WESTBROOK – The task force reviewing Westbrook’s comprehensive plan wants to hear from you on Saturday.

The Westbrook Comprehensive Plan Task Force is in the midst of reviewing the city’s comprehensive plan. State law requires this process occur every 10 years, according to Molly Just, city planner. The task force has already held numerous public meetings, and Saturday’s “Visioning Day” represents another opportunity for the public to have a say in the direction of the city for the next decade.

A comprehensive plan allows the city to legally impose its zoning requirements and enact impact fees and rate of growth or building cap ordinances. It also helps the city qualify for programs like Community Development Block Grants, according to the city’s website.

Perhaps most importantly, the planning process fosters discussion among all the community stakeholders and develops a basis for town management decision-making. The 10-year plan serves as a guide for elected officials, maintaining some consistency when the mayor and City Council could potentially be replaced every two years.

“You can’t keep switching the vision every two years,” said Mayor Colleen Hilton, who is one of the 16 members of the task force.

The comprehensive plan covers topics as diverse as transportation, recreation, natural resources, land use, housing, capital investment and more, Just said.

The visioning process began in September and has already featured eight community meetings, said task force chairman David Haskell, a former water district trustee who represents Ward 1 on the task force.

“We got some very interesting feedback,” Haskell said. “The meetings generate good public comment.”

One topic of interest at every community meeting to date is what to do with land around the Presumpscot River. Haskell said residents have commented on using it for recreational purposes, such as the simple pleasure of walking along the riverfront. Others, he said, have proposed riverside development to bolster the downtown.

“What exactly do people want us to do around the river?” Hilton asked. “You could go on two very different tracks there.”

Another topic of potential conflict is the preservation of Westbrook’s pastoral land.

“Everyone loves that about Westbrook,” Hilton said, but the landowners do not want the comprehensive plan to place too many limits on how they can develop just for the sake of aesthetics.

By and large, the task force is hearing that Westbrook residents are happy with life here and want things to remain mostly the same. Haskell and Hilton both said residents expressed desire to preserve the city’s history and heritage, from its mills to the Walker Memorial Library. Haskell said the task force has heard from residents who think it is important to preserve the mill atmosphere, while others want to move beyond the image of a mill town.

“What a lot of people like is diversity,” Hilton said, explaining that residents enjoy the mix of demographics within the city.

Those topics and more will be up for discussion at Saturday’s visioning session. Just said she has planned an interactive meeting that will begin with a dot exercise. Participants will be given a number of dots used to mark topics they think are most relevant, she said.

From there, participants will break into tabletop discussions for four areas of the city: north, south, east and west. After that, they will split up again into groups to discuss specific topics.

The task force will use information from this final public input session to craft a new comprehensive plan in the next year. Just said the new plan could range from minor tweaks to the old plan to a complete rewrite.

“I do not see this being a complete rewrite,” she said. “There’s so much that people already like about Westbrook.”

The mayor said it has been reaffirming to see many in the community show an interest in the planning process, and hopes it continues on Saturday.

“It’s very important work and I’ve appreciated the number of folks who have come out,” she said. “We’re a community of 16,000 people who really have pride in their community and we’re trying to maintain that.”