NHPA Book Club: Summer Reading!

Join the NHPA Book Club @ 3:00pm on Sunday, August 3rd at the Vietnam Noodle House in Nashua!

Whether you've read the book or not, you are invited to join this FREE event.  The discussion is sure to be both lively and educational!

Book of discussion:

"Peyton Place", by Grace Metalious 

A bestselling novel, first published in 1956, this novel is widely "undiscovered" by modern planners.  The novel, set in the fictional town of Peyton Place, NH, is actually modeled off of Metalious' experience living in the small New Hampshire Town of Gilmanton.  It provides a close in-depth look into small town New Hampshire Politics and social fabrics, all underlying influenced and impacted by planning.  This page turning novel is not your typical planning book, however it is a page-turning novel that will take you from Gilmanton, to White River Junction, to Nashua, Manchester, Boston, and back to Gilmanton again.  It will add to your summer fun if you take it along to your mountain cabin or beach vacation!  Hope to see you on August 3rd!

RSVP to Elizabeth Wood or (307) 751-0296 

As this article reaches you I hope we are starting to see some signs of spring, or at least thawing around the state. The NHPA Executive Committee kept busy this winter on a variety of projects to serve you in 2014; from membership renewals, to our new Book Club, the Annual Awards, and planning the NHPA’s spring conference.

The NHPA’s new Book Club had their first meeting on January 26^th with lively discussion on Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. The next book will be The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. Elizabeth Wood has submitted a piece within this newsletter that will inspire you to read along with us.

Meeting regularly this time of year the Legislative Subcommittee is keeping close tabs on the assortment of bills working their way through the legislature. For a current look at bills the committee is tracking, check out our Legislative Tracker at http://www.nhplanners.org/legislativetracker.htm.

The Conference Organizing Group (COG) has set a date for the 2014 NHPA Conference, to be held on June 5^th and 6^th in Durham at UNH. Get ready to revisit your college memories with two days of excellent professional development opportunities and the adventure staying overnight in the dorms!  If you are interested in volunteering or have a session idea for the conference please contact Matt Connors or Mary Friedman. Volunteers are always appreciated; please let us know if you are interested! 

Remember that great keynote address by Claudia Folska, Ph.D. with the blind folds at the 2013 NNECAPA Conference in Meredith? Out of that address and Claudia’s work The New American Dream, NHPA’s first full feature length film is under construction. Thank you again for your generous donations to the Kickstarter campaign earlier this year. We will keep you posted on progress and look forward to sharing the end result with all of you!

Lastly, you should have received your annual membership renewal in January. We greatly appreciate all of the timely returns on the annual dues – thank you to all of you who have already responded! Check out the rest of the newsletter for more great news on planning around the State.

     Sarah Marchant, NHPA President

The Town of Merrimack, NH has hired Donna Pohli as their new Assistant Planner in the Community Development Department.  Donna comes to us from a recently completed fellowship with the City of Dover, NH’s Community Development Department and completing her Master of Public Administration degree from the University of New Hampshire.  Donna replaces Jeff Morrissette, who left Merrimack in May for the Town Planner position in Westford, MA.

Goodbye and good luck to Vanessa Goold of Central New Hampshire Regional Planning Commission. She and her husband have moved to Maryland to be closer to their families and pursue new endeavors.

Jodie L. Levandowski joined the Milford Community Development Office as the Town Planner this past June. After graduating from Plymouth State University in 2004 with a degree in environmental planning and GIS, Ms. Levandowski worked for the Manchester Planning and Economic Development Office and the Londonderry Community Development Office, and spent the last two years working as a land use consultant with a private firm on Long Island. 

Mary Brundage is NRPC’s Regional Planner and provides support on a variety of land use projects including the NH Broadband Planning and Granite State Future. Prior to joining NRPC, she has worked at the Southern New Hampshire Planning Commission (SNHPC) as an Associate Planner. Her projects at SNHPC included scenic byways, open space plans, hazard mitigation, and source water protection. Mary has received her M.S. in Natural Resource Management at Antioch University New England and her B.S. in Geography from Montana State University.

One of NHPA's own, Steve Whitman of Jeffrey H. Taylor and Associates, has recently co-authored an article titled Taking the Permaculture Path to Community Resilience. The article appeared in Practicing Planner in June, and attempts to get planners to view our communities as the ecosystems they are and consider how the components of these places can be better integrated. Permaculture is a holistic, integrated system analysis and design tool that very few planners are using. Whitman and Ferguson suggest in the article that planners should know about permaculture and begin using it as a framework to guide their communities. The full article can be found at: http://www.planning.org/practicingplanner/default.htm