SPRINGFIELD - The Springfield town board voted to develop a comprehensive plan for the town by a vote of three to one at its meeting Monday night.

Councilman Rick Morris made the motion following an approximately hour-long discussion between the board and planning consultant Nan Stolzenburg.

"We need to have a comprehensive plan in the town of Springfield," Morris said before making the motion.

On the recommendation of the planning board, the town board had discussed in June the possibility of enacting a town-wide, two-year moratorium on all major development in the form of a local law while a comprehensive plan was developed.

A motion to enact a moratorium failed by a vote of three to two in June, but councilmen Richard Rathbun and Morris said they wanted to learn more about comprehensive plans and reconsider the issue in July.

Stolzenburg spoke at length about comprehensive plans and addressed several of the concerns raised at last month's meeting.

"A comprehensive plan is definitely not zoning," she said. Zoning is one of the tools a town might decide is necessary to achieve the goals outlined in a comprehensive plan, but towns with comprehensive plans do not have to have zoning, she said.

Stolzenburg said a comprehensive plan does three things: identifies current issues, conditions and demographics in the town; explains the long-term visions and goals the people would like to see for their town; and describes what is necessary to accomplish those goals.

She said any sort of land-use law - like zoning or site plan review - is based on documents like a town's comprehensive plan.

A comprehensive plan addresses more than just land use issues, she said. It identifies what recreational needs a town has, what senior citizens might need, and looks at issues with roads and intersections along with a wide range of other issues, she said.

Additionally, any other government agency must consider a town's comprehensive plan before doing work and their work generally must conform to the goals and visions listed in the comprehensive plan, Stolzenburg said.

Morris asked if the town needed to enact a moratorium before beginning work on a comprehensive plan. Stolzenburg said they are not necessary, but are legal mechanisms commonly used by towns to halt major projects while the plan is developed. She said there is some strategy to using a moratorium, as towns don't want to have them end before the comprehensive plan is completed.

After some discussion, the board decided to begin work on the comprehensive plan and hold off on a moratorium for the time being. If a major subdivision or commercial wind farm is proposed before the comprehensive plan, the board said it would then consider enacting a moratorium.

"It is a knee-jerk (reaction to proposals), but it is a legal knee jerk," Stolzenburg said.

She cautioned that comprehensive plans take some time to put together and require commitment from the town board.

"I'm not going to kid you. It's not a two-month process, it's not a six-month process," she said. The process begins by setting up a committee of seven to nine people and surveying the public to find out their concerns and wishes for the town, she said.

The board did not set up a committee Monday, but councilmen Daniel Rosen said Tuesday the town would set one up that and send out a survey to Springfield residents as soon as possible.