 So I'll call the meeting to order. And this is the agenda. Hopefully everybody had a chance to take a look at that over the weekend. I entertain a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. Do we have a second? A second. All right, we have a second. And so we will move forward with the agenda. Comments from the chair. I don't have anything. I think this will be a short meeting. I will say welcome to Brian. We're really, we still have another vacancy, but we're grateful to have Brian join us. And maybe we could just take a minute. I know it's maybe the next skipping a point here for a second, but Brian, do you want to just introduce yourself? Give us a little background. Sure. I'm a relatively new resident of Montpelier. My wife and I are both from Vermont, so we moved back in 2020. I have a kid at MHS. I have a kid in college, first year college. My background professionally is, I've done a lot of consulting work with, I guess so we call them controversial land use and development projects. A lot of zoning, a lot of town meeting work, a lot of municipal government work, but never had the opportunity to work on the government side. I've always been on the private sector side. So now that we're back, I want to get more involved and this looks like a good opportunity to do so. Are you an engineer or an attorney? I went to law school. I basically run the equivalent of a political campaign for projects. So you need a vote to get a zone change approved or get an overlay district or get a bond to anything that would need a public vote. It's usually the kind of work I'm doing and spent a lot of time with municipal officials, municipal staff. I've done some state government relations and lobbying work in the past right here in Montpelier. So kind of a hybrid politics, media, communications, some legal and kind of like political operative type person. Well, great. Well, thanks for that intro. I think there's nobody here from the public and we have a couple of minutes because I think the agenda will be short. Maybe we could just go around and just say a little bio for Brian just to get to know us a little bit. So I'm Gabe Lajanas and I've been on this commission for just about a year. My interest, I'm doing a little bit of development in the city. I would like to do more and I just wanted to learn how everything, you know, how it all comes together. So John, do you want to introduce yourself? Sure. I'm John Adams. I'm director at the Center for Geographic Information. The state's geospatial data technology office and was a sort of planner, land use planner, prior life and worked at the Department of Housing and Community Development as a land use planning and policy manager there. And I've been on the planning commission for I don't even know how long, maybe a decade or so here. Okay. Aaron. Hi, Brian. I'm Aaron Kosicki. I've been on the commission for four or five years now. It's hard to say. COVID's done things with time, but we don't understand. But I'm an attorney. I've been a government attorney my entire career. Right now I work for the Agency of Natural Resources. They've also done stints with the Department of Public Service and the Department of Financial Regulation. So I've tried to have some of those experiences apply them to this work. And yeah, it's been a good group and welcome aboard. Thank you. Thanks, Aaron. Aaron. Hi, I'm just I'm still eating dinner, so I'm off camera. But I'm Ariane. And I think I've been on the planning commission for maybe four years. And in my work life, I work for the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. So I review funding for affordable housing projects across the state. That's me. And then you've probably met Mike in other capacities. But Mike, you want to give us a little blurb as well. Yeah, so Brian, I sat down just for anyone else who may be watching. I'm Mike Miller, and I'm a director for the city. I've been a director since about 2014. Before that, I've been very single, back to about 2008. And before that, I've experienced working in consulting and working on planning commissions. So that's a bit of my background. I'm really focusing on actually building a planning and a new source plan. Actually spending most of my career working on everything. So thanks, Mike, appreciate all the support. And you're you are a little wonky in the in the your voice there. I don't I'm not sure how you can fix that. But anyway, we are Brian, if you got any friends, I mean, we're all trying to recruit our friends. We have one vacancy and we love love to get that filled. But welcome again to the board. Kirby is not here. Somebody else may know his background better. I would just say, I know he's an attorney for the state of Vermont and currently works in taxation. So whenever we get he's got all kinds of background and other things related to development. It's been on the board for a while, but we get in those tax issues. He's got quite a bit of knowledge. Yeah, I had a chance to visit with him before the before I put it in my application. And then I Mike was gracious enough to meet with me last week before the holiday to kind of give me, you know, overview and homework, you know, stuff I should should read to get up to speed. So I'll appreciate everyone's patience as I get up to speed. And I'll definitely be reaching out with there's a lot of, you know, long 10 years here. So that's good. I can definitely I'm definitely going to tap into that institutional knowledge. Oh, great. Well, so switching over which for the utilities, Aaron, what was the one that you worked off? Is it the copy of the template? Yeah, I think it's the first document there on the left that should say AK edits. Yeah, that's it. So thank you for doing this. I don't know if you want to hit any high points. I mean, it just cleaned everything up for me. Yeah, no, I just I was just going to say I tried to I mean, I thought everything that stuff didn't wise that Mike could put into the to the spreadsheet was all very good. I was just trying to really figure out ways to try to consolidate some of these concepts and just sort of reduce the number of kind of bullet points. I think I sort of took it from the perspective of given what we've seen SE group do with the information that we've provided them so far. I just feel like the kind of broader bullet points are probably probably going to be more helpful to them and to turn this into a usable document in terms of the town plan. So my idea was to sort of try to collapse these concepts down a little bit, consolidate them. And I try to do that with the aspirations and goals. I didn't change the strategies at all. I didn't want to want to get down into that level of detail. If there's some there's an appetite for me to do that, I can, but I did in the strategies. I updated the there's a column on the right hand side that sort of gives reference to what goals that it's related to. And so I updated that. So that should all be current with the updated aspirations and goal. So if you have any pointy questions, feel free. The one thing I was going to ask though, and this is to the group at large, mostly at Mike is I was going back and I was also looking at the energy section, the chapter that we have out there. And I do think that there might be some utility in working in some strategies or at least something in some goals, either in the utility chapter or the energy chapter. I think it would be a good idea to see if we can kind of get the necessary kind of components together in this town plan so that we're compliant with Act 174 so that we can get substantial deference in front of the PUC if there's any sort of citing concerns that happened in town. I don't know if there's been any work to do that. I remember vaguely when we first started this project two years ago, there was some mention of Act 174 but I didn't really see it either here or in the energy chapter. And so I guess the question is, do we want to park this right now and see if we can work in some of those concepts in this chapter or take another look at the energy chapter or there might just be a consensus here that we don't need to dive that deeply into the Act 174 issue in this document. Mike? Yeah, I might think that 174 might be more relevant in the energy chapter than the utilities but we can certainly see which, I can take another look at 174. It's been a couple of years since I've taken a good look at it. Yeah, it's funny. I was just gonna say when I was looking at this I looked at it for a couple of years either and so I did take a look back at some of the guidance documents that have been put out on there. I think we can jump through the hoops to make it work for us. It is gonna take some tweaking though and make sure we get that relevant stuff together and there is some administrative activity that needs to happen to sort of make it pass buster but I do think that there's some value in making sure that we kind of jump through those hoops. So if and when there is a PUC siting issue in town and I don't know if that's ever gonna happen but it would be good to have some good deference in front of the commission with respect to our position on that. So Mike, is that something you should go back and take a look at or the city attorney first or look at it when we engage on the energy chapter? Yeah, I'll put a note on it. I know SE Group is already working on the energy chapter. So it's one that might just, at a certain point we're gonna have to go through and kind of go through the checkbox of all of the requirements that are in chapter 117 as well as these other related acts like 174. So it's just a reminder that I do need to go back and double check on that one. I think many of them for 174 are gonna be in the energy chapter because that's about siting your solar projects or your wind projects. And most of those are not the utility that are doing it usually that's third party or homeowners that are doing those. But if Green Mountain Power were to try to do a project that actually would fall under this utilities chapter because Green Mountain Power is under our private utilities, electrical utilities which is in utilities and facilities but we don't get very many. Green Mountain Power is rarely the applicant that's coming in. So I'll take a peek and see. There may be some reference, but I think Erin's right. We should look to make sure there isn't a strategy or a policy or an action that we need to have in there. Okay, so we probably need to hold off until you do that. Were there any other questions for Erin or comments generally on the document? Any, should we go through any of these? I know we've looked at them a couple of times together. So let me just ask, there's a different way. If it weren't for wanting to check to make sure there's not something else we should include, would people feel comfortable moving this on tonight? Short of that and we're not going to. If it weren't for that, would people feel comfortable? Erin, would you move it on? Yeah, I feel comfortable doing that. How are you on? Yeah, I feel comfortable. John? Sure. Okay, and then Brian, do you have an opinion on it? I mean, I'll defer to the group. Seems like you guys have gone through it quite a bit. Okay, so Mike, it sounds like we could move this on as soon as we have an answer to that. So I think for next meeting, we can, this can be a quick discussion point and then we can get into your hands. Okay, so next up is Arts and Culture. Another one we looked at a couple of times. Are we looking at the template or the written document? Mike? I think this one was the written document. Did people have any other comments on this? I mean, I was pretty happy with it the last couple of times that we talked about it, but any other comments or desire to look at this further? Yeah, I'm fine with that. I forget why we didn't pass it before. But I think we're running out of time. It's actually. Oh, okay. Yeah, I'm fine with it. Why is there a motion to move it on to Mike and the SE Group? I'll move the motion. Oh, I'll second Aaron's motion. Very good, all in favor? Tight. All right. Any opposed? Abstentions? All right, so that one's ready to go forward. Did people have a chance to take a look at the SE Group? Storyboards? Yeah, when I took a look at them and they looked like they were the same as they were the last time we looked at them. So I don't know if we want to jump back in. I will say that they are, they currently have housing and energy are the other two. So they're working on historic and economic development, which I sent the link today for, and they're also working on housing and energy. So we should have a couple more chapters, but I haven't gotten all the information to them. So what do you think the process is? Cause I think we, you know, that this was another one. We never, I think we just ran out of time in our last meeting, but it seemed like everybody liked the adjustments that they had made and liked the general format. I mean, do we just let them go through or should we be approving these page by page? Or, you know, what do you think, Mike, what's the process to eventually get this to City Council? Well, to get to City Council is a long journey, but to get us to the point where we're able to go to public comment, I'm still going to go through and do a much finer detail. And again, I think the biggest thing I'm going to be looking for from you guys is to make sure that we agree on our story that we're trying to tell for each chapter. Because I think that's where there's been some disconnect. I think we have a pretty good chapter that we give them that they use as their template, but then they kind of shorten it up and they chop it down and they start to add pictures and stuff. And I think that's where sometimes our story gets lost. So I want to make sure we have a story so we can reinforce the story. So if there are pieces we're losing, we're not losing the story. And that's what I'm going to be going back and kind of working and being very careful about looking for and then maybe replacing pictures because this would be a better picture to go with this piece. I mean, mostly they're turning paragraphs into sentences. So... Yeah, I don't know if there's any general comments. I mean, I had gone through and looked again, this was one that I had worked on. I mean, I kind of came midway through your process on this, but again, I thought generally it looked pretty good. Are there any other general comments or feedback back to SE recognizing Mike's going to really line up what had been put together and look at what SE group has done in greater detail? Besides that, any other general comments? Yeah, I mean, I guess that's sort of the question I have for you, Mike is like, what's helpful to you? What would you like from us? I mean, I guess my question is to Gabe's point earlier, do you intend to sort of engage with SE on a chapter by chapter basis as they roll in or do we want to give sort of a broad array of feedback once we sort of get a kind of a rough final product in front of us? My process so far has been to try, as they asked for data, like I said, for like housing and energy right now, I'm trying to get back to them. They already have access to our drive. So they have all the information we have there. So then I try to give them, here's the story, let's try to go and tell this story. And I try to take what we've already done and condense it down into a much tighter story. This is what we want the public to get out of our story, out of our storyboard. And then I let them do their work. And then when it comes back to me, I usually go and bring it back to you guys, but I'm also continuing to try to look at this to go through and see where can we refine this? How can we do this a little bit better? Like with the goals and aspirations that are on the screen right now, they kind of do an interpretive, they take what we had and they make one, two, and three different wording than what we say. And that's where I'll probably need to go through and do we want to just use what we said for our one, two, and three, or do we want how they interpreted it? And we'll have to make those decisions on a case-by-case basis. And then we can get into different discussions on format. I'm less concerned about the format than I am. I am concerned about the format, but I'm less concerned about it than I am about what it actually says. Because I think once we have what it says, if somebody thinks a map would do a better job of showing this or a table or a different picture or rather than the storyboard on the side and the pictures, maybe somebody will say, we should do the same way we did the historic chapter which had the images moving in this way. But the content stays the same. I'm mostly concerned at this point about making sure we get the content right. So we can eventually go back to the committee. I can just bring it back to the committee for like historic, back to the historic and say, this is gonna be going public. I want you guys to get a look at it and see if you guys have any last thoughts that we should consider before this all goes live and we start getting public comment. And I'll be running those, go to historic, go to energy and try to do this on almost a one-shot deal. And that's how I would like to get to it. But I think what we're trying to do is to get the pictures and get the story right. Okay, that's helpful. But just sort of, I'm a little, I just get concerned about having too many cooks in the kitchen at this stage. And so is it helpful for us to be reviewing these storyboards that are coming in and providing feedback to you about our general impressions or do you think it's better for you to work through your process with SE? And then we'll take a look at it before you send it out to the relevant committees. Is that a better way to approach it? I'm just trying to make things as efficiently as possible for you. I think any of the comments and highlights are helpful. So I mean, if there's something that you look at it, because remember, you're gonna be, the public is gonna see it in almost the same way you're gonna see it with fresh eyes. And if you're seeing this and saying, you know, that the pictures look great but I don't understand the story. And as I said, I think that's the important thing for us is we're doing it in this format in a storyboard format. So we can tell the public something. That's why you do it this way. And if we can't read it and come up with what it is we're trying to say, then clearly we need to go back and make some editing. And I think that's the big thing is to make sure. Yeah, I can see what we're doing. And this makes a lot of sense. I think we're doing a good job of telling our story. So maybe if I can, like it just seems like if you need some help, Mike, you're gonna put it on the agenda and ask to have us talk about it. We can all look at the links beforehand. You'll get us the links or whatever we need to look at beforehand. And then we can have a very quick just dialogue about anything that we see that maybe should be updated. And then you can continue on your way. Is that reasonable? Yeah, that's reasonable. I mean, if there's somebody who wants to be in the weeds doing word smithing and it's like, well, I would change this sentence to read it this way rather than that way and you're good at that and somebody has a skill in that way, then let me know and we can work offline. We don't have to work here in the planning commission format to spend a lot of time doing that, you know, writing a paper by committee. Everybody knows that's really not the best way of getting it done or the most efficient way of getting it done. If there's somebody who thinks that's a good skill and a good way they could contribute to the overall process, then let me know and we can work offline between meetings to go through and take that opportunity to provide that comment. Because SE Group is just looking for any comments from anyone at this point to make sure we're all heading in the right direction. Okay, great. So we'll look for, it sounds like there's nothing substantive. I agree, I didn't notice any changes from the last time we looked at it. So we'll just, we'll look for you, you know, when those are on the agenda to give you some feedback. With that, I think we're just looking at minutes. I don't know if people have done that or not. If you need a minute to take a look at the minutes and then once we've done that, I'll take a motion if you wanna accept those minutes unless there's any amendments that need to be made. These look fine to me. Okay, can we have a motion then to approve the minutes? Move to approve them, both the sets of minutes. Is there a second? A second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Mike, is there any homework that we should be looking at for our next meeting? Anything you feel like is the next part of the plan to take a look at or? Don't know if I have another one ready to go right now. I know Jake and I are still working through the public safety, but that's not ready to go. Been a busy couple of weeks here in the office, so I haven't really gotten to jump in too deep on any of these, but hopefully we'll get something. Hopefully I'll be able to get one of those ready to go. I'll certainly email you. If I have something ready to go, I'll give you a heads up on it. Otherwise, we'll obviously get on the Act 174 and hopefully by the next meeting we'll have something from SE Group because I know they wanted to get in another meeting coming up. They're trying to get in, seems like about every other meeting or every third meeting, so they might have something else coming up for the next meeting. All right, very good. Well, if there's nothing else, I'll take a motion to adjourn. Good question, Mike. Where can I find all of the storyboards? Are they on the drive? No, they're being developed separately, so I don't know if I've got them up here, so I'm just gonna see historic, economic. It looks like they're doing them separately, so I emailed you today the historic and the economic development. So you should have an email from me on those two. But you said that they're working on the energy chapter, that it's not done. No, they haven't sent me the link. Okay, so these are the two storyboards we have right now. Yes. Okay, thanks. Anything else? Somebody wanna make a motion to adjourn? I'll move to adjourn. Okay, are you on? Second. Second. All in favor of adjourning. Aye. Aye. All right, that's unanimous. Thanks everybody for being here and helping us have a forum and invite your friends. We got another vacancy, so.