An informational meeting and supper will be Feb. 24.

WALES – The Wales Comprehensive Plan Committee is sponsoring a community supper and information meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 24. at Wales Elementary School.

This is a chance to get together with neighbors and to learn more about the draft comprehensive plan, organizers say.

The draft comprehensive plan would create three new zoning districts: growth, general use and limited rural. It also would retain the existing shoreland zoning.

Two growth areas, one in the northern part of town along Pond Road and Centre Road and the other on Route 126, are proposed.

These areas would have few limitations to development and could accommodate most of the expected residential growth over the next 10 years, according to the committee. Parts of Sabattus Mountain and Oak Hill would be designated limited rural; these areas have been identified as special by town residents.

The remainder of the town would be general use.

In order to encourage that, development would go to the growth areas, and to minimize new town expenditures, no new town roads would be accepted in the limited rural and general use districts.

Subdivisions in those districts would also be limited to five lots in any five-year period.

New lots in the limited rural and general use districts would require a minimum building envelope of 40,000 square feet that does not contain any wetland area or slopes of more than 20 percent.

Other features of the plan include: restricting access to subdivision lots to interior subdivision roads, petitioning the Maine Department of Transportation to change the classification of Pond Road to a state highway, revising the subdivision ordinance to require developers to minimize impacts on wildlife habitat, developing a site plan review ordinance for new business development, determining whether a property revaluation is justified and including phosphorous limits on development in the Sabattus Pond watershed.

Copies of the plan can be borrowed from the Town Office.