ALTAMONT — The village’s future is being shaped by consensus.

Altamont’s comprehensive planning committee is compiling responses from residents and business owners given in surveys and workshops. This month the committee plans to draft a vision statement based on the feedback.

There weren’t any big surprises in the responses, Trustee Dean Whalen, chairman of the committee, told The Enterprise yesterday. There were several requests for a grocery store.
"People miss the Marquette," he said of the store at the intersections of routes 146 and 156 that was transformed into a Victorian-looking mini-mall.

This month the committee is writing a vision statement based largely on the feedback from the 440 surveys that have been returned; Whalen estimated that roughly 1,000 surveys had been sent out. Local scouts delivered surveys by hand and surveys could also be filled out on-line — both in successful attempts to beat the 20-percent average return.

The vision statement will be part of the draft plan that Whalen hopes will be finished by September. The draft will be commented on and possibly amended by the public before the plan is voted on by the village board, which needs to approve it.

The last comprehensive plan was done in 1974, said Whalen. He added that it is best to do a new plan every five to 10 years because that will make it easier to get grants, which is one of the primary reasons he gave for doing the new comprehensive plan.

Aesthetics, facilities, support for senior citizens and teens, and coordination with the fair, school, and post office are some of the things on which Whalen said the plan will focus.