Green Mountain College
EN-13: Community Stakeholder Engagement

When Green Mountain College engages in a planning and development effort or capital investment project that will significantly impact members of the local community, business owners, or municipal governments, the College will call together a special advisory committee to discuss impacts and decide on a plan for sharing information to the wider community. Significant impact is defined as any number of the following: • Building a structure that can be easily viewed by multiple homes or businesses from off campus • Building a structure or system that increases traffic, water use, or other comparable public systems by more than 25% of current levels • Building a structure or system that will exceed one million dollars in cost • Implementing a plan that will significantly increase or decrease the number of jobs offered by the College or another business in town (a threshold of 10 jobs will be considered significant)

The Special Advisory Committee will be called together by the GMC Cabinet prior to the College formally committing to the project. Cabinet will do its best to identify a representative group of community stakeholders, including stakeholders from underrepresented populations. The Committee will meet at least once with at least one member of Cabinet, but as many times as Cabinet deems necessary. The Committee will serve the following purposes: • Listen to the project proposal • Offer feedback on how the proposed project may impact the community positively and/or negatively • Help the College decide if the broader community needs to be informed and/or consulted based on how likely it is that the project will affect the community significantly • If deemed necessary, help the College identify an appropriate mechanism for informing and garnering input from the broader community, whether that be through a public meeting, a newsletter such as front porch forum, a website, or a mailing. • Help the College navigate necessary laws, regulations, or permits. Following the meeting(s) with the Special Advisory Committee, the College will inform/consult the broader public through the agreed upon mechanism if the Committee deemed it necessary to do so. Input from the Special Advisory Committee and/or the broader community will be considered in the decision of whether or not to move forward with the project and under what circumstances.

The Special Advisory Committee may consist of members such as: • The Town Manager of Poultney • A member of the PDRC (Poultney Downtown Revitalization Committee) chosen by the PDRC • An owner of a local business chosen by the Poultney Chamber of Commerce • A citizen of Poultney, or surrounding towns, who is not formally affiliated with any of the other organizations represented on the advisory committee (this person could be chosen by a GMC staff member who has a close working relationship with underrepresented populations in the community).

The protocol for community stakeholder engagement was only recently implemented, but Green Mountain College has a long, rich history of deep engagement with the community. For example, since 2013, the College has been leading an effort called Poultney 2020, a town-wide community building process aimed at building the vibrancy of the Town. As part of this effort, the College frequently hosts planning meetings to gather the people working on the project. Another example includes the community conversations that the College holds at least once a year. For the last two years, the public has been invited to these meetings, where the College's goals and progress toward those goals were discussed. More community conversations are being planned for the 2014-2015 academic year.