Neither the Select Board nor the Planning Commission took any formal action Tuesday night, but commission member Tim Martin called the comments "very useful" and said the commission would work on revisions. He said the commission was not used to getting this amount of input.

The meeting Tuesday was the second of two to gather input for the five-year rewrite of the town plan. A list of comments from the previous meeting - attended by about 90 people June 10 - dealt almost exclusively with the proposed wind farm.

Vermont Community Wind Farm has proposed to build turbines generating a total of 80 megawatts in Ira, Clarendon, West Rutland and Poultney. The overwhelming majority of the sites are in Ira, and potential sites in Middletown Springs and Tinmouth were dropped from the proposal last week.

Clarendon's Select Board voted 4-1 Monday to oppose the project. The town managers in Poultney and West Rutland said Wednesday that those boards have yet to take an official stance on the project. VCWF spokesman Jeffrey Wennberg could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

In Ira on Tuesday, several people suggested that the town needed legal representation. Others asked how provisions in the plan that might prevent the project, such as one calling for the protection of ridgelines, could be given teeth.

Martin said the Public Service Board, by statute, must give "due consideration" to the town plan.

"The teeth, in the broadest sense, are things like floodplain regulation," he said. "If we were to have zoning, we would need an approved plan."

However, Martin said he did not think the town could zone out a utility development.

"A town's zoning cannot trump electric generation facilities," he said. "Zoning that is specifically intended to stop an electrical generating facility is going to yield to the overwhelming state policies. It's not going to work."

As Martin tried to move the meeting toward a broader discussion of the town plan, others in the audience of about 50 suggested the town organize some sort of wind committee to deal with the issue on the Select Board's behalf.

Others still suggested that the location of some proposed tower sites along the approach to the Rutland Airport might trigger FAA jurisdiction.

Martin said VCWF agreed to stay away from the town plan meetings to give local residents time to talk, but wanted to do a presentation in Ira. He said he was also talking to the Rutland Regional Planning Commission about doing a series of independent presentations on wind power.