LEYDEN — Under the guidance of Emergency Management Director Jeff Miller, the town is shoring up a new emergency management plan with a goal of making a safer, community-centered system.

The new system will divide the town into different neighborhoods, each of which will be assigned a captain to manage that neighborhood in case of an emergency. The Emergency Management Committee is assigning residents to these captain positions and setting up ways to communicate in the event of power outages, cellphones not functioning and other issues caused by emergency situations.

“So many of us are busy in our day-to-day lives we tend to forget about our neighbors, and I think this management plan with the neighborhood captain program is a great way to bring the community together,” Miller said.

“The best thing that we’re going to be able to do and that small towns have always been good at is talking to each other and helping each other,” said Sara Seinberg, who was involved in spearheading a new emergency management plan. “Moving back to a neighbor-to-neighbor organization in an emergency will, we think, keep people safer and help people have less anxiety and stress.”

Seinberg and Miller, along with Elizabeth Kidder, public safety planner on the Emergency Management Committee, emphasized their desire for this plan to help strengthen the community.

One of the features of the new plan is to use the snowmobile trails that run through Leyden, Bernardston and Gill to travel if an emergency arises. Miller will play a key role in organizing this system as a member of the Bernardston Gill Leyden Snowmobile Club and as executive director of the Snowmobile Association of Massachusetts.

“We as snowmobilers always wanted to be helpful for the community,” Miller said. “We basically have equipment across town in case there is an emergency in the wintertime and someone needs something or we have to get someone out of their house. We also have the ability to do it in the summer months in case the roads are impassable.”

The Emergency Management Committee will work in collaboration with the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) and other departments and committees in Leyden, such as the Highway, Police and Fire departments, to assign neighborhood captains, create systems of communication across town and further organize the new emergency management plan.

“I think we’re [seeing] a lot of energy, a lot of willingness for people to collaborate and offer their strengths to municipal government, and municipal government at its best makes people’s daily lives better,” Seinberg said. “That includes people being prepared for whatever emergency is around the corner.”