Envision Hillsborough, Explained: What the Master Plan Update Is and When It Comes Back

What a master plan is

A master plan is the Planning Board’s long-range policy document for how land in the township should be used. It is made up of separate elements: for example land use, housing, and open space and recreation. A master plan does not itself change zoning. Zoning is changed by ordinance, adopted by the Township Committee. But every zoning ordinance goes to the Planning Board first for a review of whether it is consistent with the master plan, so the plan shapes what the Committee can do.

The Planning Board adopts each element after a public hearing.

How old is Hillsborough’s?

It depends what you count. The township’s own list of master plan documents shows:

a base master plan from 1965–66, revised through 1996;
element amendments for the Town Center (1999), the Agricultural and Mountain districts (2002), and land use (2005, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013);
housing elements and fair share plans in 2002, 2008, 2010, 2021, 2023 and June 2025;
a land use amendment for small-scale logistics in the Light Industrial district, adopted January 23, 2025 as part of a warehouse-ordinance settlement;
the most recent general reexamination report, adopted in November 2018. The township’s page gives both November 29 and November 30.

So a resident who said in 2026 that the plan “has not been updated since the ’90s” was right about the base document but not about the plan as a whole.

What Envision Hillsborough has done so far

The township says that “Starting in 2024, Hillsborough began the process of undertaking a Master Plan reexamination”. It calls the effort Envision Hillsborough.

Surveys. The township has released three community surveys: Goals, Land Use, and Open Space and Recreation. The open-space survey went live on April 16, 2026 and closed on May 17.
Workshop. An interactive public workshop was held on May 13, 2026. LocalWhy has not found a published summary of the workshop or of the survey results.
Subcommittee. A Planning Board master plan subcommittee does the detailed work. The Board reappointed it, with three members and an alternate, on January 8, 2026.

LocalWhy has not found the planning consultant’s contract or cost for the project in the Committee’s resolutions from October 2025 to October 2026.

What comes next

In written answers to residents’ questions, attached to the minutes of the August 25, 2026 Township Committee meeting, the township said: “We anticipate that portions of the plan, including the Goals and Objectives, Land Use Element, Housing Element, and Fair Share Plan, may be considered before the end of 2026, with additional elements to follow in 2027.”

As of October 29, 2026, no draft element had been posted or placed on a Planning Board agenda. The published agendas for the Board’s November 5 and December 10, 2026 meetings do not list one.

Why it matters

The new land use and housing elements will help decide some of the township’s biggest open questions:

Where Fourth Round affordable housing goes. The township’s Fourth Round plan is still before the court, and settlements with challengers will need to be reflected in a housing element and in zoning. See Fourth Round housing.
What happens to former warehouse sites such as Homestead Road and Weston Road. See Warehouses.
The Route 206 Town Center, where one of the housing plan’s three large inclusionary sites is.

What is not known

When each draft element will be published, and on what Planning Board date it will be heard.
What the surveys and the workshop found.
Whether the township intends Envision Hillsborough to serve as its next formal reexamination report under state law.

What residents can do

Watch Planning Board agendas and Engage Hillsborough for draft elements.
Testify at the hearing. Each element gets a public hearing at the Planning Board before it is adopted.
Read the baseline. The 2018 reexamination report and the township’s list of master plan documents are online.