A new year brings a new administration and new opportunities for the Town of Montgomery.

One of the first orders of business for new Supervisor Brian Maher has been to address the calls for a moratorium and an update to the town’s master plan- something that hasn’t happened since the year he was born. He plans to establish a master plan committee composed of community members who can make recommendations to the town board. It comes as he takes the reigns of government from an administration that some citizens have seen as something less than transparent.

Montgomery, in the later part of the 20th and early part of the 21st century, has a history of warehouses and trucking terminals, including a couple of million-foot warehouses in the planning stages now– one of which is expected to be utilized by Amazon. With every pending project comes concern for the long-term future: how will it impact the town’s resources and overall quality of life? How does the prospect of new tax revenue weigh in against more traffic, noise and runoff into the town’s water table? How does the proposed project fit into the town’s comprehensive plan?

These questions need to be asked and answered every few years, certainly more than once a generation. Perhaps that should be the first order of business for every new town supervisor: the opportunity to revisit the Master Plan. Residents need the opportunity to weigh in on the vision for the town’s future.

By the same token, a moratorium is not a permanent solution; it’s simply a pause. Any enacted moratorium needs a start date and an end date, with just enough time in the middle to gather a reasonable amount of input from town residents and appropriate planning experts from the county and other sources.

The entire process is important and must be done carefully. Mistakes can impact future generations, and usually cannot be undone.