In response to multiple years of shrinking local aid, the Finance Committee is conducting a survey to see where voters think Harvard should spend more, spend less, or add or cut services. Selectmen are debating priorities for this year. Devens continues to lie just over the fence, complicating thoughts about Harvard’s future, with noise from one of its new industries intruding painfully on Harvard’s peace and tranquility.

Harvard does not suffer from a lack of planning, however. Numerous planning efforts have been initiated in recent years, with some reaching a conclusion and others only partially complete:

• A master plan update was completed in 2002, describing a bucolic vision of Harvard in 20 years, and outlining steps to get there.
• A housing production plan, required to show how the 10 percent affordable housing target required by the state would be achieved, was completed in 2004, though little progress has been made since then.
• An open space and recreation plan in draft form was updated in 2008, with an action plan to meet objectives outlined for 2008–2013.
• An assessment of town buildings and municipal space needs was started in 2008.

These plans should be required reading for all current officials and future candidates for public office in Harvard. Voters should demand clarity from candidates as to their commitment to executing and maintaining these plans.

In the midst of a long history of plans that end up on a shelf gathering dust, the town center sewer project approved this year at Town Meeting stands out as a shining example of excellent planning, comprehensive involvement of stakeholders to resolve objections, and near-consensus support resulting in approval, funding, and, soon, implementation. One of the key reasons for its success? Planners referred to the road map set out in the 2005 Harvard Town Center Action plan.

As time passes and people cycle onto and off of town boards, documents like the Master Plan, the Housing Plan, and the Town Center Action Plan serve as guideposts, the historical repository of what townspeople have said they want and need. As we see it, the selectmen are the drivers of the follow-through on these plans. It is their job to not only address the immediate needs that arise in town at any given moment, but also to take the longer view, continually revisiting, reviewing, assessing, and updating plans that have already been developed, to keep the town on track.

We hope that the Board of Selectmen will not become distracted by the upcoming off-cycle election and will appoint action-oriented committees to tackle the planning “loose ends” that are out there: the housing production plan update, the plan for municipal space needs, a plan for future school expansion needs, and updates to the Master Plan and Open Space and Recreation Plan. Harvard has an abundance of talented citizens whose expertise can be brought to bear for such work; they just have to be asked.

Keeping Harvard the way it is—or was—is not an option. Planning for what voters want, executing, assessing, and re-planning, is the way the vision for the future in Harvard becomes reality.