The Town of Norwood Community Preservation Committee on Wednesday agreed to use a shared spreadsheet to provide the committee's formal feedback on highlighted strategy items from the draft Comprehensive Plan.

Committee members said Kristen and the comprehensive-plan committee provided 179 strategy ideas in total, about 60–66 of which the plan authors highlighted as relevant to the CPC's purview. To collect consistent feedback, members endorsed a rating spreadsheet that Julie will circulate and aggregate.

The decision matters because CPC review will be sent back to the comprehensive-plan committee as part of the plan's public review cycle. Committee members said that focused, structured feedback will help the planning process and make it easier for CPC to flag items that should be included in the plan or that would better fit another board's jurisdiction.

John Hall, a CPC member, said the comprehensive-plan materials were thorough but difficult to treat as a single list for prioritization. "I thought they had done a very good job of developing these individual rows," Hall said, adding that the plan's entries mix different kinds of items — some that describe what the town wants to achieve and others that describe how to do it — and therefore require different treatment.

Members discussed several procedural approaches. Some favored asking the plan authors to provide an initial prioritization or clearer formatting; others supported the practical step of each CPC member applying a simple rating scale so the committee could return a numerical, aggregated response. Julie demonstrated the working approach during the meeting and described the proposed dropdown scale. "I'm a big spreadsheet nerd," she said while showing the draft; she explained the scale as, in her demo, "1 is I'd like to remove this idea entirely," with other values for "I'm okay with it" and "I fully support it."

Amanda, another member, recommended that reviewers judge items by how well they would accomplish the stated goal rather than by whether the item was narrowly focused: "what on this list is gonna best address that goal, and what on that list is going to be the worst at addressing that goal?" she asked, urging members to promote the strategies most likely to meet plan goals.

Committee members settled on these operational points:
- Julie will circulate a shared master spreadsheet containing the highlighted strategy codes and drop-down rating fields. Members may add items they believe were omitted; added items will be placed at the bottom and flagged for review.
- The proposed rating system uses a short numeric scale (0 or 1–3 as demonstrated) plus an optional comments field for items that need explanation.
- Members will complete the spreadsheet from the CPC perspective (the committee lens) and may also provide individual feedback in separate public breakout sessions if they choose.
- Julie said she could circulate the master spreadsheet by the end of Friday; members discussed returning ratings within roughly one week and aiming for an aggregated return by Friday, Nov. 24. The committee scheduled its next CPC meeting for Nov. 19.

Several members emphasized scope clarity: some strategies in the plan are implementation or zoning details that may fall to other boards (for example, historic‑preservation items or zoning changes) and not to CPC review. Catherine Walsh asked that the plan authors clarify which items CPC should weigh in on and which should be routed to other town boards.

The meeting concluded with a final motion (text not specified in the transcript), moved by John Hall and seconded; a roll-call-style vote followed with multiple members responding "Aye." The chair closed the meeting after recording the aye votes.

Next steps: Julie will distribute the editable spreadsheet; members will complete ratings through the shared file and return them by the agreed deadline so the CPC's aggregated feedback can be transmitted to the comprehensive-plan committee.