North Suburban Planning Council (NSPC)
The North Suburban Planning Council (NSPC) is a Greater Boston subregion of nine (9) communities: Burlington, Lynnfield, North Reading, Reading, Stoneham, Wakefield, Wilmington, Winchester, and Woburn, working collaboratively on regional issues.
The Goals of NSPC are to facilitate communication between communities, promote and seek opportunities for inter-municipal coordination and cooperation, and create an agenda for action on planning topics, such as growth management and land use.
The planning topics and action work allow our subregion to retain its character and its desirability as a place to live and work.
Your Subregional Coordinators:
Francelis Morillo Suarez ([email protected])
Brandon Stanaway ([email protected])
NSPC Leadership
Co-Chair: Jayne Wierzbicki, Town of Wilmington
Co-Chair: Taylor Herman, Town of Winchester
NSPC | About
Our Purpose
The purpose of NSPC is to:
- Facilitate cooperative regional planning.
NSPC | Meetings and Events
Meeting and Events Archive
Upcoming Meetings and Events
No upcoming meetings currently scheduled.
Meetings are typically held on the second Thursday of the month from 9:30 - 11:00 a.m. Meeting dates and times are subject to change. Meeting locations rotate among member communities.
NSPC | Communities
NSPC Subregion
Description: A map of the NSPC subregion. A gray colored map with the nine communities of the subregion - Wilmington, North Reading, Reading, Lynnfield, Burlington, Wakefield, Woburn, Stoneham, and Winchester in green.
Communities
NSPC | Activities
Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) Activities
Public Pressure, Professional Response: Tools for Defusing Conflict
For the June meeting, NSPC members participated in a workshop facilitated by Jennifer Raitt, Executive Director of the Northern Middlesex Council of Governments (NMCOG). The workshop explored what causes conflict and what our approaches can be to addressing it via specific case studies. To finalize the workshop, folks discussed new ways to handle conflict and left with additional resources to dive into.
Volunteering at Wright-Locke Farm
Planners in the North Suburban Planning Council (NSPC) region and MAPC staff volunteered at Wright-Locke Farm in Winchester on May 28.
Wright-Locke Farm has been operating in its current form since 2007 with an emphasis on local community building, organic agriculture and sustainable farming practices, and active learning experiences through its volunteer program.
Planners and staff cleaned a barn which is used to prepare produce for the farm’s Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. Additionally, they prepared fields for planting late summer produce like tomatoes.
Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) Activities
NSPC Youth Internship Panel
Cities and towns across MAPC face challenges hiring and retaining staff as well as creating a pipeline of younger, passionate staff who can take over as veteran staff retire. Our subregional members emphasized this challenge at the March 2024 legislative breakfast.
Based on this, we organized a panel consisting of a workforce organization, a university, and a local sustainability planner which work to place students and young adults at internships and jobs in the planning field.
Panelists and planners discussed how to best advertise entry level job and internship positions, the time it takes to manage new hires well and set them up for success, how to ensure the hiring process is equitable, the financial barriers to hiring interns, among many other topics.
Panelists:
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Gemma Wilkens, Former Gloucester Sustainability Coordinator
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Chris Albrizio-Lee, CEO, MassHire Metro North Workforce Board
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Rebecca Westerling, Senior Cooperative Coordinator, Faculty at Northeastern University