Letter From Cooperative Extension- BOS Video Addressing Letter


The citizen formed revitalization group received the following email from Molly Donovan at UNH Cooperative Extension. Michelle Elbert addresses this at the BOS meeting 17 minutes into the video.



Good Morning. 

I wanted to update you in our thinking about first steps in working together. As you know, we said we would attend a June meeting and we would now like to postpone. At the Economic Development committee meeting we attended and via email we have stressed that citizens, elected officials, volunteer boards and staff need to be aware and supportive of our programs for Extension to begin working with a community. In order for any of our programs to be successful, we need community-wide support. We think Farmington is moving in that direction but not quite there.

We appreciate having been invited by your citizens group. In preparation, we had a conversation with Arthur and Erica (copied here) and were happy to learn that they are interested in our programs but other boards have not been contacted. So now, we see you as citizens and staff having interest. The next step is to share our program information with the Selectboard, planning board and economic development committee (and other relevant parties). We encourage you to share our program information (below) via email and encourage you to go and talk to the boards. Having the economic development committee attend your June meeting will be helpful.

We suggest that this should only take you a month or two given board schedules with the plan that we would attend your meeting or other appropriate meeting once we learn that there is broad support for our work.

I realize that this may be frustrating. We often see citizens eager and ready to move forward before town boards and we always recommend that they meet with the boards prior to our starting a program.

We look forward to hearing back from you and scheduling a meeting in the months ahead. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best,
Molly