GUILFORD-The town of Guilford recently announced the publication of the Guilford Guide, a comprehensive new resource designed to connect residents and newcomers with the Guilford community. The 76-page digital version of the guide is now publicly available and free to view online or download.
The Guilford Guide serves as a "user's manual" to living in Guilford, wrote coordinators in a news release. It contains information about the town government, local businesses, food and agriculture resources, news sources, social services, recreation opportunities, arts and culture, houses of worship, and more. It is intended to serve as a go-to handbook for anyone looking to better understand and engage with Guilford's community.
"The Guilford Guide reflects our town's longstanding commitment to communication, collaboration, and connection," Rick Zamore, a volunteer on this project and former Selectboard member, said in the news release. "We hope it helps everyone - longtime residents, newcomers, and those considering making Guilford their home - find ways to engage, support local businesses, and discover all that our community has to offer."
This initiative has been in the works since 2014, when the Guilford Community Visit Project and subsequent Town Plans highlighted the need for improved community communications. Similar goals have since been realized, including restarting the town's quarterly Guilford Gazette, enhancing the town website, and expanding the use of Front Porch Forum.
But the idea of a comprehensive, printable guide to the town was a longer-term project that took a lot of volunteer effort and a small team to hold the vision. After the Guilford Planning Commission convened a visioning roundtable in 2023, a group of citizen volunteers stepped forward to lead the effort, drawing on models from other Vermont towns, verifying resources, compiling the content, and professionally editing and designing the guide.
A fundamental intention of the Guilford Guide is to provide information about other volunteer opportunities throughout the town and community. To that end, a volunteer icon is easy to spot throughout the guide, and a page of "volunteer opportunities" toward the end of the publication sums up the information nicely.
The print edition of the Guilford Guide will be distributed free to every household in town in the coming months and will also be available to area real estate agents. In the meantime, residents are encouraged to explore the online edition, which will be regularly updated with new information and resources.
For more information, visit the town website at guilfordvt.gov.
This Town and Village item was submitted to The Commons.