Milan supervisor sees busy future for town

By:EAMON MCNIFF , Special to the Freeman Daily Freeman Tuesday , February 22, 2005

MILAN - Town Supervisor John "Van" Talmage says Milan's future looks bright, and busy.

In a "Milan State of Town" address, Talmage focused heavily on Milan's growth outlook and the people who are working to make it a better place,

"Milan is in really good shape, financially we are in pretty good shape," Talmage said at Milan-Wilcox Memorial Town Hall recently. He said the town has a budget of $1.4 million and $600,000 in liquid assets with an additional $700,000 collected from a revenue stream of the court system and mortgage taxes.

The biggest issue facing the town, he said, is dealing with the urban sprawl that is quickly approaching Milan's borders. "There's a widespread sentiment of 'what can we do to hold off fast sprawl?'" Talmage said.

"I want to keep Milan from growing too fast, my motto is 'Don't junk up Milan,'" Talmage said.

"People want to keep the rural character of Milan, but we aren't really a rural community," Talmage said. The supervisor said that a "real rural" community is one that is agriculturally dependent, and that Milan doesn't really have a large farming community.

"We have a bunch of people who live here full-time and work places locally, a group of people who live here and travel to work, and 'halfers,' people who work in the city and want to come up here to live some of the time," Talmage said.

Talmage said he is determined to find ways to handle growth correctly, including the Greenway Compact, a state program that has a plan for smart growth and gives grants to handle the growth, and the town's Comprehensive Planning Committee, which is creating the town's vision for land use.

Talmage said he is most concerned with protecting Milan's watersheds and streams. "They are part of the beauty of Milan, these areas we have to be most careful with," Talmage said. "We need to take and protect land from development; the town can take a trusteeship of smaller areas, saving them from development,, like our wetlands, the cradle of life," Talmage said.

Talmage and the planning committee are also going to take note of Milan's older structures that are worth keeping. "Old homes, old barns. There's a real value there, they add to the community," Talmage said. He also said they are going to be aggressive about saving Milan's open space.

Talmage wants to take a wide view and set things off limits to building and aggressively define what needs to be preserved.

"We're not making any more land; when it's gone it's gone," he said.

Talmage wants a plan laid out so that when zoning laws are set there aren't as many problems and people aren't scrambling to save land and structures.

"People are coming; we need to get a jump on it," Talmage said.

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