Land Use Planning Commission seeks input on Comprehensive Land Use Plan update
AUGUSTA — The Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry’s Land Use Planning Commission is inviting residents, property owners and others to help shape the next Comprehensive Land Use Plan by participating in a pre-process survey. The LUPC is gathering feedback through a pre-process CLUP Survey.
The Commission provides planning and zoning services for unorganized townships, plantations and towns in 13 counties, covering roughly half of Maine, and often called the UT. The LUPC statute requires the Commission to prepare a CLUP, to guide its rules, zoning and development review. The plan is similar in some ways to comprehensive plans written by municipalities in Maine, but covers a much larger area, about 10.4 million acres.
Since the first CLUP was adopted in 1974, there have been five updates, the most recent in 2010. The next update will address changes since 2010 and will guide the Commission into the future.
According to Acting Executive Director Benjamin Godsoe, “It is essential that the Commission hear from those living, recreating and working in the UT about what is happening in this important part of Maine and how the CLUP update process should go.”
Through September the survey is available to the public via the CLUP update website.
| Printed copies are available upon request and may be returned by mail or dropped off at the LUPC offices in Bangor or Augusta. Postcards about the survey are being mailed to all identified property owners in the service area.
The survey aims to gather feedback on how people relate to the Commission’s service area, the most important issues to consider in the update, the best process for updating the CLUP and how the LUPC is doing. Survey results will be analyzed and presented to the Commission at a public meeting during the fall or winter. The Commission encourages anyone who lives, works, owns property, or recreates in the service area to participate in the survey and help shape the future of land use planning in Maine’s unorganized territories. The LUPC’s CLUP: Pre-Process website is being continually updated and contains additional information about the current update effort, including an Initial Outreach Report, informational session summaries and presentations and data and information. The Contact Us page provides information for individuals to sign up for email updates. The following email address can be used to contact LUPC staff directly at Clupdate.LUPC@maine.gov. The Land Use Planning Commission was established by the Maine Legislature to extend the principles of sound planning, zoning and development to the unorganized and deorganized areas of the state, including townships and plantations. These areas either lack local government or have chosen not to administer land use controls at the local level. For more information, please visit the LUPC webpage (https://www.maine.gov/dacf/lupc/). |