 So, and it is six o'clock. Excellent. So we will start this meeting of the RPC at 601 p.m. And there is no consent agenda so we can move on to the delivery. We've already had our call to order and we've checked our attendance. And there's any changes to the meeting. It's not necessarily a change, but what I will note that Charlie is running, he's on a plane, supposed to land, supposed to get close, but he may be six 30 or a little bit later before he gets to the meeting and he wanted us to make sure we continued with the agenda because of the importance of doing the equity training and not take, you can then, is there anybody else have any changes to the agenda? All right. Moving on then. Do we have any public here who wishes to comment on things that are not on the agenda? In my screen, I don't see anything. I don't know if you see anything anywhere else. So I'm going to assume. I don't see anything. Okay, so I'm going to assume then that there is no public who has anything to say that is not on the agenda, which means because there is no action on a non, a non entity. We can move on to creative discourse in our equity training, which means I will pass the meeting over to them at this moment. Hi, thanks, Catherine. Hi, everyone. I'm sumo karmic. It's good to be with you again this week. How's everyone doing? Good. Thank you. Good. Thank you. Great. We're halfway through the week, right? So we appreciate you being with us. And I'm just going to give a really quick reminder of how we got to this place where we're all in this meeting tonight and an overview of the agenda and then I'll pass it along to my colleague Nadia and we'll get started. So as you know, the CCRPC made a commitment to racial equity and social justice. And they've been working with our team to find ways to become an organization that can help Chittenden County make progress in these areas, right? And as part of our work, we had a chance to interview many of you. We did some focus groups with staff and board members and community partners and we heard some really clear themes. And because of those themes, we recommended adding in a couple of learning opportunities ahead of a summit that's happening on November 6th. That's coming up in just a couple of weeks. And what we heard from the staff and the board is, you know, we are interested in these issues. We're committed, but we don't have, haven't had a lot of experience talking about these issues as a board and as a staff. And we just want some help, you know, knowing how to talk about, have these conversations that can be hard at times. And also people wanted to, so there's a desire to improve capacity skill and practice having conversations about racial equity and justice. And then also people wanted to have a better idea of how planning specifically has perpetuated inequities and how planning can be used to create equity and opportunity and reduce barriers for people. And so we have responded to that with two sessions. The last time we were together, we wanted to give you all an opportunity to just build those muscles talking about your own racial and ethnic backgrounds. We did an exercise to look at systemic inequities and we talked about Isabel Wilkerson's idea that, you know, the foundation of our country has some serious cracks in it because of our origins. And if we close the door and we don't look in the basement, we're going to have some trouble. So we really need to just take a look and address those, some of those systemic issues so that we can move forward in a better way, that works better for all of us. And so that was the last session. And tonight I'm going to share my screen for just a moment. So our agenda tonight is to talk a little bit about the legacy of planning decisions and Nadia is going to share some information with you and have a conversation about that. And then we're going to do a little bit of an analysis of how structural inequities work and how challenging it is to unpack those. And I do want to name that we're actually going to continue to ask you to reflect very personally on your own experience and what you bring to your own work as elected officials and staff members working in municipalities around Chittenden County. Because we find that doing that personal work is extremely important foundational work. And even with the best of intentions, we can try to create a policies that are more innovative, more equitable, but without also doing the personal work, sometimes it's hard for those policies to have the outcomes that we intend. We'll talk a little bit more about that in the meeting. We'll have some small group conversations so you can explore those ideas a little bit more. And we'll end with a closing reflection and talk a little bit about what to expect on November 6. That's our plan for tonight. We also wanted to suggest a few group agreements for our work together tonight. And these come from courageous conversations. And the agreements are to just stay engaged to experience discomfort as we know talking about racism and inequities is uncomfortable at times. And so just lean into that. We encourage you all to speak your truths without fear of consequences. And if people have questions or don't agree with something that we are sharing, we encourage you to speak up and share your perspective. We just want to encourage you to expect and accept nonclosure. We're talking about issues that have been with us for hundreds of years. We're not going to solve them tonight in the next hour and a half. And then also, this was one that was added by the equity leadership team of CCRPC that we've been working with, which is the importance of believing people's experiences. If somebody, especially someone who has a different background or life experience than you, share something that's happened to them or that they've experienced, we want to share it with them and to believe that. So those are some suggested agreements to guide our conversation. And with that, I'm going to stop sharing for just a moment and turn it over to Nadia. And Nadia, I can share the screen again when you're ready. Yep. I think we can go ahead and just share the screen right away. So thank you. So good evening, everyone. Hope all of you are doing well today. It's been a lovely day on my end. Very busy. Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you so much for having me connect with you all and take our work a little bit further. I hope today my internet is doing much better, although I have had a little bit of choppiness with Burlington telecom today. So naturally today of all days when I'm trying to show up with my full self in no tech issues. So hopefully all goes well tonight. And I appreciate again your flexibility and your willingness to deal with my issues and my work. We believe that's important to gain some general knowledge about the history of inequities and particularly as we think about issues of wealth, structural and systemic oppression, privilege and power. And so to help us today, we want to share a six minute video that is a short history of housing segregation and redlining in America. And as you watch this video, I want to ask you to take a look at some of the stories in which you see housing segregation is really connected to our education system, our health system and our justice system. So the four of those areas, housing, health, schools and justice system, the way that they are interplayed and overlapping. And so as we get ready to start this video, I just want to give you a heads up that the first ten seconds of the video starts with a clip of Chris in a comedy where he uses profanity. He uses the F word. And so I just want to give you a heads up that that's going to get the first ten seconds of the video. If you don't like swearing and you don't want to hear that part, you will wait until I give you a thumbs up like this to know that that part has passed and then you can turn your volume back up. So I would mute your volume now as we start the video if you want me, if you're doing this up there. So this is my name. You don't want to be on the streets. It's different now. Now it's not looking at street. And I'm going to fuck with you in America. If you don't know how to look like this, that is a bad stuff. Matt, of course, is Chris Rock's famous about street's name from Martin Luther King Jr. which tend to be in let's say distressed this way. Once you see it, you won't be able to unsee it. Okay, let's look at MLK Boulevard in Baltimore. I want to show you how to see housing segregation in schools and health, family wealth, and policing, but first, an explanatory column. It's the 1930s in the wake of the Great Depression, FDR's president. He wants to bring economic relief to millions of Americans who are collection of federal programs and projects called the New Deal. One part of that New Deal was the National Housing Act of 1934, which introduced ideas like best of year mortgage and low fixed interest rates. So now you have all these lower income people who can afford homes. But how do you make sure they don't default on your new mortgages? Enter the Homeowners' Law Corporation. The H-O-L-C created residential security maps. And these maps, they're where the term redlining comes from. Green meant best area, best people, aka businessmen. Blue meant good people like white collar families. Yellow meant a declining area with working class families. And red meant detrimental influences, hazardous like foreign born people, low class whites, and most significantly, e-grows. Again and again, on these H-O-L-C maps, one of the most consistent criteria for redline neighborhoods is the presence of black and brown people. Let's be clear. Studies show that people who live in redlined areas were not necessarily more likely to default on their mortgages, but redlining made it difficult, if not impossible, to buy or refinance. So landlords abandon their properties, city services become unreliable. In most places, crime increases and property values drop. All of these conditions fester for 30 years as white people to lead to the brand new suburbs popping up all over the country. Many of those suburbs institute rules called covenants that explicitly forbid selling homes to black people. And all of this was perfectly legal. Now it's 1968. MLK is assassinated. Good evening. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King from the Hospital of Non-Violence of the Civil Rights Movement has been shot. The king and the shot that was killed tonight. In the aftermath, Congress passes the Fair Housing Act of 1968. It's a policy meant to encourage equal housing opportunities, regardless of race or religion or national origin. And it offers protections for future homeowners and renters. But it is little to fix the damage already done. Over the next 50 years, the Fair Housing Act is rarely enforced. So you can still see housing segregation and its effects in Baltimore and often along any MLK report in any US Senate, like its effects on wealth. So homeownership is the major way Americans create wealth, right? Well, discrimination and housing is the major reason that black families up and down the income scale have a tiny fraction of the family wealth that white families do, even white families with less education and lower incomes for almost 30 years, 98% of FHA loans are handed out to white borrowers. Not only were black neighborhoods redlined, and not only was the Fair Housing Act selectively enforced, if at all, but it is still today much harder for a black person to get a mortgage or home loan than it is for a white person. Families are fearful of speaking up about a basic human right that should be afforded to everyone in the world, but definitely in the richest country in the world. And housing segregation in schools. The primary way that Americans pay for public schools is by paying private taxes. People who live in more valuable homes have better funded local schools, better paid teachers, better school facilities and more resources. Here's the feedback. The better the schools in a neighborhood, the more those homes in that neighborhood are worth and the higher the property values of those homes, the more money there is for schools, and so on and so on. And housing segregation in health. Because of urban planning that benefited those richer, wider neighborhoods, people of color are more likely to live near industrial plants that's new toxic fumes. They're more likely to live far away from grocery stores with fresh food and in places where the water isn't drinkable. They're more likely to live in neighborhoods with crumbling infrastructure and in homes with toxic pain. When you're living with rats, roaches and things like that, that's the problem. Can I have that kind of stuff with children running around and building a building that they can fill and laugh. And not coincidentally, people of color have higher incidences of certain cancers, asthma and heart disease. And housing segregation in policing. Housing segregation means we are having vastly different experiences with crime and vastly different experiences with policing. Because our neighborhoods are so segregated, sometimes racial profiling can be camouflaged as spatial profiling, where living in certain areas can make you more likely to be stopped by the police. And it means that people have a lot of unnecessary contact with the criminal justice system just because of where they live. The problem in our city, the police and as soon as there's a fight, they keep targeting my brothers and sisters who don't really have nothing. And that heavy, aggressive kind of policing that you see in black neighborhoods in particular, makes people feel like they can't trust the police. When people don't trust the police, crimes go unsolved and people have to find other ways to keep themselves safe. But of course, it's not just Baltimore, because housing segregation and discrimination fundamentally shape the lives of people in nearly every major American city. It really is in everything. To hear more about how race shapes American life, visit npr.org slash code. Thank you, Sue. So, you know, the segment that I showed here really highlights the history of housing segregation in the centuries of inequities through land and housing. So you can go ahead to the next slide. And the video sort of reminds us that in this century, typically any wealth that families have experienced has been through property ownership, you know, home equity accounts for around two thirds of the wealth that families are experiencing. However, black people were excluded from this opportunity for to generate wealth. And white Americans had sort of parents or grandparents who bought these homes for, we know, to be at that point, minuscule amounts of money that then grew significant wealth, like to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars of wealth. And the government, we know now, played a huge role in making this happen through redlining. And although Vermont was not formally redlined, there are still really specific examples of racial segregation in the form of exclusionary housing covenants. And these were written into property titles to prevent them from being sold to or occupied by members of particular races and ethnic origin or religion until they were outlawed only in 1968 by the Fair Housing Act. So they were often used by real estate developers to keep subdivisions entirely white. And we know at least two neighborhoods in South Burlington, for example, as I share on the screen here, had housing covenants that forbade non-white residents. And despite our comparatively limited history of systemic racism, racist housing practices, Vermont still does have a history of decisions around zoning and land use, which have had the effect of determining who lives in whichever, you know, particular communities. And many Vermont communities, particularly more in this, you know, suburban areas of Vermont, have largely retained mid-century zoning practices that kind of discourage multifamily housing or more dense development. And these types of zoning codes were often consciously designed to exclude renters and lower income homebuyers. And with the full knowledge that Black and Brown and BIPOC people and their households were more likely to fall into these groups. So on the slide, the covenant that you see on one of them is from Mayfair Park in South Burlington. It reads, no persons of any race other than the white race shall use or occupy any building or any lot, except that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race, domiciled with an owner or tenant. So, you know, again, federally enforced segregation affects every part of our lives. And I asked you when you were watching this video to kind of think about that overlay, right? The jobs you could access, the schools you went to and how safe they were, or schools your kids went to and how safe they were, whether you're home increased in value and how policed or in contact with the justice system you are. And, you know, as we, you know, continue this work, we're going to take, we're going to take an opportunity here to have a little bit of a group dialogue about this video and these ideas. And I just want to point out too that I know that, you know, when, when embarking on this journey with us, you know, it's, you know, it can be really sort of overwhelming or maybe perhaps some of this information you already know, but to kind of see it in this form, sometimes that redlining conversation or these, these conversations can get a little overwhelming and we want to jump to the place where we're like, okay, so what do we do now? What are the solutions to this? And I just want to reiterate what Sue said at the beginning, which is the time that we're spending here really is to give you an opportunity to kind of do a little bit more of that deeper learning that prepares you for the time that we're going to spend on November 6th. You know, we're going to break there will be more examples of Vermont and, and, and expanding of this idea of, you know, housing and in land use. But for now, what we want to do is take some time and so you can go to the next slide here just to do a group discussion. And I want to talk about actually you can just take the, take the, take the slides down. So thank you. I want to ask you and I'll drop these questions in the chat. What stood out to you about the video? And are there things that were maybe surprising to you? So I'll drop that right in the chat. I'm going to invite us to have just a broad group conversation. What stood out to you about the video? And what are some things that were maybe surprising to you? I have a comment. When I was watching the video, it brought immediately to the forefront of my thinking, plenty of planning commission, municipal planning commission hearings on residential developments that I have attended where I was staffing the planning commission. And a developer would come in proposing multi-family housing or single-family housing. And there would be people in the audience who would come in specifically to make sure that the housing units were not going to be affordable. They would ask about the price points to make sure that the costs of the housing were going to be high enough to keep lowering people out. And the planning commissions are often really ill equipped to deal with those kinds of questions. People as soon as they would hear, oh, well, they're going to be $400,000. There would be a bunch of people who would go, oh, phew. A lot of feelings about Section 8 housing. And those kinds of conversations in front of regulatory boards still go on night after night. As a staff person, I would bring up the Fair Housing Act. I would try and educate the Planning Commission a little bit on it. But it was always really awkward at those meetings. And it still happens Thursday nights all over the state. And that's not necessarily racial equity, but it's social equity. And it's very alive. It's very disturbing. Thank you for sharing that. You know, this is part of an observation that I've had some conversations in our town in Richmond where it's curious. The same people who have a Black Lives Matter sign in their front yard are adamant that we will destroy the character of the neighborhood if a single house turns into a duplex or a triplex. It's just a really interesting conversation. Yeah, I have that conversation. I feel like daily, right, Sue? You know, we have this feeling, you know, as a state, we feel really proud of the fact, you know, some folks feel really proud of the fact that, you know, the state is progressive and leans more liberally and is about Black Lives Matter and all of these other ways that we want to demonstrate our, you know, our desire for, you know, equity and diversity, right? Diversity and inclusion, right? But when it starts to get down to issues of equity and justice, right? We get, we start to get a little bit off track, you know, because, right, then we start to feel like, well, that's fine. So long as what are my, you know, freedoms that are going to be infringed upon? How is my life going to be changed? And it gets to be really murky in those waters when we get to that place. And we have this conversation a lot. And I, you know, I talk about the fact that I feel like, you know, in Vermont, we get really complacent because we feel so comfortable in this space because you can drive around the state and see Black Lives Matter flies and feels like we're good, you know, but, you know, when you ask folks who are experiencing the other side of that or the impact of the work not moving forward in justice and equity not really being seen in the state, then that's when you start hearing folks talk about the performative nature of some of these acts. Is it actually something that's making a difference and making a change in the lives of people or is it performative so we can maintain our status quo? You know, I would just comment. I don't think it's consciously performative, but it is practically performative as you describe. I mean, these people who are well educated, well intended aware they have been educated. But moving from sort of, you know, from the performative aspect to the practical aspect, as you describe it, is a second phase that I think many people find difficult as just as you describe. Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. I don't think it's intention. I think folks are we are that's where we can see that we have further work to do, you know, where we need to go a little bit further. So I would offer is my turn that that does seem like a confirmation bias where they just filtering out walking any of that discussion. So that's what happens when you're confident that your view is correct and you're not going to enter any new information based on that. Sure, yeah, yeah. Garrett, I saw your hand. You wanted to speak. Yeah, I just wanted to mention something. It's not here in Vermont, but actually in Lawrence, Massachusetts. I volunteered at a hospital in Lawrence. There were a couple of hospitals there and I worked at both of them worked, volunteered at both. And one was in the white part of town and one was in the non white part of town. Lawrence had not just African Americans, but a lot of Portuguese and Portuguese was actually a really large percentage. But anyway, the difference in funding and services that the two hospitals just boggled my mind. Now, this is back in around 1970, but I would see care that was done at the upscale hospital that they couldn't even consider doing at the other one. And that was my first direct experience with how different it can be. And you see that many, many places where it's not over, but it's definitely there. And watching out for these subtext is really, really important. Yep. Thank you. I'm going to drop another question in the chat as you all continue to think about the one I already asked. But, you know, I did ask you to think about the connection between housing, schools, the justice system and our health system. If anyone wants to reflect on that question as well. Can you draw any connections? Go ahead, Regina. Um, so. Um, I had read and I know some other staff have read the color of law. So this time wasn't surprising, but in reading that book, which is very much reflected in this in this video. Definitely a lot of surprising things. And I think particular, particularly in this video, it points out that I don't remember if it was like 88 percent or 98 percent or something of the FHA loans were given to to white folks and really as a planner even who went through getting my master's degree in this line of work, seeing how much influence the government programs had in creating these very specific segregated places really, really sort of blew my mind a little bit. And I think particularly in watching this video, one thing that sort of surprised me a little bit more because I hadn't really thought about it from this angle, because I can make the connections in my mind between lower property taxors, more struggling schools, less health income, worse health outcomes. But the policing part was interesting to me in this video where they described that if the police aren't really working for you, you are going to have distrust in the police as an organization and a and a concept that can help solve crimes that have happened to you in your community. And so I think that was a helpful nugget this time around in seeing that and under and drawing that that connection. Thank you, Regina. Other other connections that were drawn that were that stood out to you. Yes, Catherine. Well, it's interesting. I the video did was not a surprise at all to me because we lived down river from Detroit and I went to school at Michigan State. Granted, it was a long time ago. But even when we got, you know, adult grew away, got married. My brother lives on the north side of Detroit. My parents still left lived on the south side. So we would drive the I-75 corridor and you could just see the leftovers from the riots in the 60s where people still their areas were still devastated in that ground. And even though Detroit created the rent center and all kinds of new things that are happening down there, it still was very isolated from the rest of the neighborhoods. And it was very difficult for people in the regular neighborhoods to upgrade their homes. And you just would see all these homes that just were sad and not being able to be taken care of or emptied out or whatever. So it it's, you know, still goes on. And then in fact, in terms of education, when I did graduate, I had friends who graduated as teachers and ended up teaching in the Detroit school system. And they had to teach. They were given hazard pay because it was such a that was the only way they could get people to come down to Detroit to teach. Thank you, Catherine. I see I see Tony's hand. I'll let you go ahead, Tony. And I'm going to drop another question. The last question for the segment in the chat for you to reflect on, and that is, in what ways can this knowledge inform the CCRPC's equity work? So, Tony, I'll let you go ahead. You may not be answering that question. That's OK. But those that come up next, if you want to start to think about that question. Sure. So what I what I see out of that, you know, I'm a realtor. So I, you know, for real estate class, we talked a lot about fair housing and things like that. I can tell you it still goes on. There's still discrimination. One of our instructors, that's her job is to go all around the country and deal with with real estate firms that are discriminating. So it does still go on. But what I wanted to touch on is the perpetual cycle is what I see. And you see, like you said, these, these, you know, the communities are getting poorer and poorer. And then these children are born into these communities. And it just makes things worse and worse because they see all around them. But this is this is the best they have. And I feel like one of the ways we need to find some way to break this cycle. And that's that's what I find myself thinking about. How can we break this cycle? How can we stop this from going on? How can we teach these children that are coming up in these neighborhoods? It doesn't have to be this way. Well, I think, Tony, that's a great question. Is how do we break this cycle? And that last part that you asked, how do we teach the children that it doesn't have to be this way? I wonder if it's a question that we ask ourselves, right? Because we can try like I could try to have that conversation with with with folks who are growing up in these in these communities where, you know, opportunity is lacking and they don't have the same access to health care and they're they're they're roped into health disparities. I mean, Vermont COVID numbers around racial disparities are outrageous. If you haven't seen that data, you should check it out. You know, and and we have we're like the, you know, we're doing really well in Vermont, right? And we start to ask our questions. Why are we doing so well? But, you know, underrepresented populations of people and particularly BIPOC people and children who have got caught COVID are, you know, black and brown kids. That's what the state looks like in terms of the numbers. It's it's, you know, the data staggering. And so I think, you know, the question is, you know, telling, you know, asking them, but I wonder if it's asking orgs who are who are situated with with power, right? And privileged, right? So that's that's the question that, you know, we're asking, I'm asking next is how can this knowledge inform CCRPCs equity work so that that is, you know, we're headed toward a place where that is a change, right? What's within the realm of what we can do or be thinking about in the actions of our day to day work in the actions we take in our day to day work? This is Wayne from Jericho. I'm just wondering if one way to get into this to address this is to make it applicable to income diversity as much as racial diversity and I just wonder if that might be, so many of the issues overlap and I just can't help but wonder if as a strategy that kind of chips at the whole thing and creates opportunities for underrepresented populations to get a toehold in towns and, you know, grow their own relationship to that town because darn it, they can finally afford to live there. Yep. You know, I think that's an interesting question. I think it's also one that I think we ask a lot and I, you know, I almost, I invite Sue to like it to speak here because Sue always really does a great job of, you know, really talking about that the, some of us book that was written by Heather McGee in the way that she talks about, you know, how this work is important for all of us and I think, you know, we try to think about the ways in which the intersections of socioeconomic status, race and down the line, right, impact us and I think in Vermont it gets to be really tricky when we start to talk about race because, you know, it feels like we have a bigger problem when it comes to, you know, our rural areas and lower socioeconomic status and all these things but I think, you know, the challenge is that, right, we have, when we look at the data in our states like I just gave the example of COVID data, right, the staggering data is telling us that disproportionately, right, black and brown people have been impacted by COVID children, right, in particular and so we know that we have these, this is the problem we have in Vermont like we do have a racial equity, you know, issue. So I don't know, Sue, if you wanna add to that. Sure, I think I really appreciate that Wayne and from our perspective and again, Heather McGee's what the sum of us is really helpful because what happens is there's been an intersection over hundreds of years of racist ideology and racist systems and these systems were originally put in place very specifically to keep the status quo which was that white people held the power and black people were and did not have power and were working, you know, as unpaid people to help build the wealth of the country. But the problem is that a lot of those systems, well, there's many problems with those systems, right, the reality of those systems is that they didn't just negatively impact black people and brown people, they ended up negatively impacting a lot of low income white people. So for example, you know, when integration happened a lot of communities around this country had beautiful public parks and swimming pools and rather than integrate their swimming pool they filled them in with cement and hovered them over. And so this was a reaction to not wanting to be in a swimming pool that was integrated but when you think about who is harmed by that it wasn't just black and brown people it was low income white people who could not afford to have a pool in their yard they couldn't afford to join a private club. And so, and you can also look at voting rights, right? A lot of the barriers that were put up to keep black and brown people from voting have also disenfranchised many, many low income white people who live in counties that might be predominantly black and brown and they have a lack of access to voting. What our stance is that if you do an analysis that doesn't begin with understanding how the racist systems have been put into place it's a little bit harder to, you know you wanna understand the root causes so that we can come up with solutions that are really going to be effective. And so we take a race first approach to try to get an understanding of these systems but we don't end with race. And so in Vermont, I think it's really important for us to think holistically about how some of these systems affect lots of people in our communities and we also think it's helpful to have that analysis. And as Nadia said, in Vermont right now there are black and brown people who are being disproportionately impacted by COVID. And so we need to keep our focus there and also broaden it. So it's not an either or I think it's a both and. Thank you Sue and thank you Wayne for that too. I think I want to make sure that we can move through the rest of our agenda. I did see Ann that you had your hand raised so I'm not sure if you still wanted to offer something up before we move to the next segment. Yeah, just real quickly, I think it's important municipalities to have training on the Fair Housing Act because I think that most elected officials, a lot of elected officials are not even aware of it and not even aware that some of their comments in public meetings are violating the act. We did it when I was in shelter and we did bring in an attorney and did a training and it made a big difference. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. And you will continue this dialogue when we get to November 6th. There's much more work for us to do. It won't it'll we're going to we're going to expand this dialogue and we're going to to continue to build upon it. And we will get to the place where you will spend time really thinking about some of this knowledge game. You'll be I think in a better place to really start to collectively along with community partners and others that will be in the space with you think about what are the solutions will bring some of the recommendations we have breakfast practices will be looking at some other other things that are happening across the country. And you'll have some opportunities to really start to delve more deeply into how are the ways that this what are the things that we can be doing with regards to CCRPCs equity work, right? So so we work first pausing for now, but we will be back in continuing this dialogue when we get to November 6th. So with that, thank you for that that dialogue. And I want to turn over to Sue. Thanks. So in order to move forward, I actually want to go back to something. I believe it was something that Tony said, this question of, you know, how do we break the cycle? It's so complex and things are so interconnected. And we just wanted to share this definition of systems change that we really like systems change is about shifting the conditions that are holding the problem in place. And again, we're, you know, our kind of theory of change is that if we can understand the conditions holding racial inequities in place, it positions us really well to address those inequities as well as income inequities and other inequities that our communities are facing. And I want to share with you a little bit of a construct that we can work through. And before I do that, I'm actually going to stop sharing the screen again for just a minute. I just want to say that, you know, if we look at the video that Nadia shared, you know, some people might say, you know, black people don't care about home ownership, right? Well, that would be a really inadequate analysis of the situation. And so we try to look more deeply at that. I want to just share that we're going to actually share a few links at the end of this meeting with some resources around equitable best practices for equitable development. And if there's a ton of resources out there, but one thing that all of these resources have in common is the need to make sure that people who have been underrepresented have a meaningful voice in decision decisions that are made that impact them, right? So it's about engaging effectively with communities. And we've been hearing this from all of you, too, that that's really important. And when I started doing this work decades ago, I don't want to give away my age, but I used to hear something a lot from people, I from especially community leaders, municipal officials, school leaders. People would say, you know, people are just so apathetic. They don't care. They don't come to meetings and then they get mad and complain after. But people just don't really care. And, you know, in our view, that's not an accurate analysis. And what I will say is that when we talk to all of you during the audit, we can see that there's actually a lot of progress being made because people don't have that analysis anymore. And so when when we talked with with people, we heard one of the themes that we heard was just this real concern about who does and doesn't participate in in some of the processes that would lead to people having a meaningful voice. So this is a theme that we articulated. This came from all of you and people said, you know, that meetings are inaccessible and they're poorly attended by underrepresented populations of people. And there's a recognition that there's too much jargon. There's a digital divide. There's a lack of translated materials and that this is perpetuating marginalization of diverse people's voices and experiences. So that's come a long way from what I used to hear from municipal officials is that just people didn't care, right? And so we just want to try to unpack this a little bit and talk about, you know, why it's hard to change this, right? It seems like it should be simple. Well, if we, you know, if we give everybody a computer or we have translated materials back in the solid, and we all know that trying to get engagement, equitable engagement, engaging underrepresented people isn't simple. It's really hard work. And so we want to try to look a little bit at why that is. And we're going to just share with you this very simple construct that we have found can be useful when we're trying to analyze how difficult it is to undo structural inequities and break that cycle, as Tony was saying. And usually what happens is that there's a combination of personal attitudes and belief, cultural practices and traditions and institutions that all kind of work together to make it really difficult to undo these inequities. So the personal, these are biases that people have. They may be implicit biases or explicit biases, beliefs, people hold attitudes, actions, people's life experiences that have led them to see the world in a certain way and believe certain things about certain groups of people, you know, about people with low incomes or black or brown people or people with disabilities, right? And so we carry a lot of beliefs about different groups of people and how things are. And then there's cultural factors, right? These are some of the formal and informal practices. These might not be laws, but these are just kind of the way people have always done things that can actually create a lot of barriers. And then at the institutional level, there are actual policies and procedures that, you know, keep inequities in place. And so what we want to do now is we're going to challenge you to look really personally. And again, we we want to if we really want to create change, we have to do work at all of these levels, the personal, cultural and institutional. And we're going to ask some questions and invite you to do some reflection just about your own way that you show up as leaders in our county municipal leaders when you are thinking about engaging with people, trying to hear from the voices of people who have been underrepresented. Because we do know, as I said before, this is very connected to that video we saw before about Red Line, right? Obviously, people who are impacted by that had no voice in what was happening. And we know that if we want to do planning in more equitable ways, people need to have a meaningful voice. It can't just be people showing up at Dana's meeting who don't want the, you know, affordable duplex built in their neighborhood, right? So so we have two questions here that we're going to invite you to reflect on. And I'm going to invite you to just actually spend a couple of minutes. You might if you have a pen or a piece of paper, you might want to do a little bit of writing. So when you think about trying to create more equitable opportunities for people to have a voice and decisions that impact them, what personal attitudes and beliefs impact your ability to imagine or implement a different way of achieving this? And another question and is what holds you back from building relationships with people in your community you don't often hear from? What are some of the barriers there? I have a comment. Go ahead, Dana. Well, I'm thinking about the perspective of being a municipal staff person to a planning commission. And we often feel like, how do we do this? We have statutory obligations. You know, we posted in the newspapers. Now we have front porch forum. We're required to post notices of public meetings in three different places around town. It's in the newspaper and we're often left like, what more can we do? Like, we're really trying. And so then we don't get a lot of people and we just feel really discouraged by the turnout a lot of the time. But then when heart and soul came to Essex, I was in these like community gatherings with clergy people and young people and people of color. I'm like, how did they do this? So maybe, you know, some points so you might want to share how you do that. Because it's very effective. Yeah, well, so I I appreciate that. I'm somebody's asked me to put the questions back up. So I'll do that for a minute. And maybe not. You could actually put those in the. Yeah, I'll go ahead, put them in the chat. So if you want to take it down. Yeah, so let me stop the share here for a minute. So, Dina, I guess what I if you're up for it, I want to push back on you a little bit because what happens, right? We, you know, I can share with you some of the techniques we use during the heart and soul process, but what. But there is a lot of personal work that has to happen to have the mindset that makes something like that possible, right? And so we we tend to externalize this work and think about, you know, all the barriers. There are many, Dina. You just mentioned a bunch of them. And so that's an important conversation. In fact, we're going to have you do some small group work around that conversation. But it also really requires a mindset shift in how we think about ourselves, our role, what's possible. And so that's why we were really encouraging you to think about what personal attitudes and beliefs might impact your own ability to imagine or implement different ways of achieving things. So I'll share one belief, right? One belief might be there's not time, right? And efficiency is super important. So I just want to see if other people have any reaction to that assignment. I've got a very quick reaction. I don't want to take up a lot of time with it, but people who are, those of us who are involved in some kind of public service feel like we're working for some kind of common thing. And it can be very difficult to sit in the place of someone whose motivation is not necessarily for the common good, but someone who wants to ensure their own liberty to pursue what they want to do, maybe to the exclusion of others. That is really tough for me. That's a personal thing that's taken in my head and I'm trying to be nice and make nice and make chit chat, but they're coming to the meeting or they're coming and their input is really just based on they want to get what they want to get and get out of my way. And that's sort of built into some of our how our country was put together. It drives me nuts, but that's a personal bias that I have to fight against. Yeah. Thanks, Wayne. Regina. I'll try to make this succinct. I think part of my bias is with the time piece a little bit and it's partially that we have sometimes a hundred different projects on our list in a given year that we need to get input on. And for some of those projects, they live in this kind of like wonky, high level world where it's not gonna have an impact to anybody on the ground anytime soon. And I am fearful of wasting time in people's time when they may be more in the place of trying to keep the lights on and I'm coming in asking some seemingly very distant question to their reality. Thanks, Regina. That's such a great question for CCRPC to wrestle with which is how do we reframe our work so that it makes connections with people in different ways and create processes that have reciprocity in them. And it might be integrating a longer term planning project with some other things so that you're not just coming to people with that one thing but maybe there's a way to think about working with partners and doing some integration so that there's multiple pathways for people to interact in ways that are benefiting them in the more immediate term. Andy. Good evening, everyone. I apologize for wearing my Red Sox T-shirt but I'm trying to admittedly split my attention with the ongoing Red Sox game. One of the things that Wayne spoke about just a moment ago spoke out to me. I've spent my adult life in public service and I think oftentimes we look at things, individual public servants, we may have our heart and minds in the right place but oftentimes I believe that we look at things around us and the communities that we serve in a more macro way. If you could picture an umbrella, we're holding up the umbrella and we're trying to encompass so many things and accomplish our goals that it's oftentimes difficult to listen and well to hear the micro aspect of it. So you've got the macro that's over the top but you have individual voices that sometimes get drowned out because they may be ignorant to the process, they may not know just exactly what our jobs are and they may be very well expressing valid concerns that we're just not hearing because we're too focused on the big picture and I think that oftentimes I think that that's just a side effect of government in a way in bureaucracy but I think that being able to truly listen and respond to individuals that might not know the way to sophisticated if you will way to bring their concerns to the table. They might not know how, they might not know the process and we're so concerned and I don't mean we as us, I mean we as the general group of public servants and people in those positions, I think that sometimes the individuals get drowned out in the noise, if that makes sense. And I think that that's what Wayne said a moment ago maybe in a little bit different way but I think that that was the same, I think it was the same point he was getting at but I do think that individuals get drowned out when we are considering the big picture sometimes. Thanks for that, Andy. Anybody else? I wanted to look at the second question for a minute about what holds you back from building relationships with people in your community you don't often hear from. I know that in talking with leaders of schools and municipalities, people often just feel really unsure about how to start building those relationships and I wonder if anybody reflected on that question and had anything that you'd like to say. Did you want to say something Taylor? I was thinking about it, I'm just gonna say kind of what Regina already said really which is time and mostly billable hours. As staff, we've got to bill hours and it's not like Charlie and leadership puts a bunch of pressure on us to make sure that we're building a certain amount of our time but we've got 40 plus hours to give or take a week and a lot of that's filled with those 100 plus projects in our UPWP and a lot of times it's getting that project done, moving on to the next one or getting that piece of that project done and moving on to the next one. There often isn't that more relaxed time in which you can converse with someone about something not directly related to a CCRPC project and build a relationship. Right, so I think you just did a really good job kind of highlighting how the personal, the cultural and the institutional can all work together, right? So on the personal level, I've heard people that we talk to say, I'm kind of afraid I'm gonna say the wrong thing. If I'm talking to somebody from a different racial or ethnic background or somebody with a disability, whatever it is. So there's that fear factor there and then there's the cultural. This is how maybe the cultural idea that efficiency is important. And then the institutional is your pay, how you get paid, right? And how you need to build hours for particular tasks and projects. So that's an example of how those different levels can work together to make it really hard to shift how you're approaching things. Jackie? Well, similar. I think it's just really hard to figure out how to access people who you don't naturally engage with. And so I've been on my select board for a few years and very rarely do I hear from anyone in town unless it's something that's bothering them. But to figure out who actually, who are the people I never see and would like to talk to who aren't in my social circle or previously my work circle, I just don't know how to do that in an effective way without having it feel natural, I guess, to build a relationship. Thanks for that, Jackie. I know that in Essex, our elected officials have been doing coffees, right? In different coffee shops all around town. And it takes a really long time. They've been doing it for a long time and mostly it's the same people that come to the meetings but every once in a while a few people will show up who haven't been there before. And I think one of the things that you all have going for you is that you think about planning in terms of a longer timeframe than a lot of people are used to in our culture. And in my experience in Essex, I've had an experience where I've been building relationships with people for maybe two or three years before I would ever ask them to do something, right? And so that willingness to make a beginning and start small and stick with it even though you might not have the immediate outcome you're hoping for and being patient, I think that's a really important approach. And so going to hang out at different parts of town where people are and just being available in informal ways on a regular basis can be really helpful. What we wanted to do is to do a little bit of small group work because when we're in this big group, we hear from some people but not everybody and we do want everybody to have a chance to talk. So we're going to do some small group work and we really do want to circle back to this question and we're practicing with this question. We can practice with a lot of different questions around the work but because this idea of engaging with people who have not had their voices heard and people especially who are impacted by these decisions, decision that you all make, this is a central important piece of lots of different literature around doing more equitable planning. And so what we wanted to do is invite you to get into some small groups and really do a little bit of an analysis about how these different factors, personal beliefs and attitudes, traditions, just things that you've always done a certain way and then actual policies are getting in the way or making it challenging for you to hear from the people you would really like to hear from in your communities. Does that, are the instructions clear? So we're going to do, we're going to have about three to four people in the room and we'll have about 15 minutes for this conversation and then we'll look forward to hearing from you when we come back together. And I want to offer Sue, I know sent a broadcast out to the group that, because we are ending at 7.30 and we don't have the opportunity to do the large group report out, what we want to do is offer you an opportunity to share those ideas in the chat. So if you haven't already, please do share those ideas. If you had any key ideas, share those in the chat and we'll capture those for you. But if anybody wanted to maybe to report out what came up in your group where folks were having a thought that you want to finish, that's another thing because again, our chats closed down a little bit earlier than we thought because of the setting that was on Zoom at the time. So anyone that wants to share just a broad idea that came up in your group or if you wanted to finish a thought that you were having. We were concerned about the MPL and the RPC as an organization that there is such a long learning curve on getting up to speed to our issues for someone to make a meaningful contribution, that it was gonna be impossible to go out and have coffee with each member of the BIPOC community for three or four hours to let them know what we do so they could think about what it is that we do and that they could come and give us meaningful feedback that they would feel comfortable giving us. So I mean, we have board members that take years to get up to speed on what we do. I don't know how we're gonna do that for the general public in general or specifically members of the BIPOC community without an awful lot of outreach and education about what it is that planning does and what we do in the region and in the community in order to make them feel comfortable enough to give us feedback that they think will be more than just rolling off to the side. Thank you very much for your opinion because it's hard to contribute meaningfully on substantive issues and be impactful without an awful lot of the knowledge base that's out there and very few members of the general public are able to do that. And a lot of times even select board members don't understand what we do as an organization. So it's gonna be a heavy lift to be able to get a sufficient amount of background out there and it's gonna have to be a policy that is done in terms of outreach by the MPO to even get people to the point where they feel comfortable coming up to the microphone or maybe we gotta give them a better opportunity to express themselves in other means. So Jeff, I really appreciate that and what I wanna say and I'm gonna talk fast because we don't have much time. This is where I wanna go back to Dana's example of the Heart and Soul of Essex Project. One of the things that I again have noticed that happens this is the mismatch is that oftentimes leaders go out and try to get people to weigh in on really technical stuff. And the general public that's not their thing. You all have the expertise around the technical decisions. The reason the Heart and Soul of Essex was so successful is we really try to listen in a very deep way to the values that the community held. And then we gave those values to people who have the expertise around planning and they were able to embed those values in some of their planning work and then circle back with the community and said and be able to say, you told us these four things were really important and this is how we're trying to address those. And also sometimes you have to be able to articulate. You shared these three values and there's some tension here and how should we navigate that? So when we're looking to the community to share their wisdom with us, to share their values with us, to share what matters most to them, then we can take that and apply our expertise to that. And there's an integration of facts and data and values. That's very important that we're not that good at but we can do it. And so that's how I would, what I would have to say about that. We don't need to turn everyone in the community into planning experts. We just need to listen and know what matters to them and be able to talk about how they work. Sure, go ahead, David. Just one second. I think that it's important that CCRPC recognize how different the towns in our county are and how non-diverse and why some of the towns are. And then you get to Essex, which is absolutely one of the most diverse communities in our county. And I've been told when I was with Essex that there are 43 different languages spoken at the Essex High School. So how do you train leaders to tap into that kind of diversity in our towns that are very, very different and the different kinds of training and abilities in our county? That's a great question, Dana. And go ahead, Garrett. And then we're going to wrap it up with it. We have a few things we wanna say about the November 6th meeting before we end. So go ahead, Garrett, and then we'll do that. Okay, I just wanted to sort of respond on the heart and soul thing is that one advantage heart and soul had was that it was something new and different and it got a ton of media coverage. And believe it or not, the RPC does not get a ton of media coverage the way heart and soul did. So that just created a very different environment. Well, when you put a canoe in the street with a bunch of balls in it with questions in them and have people sit in the canoe and pick up a ball and ask each other questions that gets news coverage, right? Cause that's not the way we typically gather feedback. So there's a lot of creativity and ways to think about engagement that are really different than typically having to speak at a microphone at a meeting. So speaking of engagement, I just wanted to say a few words about November 6th. We're really excited about this meeting. Jeff, I hope you'll be happy to know that we're going to have more time for people to work in small groups. In fact, we've designed the meeting so that the same group of people will come together three different times and have 20 minutes and then 45 minutes and then 30 minutes to be together. So that's a really central part of our design for that meeting. And there's three things that we're just going to encourage you all because you are all leaders. You all have tremendous expertise. You know, more about this than all the other people that are going to be in the room. And we have three things we want to encourage you. We hope you'll be there. First, we want you to believe people when they tell you their stories or experience, you know, just lean into it, even if you, you know and I've caused a lot of harm by not believing people that have experienced racist things on our block and I just didn't want to know that that was happening on our block and I was like raised an eyebrow. Are you sure that was really happening? That's very harmful. So believe people no matter what they tell you about their experience, they're the experts. The second thing, this is an opportunity to really listen and gather ideas for people who hold different perspectives and different roles. And so, you know, I would just try to hold back a little if you're used to, you know, talking a lot, you're still presenting being in these public spaces and do some as much listening as you can. And then finally, this is really important to listen with an open mind. So if people are sharing ideas that you know can't work with existing structures, you know, instead of thinking this can't work, we're just going to really encourage you to think about how could these structures shift or change so that this idea could be possible. And again, that's a heavy lift. That's a big ask for all of you that have all this expertise and you know some of the barriers, but we just want to try to start to think about how do we shift those structures? So some of these ideas that may be new to you or sound really different could, you know, have a chance to be implemented. So those are our three tips for November 6th and we want to thank you very much for being with us. We wish we had more time. We usually don't do things shorter than two hours, but we have been trying to accommodate all of you and we appreciate you being here. Nadia, I don't know if you want to say goodbye. No, thank you. Thank you all for your engagement today and we'll see you all on November 6th. Thank you all for the work you've done. Thank you. Thanks everyone. Take care. Same to you. Alrighty. It's always hard to follow such deep discussions, but with the mundane, but we have to do that. Well, I froze up again. Oh, well, let's come back and see what happens. All right. What is next on the agenda is the VPSP2 update and recommendations for two fee trends. So, sorry. Do you want me to say a few words on this or should we? Sure, sure. Yeah, so there was a pretty detailed memo in your packet. Hopefully you can hear me now. I'm on my dual device. I'm on the phone and the computer. So this is really the next to the last step in the VPSP2 process that we've been talking about and working on for a long time. This is for the roadway traffic and safety and paving projects. And so just to recap, started out with VTrans determining how much money is available, how much is promised to committed projects. They identified, as the driven projects, we identified regionally driven projects. 23 projects were scored back in June, approved by the board and submitted to VTrans. These projects were combined with all the other projects in the state. There were a total of 95 projects statewide that were considered combination of asset driven and regionally driven. There were 23 Chittenden County projects and of those 11 of them were the regionally driven that were selected by us that we requested to be added to the capital program. So we had, what's my number? So we had a total of 19 projects selected in Chittenden County. There were four projects that were in this category recommended for future funding. So in your packet, there's a lot of details of the projects. I can go through the list in more detail if we want to. But basically what we're doing tonight, we have, there were four projects that were not selected and we have some comments to VTrans on those four projects. That's where we are now is what we can do is submit comments on the list to VTrans. So we're asking for your comments on the comments if you endorse them to send to VTrans or if you want some edits to those comments. And that's my quick overview. Charlie? Yeah, and I just want to put a little bit of context, a couple of things that were notable in this first time through this process was that Chittenden County projects score pretty well. And so, when you look at the individual list you'll kind of see Chittenden County projects rises at the top. And also we're submitting some comments, but also we're also trying to be realistic not everything that Chittenden County wants can Chittenden County get. And so I think as long as we're our eyes are wide open but I do want to thank VTrans for really opening up this process. This is really the first time we're kind of seeing how the back end of the Capital Program gets populated with new projects. And so this is a pretty exciting point in time. So are there any questions or if not, we should make a recommendation that the comments prepared by staff and the TAP be submitted to VTrans for consideration for the VPSP2 process. So moved. I'll second. Thank you, Jeff. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any abstentions? If not, the motion passes. I don't know Amy or did you catch that Amy Ball abstained? That was Dan and Jeff. Yeah. But did you catch that Amy Ball abstained? Okay. Yeah. But moving on then, we have the Lamoille Tactical Basin Plan, Regional Plan Conformance MIMO. All right, I'm gonna try to share my screen. Is that, is that it? Oh yeah. Okay, great. So Dan Albrecht, Senior Planner, we're at the RPC. So I'm at all outlines of, you know, gives an overview of the processes taking place. Tactical Basin Plans have been around for a while and they keep getting more refined, more detailed, and also much more discreetly action-oriented and organized better and better each year. I do wanna especially compliment the Basin Planner, Danielle Arzowski, for a lot of good input and opportunities for input and working with me as a staff member as well as working with our municipal staff as well. So basically I'll go briefly through the strategies in the draft Tactical Basin Plan and we're directed as the memo notes in our Tactical Basin Planning Support Grant that we provide a written analysis and formal recommendation from the board on the conformance of the draft Tactical Basin Plan with the goals and objectives of the applicable regional plan. So let's see, okay, so now I'm scrolling down the page. So again, they're just a handout here from DEC, which I've included, which describes the different bases and what the purpose of a Basin Plan is. And it's very clear that a focus on projects or actions needed to protect or restore specific waters, identify funding sources, et cetera. Chittenden County has three different watersheds, the Winooski watershed, of course, the LaMoyle and then Northern Lake Champlain, which is all the small streams that are not the same as the LaMoyle, the Winooski. And there's a tiny sliver of charlotte in Basin 3 there as well. Okay, and so moving, so again, that's the overview. Just in terms of for the public record here, the plan was released on October 13th. There was a public meeting on the 14th last week at several locations. The town of Jericho was the satellite location. We got a couple of Jericho residents come to that location as well, so that was nice. And again, the comments, so that you can read the plan there at the tiny URL link. You can send comments to Danielle, or excuse me, comments to this anr.basin7 comments or by US Postal Mail to the address there. So again, comments on by November 12th. A lot of detail in the document and they will prepare a responsiveness summary to see how comments were addressed. So I won't go into too detail into this little thing because it's excerpted in the letter below, but this just shows you how all the different areas, the focus areas, agriculture, developed lands, stormwater developed lands, roads that sort of cut off. They're actually, I just noticed in that table, wastewater and the natural resources projects which fall into the categories of rivers, lakes, wetlands and forests. Again, so then there's the summary from DEC. So the formal letter which I need your action on tonight because if we waited until mid-November then it would be after the comment if not. Again, as I mentioned, we were directed to develop in consultation and then also formal recommendation on conformance with the goals and objectives of the regional plan. So this memo, obviously very familiar to you the items of the ECOS plan, the memo here to DEC, this analysis outlines the goals that are most applicable to assessing conformance. We have 17 goals under four broad goals and the discrete broad goals of natural system and built environment. And within that goes one, two, three, 16. And then when you look into the strategies or strategy two, strive for 80% of development areas planned for growth, which amounts to 15% of our land area, strategy three, the biggest, most applicable on the prove the safety, water quality and habitat of our rivers, streams, wetlands and lakes in each watershed. And strategy seven, developing financing and governing systems to make the post-efficient use of taxpayer dollars. So again, so when I looked at, when I put this memo together, again, there's a recap of the strategies by sector. There's actually 57 strategies in the plan. And they all go, again, focus on help implement goals one, two and three, 16 and strategies two, three and seven. And then here's where I excerpted the most applicable tactical basin plan strategies that are directly applicable to municipal work. And a lot of the work we do here is the RPC. So I won't go into detail on those, the develop lands, again, the permitting issues, the implementation of projects, stormwater projects, number 12, illicit discharge, trainings, number 16, green stormwater infrastructure, 18 to the extent that projects of dealing with hazard mitigation also have water quality benefits. The roads is probably the most directly applicable to all our towns broadly. So the MRGP work, implementing a high priority road projects number 22, the road and bridge standards, all our towns are on board with that already. Couple of the wastewater issues applicable to some of our rural towns that are trying to find ways to address wastewater solutions. The forestry work is applicable to several of our towns, lakes. In this particular case, one of the big lakes in this watershed is Lake Arrowhead in there, Elton. And then the river work, again, all the emails from me that people have seen about river corridor protections, example, the work we're doing with South Burlington on their land development regulations expanding to 500 acre floodplain, et cetera. So on and so forth. And wetland work, not too many discreet projects there, but all about improving water quality, protecting what you have and improving what's impaired. Well, impaired is too strong a word, but there we go. So the final, so after running through the strategies there we're basically the closing statement as detailed in the staff analysis of the tactical basin strategies above, CCRPC, Board of Directors of the Firms of the Draft with the Moil Tactical Basin Plan is in conformance with the optimal goals and objectives of the 2018 Chittenden County Regional Plan. And I'll stop there and see if you have any questions. I have a dumb question. I do apologize, I didn't make it to the tactical basin, I had a conflict, but in reading all the applicable watersheds I always thought the Lee River was part of the the Moil Tactical Basin. And it wasn't the... Yeah, I get, oh, well, right, you're right, you always thought the Lee was part of the... Yeah, the Lee is, yeah, right, good as part of the Moil, right? Yeah, the Lee, does the Lee flow into the, does the Lee flow into the Browns? Or does it flow somewhere else? I go into the Browns right below the old red mill. Yeah, I just wondered why, because I thought, you know, because you mentioned the Browns, you mentioned the Mill Brook, which is like smaller than the Lee River, so I just wondered why Lee River wasn't mentioned. Yeah, well, it's interesting too, because the strategies are ideally broadly written, but every now and then there's a very discreet location identified as a strategy, which is not the way I would write a basin plan, but it's not my basin plan to write, so. Well, thank you. Are there any other questions? I'll move that we send it. I'm sure Amy has the right language. Is there a second? I'll second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. What about you? Any opposed? Aye. Any abstentions? I didn't see anything, so the motion passes. And thank you very much. And thank you again. Now I got to switch to the last, now I got to get two pairs of glasses. Okay, next is a discussion on the municipal dues. Yeah, so I think Forest has more detail on this if you want, but I will in general say that staff and the executive committee are asking for consideration of a vote for our 2% increase in dues. We have an increased dues the last couple fiscal years and we really started to feel it in the budget this year as we're running out of local funds to match federal funds. So that's really kind of why we're looking for the increase and happy to answer questions or Forest can give you more details in the numbers if you'd like, but. And for those of you fairly new to the board, our dues are based on the equalized grand list across the town. So towns are basically paying based on their ability to pay base from the property tax. So that's how it's calculated. Questions, thoughts? The motion. The motion. I'll make a motion that we approve the 2% increase for this year's local dues. Second. Oh. Second. Yeah. Okay. All those in favor say, hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Any opposed? Abstentions. Seeing none, the motion passes. Moving on, we're going to talk about the ECOS plan schedule as part of the executive director report because the chair has nothing to say. Regina, did you want to talk about the plan schedule? So there's a pretty brief overview memo in your packet. Essentially we are, we've been starting to meet as staff to talk about the ECOS 2023 plan update. We've got to have that adopted by June of 2023, considering the lengthy official public engagement process, that means we really will have a draft in place by January of 2023. We are working on lots of different efforts that will get incorporated into that plan. So the memo includes those, some big ones that you're certainly aware of, I-89, working on a new SEDS. There'll be a new comprehensive, there'll be a new comprehensive energy plan at the state, climate action plan at the state, number of different things. So that is that and thanks for those of you on the long range planning committee and having patients with me through a second round of doodle polling, but hopefully we can land on a date soon. Yeah, so that was really just a information item, just one you to know kind of the next 15 months or so are probably going to be a little busy with developing the next plan. And there are a lot of issues going on in the community that we'd like to incorporate and update the plan with. The other item under there is to let you know that GBIC has been somewhere between requested, required by the agency of commerce to provide, well, to consult with us and provide the state back with kind of a top 10 list for economic development projects. So we've been talking with GBIC at the staff level. It's kind of unfortunate timing because we are going through this whole comprehensive economic development strategy. So a year from now we're going to have a much better, well vetted list. In the meantime, we're trying to pull from our previous SEDS work and other work. And I will share in the next week or so, I'll, this is really my heads up to you. I'm going to circulate a list for you to take a look at and we can talk about it at the November board meeting, but so this is just a heads up. We're kind of working on the list. Hopefully the things on it wouldn't be shocking to you, but we'll send it back and heads up incoming. And again, a focus on economic development. And that is really all I have to report at this point in time, Madam Chair. Oh, thank you. As usual, the committee liaison activities and reports are either digitally provided to you or in your packet, depending on your choices. Is there any people who have any ideas that they'd like to have for future agenda topics? Because that's, if not, just think about it for the next meeting. Seeing no other hands up. Are there member items or other business? Don't see anything. So we made a motion to adjourn. I moved. Second. All those in favor say aye. Thank you so much guys and have a nice evening. Thank you everyone. Thanks, Catherine. Thank you.