For More Information Contact:  Steve Caine at 384-3948 or Deborah Herrin at 882-1009

Community Invited To Participate

Town of Charlton to Rate Visual Preferences, Build Community Image

A community image survey for the Town of Charlton will be conducted at a special program on July 1, 2004 at the Charlton Freehold Church Academy from 7 to 8 p.m.   All Charlton residents, property owners, civic groups, businesses, and government officials are invited to participate.  The community image survey is a research and visioning technique that will be used to articulate Charlton’s impression of desired community image and to build consensus and define acceptable community character.  It will evaluate a range of images and places showing various development intensities, styles and designs.  The Town of Charlton Comprehensive Planning Committee will use this to help define a clear vision of the desired future appearance and character of the town.  Participants will be asked to numerically rate images as either acceptable or unacceptable from a visual point of view.  This technique measures the aesthetic character residents’ desire for Charlton in the future.

The survey will be quick and simple. A series of slides will be shown depicting a variety of commercial and residential development, and landscape scenes. Participants will be asked to rate each slide on a scale of -5 to +5 to indicate how visually pleasing the scene is to them. 

The community image survey will be facilitated by the town’s consultant planner Nan Stolzenburg, AICP.   Stolzenburg said, “Visual character is very important to residents and landowners.  Community character is usually one of the most critical concerns of residents and at the same time, is usually not adequately addressed in development plans or local laws.  Defining community character can be problematic because it is often very subjective. The community image survey is a technique that helps us evaluate visual character in a more objective way.”

In addition to the slides, participants will be asked a few short questions related to specific locations in Charlton that people find visually pleasing or displeasing.  The Charlton Comprehensive Plan Committee will use the results of the survey and incorporate these additional thoughts and opinions into the new comprehensive plan.  The full plan will be a blueprint to guide physical growth and community development action strategies. 

The community image survey is the third public participation activity sponsored by the Town of Charlton.    Past activities include a community visioning and planning workshop that attracted more than 70 people and recently, a town-wide mailed survey was sent to all residents of the town.  About 800 written surveys have been returned to date. All activities have been designed to involve Town residents in the comprehensive planning process.