Rye’s Mayoral Candidates Discuss Comprehensive Plan Update

With the Rye City Council election around the corner on Tuesday, November 4, 2025, MyRye.com is publishing a series of issue focused articles highlighting the views of our candidates running for mayor and for city council. Today we are highlighting the views of the three mayoral candidates in regards to establishing a new comprehensive plan. The old plan (then called a master plan) is a fossil from 1985. The work is in its earliest stages and aims to be a governing document of the community we all want going forward and the guardrails we want to put on the community we love.

Read our full candidate interviews on MyRye.com (links below).

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The city is finally taking steps to update its comprehensive (aka master) plan that dates back to 1985 and is in the process of selecting an external consultant to help develop the plan. How would you explain what this process is and why it is important to a fifth grader?

Bill Henderson (GOP): This is a 1 ½ to 2 year project designed to provide guidance (not law) for future City Councils so they can prioritize and act on issues of long-term importance to the City, e.g., future land use and development, public safety, flood mitigation and resiliency, conservation, preserving our environment, parks and green spaces, traffic and pedestrian safety considerations, etc. The process involves hiring a consultant, setting up a committee of citizen volunteers with varied expertise to shepherd the process, engaging with the consultant and perhaps other experts and, most importantly, obtaining significant input from our citizens. The theoretical goal is to create a “blueprint” or planning document for the future.

One additional thing that should be mentioned, the Comprehensive Planning process should not be used as an excuse to not address the pressing issues of today.

Rick McCabe (Ind.): Would you make improvements to your house without sketches, a budget and a schedule to get things done? Of course not. Rye needs those things as we plan for the city’s future. It won’t dictate every detail of the renovations of your home, but you’ll have a better idea of what it could feel like and look like when you’re doing the work.

To make that plan a reality in the coming year or two, we’ll need the leadership of the mayor and council; input from people, businesses and other organizations in the city; and the actual plan development and implementation by professional leaders such as the City Manager, City Planner and many others.

Josh Nathan (Dem): (Rye 5th graders are a pretty sophisticated group.) 

1. Comprehensive planning is an opportunity to create a guide for Rye’s future to best meet the needs of the people who live here now and people who will be living here during the next 20 or 30 years. People in Rye today have some different needs than the people who were here in 1985, the last time Rye did a plan. 
2. Our goals are to: (i) protect all that we love about Rye, like our parks, downtown, beautiful neighborhoods, shoreline, etc., (ii) improve what needs work, such as recreational facilities like Gagliardo Park, and (iii) plan for a range of changes that are happening, such as more electric cars, greater demand on our recreation facilities, climate change like flooding and heat, and population change like what today’s young families need and what people living longer and wanting to stay active in the Rye need. 
3. The process will have us come together as a community and collect people’s ideas and concerns and, working with our consultant, develop a shared vision for Rye’s future that helps us make important choices, like in updating our zoning code which tells us what we can build and how it can be built. 
4. We will be getting participation from all facets of Rye’s community, residents from throughout our neighborhoods, our schools, our nonprofit organizations, our churches and synagogue, the businesses that are here, developers who work a lot in Rye, our professional staff, different user groups of our parks and recreation programs and the many people who have volunteered in Rye over many years. 
5. Once we get started the process should take 18-24 months. That doesn’t mean we need to wait for it to be finished, we can develop aspects of the plan along the way. When we have a shared vision, we can make good decisions, including about zoning, infrastructure priorities, ways to improve traffic and parking, flood mitigation, recreation facilities, neighborhood preservation, and climate smart initiatives. 
6. Comprehensive planning will help us protect and improve what we love about for years to come.

Read all our candidate interviews:

GOP Slate – Henderson / All in for Rye

• Q&A with Mayoral Candidate Bill Henderson
• Q&A with City Council Candidate James Fee
• Q&A with City Council Candidate Robin Thrush Jovanovich
• Q&A with City Council Candidate Maria Tufvesson Shuck

Independent Rick McCabe / McCabe for Mayor:

• Q&A with Mayoral Candidate Rick McCabe

Democratic Slate – Nathan, Anderson, Kesavan & Ward for Rye:

• Q&A with Mayoral Candidate Josh Nathan
• Q&A with City Council Candidate Marion Anderson
• Q&A with City Council Candidate Amy Kesavan
• Q&A with City Council Candidate James Ward