Crisfield community visioning session highlights top 5 needs residents want addressed

CRISFIELD, Md. – The Town of Crisfield has partnered with SU’s Beacon Program to help identify the needs of the town and help plan how to achieve them

A public meeting to unveil the results was held Thursday night, highlighting the priorities set by residents.

“There’s a lot of momentum to transform and revitalize our community,” said Crisfield Mayor Darlene Taylor.

Taylor tells 47 ABC the top voted issue at the forum was letting the community know about public events and creating a community calendar.

“It’s for our tourists or residents we need to know what’s happening, we had a lot of young people at the meeting, high schoolers who said they would want this,” she said.

Also on the list were ways to manage flooding, something Mayor Darelene Taylor says the town is already working on by looking to state, federal and non-profit funding to help accomplish.

She tells us the meeting had residents saying they want to see those updates implemented by 2024.

Taylor tells us the heaviest lift, but one with the most payoff was a renewed focus on business development, hoping to bring new life into vacant storefronts and encourage new businesses in the area.

She tells us the town council has the power to add variances and allow for less strict zoning to allow for more kinds of businesses in the town.

“We want to look at our business development and make sure that even though Main Street looks empty today that there’s a plan to get to where we need to get to, that means getting the city and legislators engaged in helping us to revitalize our business community whether that’s our current businesses new ones, entrepreneurs all of those things together,” Taylor said.

Crisfield Reisdent and Country Store Owner Tim Howlett were at the meeting and tells us he’s encouraged that these priorities can get done.

“We are going in the right direction to get something going,” Howlett said, adding that he hopes the renewed focus on revitalizing the downtown can help to cut down on vacant storefronts.

“My wife and I have a store here but the biggest issue is we have too many vacant buildings in an area here we are on the water we have crabs and seafood we should have more visitors and tourism there should more tourism I’ve watched its face and I hope this can turn it around and bring people back,” Howlett.