GRANITE QUARRY — The Granite Quarry Board of Aldermen discussed potential avenues to increase community engagement during their meeting on Monday. The discussion was inspired by a similar discussion during September’s meeting about what the town could do with the revitalization committee, which had recently fallen dormant.

The town realized in 2020 that the revitalization committee was not ordained by the town’s ordinance, Town Manager Larry Smith said in his monthly update. Smith also said that the committee was originally created to study different sections of the town’s Downtown Master Plan with the end goal of bringing businesses together into a downtown organization. By 2019, the committee had completed most of that goal.

Alderman Doug Shelton said he envisioned any creation of new committees to have the aim of creating a nonprofit that works closely with the town to bring projects to fruition or help host events. A nonprofit associated with the town, but not run by it, would be able to accept donations and grant funding that would be otherwise unavailable to the town.

“I am concerned about community involvement, but I’m also concerned about committees that we’ve had for years just disappearing. However, I think we have an opportunity to try to recruit new members for some type of committee to start coordinating our efforts,” said Shelton.

Rick Flowe, the town’s contracted outside planner, said that much of what the board was originally discussing would fall under the purview of the planning board with the town’s recently reconstructed plans and ordinances. All of the town’s future plans have been combined into one large master plan, which Flowe said will allow the planning board to act as the main forward-thinking board to enact the plans. Previous separate plans included the parks and downtown master plans.

Other members of the board echoed Shelton’s hopes of rallying the local community around events and any future planning.

“I think we take these things that we’re focusing on and then rally in those key components and community, whether they’re business owners or volunteers or community members, and funnel them in and invite them in and get them engaged with what we’re working on,” said Mayor Brittany Barnhardt.

Smith and Town Attorney Zachary Moretz said that the board needs to be careful to try not to force any community engagement. They said instead the board should look to find ways to stoke natural community interest. Moretz said that he has seen where towns can go overboard or set up corporate structures for their nonprofits and committees before the community has bought in enough to require those.

“Not everything needs its own corporation right away. Sometimes it can be more overhead than it needs. You want to have that organic citizen interest and excitement and input. Not necessarily jamming it into a little corporate structure before its had a chance to bloom,” said Moretz

The board did not take any action at the end of the discussion, instead choosing to take more time to discuss how to get businesses and local residents involved. They did agree to send thank-you notes to the members of the revitalization committee for their work.