Cavendish Update 11/26/10 SB/Shopping Locally/Favor Johnson

The 11/26/10 Cavendish Update contains the following
1. Special Selectmen’s Meeting, Monday Nov. 29
2. Shop Cavendish for the Holidays
3. Favor Johnson’s Fruitcakes Now Made in Cavendish
4. New Concepts in Town Planning: Is it time to re-think how we plan?
5. Cavendish Events 11/26-11/30

1. Special Selectmen’s Meeting, Monday Nov. 29
The Selectmen will meet in executive session on Monday, Nov. 29 at 4:30 in an executive session regarding a legal matter (litigation). Beginning at 6:30 there will be a joint meeting with the Cavendish Board of Cemetery Commissioners. The meetings will take place at the Town Office in Cavendish.

2. Shop Cavendish for the Holidays
With today being “black Friday,” the beginning of the holiday shopping season, we are including a number of area businesses that have provided information about some of their holiday specials. If you are a Cavendish business and/or a resident, who owns a business, and have holiday specials you would like to share, please send information to margoc@tds.net by Wednesday Dec. 1 to be included in the next edition.

Holiday Fair: The 9th Annual Holiday Fair is from 9-3, on Saturday Nov. 27. All five of the local churches, the Cavendish Library, Historical Society, Cavendish Conservation and Community Association (CCCA), Proctorsville Fire Department and other groups will have booths set up at the Cavendish Elementary School. Each group will have unique gift items, foods, treats, raffles and much more. The Holy Name of Mary will once again provide lunch-a choice of delicious soups, chili, sandwiches and desserts. It’s a great place to do some shopping and catch up with friends.

Cavendish Game Birds: Order Quail and Pheasant on-line. The website also includes recipes

Crows Bakery: Once again, Crows will be offering their wonderful array of baked goods for the holidays - Pies - Cookie trays - Yule Logs ( a fantastic cake made to look like a fallen log, with meringue mushrooms and treats!) – Gingerbread men and decorated butter cookies including our famous Snowmen adorned with candy canes, chocolates, Swedish fish and more. Beautiful Bread wreaths to adorn your holiday table and seasonal bar cookies including Linzer bars and revel bars. All of us who work at Crows invite you to come and enjoy the fruits of our labor while you support your very own local bakery. Note that Crows also sells CCCA products including the 2011 Cavendish Calendar, note cards, Barn Poster and more. Crows Bakery and Opera House Cafe, located on Depot St. in Proctorsville is open from 6:30am to 6pm Monday through Saturday and 6:30 to 5pm on Sundays - serving great breakfasts and lunches every day.

Old Cavendish Products: Fruitcakes, Monkey Chews, Mustard and more. While Singleton’s carries some of their products, you can order on-line or call 1-800-536-7899. They have a note on their website that says they have limited quantities of their 40 oz fruitcakes and extremely limited quantities of 16 oz fruitcakes. If you want to ensure a fruitcake for the holidays, place your order today.

Singleton’s General Store: From clothing to special gourmet delicacies, this store seems to have it all. While you can take a virtual tour at their website, you will need to visit their Proctorsville store to make a purchase. Order a head for holiday meats and other treats. Call 226-7666.

Six Loose Ladies (Proctorsville Green): Gobble Up Savings Event Friday Nov. 26 only. From 10-6 there is 20% off all commercial yarns and supplies and 10% off books and patterns. FMI: 226-7373 or www.sixlooseladies.com

3. Favor Johnson’s Fruitcake Made in Cavendish
Every year at Christmas, Wilem Lange retells an all time favorite story “Favor Johnson” on Vermont Public Radio. It’s the story of a hound named Hercules, a flatlander doctor, who helps take care of him when he’s injured, and how this gift of friendship and Christmas resulted in Favor Johnson making fruitcakes for his town.

A few years ago, the Favor Johnson story became a book. This year, you can now enjoy one of Favor Johnson’s fruitcakes, as you listen or read to Lange retell the story. Old Cavendish Products is now offering the Favor Johnson’s Fruitcake, the perfect size for just one or two people. The Cavendish Historical Society will have the fruitcakes for sale on Saturday at the Holiday Fair. You can also purchase them directly from Old Cavendish Products or call 1-800-536-7899.

4. New Concepts in Town Planning: Is it time to re-think how we plan?
By Stephen Plunkard, FASKA, CNU, NCI Stephen Plunkard is a CCCA board member, and the following article appeared in the most recent edition of the CCCA newsletter.

I recently completed a course entitled The Principles of New Urbanism at the University of Miami’s School of Architecture. While I have been practicing town planning and landscape architecture for more than 40 years, this course gave me a new perspective on how we have planned our communities in the past, and why many of precepts of comprehensive planning have not been successful. I was particularly interested in this new way of thinking about planning and how it could relate to planning in Cavendish.

Living in the Village of Cavendish form ore than 30 years, I have become acutely aware that we have not focused on infilling the villages but instead have decided to promote conventional suburban development, which has resulted in low density sprawl. The sprawl that we have accommodated has gradually deteriorated what many people fiercely want to protect-the countryside and our rural environment. With few exceptions, our village centers have become places that you drive through rather than drive to. In 2005, Cavendish Proctorsville applied for and received from the state “Village Center Designation,” which is part of the state effort to avoid sprawl and keep villages contained. It also has incentives attached for the re-development of village buildings that strengthen the economic viability of villages. The recent upgrade of some of our sidewalks is an important first step in making the villages more walk able-we now need to focus on creating more places in the villages to walk to and from.

The history of land use planning in his country shows some of the reasons why it is not effective in the context of our villages. Land use planning regulations adopted at the beginning of the 20th century were based on the premise that cities and towns needed to exercise police power to protect public health, safety and welfare of its citizens. The regulations primarily dealt with fire protection issues and the separation of incompatible land uses. The separation of uses, or creation of single-use zones, created increased travel distances and made the use of public transportation less efficient and eventually obsolete. The net result of 20th century land use regulations has been sprawl. In the 1960s and 70’s there were a number of attempts to fix the system, including performance zoning and incentive based zoning. While many communities have attempted to fix the system with modifications to the system, they remain by and large dissatisfied with the quality of the places that conventional zoning has fostered.

In the 1980’s the Congress for the New Urbanism began developing alternatives to conventional zoning. The alternative approach began to look at communities more in terms of variations in scale and intensity of development than in differences in land uses. Many communities adopted these “form based codes” to encourage Traditional Neighborhood Development. This 21st Century approach land use regulation is summarized in the table below:

Conventional zoning vs. Form Based Codes (Source: Formed- Based Codes: A Guide for Planners, Urban Designers, Municipalities and Developers by Daniel G. Parolek, Karen Parolek, Paul C. Crawford, 2008 John Wiley and Sons)

Conventional (Proposed in the past in Cavendish) Auto-oriented, segregated land use principles
Form Based Codes Alternative: Mixed use, walk able, compact development oriented principles

Conventional: Organized around single use zones
Form Based Codes Alternative: Based on spatial organizing principles that identify and reinforce urban hierarchy, such as the rural to urban transect.

Conventional: Use is primary
Form Based Codes Alternative: Physical form and character are primary, with secondary attention to use

Conventional: Reactive to individual development proposals
Form Based Codes Alternative: Proactive community visioning

Conventional: Proscriptive regulations, regulating what is not permitted, as well as unpredictable numeric parameters, like density and floor area ratios.
Form Based Codes Alternative: Prescriptive regulations, describing what is required, such as build-to-lines and combined minimum and maximum building heights

Conventional: Regulations to create buildings
Form Based Codes Alternative: Regulations to create places

On at least two separate occasions in the past, grass roots efforts to adopt traditional zoning in Cavendish have failed. Is it time for the Planning Commission to investigate and propose new alternatives to conventional zoning? Do we need to be more proactive in emphasizing what we want rather that what we do not want? Doe we need to take a closer look at the village centers, and emphasize adaptive, mixed use and infill rather than single use zones? Should we think about connecting our villages with a safe alternative to cars-walking or cycling? Do we need to take a second look at the results of our land use policy of dispersal and the resulting devolution of our back roads and countryside? Have we become a victim of incremental change?

The vision is where we want to be, the plan is how we get there. Have we been developing plans without first developing the vision?

5. Cavendish Events 11/26-11/30
November 26 (Friday): Schools closed for Thanksgiving Recess
• Ludlow Library Closed

November 27 (Saturday): Holiday Fair, Cavendish Elementary School 9-3
• 2nd Annual Wine Tasting at Pleasant Valley Foods in Proctorsville (Black River Produce building) from 4-6 pm. 226-7336 www.pleasantvalleyfoodsvt.com
• Ludlow Library Closed
• Ludlow Winter Farmer’s Market, 9-1, Ludlow Masonic Lodge, 22 Buttermilk Falls Road (across the street from the entrance to Jackson Gore).

November 28 (Sunday): Last day of Vermont Deer Rifle Season

November 29 (Monday): Tween (ages 10-14) WII night at the Fletcher Library, 4-6:30 pm
• Special Select Board Meeting (see Item 1)

November 30 (Tuesday): Bone Builders Class at the Cavendish Baptist Class from 10:30-11:30. FMI: Anne Oakes (802)228-5236, Andrew Ohotnicky (802)228-5236 or Dot Ramsdell (802)226-7870 .
• Special School Board meeting at 5:30 to act on: Approval of Amendment to Teacher Bargaining Agreement. Finance Committee Meeting scheduled at 5:40 p.m. the same day. Draft 3 of a budget will be presented at that time.