Sandy Bodmer-Turner

Political platform statement

My family and I came to Manchester over 25 years ago, choosing Manchester because of its excellent schools, incredible coastline, and small-town way of living. Our town is a place where you and your family are known in a neighborly way and your children have the freedom to ride their bikes, go to a coffee shop with friends, and walk to school. I am running for Planning Board because I want to help preserve this way of living and our Town’s heritage and unique seaside character.
In 2023 I was appointed to be one of two At-Large members for the Town’s MBTA Task Force. The Task Force was convened by our Select Board to craft a response, consistent with the Town’s character, that would comply with the State’s zoning requirements for MBTA communities. As a member of the Task Force’s Communications Subcommittee, I helped to devise and participated in the many different ways we reached out to inform citizens about our work – FAQ’s, forums, Town walks, videos and mailers.
Serving on the Task Force gave me an opportunity to learn in some detail about the Town, the rules that govern development here and how important its character is to so many of us. It also gave me a sense that my business experience and professional training might be useful to the Town.
As an entrepreneur I’ve held leadership positions in several start-up companies, one for digital books, one for wind energy. Both companies had ideas they turned into reality. My professional training is in business, as a Sloan Fellow at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and in land use planning, as a graduate of the planning program at Harvard’s Design School. All my experience has reinforced my belief that people coming together with clear goals and the facts and ideas in front of them can achieve much.
I am running for Planning Board because I love this Town and want to contribute to its vitality and well-being. I want to see us actively manage our future rather than passively watch it turn into a different place than we want. I’ve observed two concerning trends happening of late in the Town:
1)Our downtown, once vibrant and full of shops and restaurants patronized by residents and visitors, now has begun to have a number of empty storefronts;
2)Modest homes on larger lots are purchased by developers, demolished and replaced with much larger, lot-filling structures priced at $1-2+million/unit, leaving no housing possibilities for our teachers, emergency responders nor for young families wanting to move here or seniors wanting to downsize.
Both trends are contrary to citizens’ wishes as directly expressed in the many meetings and forums that were part of developing the MBTA plan. They are also contrary to the goals in the Town’s Master Plan There are, of course, many reasons for these trends, but it seems to me that our current zoning rules may be one of them.
If elected I would hope to work with residents, property owners and local businesses, along with my fellow Planning Board members, to discover what our zoning bylaws can do to counter these trends. This is a complicated task, needing lots of listening, research and communicating about what can be done. I believe, working together, zoning is one tool we can use to take charge of our future in a way that supports our Town flourishing. I would appreciate your support when you vote for Planning Board on May 20th.