PERU – The town comprehensive planning committee released its inventory and analysis Thursday night. The 43-page document contains information on everything from school enrollment and household income to public assets and land use.

The document is the result a year-long project funded by a state grant for a comprehensive plan. The committee intends to use the data as a guide for constructing a growth plan.

Committee Chairman Bill Hine said the inventory and analysis includes information from as far back as the 1820s, but it focuses primarily on the time since the early 1980s.

Although the committee will not begin putting together recommendations for at least a couple of months, its research did identify some recent trends that it believes the town will want to address.

One is population growth.

“The population of Peru has leveled off over the past 20 years,” Hine said. “We’re in a slow to no growth phase right now, and what our committee is trying to figure out is what might happen next.”

He said, depending on what residents want for Peru’s future, the town could adopt a plan to help determine the rate and locale of population growth.

Another trend identified by the committee is rising property valuation.

Hine said state valuations in Peru are rising much faster than in other parts of Oxford County.

Several committee members, including Norman DeRoche, see that as a disturbing trend. DeRoche spent time in a Massachusetts town where property values spiked over several years.

“Over four years the price of a house lot went from $30,000 to $100,000,” said DeRoche. “I saw several friends literally taxed out of their homes.”

John Maloney, the senior land use planner at Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments, joined committee members at Thursday’s meeting to help answer questions and encourage public participation in framing a plan for Peru’s future. For the past several months Maloney has assisted Peru’s planning committee in gathering and presenting information on the town. He plans to continue consulting with the committee as it begins making its recommendations.

He said his experience has shown him that towns are sometimes reluctant to pass such plans because of fears of over-regulation. He stressed that it was important for townspeople to remember that a comprehensive plan is a “living document” that can be revised.

Maloney suggested that as the committee tackles issues like wildlife protection, road construction, mutual aid, zoning ordinances, water quality, and others, more people will become active in the process.

“People who don’t think this is important just have to look around them,” Maloney said. “There were 90 houses built in Turner last year, and things are moving this way.” To put that number in perspective, Peru has averaged five to six new houses in each of the past few years.

Hine said he and the other committee members are going to take a two-month break before beginning work on the comprehensive plan itself. The committee will hold a public forum in October before it puts a draft plan together in November. Members hope to have a final draft completed by February so that it can be put before voters at the March 2005 town meeting.

Residents wanting a copy of the inventory and analysis may get one at the town office.