 Welcome, everyone. Can everybody hear me? People in the back, okay? I'm Paul Costello. It's an honor to be here. Deeply appreciate all of you being here on the line for this community, on the line for democracy, on the line for the future in the face of climate change and the tremendous destruction that we've seen in our downtown in the last couple of months. Thanks for being here and being dedicated to the future of this place. Can't hear me? I'm going to hold it closer. Okay, thanks. So, Henry Adams said unity is vision. It must have been part of the process of learning to see. You think about how a baby puts together color, light, shapes, movement, and over about six months they turn into real things that move forward. Visions like that too. We've put a lot of ideas out there. We've done a lot of brainstorming in this process, and now we're going to where we gestate perception, unity, the ideas that we stand for as a community that we want to move forward together and structural ways to begin to do that work. So it's a great honor to be here and be part of this process with all of you this evening. I want to just summarize. This is the third meeting, the final meeting, in this phase of discussion for the future of the city. The first one was really a brainstorming session. It was sharing some of the challenges, the trauma, the first ideas we had around the future. The last meeting at the state house about 10, 12 days ago was about bearing down, looking deeper into issues that a steering committee selected as good foundations for digging deeper and kind of coming up with concepts that are kind of at the level of priorities that we could look at. We've digested the ideas in the first session. We looked at all the priorities that hit the table in the second session. We looked at the padlet information. We looked at the Zoom chat from the first meeting. We looked at emails and messages and so forth that came in on this whole process, and we added up to bring the list that's on the wall and that you should have in your hands of ideas that have come from the community. We didn't make any of it up. We're personally neutral to what you end up choosing as priorities, but we do want to move. Everyone talks about meetings like this and says the last thing you want to do is get together and not build action from it. So tonight's the night to gear up, to line up, to build some work towards action and moving this all forward. I've done this a lot enough to see that the power in this kind of process and the power of the community comes when people build a collective spear point of activity. When we get beyond faction, we line up for the common good and results follow, funding follows, and things move and we have real progress. So we're at the end of one phase of a dialogue, beginning of the next, and I'm really appreciating y'all being here. We've got a couple of announcements to make, and I want to introduce Ben Doyle from the Montpelier Foundation and Katie Trouts from Montpelier Live. Thank you. I just want to, before we even get started, can we just give a thank you to Paul Costello for all his work. I know you folks have seen it in these meetings, but behind the scenes, the amount of work that this man has put into it, he's done a real service to our community. As Paul said, my name's Ben Doyle. I'm one of the Montpelier Foundation, Katie Trouts with Montpelier Live. We just wanted to give you an update on the fundraising and the granting that the Montpelier Foundation and Montpelier Live did. And we set out with a goal to raise $2 million, which was about 10% of the estimated economic impact to businesses in the downtown. And I'm pleased to say that as of today, we've raised $2,030,000 from all the help of you people. That's really a testament to you, and there's obviously still a lot of work to do, but I think that shows what this community is capable of, and I think we're really just getting started in the good work ahead. And to talk more about that, I want to hand it off to Katie. Thank you. And on behalf of Montpelier Live, I want to thank you for being here with us this whole time. And it's a real example of our community strength, and we see that over and over again as you show up. So thanks for coming tonight. Yes, we've met our goal, and we're really excited about that. We have granted one round of around $500,000 already as a direct kind of emergency response, and then we are in the process of granting a second round of around $1 million to the downtown businesses who are affected by this flood. And we're continuing our fundraising. We have two events coming up that I know about that are fundraising events, and that won't be all. We will continue through the fall. So tomorrow night, Friday night at Barry Opera House, Capital City Concerts is doing a fundraising concert there with a pianist. And then on Saturday, we have the central Vermont recovery benefit, flood recovery benefit that will benefit both Montpelier and Barry, and we have a great lineup of musicians on the Statehouse lawn from 3 to 7 p.m. on Saturday. I hope you can join us for that for a great community celebration, which we all need, but also to support more efforts in our downtown recovery. So thanks again for being here. We really appreciate it. It's great to see you. And I will hand the mic off to Paul for the next steps. Thank you too so much for all that you're doing for Montpelier. Can you have a round for them? So we've got an incredibly vigorous agenda tonight to move forward that will be decisive and will gear us up and set the next stage for this process moving forward. I want to make an announcement on behalf of Montpelier Alive, the Montpelier Foundation, and with the city in partnership around the structure and movement of this process. From the beginning of this process, we've heard over and over again people calling for a new leadership structure to take recovery and resilience seriously into the future. That we need to drive from ideas to implementation. We can't leave ideas on the table. We can't look back in 10 years when this happens again and say, what happened to all those ideas? Why wasn't there follow-up? Why didn't things move? Why are we still in the same circumstance? We heard a great desire to give voice and power to the community in the future to look at resilience. The desire to engage the incredible expertise of Montpelier residents. To unite public and private efforts to build a strong united front to drive forward resilience in the community. To drive with vision and energy around resilience, around consistent and determined work. I have to flip this around. To link and coordinate public efforts and private sector groups and what downtown's doing and what people are doing and all the ideas that hit the wall in this process. And to connect with communities beyond ours to be a convener of the watershed if necessary to bring people together to look beyond one project that might bring the water level down at six centimeters to look systemically at the watershed and what can be done regionally together. To convene and coordinate community groups, action teams, give them support as identified by the community over time. So this process is the beginning of that, not the end. So Montpelier Foundation, the city, we've all heard this loud and clear. And together today we announced a plan that's in process that will look for your feedback on to commission a Montpelier Commission on Recovery and Resilience to work together and we would work together to raise funds to hire a Montpelier Recovery and Resilience director to carry it forward this work with help and support from community groups, the city and others. So as we set priorities tonight, we're going to look for the engagement of people from Montpelier and all of us, our partners in resilience and recovery to move priorities forward that are established and we have a one-page draft for this process that we'd love to share with you that will pass around. And we'll look for people at the end of the evening in your working sessions to sign in that you're interested in working on that priority in the future and we'll be getting back to people to begin to convene priority work in these action teams potentially in the future. This room tonight in that period when we're in breakout will be a larger discussion of the idea of this commission and people can share their ideas for goals and some of the actions that it should be taking early on. We'll also at the end of the evening talk about how we're going to begin to take applications to be on the commission and we'll walk through some of the steps that you could take to apply to be a member of the group, okay? So that's where we are with that and we think it's going to be a good, uniting and strong structure and we also think that it's something that's fundable and can be a useful driver for our unity as the work moves forward. So let me just walk through what we're going to do through the course of the evening here. First, we're going to review the ideas that have hit the table through these two first meetings that we've got on the wall but that you also should have as a sheet in front of you. We're going to walk through those really quickly so that we all hear them and we all think about them. We all set aside our predisposition to really listen and think about what are the most doable ones? What are the ones within our power? What are the ones that we can organize around efficiently and get done and drive forward on? And then we're going to vote on them. Everyone's going to have eight dots. People on Zoom are going to have dots. We're going to do this together and we're going to add up what turns into priorities. We're not going to limit it for five priorities or 15 priorities, but we're going to see how that plays out and all this material, nothing's going to be lost. No idea is a bad idea to someone. We're going to keep all these ideas in the stream but we'll bear out for the working groups tonight to think more deeply about five of them and in this room we'll talk about the, as I said, the organization of the new commission. And in those rooms, we'll do some action planning with facilitators. Just briefly, we'll only have a half hour or so. We're going to knock down what are some of the first things that should be done in this area to get organized to, you know, what are some of the low-hanging fruit or the things we could be doing this year right now to move this particular area forward. Then we'll come back and we'll have some time to conclude and think where we are. We'll talk about how to apply for the commission. We'll close up shop and we'll then have the opportunity, again, if you weren't in one of those working committees, you can sign in, express your interest and potentially being on a committee like that into the future, okay? So, everybody got the idea? All right, so let's start then. We want to first start by reviewing these action ideas together. And I know this is going to seem slow, but it's really important to listen. Because, you know, we all have something we want to champion maybe, but we really want to pay attention to what everyone else is thinking, okay? Before we go and vote for the thing that we want. So, we're going to actually take the time to read these sheets. And John and I, where's John? Oh, he's coming. We're going to walk the room with these microphones. It's a little bit like a game show, okay? All we want you to do is read the next one. So, I'll look for volunteers and we'll start over here as there's someone who would read the first idea on the list. Sure, thank you. Okay, last one. Okay, develop a recovery and resilience leadership structure. Recovery and long-term process for developing resilience will require unity of action, clear public authority. A public-private authority should be commission-funded and staffed to bring together the city, leading non-profits, and all forces for good in partnership to act on public priorities for and drive implementation toward recovery and resilience. This structure would work to build a deep, inclusive community engagement, foster key leadership on diverse aspects of recovery and resilience. The commission and its director would convene that from neighborhood towns, neighboring towns for the evaluation and development of resilience efforts that help manage future flooding through the full watershed. Thank you. The next one? Okay, thank you. And maybe just say your name, stand up and say your name and get to know you. My name is Chris Piatik. The second one is declare a climate emergency. The city should declare a climate emergency to elevate the dialogue about the climate change era we live in. The declaration can serve as an outreach and education tool and can be used to help identify some key steps the state and city should take to reduce its own carbon footprint. By joining with other communities that have made similar declarations, Montpelier could make significant contributions to climate policy conversations at the state house. The declaration would also serve to create space for new voices, specifically younger Montpelierites looking to engage in climate advocacy tied to their own community. Thank you. The third one? We're just like therapists here. We can wait, we get paid by the hour. Yeah. No editorial. We should create a community carbon footprint assessment tool that will help us to track our personal and family impacts and help everybody participate and feel engaged in reducing our collective climate pollution. Thank you. The fourth one is Montpelier should reduce its carbon impact by addressing transportation and heating. Working together Montpelier residents and businesses should address Vermont's two biggest carbon pollution contributors. Transportation by taking steps such as using paint on our streets to make them more bike and pedestrian friendly, increasing the availability of electric vehicle chargers, advocating for additional EV incentives, and improving local public transit in Montpelier. Heating buildings by helping people who are rebuilding now to access and afford fossil fuel and efficient solutions by promoting and expanding incentives, exploring possible local regulations such as no new fossil fuel heating in new construction, and exploring ways to expand the use of the district heat system. Thank you so much. The next one? Stand up and say who you are. I'm Judy Walk. Let's see. Protect the wastewater system. The city should act now to improve defenses against flooding of the wastewater treatment facility on Dog River Road, which were tested and reached their limits in the July flooding. Immediate actions could include conducting a risk assessment of the facility, building or revising a capital improvement plan, convening state and federal funding agencies to consider financing, financing options and developing updated contingency plans should the facility fail during a future flood event. Thank you so much. The next one? Sir. Improve Wrightsville Dam. Montpelier, either through the city or a community-led task force, should work collaboratively with the Department of Environmental Conservation to evaluate and improve the operations and infrastructure of the Wrightsville Dam for enhanced flood control. Further work should advance water retention within the whole upstream watershed of the North Branch to slow the flow of water into the reservoir, bring engineers and environmental scientists together to evaluate potential water storage further upstream, evaluate potential pre-flood releases at the dam and investigate the limitation on water release based on the current generating system and pressure from high waters. Thank you so much. The next one? John's ready over there too, so. Re-envision downtown. Through a facility public engagement process re-envision Montpelier's downtown this effort should include revisiting previous planning including the proposals that emerged from the net zero Montpelier competition. Architects, artists, engineers and citizens in all their diversity can contribute their ideas for downtown improvements and long-term design changes. Implementation will depend on work to raise funding and to build partnerships with and benefits for property owners. Thank you so much. The next one? Hi, I'm Cara. Celebrate and boost Montpelier's downtown in recovery. Downtown cleanup and beautification efforts can start now. Parties and celebrations can accompany each store, restaurant events and promotions can be organized even now. Residents can bring their heritage downtown to support businesses early and throughout the recovery period. Montpelier should look at the organizational structures in place and add hired staff and volunteers to support organizations like Montpelier Alive to provide leadership and engage the public. Montpelier should leverage the connections of Vermont's dynamic arts community to attract nationally residents to the city. Thank you so much. We have someone here. I'm Paul Karnahan. Invest in an adaptive downtown. With more floods likely in the downtown floodplain, Montpelier should do everything possible to protect public and private property homes, stores and downtown buildings. Currently steps toward hardening toward building hardening, elevating buildings, appliances and services. The city of Montpelier is led by individual homeowners, merchants and building owners who often lack access to public funding resources and or the capacity to navigate existing financing options. A task force could gather and share best practices, raise money to help businesses afford transitions and work to leverage resources like those of efficiency Vermont to replace money, invest in an adaptive downtown. Sorry. Raise state, federal and philanthropic funds for recovery and resilience. Working together the public needs to advocate for more grant funding for the downtown, from the city, the state, the federal government and philanthropy both to support recovery and to invest in best practices that will make the downtown more resilient A task force should be convened to quantify the economic impact on the city, businesses, and homeowners. This analysis can be used as a foundation for a capital improvement plan to advocate for state, federal, and philanthropic assistance, and appropriately reprioritize existing funds for recovery and resilience initiatives. In addition to public or philanthropic funding, the analysis could be used to attract the attention of the private sector and investors interested in green investing. The Congressional Delegation Governor and Legislature should be called upon to activate resources and provide maximum flexibility for their rapid deployment. Sarah Norton. A regional commission should be convened to develop a plan for flood prevention. This task force would evaluate and implement ways to reduce flooding. Mount Piliers should act as the convener of a visionary and diverse leadership team of citizens informed by engineers, hydrologists, architects, and municipal leaders from towns from throughout the Upper Winooski watershed to map flood impacts, study potential amelioration projects, and design and implement solutions to wetland absorption areas to reduce the speed and flow of water to minimize damages in future flooding events. This team could work together to evaluate and implement steps, including slowing the river through watershed management, increasing capacity at Riceville-Weservoir, and expanding green infrastructure to lessen backflow into the city during future flooding events. Sarah Lisnianski. End hunger. Mount Piliers should commit itself to being the first state capital in the nation's history to be free from hunger. Working together, the churches should establish a centralized, coordinated charitable meals system in Mount Piliers by developing a shared kitchen and meals site. This initiative should draw upon the expertise of statewide food security organizations like the Vermont Food Bank and Hunger Free Vermont, and could leverage Mount Piliers' capital status to attract national funding for the nation's first hunger-free state capital. Thank you so much. Someone else? Sir. Paul Bofa. Address the house crisis. In the short term, Mount Piliers needs to be nimble and quick in supporting the development of housing for all who need it in the city, including through home share approaches. In the long term, support the rapid development homes in the right places, especially above the floodplain with low-cost options and units that meet the wide spectrum of accessibility needs. The Elks Club property development should be informed by and or accelerated by the immediate need, and new partnerships, including with private developers, prepare to accelerate new home construction considered. Thanks so much. Liza Earl Centers. Improve mental health in the community. Community mental health must remain a short and long-term priority. In the short term, a team of residents and service providers could organize to promote community education around mental health issues, advance the recognition of current challenge, and evaluate and fill gaps in current services. In the long term, the Mount Piliers community needs to come together to develop third spaces, places that build community and interaction beyond private homes and workspaces, where residents can gather and connect with one another. While the trauma of the recent flooding has impacted all of Mount Piliers citizens, particular focus should be placed on supporting the most disadvantaged residents, including the unhoused or those experienced substance misuse disorder. Thank you. Nancy Scholes. Mount Piliers should detoxify. The City of Mount Piliers should institute testing, communications, and awareness about how to clean the city and prevent health impacts of toxins, mold, and other health hazards associated with the flood. In the long term, the city should set clear goals and expectations for outcomes of what remediation work is done. Working collaboratively with the Central Vermont Solid Waste District and other organizations, both public and private, involved in waste stream management, Mount Piliers should actively support the hazardous waste mitigation in the region and promote outreach efforts to homeowners, informing them of existing resources for waste disposal. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Support the future of agriculture and advanced food security for all. A team formed to support agriculture and food security in the Mount Piliers area should liaison with the farm to plate to incorporate their data and expertise into local planning efforts to advance local agriculture and food security. A team formed to lead food security efforts should vigorously support the Feast Program in the short and long term. It should create a public media campaign to raise awareness of farm and food system vulnerabilities and long-term sustainability for Mount Piliers. Advocating for local purchases and supporting farms could be augmented by starting a grassroots campaign to change the state's agricultural budget with a focus on community based and diversified operations and away from dairy. Thank you. The next issue? James Ray. To improve preparedness communications and disaster alert systems, Mount Piliers should advance the accessibility and preparedness information and disaster notifications. A process should be developed to assess and improve how communications connected with seniors, people with disabilities, unhoused people, and tenants. Notifications and alerts should include more geo-targeted information with more specific information about what actions people need to take. It should also improve broad notification systems for different types of events, using a siren, local radio, and mobilizing a volunteer network for in-person communications to the most vulnerable. We should encourage and educate on how to sign up for VT Alert regularly, parentheses send out in water bill, posters, dropped in mailboxes, et cetera, and make city preparedness and recovery plans more broadly known and available. Thank you. Hi, I'm Alaya Mourning. Build a Mount Pilier resiliency volunteer brigade. Establishing a volunteer group or network for preparedness and disaster deployment that is backed by professional support, training, and has a budget, potentially with a paid coordinator position. This effort could feature the revival of the capital area neighborhoods and build off a volunteer response from this flood. This volunteer network would be organized ahead of time and connect with existing orcs. City, Mount Pilier parks, Meals on Wheels, schools, medical center, et cetera. Ready to mobilize in future emergencies. This group can support the city and its residents and businesses and help craft and create volunteer tracking systems. So it is clear who is doing what in disaster events. Thank you so much. So that's a lot of information. And obviously there's overlap between these. Some of them might be parts of other ones. There are different orientations in terms of starting points. Let's remember before we think about voting that none of this goes away. We're going to consolidate all these ideas into a report so that we don't lose any of this thinking. And as the work moves forward, we can always look back. We also know that people prioritize one thing, start working on it, and six months later they recognize, oh, that other idea is part of this. We need to do that too. So this is democracy. We're not making rules that prevent us from doing other things in the future. And we're not voting anything off the island. We also aren't making legal votes here that are binding on the school board or binding on our elected representatives or the city. We're making votes of, and we also aren't voting for what we want Washington, D.C. someday to do. We're in Montpelier. And when you're voting, you're voting with your mind, but also your heart. What would you stand for? What would you support? What might you actually put your back to and be on a committee to drive forward? What might you contribute to to make it happen? So it's not an abstract exercise. It's more than a poll, but it's not a legal vote that's binding on anybody. So with that said, what we want to do is we still have, we're right on time with the meeting tonight. And what we want to do is champion what's most important. So we're, I'd love to give, oh wait a minute. We skipped a whole section. We skipped a whole section. That's why we're on time. We may need to come back to that at the end. See, that's how organized this is. But I think we go forward from here and come back. So when you think about these 18 or 20 ideas, which ones are most within our power? Which ones answer the fundamental challenges that are presented to us for recovery and for climate preparedness in the future? Which ones do you think we can get behind and drive forward? And so we'll ask people to take a minute or so, or even less, just to say what you're for. Don't say these three are bad ideas and I'm for this one. We just want to know the one that you're for. And this is your opportunity to convince other people to vote for it. Okay. So be very quick, but be on point for why it's the priority for you, why it's the thing that needs to be driven forward. Yes, ma'am. Hi. Hi, everyone. My name is Gail Johnson. I live in East Montpelier, Vermont. I was flooded out of my apartment from the Winnowsky. I still love the river. It's part of where we are. I see this as, I know I have to be short. There's two things. We're trying to do recovery and resilience on one side and we're trying to do flood prevention on the other side. They're both important, but if you don't have the flood prevention and have that commission going, what's the use of it? Because it can happen again, right? We need to have that river flow like it should and be able to have access to flood plans, perhaps create new watersheds, get it spread out, so this doesn't happen again. So I would say the commission to me is the most important. Thank you so much. Yes, go. Hi, I'm Thomas Weiss. I think a regional commission should be convened to develop a plan for flood prevention again as the most important of these items. The flood that happened in Montpelier began in Cabot and Woodbury in Williamstown. And in order to reduce what happens here in Montpelier to increase our resilience and reduce our need for recovery, I think we need to work together with all of the communities in the watershed upstream of Montpelier. Okay, thanks, Tom. So we're going to ask you to be as short as you can so that we can get as many voices on the table as we possibly can. We also aren't going to let go of the mic. Hi, I'm Zoe Niederland in Montpelier. My six would be the two that relate to slowing down and managing water upstream of Montpelier, the one about continuing to work on Wrightsville, the one about helping people and businesses be more prepared for flood waters in the future, and the two that overlap about having a great volunteer system and notification system in Montpelier. Thank you. Thank you so much. My name is Phil Dodd. I'm going to use some of my dots on the leadership structure. But I have a question about that. It sounds like there is a commission for recovery and resilience being formed in any case. So should I save my dots for something else? That's a question for you. There is going to be this overarching commission, and it may immediately form that separate working group to make sure that happens. But I think you should vote for what you think is most important and go for it. I'm going to advocate for reduce our carbon impact by creating an assessment tool. I think this is the kitchen table. This is when my grandchildren and my friends and I can sit around and we can talk about exactly what we're doing as individuals to really feel like we're making a difference in this. And it's not, yeah, but, well, China's still building coal plants. It's not, yeah, but somebody's doing something else. It's what we're doing at the kitchen table as our community to help this climate emergency. Thank you. My name is Kirk Gardner. We're in extremely unique position here in Montpelio right now. We can make a big difference around the world and certainly around the country. If we can come up with an idea which is compelling, which is engaging enough, and which clearly moves people's context of flooding and national emergencies forward. Right now, people are not taking actions largely because they feel it's too big a problem. It's beyond them. They can't handle it. If we can find a way to change that context here in Montpelio we can't keep you in our reactions. So people can see there is something they can do and it will make a difference. We will make a profound change in this. I hope we take that advantage. Thank you so much. I'm Eve Jacobs-Carnahan. I live in Montpelio. I'm going to vote for the Regional Commission to develop a flood plan prevention, but the second thing I'm going to vote for, I think is super important, is protect the wastewater system. As we heard it described at the last meeting, it sounded as if that we were very, very lucky that the wastewater system wasn't overwhelmed. And I think that even though that won't prevent a flood, that if that were to fail, we would be in an incredibly more devastating position than we are right now. Thank you so much. Yes, why don't you come out? I'm Tessa. What are you for, Tessa? I think people whose houses were hurt in the flood should get their houses fixed first. People whose houses were hurt in the flood should get their houses fixed first, and that should be a cornerstone priority. I've got someone here. Okay, go for it. Hi, I'm Colin O'Neill, resident of Montpelio. I'm in support of the Commission to prevent future flooding, and I just want to throw out a quick data point. When Montpelio flooded, there was 970 cubic feet per second being released from the Wrightsville Reservoir. 24,000 cubic feet per second were entering Montpelio through the main branch of the Winooski. And that didn't overflow upstream. The capacity from the confluence of the North Branch and the Winooski Downstream is where the issue was, but we weren't off by much as far as the capacity of that river downstream. So looking at from the confluence downstream, using elevation change, embracing, taming the river and embracing it and celebrating the river and finding ways to get closer to it, but reducing the hazard created by the river currently. Thank you so much. I'm Steffi Lehar, and I think it was Thomas. I'm going to save some of my dots, too, for the developing a public-private leadership structure. I think that's so important that we get a good one. I also just wanted to comment on one other. I was listening to the Surgeon General talk about endemic despair, actually, in a really eloquent way the other day. So I'd like to improve mental health in the community in a very broad way, not just about mental health crises, but strengthening mental health for everybody. Thank you. Hi, I'm Larry Gilbert, and I think every cause needs a banner to follow. And therefore, I think having, declaring a climate emergency is an essential first step, too. So we all head in the same direction. Hi, I'm Joe Romano, and I have two in particular. One was to invest in an adaptive downtown where we can still have a city, make it vibrant, and have businesses there. But we can't do that unless we have this commission that works with the water and embrace the water, celebrate with it, and find ways to support the water in what it needs to do in any moment in time. Thank you. Hi, I'm Vic Guadagno. I just want to emphasize that on the heels of the climate emergency that we're dealing with a flood now, but as was mentioned in the last one, that we don't know what will come next in this. So how we go about looking at it, and I'm an advocate for the Regional Commission, but so far Vermont has been informed by engineers, hydrologists, and architects. There needs to be a new appreciation of the ecological system. So I know it's a minutia point, but we really need to emphasize ecological design and systems thinking. Thank you so much. My name's Carol Rose, and I really think we need to take care of the people in Montpelier when there is a crisis and an emergency. And it was very confusing, and there are a lot of PTSD people that are dealing with trauma because there really wasn't the leadership and there wasn't the direction of what people should do, where they should go, how they could get. I mean, it kicked in really fast after, but the day after the flood, there were people that were just in despair and there was no direction for them. Thank you so much. Hi, I'm Rebecca Copans. Something that hasn't been mentioned tonight but fits within two of the points that people have been talking about. One is the commission, and the second is the adaptive downtown is our schools. The building you're sitting in tonight flooded. This gentleman on the end of this row said very eloquently at the first meeting about how the rows need to go where they need to go, and they're coming right through here. And I think we need to re-envision how we operate our schools. I'm not operate, but where we have our schools, and I think this is the time to think about combining your 32 and Montpelier. Thank you. Hi, Dan Jones. This is an expansion of the idea of better communication and emergency response. I think we need to create an emergency preparedness commission independent that can review and study what is possible in terms of response plans to address failures during the recent flood and creation of a new plan with specific responsibilities assigned, activation triggers, and community engagement. Said plan should also be appropriate to other possible emergencies such as heat events, fires, and other climate emergencies. So, Dan, are you suggesting that a group that was formed on that would look at that language as well? I'm making a motion to add. That communication and function would be a subset of this. Okay, do people understand that motion? Well, if he... No, but he's basically saying he wants to change the language that's in the sheet on that particular item to add language that describes a new commission that would oversee and work with the city, I'm assuming, to drive this... What is emergency? It's a larger version of what is emergency preparedness required in the climate change era because we are now looking at something where things will be repeating more often. We have to have a better response plan. We didn't see it worked in the last flood, and so we need something that's actually going to be appropriate for the conditions we will be facing. So, Dan, would this work with the city or would it be above the city somehow? An independent voice. Okay, so it is different than the one that's on the wall. Write it on the wall. What's the name that you give it? Okay, John, could you write that Emergency Response Commission? And you've been waiting nicely. Thank you. Hi, I'm Michelle Braun, and I'm glad that Montpelier is interested in regional coordination. I was asked to tell everyone if I had the opportunity. Cabot and Plainfield are ahead of us. They've already formed these committees, and they think it's really important to make that connection between the headwaters and the downstream communities. The other thing that I think is important is this preparedness communications. And on that point, the forecast for the next 10 days has a lot of rain. And the groundwater is at max and the rivers are high, so everybody pay attention. Yes, thank you. It's ominous to have a forecast like this. Yes, please. Yes, hi, I'm Val, and I'm from southern Vermont, but I work with Vermont Center for Independent Living and related to different types of alarms, different type of signals, giving emergency response notification. I mean, people have phones, but we also need to add access for people who are deaf and hard of hearing. They always have to, people who are deaf or hard of hearing always have to ask for interpreters, any type of emergency responses to be interpreted, especially if something is going on on the TV. So we need to make sure that people who are deaf and hard of hearing have access to sign-language interpreted messages so they know when there's an emergency. Thank you so much. Okay, go John. Sure. I'm looking at a couple of people who've already spoken. I want to make sure we can get as many as we can before we close voting. Hi, I'm Jared Duvall and so many good and important ideas have been raised. One that I haven't heard that I want to give extra attention to is one that I think undergirds our ability to do a lot of the others, which is the one around raised state, federal and philanthropic funds for recovery and resilience. I think a couple of key lines in this description really stood out to me, convening a task force to quantify the economic impact on the city, businesses and homeowners, and using that analysis as a foundation for a capital improvement plan to advocate for state, federal and philanthropic assistance. So much good work has already been done, including by the Montpelier Foundation and Montpelier Live and others, but we know that there will be additional need going forward and that quantification and task force exercise I think really is a key kind of systemic undergirding of everything else. Terrific, thank you so much. Sir. Thank you. I appreciate everybody being here today. I appreciate Paul, your work putting all of these together. I do want to give some room for the groups that are going to be tonight to sort of be expansive in their thinking along these. While these are one paragraph summaries, they may not be the precise route we need to go down. I can think of other ways beyond the regional commission to think about how waters flow and how they come together next to the natural systems that flow, and I just want to make sure that we're not confined that we are thinking more broadly so that we can get to the solutions that we need and not just where we've gotten to on this. Great, thank you so much. Other things that you would like to champion? Hi, Liza, and it's I think not a very glamorous or glitzy one, but just I really feel the importance of building the resiliency volunteer brigade. I worked 60 years at the Unitarian Church here in town, and as a paid staff person I could accomplish really very little, but with the 60 volunteers helping out we could accomplish so much. So I think there's a lot of people in town who want to help. I know in my neighborhood we thought, oh, we should check the sewer great and keep that clear. You know, but how many neighborhoods didn't have someone thinking about that, but if every neighborhood had people thinking of those things we could do so much collectively. Thank you so much. Hi, I'm Elena Guadagnio. People were talking a lot at the last meeting about Montpelier being used as a role model for the rest of the country or possibly the rest of the world. And I think that public transportation and heating systems could play a key role in that, because it takes down carbon emissions a lot if the heating system was made differently or if there was more public transportation available. Thank you so much. Hi, my name is Jeff Squires. I came to Central Vermont in 1977 to work for the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission. So I find it interesting that we have an action item that is let's create a regional commission. We have a regional commission that they could provide a wonderful platform for the kind of research that I think this gentleman was referring to that should underpin a fact-based data-driven plan. And there are other existing institutions that may limit the need for all of these new groups and so forth. Not the least of which is the legislature. When's the special session? When are we floating the Vermont recovery bonds to issue the meaningful money that these downtowns are going to require? So I think let's focus as well on the existing structure of democracy and governance at the same time as we're soliciting new voices. Thank you so much. We have some comment from people on the Zoom. Lauren. Yes, so Lauren Hurl. There have been around 100 people consistently online also. One comment from Ellen was we have a huge investment in the wastewater recovery facility. We need to protect it. This is the most compelling, immediate thing we need to do. And just acknowledging people are having some audio issues online. So thank you for bearing with us. We're working on it. Okay, thank you. Others, I think we have time for just a few more. We want to probably close this by 7.30 or so, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I've spoken the first couple of meetings about the importance of letting our rivers be rivers. That is still the nearest and dearest issue to my heart. Creating that commission working with existing like the existing commissions that we're seeing getting spoken much about right now is the housing crisis. I need to put in a plug for that because that is an absolute critical crisis, especially as we go into the colder months. Thank you so much. Other comments? All we got. Hi. I'm Peter Lux. I think it's important to say that we need to make sure that we have the power to do what's at stake. If this happens a couple more times in a short period of time, there will be no mumpiliar. So we must prevent. We must improve our response. We must reduce the impact. That's critically important. It's wonderful to see all these faces here tonight and the community engagement. We cannot just vote for people just because they share our values or because we like them. We need to know what are you doing if we have another event five years from now that we do not have the same catastrophe we have today. Thank you so much. So I just took a quick look through this list of 18 really important ideas. Seven, explicitly mention the need for creating either a commission, a task force, a team or a process for convening existing community organizations. To me this means we must all step up every day from now on and be the leaders and the workers we've been waiting for. I'm ready to do that. Thank you so much. Okay, one or two last comments. I'm Nancy Schultz and I would like to say one thing we can do as a city that is almost cost less would be to add paint to our roads so that people who are pedestrians and want to actually have a visible crosswalk and people who bicycle but won't do it if they're fearful but if there's a white fog line that they can bike to the right of small changes that cost almost nothing. It's the feeling of safety that pedestrians and bicyclists would have and if more people biked and walked our collective carbon footprint would be reduced. Thank you so much. So you'd advocate for voting for that one. We really should stick to the wall because there's a lot of ideas beyond the wall that will come into this process as we go, right? But tonight we're setting priorities so I'd be glad of a last suggestion on a priority from the wall. Oh, sorry. Hi, Colin O'Neill again. A comment that perhaps Montpelier isn't leading here and we should be open to looking outside of the state for examples in Europe in this country maybe we are leading but I'm sure we can learn from a lot of other communities around the world. Great, thank you so much. Someone want to make a last comment about one of the priorities that you would advocate for. Oh yes, Lauren, go for it. All right, so we had a number more come in on Zoom. Several people prioritized regional watershed collaboration for flood mitigation. Somebody suggested investing in adaptive downtown needs to include a dynamic hazard mitigation and adaptation including moving some businesses out of the current downtown center. There was a request to look at a car-free street in Montpelier another request to allow the river to access its floodplain in safe areas looking at merging U32 and Montpelier High School and a couple people voted for restarting the CAN network and again some of these are in the descriptions or would fit under some of the categories and pedestrian friendly city and learning to work with the ecosystem instead of against it. Thank you so much, Lauren. Ben? Just real quick, I just want to say that I think when dealing these kinds of things it's really important to have some practicality and I just want to say I think there's two things that are essential to any of the ideas and there's so many good ones but one is the leadership structure to make it happen which is the priority number one and number two is that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. We need to be able to be loud and advocate to the congressional delegation to state and federal funders to get the money to do these ideas. Thanks so much. I'm going to let this one fellow talk about one of the potential priorities. Okay. You can hold the mic. I think these are all fantastic ideas I respect everyone who's kind of commenting on them. I really appreciate the youth who are here today and sharing their comments and I hope the commission gives them a place on that and encourages the youth to be a larger part of this. So thank you all who are here. Thank you so much. Okay. So here's what we're going to do. We want to do this efficiently and I'm going to ask a couple of people to help everyone gets eight dots. The colors don't make any difference at all. You can tell I did this at my kitchen table. But Ben, could you hand some of these out? Katie, do you want to do some? And basically once you get your dots, go up to the wall you have the opportunity to put all your dots in one place. If you want to, you can spread them out through the list of them whichever ones are your core eight priorities. People online who are voting don't have the option to lump their votes. They will have to choose eight different issues and unfortunately just the the polling options are different. But they'll still weigh in. We're going to do this really quickly so you can start walking now if you've got your dots. Place your dots then step way back from the wall so that everybody knows that you're done. And we can see when it's done, it's five to ten minutes to do this. Thanks so much. Folks? Folks, could I ask folks to come back together? Wouldn't it have been great to have refreshments? But we don't. Could everyone gather in your seats again? We'll get back to business. You guys could just do that the whole way through like in priority order. So, thank you Ben. So we've done this voting exercise. We're right at 755 reviewing what was prioritized. You know, there's a lot of people here. There's at least 100 people online as well. They're contributing their ideas. We're all kind of dedicated to move these ideas forward. There's nothing on this wall that we can't do. And we've got some that are clear top priorities and some that are lesser and it doesn't mean they're not important. I'm not sure how much votes ending hunger got but if it didn't get a lot, it's not because it's not important to us as a community. I think we're sort of focusing in on the climate emergency and recovery. As we look at this, this idea a regional commission should be convened to plan for flood prevention and do all the different things that are possible to ameliorate the level of water in the future. Secondly, as a priority, investing in an adaptive downtown. And isn't that an interesting mixture? Someone described that we're talking about recovery and we're talking about resilience. And when we look at adaptive downtown, we're getting prepared for the next flood but it's also a major recovery effort to help people do that. And then protecting the wastewater system. A lot of priority around that because that's an immediate and objective practical need. Federal and philanthropic funds for recovery and resilience. And this is one that whatever we choose and wherever we're going with this work, it's part of an essential part of the work that we want to be doing. Develop recovery and resilience leadership structure. Some people were asking should we vote for this one or not if it's already going to happen. So mixed votes but it's still within the top five priorities. Improve preparedness communication and disaster alert systems. This one is was given a very high mark of 101. There was the other one that Dan Jones raised. I think that they may have taken votes from each other. I think the intent of a lot of it is similar. And people do want to take a hard look at the emergency preparedness disaster alert systems and what we can do to make sure that they're completely on the ball and also that they meet the needs of all of our citizens. Then addressing the housing crisis. Re-envisioning downtown. Reducing carbon impact. Building a resiliency brigade. Improving the rights filled dam. People may think well if we're doing this watershed evaluation we're probably going to look at the dam as part of that right. Declaring a climate emergency. This is something that could be done. It's something that people didn't put at the front of the line because there's so much else that's important but it can still be coming up. We're in food security for all. None of these go away. Celebrate and boost downtown recovery. People know that this is going to be happening and that it needs to happen and that we have one of the greatest downtown organizations in the state with Montpelier Live that can lead that work. Emergency response commission. Improve the mental health in the community and again people are dedicated to this but it's a little it's a step from the immediate climate issue. Ending hunger is fundamental. Reducing our carbon impact with an assessment tool. And this idea of detoxifying. So none of them go away but clearly we have some very big cornerstone issues at the top. We know that we will have a commission and people who want to talk about the idea of this structured commission that can potentially support and oversee this work and provide some staff leadership on it should stay here but we're going to break out into three rooms or five rooms in just a minute with facilitators to look at the regional commission idea investing in an adaptive downtown protecting the wastewater system raising state federal philanthropic dollars for recovery. This one will stay here and then improving preparedness communications disaster alert systems. So I just mentioned that the city council and the city council are already planning to do some of this work around celebrating and boosting downtown recovery. Does anyone want to talk about any of these in terms of their roles and responsibilities? I think we should recognize that the city and it's really hardworking staff and the city council are all paying attention to this process. They also are leading on a lot of this work. We're outside and in some ways we're amateurs in looking at the different features of work that's at the table for city government and regional commission and other work that's going on already and we want to be integrating with that work and supporting that work and celebrating that work as well. But I'm wondering if anyone wants to talk about any of these from the city's point of view or from Montpelier Lives or from another organization that may be doing good work that exists in commission for just a minute before we break up. Yeah. I mean this is what we do all the time. We set out to celebrate Montpelier and a part of the recovery is bringing people back downtown and we're doing a lot of those efforts currently that doesn't mean you can't be involved. So I would love to see people involved with those efforts and we're starting to form committees and I've got some leaders who are doing specific projects that are going into the downtown and celebrate and continue our recovery process. Please talk to me. I'm open to having more help. Thanks. Any other comments? Sir. Hey everybody, I'm Connor Casey. I'm one of your state reps here and I just want to talk about the state perspective a bit. Gentlemen down there said like why aren't you in session right now? You're alive. Heroes. The city of Montpelier. All our public employees. Heroes. But you know like twenty million dollars for aid coming up with a license plate program. It's not enough. We're state government. We pay taxes. We deserve to like expect a bit more from state government than what we've gotten so far. And I think we can expect like businesses 186,000 dollars in the hole right now. People waiting on employment checks. We raise them. The state needs to do more. So as I'm looking at that thing I'd love to get back to work in January. January is way too long right now. We need to get back to work right now and do more. And it's reasonable for Montpelier to expect more from the state. So I really think we need to lean on it as I'm looking at all this. It's City of Montpelier's budget 15-16 million dollars. State budget 8.5 billion dollars, right? We got to come together for our capital. And I look on that Human Services Committee, Appropriations Committee, Natural Resources Committee. You can go on Institutions Committee. I think we need to form a legislative committee ourselves under this commission and get in those rooms and raise your hand every time this comes up because the clock's ticking. We're back in four months and people got re-election on their minds. We're going to be out of there in May. So we got to do as much work in as short time as possible. So the state needs to play a bigger role. So I just want the way in there. Thank you very much. Okay. Other comments from existing committees or other folks that want to just share a little bit about what they're doing really briefly before we break into separate rooms? Yes. Very briefly. Hi, I'm Shayna Casper. I just really want to make sure that even as kind of you said, even when ending hunger gets pushed down, even with, you know, housing at the front, even though we're on the table for a diversity seat and for a youth seat, that's not really enough and we need to prioritize and to make sure that we're embedding racial, economic, social, language, equity and justice really throughout all of these different processes and all of these different spaces. Thank you so much. That said, one last voice and then we will break. Hi, Joe Romano. I think that tonight we also need to go that the group who wants to work on legislature right now needs to convene in a place, in a room and so where can we meet because it's not any one of these to get the conversation going to approach the legislature? Yeah, I think you can. I think the commission will take on all of the work that's on the wall and looking for state and federal monies, one of those things, but if Connor wants to have a group sit and talk with him, you can go down this hall here and people can go meet with him. We have these rooms. Could John help me with this? We have rooms set up so in the auditorium here we've got goals for the commission. Room 101, what's that first priority there? The regional commission to look at the water shed. The second one, adaptive downtown John. I'll tell you in a second. Protect the wastewater system. The next one is actually raised state, federal and philanthropic funds so maybe Connor should be in that room and we'd all have that conversation about the state but we want to push the feds as well right and we're going to need philanthropic dollars as well. We've raised 2 million dollars. But now we're in another phase, the phase of resilience planning and it's worthy of investment. And then improve preparedness, communication and the alert systems, John. Okay. So here's the rooms. We will . So this, the top is the overarching commission that's going to provide leadership and coordination to this group that would look at water issues and, you know, upstream and downstream and presumably Wrightsville. So this would be, this would be meeting in room 101. Okay. Room 102 is adaptive downtown. Room 103 is the wastewater treatment plant. Room 104 raised state, federal money. So room 104 for that. I'm going to put this poster on the outside so you walk by it as you're going. And then room 105 improve preparedness and alert system. Okay. So we're going to meet now. It's 805. We'll come back at about eight. We'll come back at about 840 instead of 845. Your facilitators will bring you back and then we'll, if we have the energy we'll do a quick visioning session where we'll say one sentence that could be part of a vision statement for the future of this project. It's going to be about state, federal money and that will be room 104. I'm going to put this on the door so that we'll have it there as you leave the room. Okay. Hold on, hold on one second. All these rooms 101 to 105 are straight that way on the left. Okay.