to ensuring that the Plan and the action items the town takes following its adoption are truly based on informed public involvement in the decision-making and prioritization process. Through an array of innovative engagement methods and a focus on inclusion, the town endeavors to reach underrepresented and underserved community members who have previously been excluded from the town's long range planning processes. Context and Background Since 1990 the Williston Comprehensive Plan has expressed a vision for Taft Corners to be a compact, mixed-use area with a pedestrian orientation, for the Village to serve as the town's civic center, and for conservation of open space throughout the town's rural areas. Over the last two decades, however, public engagement efforts for the Williston Town Plan have been lackluster, typically consisting only of a few meetings attended by 20 or so residents. Low levels of public engagement have resulted in town plans that contain very few new ideas and do not provide the foundation for policy and programmatic decisions the town has faced over the lives of those plans. Despite this lack of engagement during the Town Planning process, Williston has completed several exciting planning initiatives noted as implementation actions in the 2017 Plan, including a Village Masterplan, Enhanced Energy Plan, Taft Corners Vision Plan, the adoption of Form Based Code for Taft Corners, adopting a townwide Official Map, revising the development and design review standards for the Village Zoning District, and conducting a Housing Needs Assessment. A Housing Committee will likely be established in spring of 2023. The town is also working with partners on several transportation initiatives, including a microtransit feasibility study, multimodal hub feasibility study, a Class I Highway pilot study and a Route 2 Corridor Study As Williston has made steady progress in implementing the action items of its Plan, critical issues including housing affordability, racial equity, public health, and climate change have risen to the forefront. At the local scale, Williston continues to experience growth and development pressure, with each new development eliciting vocal opposition from those who want to stop or drastically slow new development. Such opposition often conflicts with longstanding town policies like concentrating development in areas served by town infrastructure and supporting its fair share of growth in the region. The rising prominence of new issues and the town's progress on its existing goals call for a renewed approach to planning Williston's future. Broad and deep public engagement on the new Plan is critical to ensuring that the Plan and the action items the town takes following its adoption are truly based on informed public involvement in the decision-making and prioritization process. Through a broad array of innovative engagement methods and a focus on inclusion, the town endeavors to reach underrepresented and underserved community members who have previously been excluded from the town's long range planning processes. Funding A total of $32,000 is available for consultant services from the Municipal Planning Grant Program administered by the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development and Town of Williston matching funds. Work Plan We seek consultant assistance in developing and delivering new, innovative, robust methods of engagement, with the goal of increasing participation from historically marginalized populations. Our Scope of Work includes virtual/online engagement platforms, mailed surveys and in person events. The web-based outreach could include such elements as FAQs on the project, quick polls, a moderated forum, individual stories, sign-up opportunities for events, a mapping feature, and a comment board. The in-person events will include at least 3 town plan-focused community events happening in different parts of town, as well as "popup" engagement happening in the context of other typical town events like Town Meeting, Green Up Day, and Independence Day Celebration. We propose to also conduct some activities in local schools through class discussions and hands-on activities. In preparation for the Town Plan update, we engaged a UVM student to gather existing conditions data for all sectors of the Plan (population, housing, schools, transportation, economic development, etc.), and the data along with source citations has been compiled into an Excel workbook. We intend to use the existing conditions data as a starting point for public outreach. We have also engaged the Leadership Champlain program to lay the groundwork for public engagement in the town plan process and pilot that engagement effort on the particular plan element of housing. The Leadership Champlain team drafted a Public Engagement Strategy, established "williston2050" as a website, and developed a logo and tagline as social media brand to identify the comprehensive plan effort. This preparatory work will help ensure that the outreach effort starts from a solid foundation. A detailed Scope of Work with numbered tasks and task descriptions is attached. There is some flexibility to modify the Scope of Work if the consultant recommends other types of activities or methods of engagement. The consultant should expect substantial support from Williston planning staff in outreach implementation. For example, Planning staff will participate in coordinating and participating in all outreach events and can assume a greater share of the workload as needed. Timeframe The project will begin as soon as we have selected a consultant and awarded a contract, anticipated by the end of June. We expect the bulk of contract deliverables to be completed no later than August 31, 2024. However, there may be a need to assist with one or more presentations to the Selectboard after that date.