 So just to give everybody kind of an overview, first we'll like to be able to ask everybody to make sure you sign your name if this is something that you're interested in. Thanks, Ron. And then we'll just kind of give a quick review. Now this isn't something that I do on a regular basis, so bear with me. We've got the found, I usually call it the founding households. Not everyone is here today, but I'm gonna ask Sarah, Catherine, and Jeff to stand up and say hi. And we've been meeting for about a year. We're missing Lynn because she fell on the ice and she's doing okay, but she's a little bruised and she said she wasn't gonna be able to make it tonight. And then there's Bronwyn and Kevin. Kevin said he'd be here, but he may just be late. So there are five households, three singles and two couples. So it's kind of a nice mix. We're also gonna have Susan who's here from ORCA and she's gonna be filming the meeting so that those people who aren't here will be able to see what's going on. I have about 17 people who contacted me to say they had a conflict tonight. They also have put together a 10 question survey on SurveyMonkey, so I'll send around that link. And so anyone who's particularly interested in Silver Maple wouldn't mind filling out that survey and sending it in. I'll also try to send around links to other sites that are relevant and some ideas on books. So the survey is only about just your basic details. How many in your household, what kind of house do you, would you look at, that kind of thing. There's nothing terribly subjective in it. So a lot of us have these big homes. We are looking to be able to downsize and most everybody here is kind of a subset of the main downsizing group. And now we have like 250 people on that group. So the aging in place is a little bit more challenging but we'd also like to have our friends and neighbors a little bit closer, especially as we get older because socializing is so critical. So that is how we all kind of got together. We've discussed possible locations. We've discussed goals which I'm gonna actually go to the next slide. So these are the goals that our group has focused on. It's like who we are and what do we want in a community. We agreed on a name of Silver Maple. We secured an email address and a URL and had a logo designed. We also discussed the advantages of each kind of a group of both over 55 and intergenerational. So there's that and we also talked about possible partners. And we've met for about a year and it's been fluid but over the past few months it's been a pretty solid group of the five households. So what I'm gonna do is just move the slides along. We'll give you a chance to read them and then if I'm going too fast just let me know and then I'll have a couple of comments on them. I'm not gonna read the slides. You guys can read the slides, so. I have a question. What's possible partners? Excuse me? What do you mean by possible partners? We'll get there. In a different kind of a connection terminology than partners. But anyway, so it's really talking about who are we? I mean, we're the Woodstock generation and we do things our way. We don't do things the way our parents have done them. So we want to change the traditional approach to aging which is often institutional or very separate in our own homes. We're looking for people to join us. We're looking for, say, 24 households to move the process forward, but the number can be very fluid. We can start with fewer, we can start with more. And this is kind of, a lot of these images are from two different architects. One is Ross Chapin who wrote a book called Pocket Neighborhoods and the other is Chuck Durrett whose focus is on he designs co-housing communities. But we're not saying this is one community or another. We're letting whatever the residents decide is going to be. So in who else? This is having young families nearby could enable an interaction with the Silver Maple members whether it be mentoring or it could be babysitting. It could be changing of exchanging tasks. It would also enable younger families to live closer to their parents or older relatives. There could be a resident nurse or physical therapist in an adjacent neighborhood. But it would be, the intergenerational would be spearheaded by someone or a family that would actually be living there. It's not going to be spearheaded by Silver Maple because we have our own stuff to do. But the housing would need to be compatible with the design of Silver Maple but not identical because intergenerational, they may want two stories, they may want a different approach. So that's where the two communities would be set by side. Set by side. So the 800 to 1200 square feet is pretty standard for a small, I've seen actually 500 square feet and it was really well done. So you can really live small and make it very efficient for you and affordable. So the homes that are facing a central green is what pocket neighborhoods and how they're designed. So think of what you have now as your back porch being your front porch so that you're facing friends and people who are walking in the area and having the shared space. And then the back of the house, which is technically the front, is when you would come in with your vehicle and it would be more functional than aesthetic and this is where most people would spend their time. And we're talking about different structures. So these photographs all come from either Chuck's designs or Ross Chapin's designs. There tend to be in the Northwest of the country but there are a number of housing communities in our area that could work. So each house, the community could build in different stages and different phases but the legal entity being that of a condominium which means it's joint ownership of the land and of the exterior of the buildings. The interior would all be owned and managed by the resident. So this way upkeep on the exteriors is all taken care of. It would be outsourced to contract it out and that would be decided by the residents. So services could be anything. I pulled out a couple of gardens and just a really cute house that has its own garden in front. So a lot of the services would be contracted out especially on the Silver Maple side. Some people could get together and fund dock walking services or you could contract with physical therapists to visit multiple people in the same community but you still have your own space, like your own garden, your own little patio in front, your own porch. And some of these are just examples of pocket neighborhoods. So there's the center greens which you can see in most of these and the lower right, that's a very small common house but a lot of exterior space where people get together and share meals and share events, parties, that kind of thing. I'm losing this. Where are these pictures from actually? They're from those books. They're from all over the country. I don't know exactly where they're all located but I pulled a lot off of the websites and I have the pocket neighborhood book and I took a workshop with Chuck Durritt so on senior co-housing but this isn't necessarily co-housing. This is really up to the residents as to what they actually want to be. So the layouts, as you can see, these are just different communities and different parts of the country but they could be in different phases. They could be, and a lot of it's based on the terrain and the size of the land and the climate, all of that. The common house is something that you usually see in co-housing but it's really important for socializing but it's also really important for everybody who is a resident because you have storage and people talk about bike storage and kayak storage and tire storage and whatever so having a larger house that has these kinds of advantages is really helpful but what it really does is bring people together and there can be an outdoor, as you can see with these folks. I think that one happens to be, there's one in Boulder, Colorado, that may be them. The drawing on the right is like a greenhouse that has a shared space as well as actually growing things for gardens. Where is going to be, who knows? I mean, we've looked at three particular locations. One is particularly good but we are not locked in to one and this is going to be decided by whoever decides to join the group. Happen there. Okay, and it will all be determined by a lot of things. What space is needed. Land can be purchased by the group and a bigger amount of land than that's actually needed and then that other trunk could be sold off to another group and it could be a profit center for the residents of the first group. I mean, it can be just about anything. So transportation, the question came up because we are in this climate and because we are older, having an attached garage is pretty important for when you got groceries. You don't want to slide all over the place and fall and not be able to get your groceries in the house easily. So that will be somewhat different. The intergenerational, the photo on the lower right is when I took in Massachusetts in the whole carp where there's nothing but solar panels. So it could be very effective on that front. I just pulled that, it looks like a fiat or something on the web but it could be a small cars with charging stations. And from the standpoint of using other type of transportation, I talked with a member of the planning commission whose area is transportation and he said that depending on the number of residents they could actually create a stop within Silver Maple. So that would be a great advantage. There's also para transport transit which is you call in for a ride and they're considering any seniors who need a ride in the winter time that you can call and be able to get a ride. So it does have to have a doctor's signature but that's not that hard of it. But golf carts I think would be fun. Maybe not scooters. How much is always a question? Montpelier's not particularly cheap to build in but I did get these quotes from a couple of different architects and builders but this remember just is the cost of building the house and the higher the price, excuse me, the smaller the house, the higher the per square foot because you have to have the same water or sewer and all that in a small house the same way you have to have it in a slightly larger house. But it does have a number of factors that have to be considered. The permitting process, all of that, the site work. You see, now let's see. There's a possibility of being able to build a four-unit structure that looks like individual structures. They've done it in Oklahoma and it's a four-unit, think of a duplex that is two duplexes joined together and they have each a front porch so it looks like they're all separate houses even though they're all joined together. I thought that was pretty interesting. So that's possible and it could reduce the price of the individual homes. So talking about partners, because the land properties that we're looking at have a lot of acreage, it would be advantageous to be able to not control but partner with organizations that would maintain the green space and you wouldn't have like a 100-unit development going in because you can't buy the entire piece of land. So I've talked with both the city and the trust for public land and they're very interested in creating a city park on a couple of the properties. So again, this is a public meeting so we can't get too specific about the locations. Also met with the Living Well Group and it's really worth looking into them. They have such a unique approach to aging both assisted living and memory care. So a quote from them is that they have a holistic approach to aging that's vastly different than the approach from traditional institutions. They're considering, I quote, creative collaboration with a focus on health aging in community and possibly building an assisted living residential facility based on their philosophy and near silver maple. So that would be really helpful. Somebody at the last downsizing meeting said, okay, we'll live by ourselves up to a point and then what? So we kind of want to look at the then what and they're doing some amazing work at Heaton Woods. So they have two other facilities, one in Bristol and then one in Burlington but they haven't, they've taken them over. They haven't actually built their own. So they have their own really interesting ideas about building assisted living center that is focused on community. Also met with the consultant who was doing the feasibility study for the rec center. And I thought, oh man, if you have a park you could have a rec center attached to it. Wouldn't that be great? Is that a light senior center or something? It would be a real asset. So I just pulled that photograph on the right as a sample of a city park somewhere. That's nothing specific. So when? It all depends on involvement but ideally two or three years for the community because of permitting, all the items that are listed there but then we also have Vermont weather as a lot of us know and we're afraid about tonight but hopefully it won't come until 10 o'clock tonight. We're all back home. So some of these, some of the considerations on the timing. Again, it depends on involvement and how many people are interested in this kind of approach. Decision making, a lot of people ask about. You get a bunch of people who are just residents and you really have decision making, a situation to really kind of come up with but you can see the people like the guy in the back there. He's Chuck Durritt who was the architect for a lot of co-housing units in this country and he was very involved with the residents of a community who are really deciding, where are we gonna put the houses? How big are they gonna be? I mean, who am I gonna be near and how are we gonna govern? So I took a workshop on sociocracy which is also called dynamic governance and it was fascinating. It's not consensus and it's not hierarchical. It's bringing people together who may have different opinions but being able to get them to agree to move forward on a particular project. So it gives everybody a voice but it doesn't inhibit something from moving forward. And then the next steps. There's the survey that would be really helpful to have input on. We're going to ask for a deposit. We need to, we have an attorney that we feel is gonna be a really great person to work with. I have spoke with landowners so there's a lot that's been going on. So I think we are ready to make the next steps. For those people who are really interested in something like this and a public, it would not be a public meeting. It would be only for those people who said, okay, this looks good to me. Let's see how far we can go with this. That will be on December 8th in the city hall. So I appreciate everybody being here and putting up with my lack of experience and doing this kind of thing. But are there any questions? And I should say Kevin is here now too so we have four of our households represented. If anybody has any questions, this would be a great time. Did you say can we look at any of the properties yet that are being considered? Yeah, I mean, if you wanted to join the group, the first deposit would be refundable. But because again, this is public, I don't think it's a good idea to kind of divulge where we've been looking so that we can certainly sit around and discuss at the next meeting. I've walked a bunch of a few different areas and they do change, you know. One we were looking at, it's like, okay, well somebody bought that and they're putting two houses on it, like 10 acres, 12 acres, what? So, you know, it goes, you want to go? What's that? A front? A little bit more. So people can see that. Anyway, I had to stand here because I had to get the clicker close to the computer. So, thanks. So are you heading out? No. Okay, thanks. So in other words, before the next meeting on December 8th, you want a commitment with a refundable deposit? Next meeting, not before the next meeting. So for those, excuse me. You mean at the next meeting? Yeah, so those people who are really interested in being part of Silver Maple and taking the next steps, we would be asking for $100 deposit. We haven't formed the LLC yet, but that's next on the list. We will have a board, but that's fluid as well. So we have just been meeting as a group for the past year. Yeah? I understand that you can't tell us about the specific properties, but you probably could tell us that these are going to be outside of the central downtown area, correct? Yeah, because there's acreage. And there isn't any acreage in the downtown area. But it's a community. So if you're thinking of a community within a community, but everything we've looked at is within Montpelier city limits. And part of the consideration is access to services like sewer, water, because that changes the price of a home significantly. I've talked to people, there's a small co-housing group in Middlesex, I think Middlesex or East Montpelier that has six homes. And she told me about what the struggle was to get a septic and a well-drilled. And it was a really a big headache. It took them more money than they really wanted to spend on it. So that's kind of why we're looking at city services. There was a time frame before two to three years. Did you mean that two or three years to first get the group organized and then? No, two to three years to be built, hopefully. A year to do the planning and all the requirements of that. And then a year to do building. And you have to take into consideration seasons and cities, the timing for all the permitting and all of that. So what we like to do is work with someone who has experience in that to be able to make it happen. Now, whether that's a project manager, whether that's the builder who has a general contractor or whatever, cause none of us really have deep experience in this. And if you organize enough to start the project, can you estimate about what year it would be finished? Well, it'd be great to do it by 2020. So I'm looking at two years. I mean, none of us are getting any younger. So pushing this off for five years, none of that happened. And I got involved in doing this because sometimes if you want some, you gotta go in there and do it yourself. So that's kind of where it came from. I'm not a builder. I'm not a realtor. I don't have any background in that, but. So Meredith. No, he's trying to say something wrong. Isn't that kind of ambitious, sir? Why not? In two years, in less than two years, you can have the whole thing. Well, it depends on the number of people who want to be involved. And according to the builders and people we've talked to, it's about a two year process. Yes, it can be longer than that, depending on if you run into roadblocks. But that would be two years. And we got a timeline from an architect and a builder that that's pretty much what it was. So, I mean, you're skeptical about that, but it, two years seems to be what, and it all depends on when you start the process too. Because you can't start building in December. You've got to start. So you've got to start, but you can do all the backup. You can do the planning and the permitting and all of that, because a lot of that's available online and through maps and the rest of it. Chances are, getting really going on this is probably not happening till spring because we have a lot of organizing to do as a group. Let me get Meredith first, because Meredith. Does that first square foot price, does that include the road that you'd have to put in and that kind of thing? No, it only includes the house. It only includes the house. And it was a similar, I only saw one other company that came in a little bit lower than that, but it really depends on how much management there is of the process. So the higher the price, the more involvement of the management of the process, which also means you don't have to do as much of it and hire an outside person. So it's kind of fluid on that. I talked to three different organizations, they all kind of work a little differently. But then again, if you were able to have the city want to do a park someplace, they would already have access roads because they got to build it for a park and if we're going to adjacent to a park, you know, might be a little easier. So it doesn't include the land and it doesn't include the complex? And it wouldn't include the land and it really depends upon what size, acreage, some of these pocket neighborhoods are built in cities so that you have very little acreage. Some of them that I went to Massachusetts, they were on 20 acres. So it really depends upon what the group wants. If they want, people want a lot of green space and open space, then you make a greater commitment to more land than you would actually build on. And the zoning is kind of all over, but around the rough is around R9000 within Montpelier, around the periphery. So some of it is zoned that makes it very challenging. So it really depends on the property you're looking at. It really depends on how many people buy in, but... Yeah, and then what people want, you know. So if there are 12 people and say, okay, everybody would like to have a lot of green space, you know, maybe it's an acre house, even though that's not required. It really is up to the residents as to how this comes together. And we want half an acre. Do you want 9,000 square feet? But the city did zoning as a cottage cluster in various parts of the city so that you can have double the density for that particular zoning area. So that's possible. And I'm just learning all this stuff so bear with me. I think a lot of people here know more than I do about it. I'm just trying to move it along. Joan. So would all have different cottages have different amounts of land attached to them? Not normally. Normally pretty much everybody has the same amount of land because then that only, that is fair. And then the upkeep is the same for every home. Whether you have an 800 square foot home, you might have a little bit more land just from the sand point of square footage. But other than that, not normally. For what? Yeah, actually, Jay was supposed to be here tonight. Jay's supposed to be here tonight. Give the information. They're really, it's really psych-dependent. You know, there's linear, there's costs for linear foot that for design estimates, engineering design estimates. I'm gonna get near you because this is a mic. Oh, for design estimates. But it really depends on the site, totally on the site. Yeah. I mean, there's terrain issues all over Montpelier as you can well know. And, Fran? So there's really at least three different sets of costs, right? There's one for the building itself which you had up there and estimated the range for square foot. Then there are the sort of basic structural costs at the beginning, the land and the roads. Like the site work. Site work and utilities. And then one side's all done, then there'll be condominium costs of some sort to maintain the yards and the plow. Yeah, but that's usually a monthly charge like a condo maintenance fee. That's pretty standard. Yeah, right. But that will take care of the exterior. Right. It comes from the exterior of the building. Right. If this were to move forward in some way, the LLC that you create, would that be the purchaser of the land? Well, that could be the... And then you would, and then to buy in, you would reimburse some part of the cost of that land in some way. Yeah, what the attorney said that you want to do a offer to purchase to the landowner. And then the deposits that come in from that are retained in an LLC account. But once you finish the building, that LLC is dissolved because then everybody has part of the condominium organization. So it's basically for building. I think of kind of like a construction loan and it's changes all the time based on where you are in the process. I was interested in how you can finance the initial purchase of the land. Well, it depends on whether the land can be subdivided. So that's one reason for talking with the city and various other potential partners because if the land can be subdivided, you have to make a decision as to what you want. Do you want 10 acres? Do you want 20 acres? Do you want five acres? What does the group want? What size community? What amount of green space do people want? And when that is decided, then you can go to a landowner and say, would you like to subdivide X property into 10 acres or whatever? So then you would get a price from the landowner and then you would split that up among the residents. So, but say you have, say you have 12 households, but eventually you'd like to see 24. So you're going to purchase enough land to be able to enable another 12 homes and you can make that consideration as to whether you buy that and then turn around and sell it or whether you want to keep it. And I don't know, that's something to be decided. And no, Leslie, you had a question too. No, I was just wondering about the building of the, because they have to be the same, right? Well, they could be similar. I mean, if you look at some of the websites for either co-housing or pocket communities or intentional communities, they're similar, but they're not identical. It can be various differences in color and some of the ones you can kind of see, they're a little similar, but when you have homes that are 800, 1200 square feet, they're single level. They're on a front porch. They're not gonna look a little light, you know. You might want purple and somebody else might want teal, but that's okay. What actually is the difference between co-housing and this? There isn't a whole lot of difference. There's intentional communities, which is a little bit less involved. There's co-housing, which is very involved. And then there's just these pocket neighborhoods, which are really more just designed around a green. It is not necessarily involving cooperation, but if we're talking about building community and a new approach to aging, that's really involvement. And I think the people I've talked to would really like to be involved with each other, have a neighbor, have a friend, really establish a connection. Yeah, I'm getting back to the question of it being completed by whatever time you're talking about 2020, 2021, let's say. When you look at the models, when you've gone and seen the models, is it about one architect in one builder building all these homes? Or is it one architect in many builders building various homes? Because it seems to me that if you had one builder building all these homes, it's hard to visualize it all being done by 2020. Well, it depends on the builder. It depends on how big the builder is. I mean, if you're using a small builder who usually does one-up homes, that could be challenging. But if you're using a builder, I met with S.D. Ireland. Initially, I have a connection with them through a little non-profit cancer research fund thing. And they build 100 homes at the same time. So they're a different animal. They don't wanna do here because it's too far away. Is the idea one architect though? Well, if you use one architect, you're going to have efficiencies of scale so that you're gonna be able to have, say, the architect's gonna design like three different floor plans or four different floor plans. You get another architect and they're gonna wanna charge, okay, how are you gonna bring that together? So I think sticking with one is probably the way to go. Would there be bylaws regarding the use of, suppose somebody built one and then moved to a different situation. Can they rent that? And if they can, are the people who are allowed to rent or to buy one if they decide to sell limited to certain ages or certain? Well, that's all to be decided by the residents. But I have a cousin who lives in Florida and they live in an over 55 community. I asked her that question and she said, yeah, we've got rules that say you can rent it for six months and then it has to go to an over 55 couple after that. There's a lot of different, this is where it comes down to operating plans and designing that. Great, I know a fair amount about co-housing and there are three sets of issues that you've sort of each time said, well, that's to be decided. That's one of the issues, how decisions are made. Right. And you referred to a particular approach which you may or may not take and say, well, that's for the people who are doing this to decide whether that's the way we're going to decide. Which is a little, the other two big issues besides the selling one is aging out. When you have a non intergenerational situation, you will have people who are going to age out or who are going to go to assisted living, die, et cetera. And then the idea of the succession because they're gonna leave their homes to their heirs who may be their grandchildren. So there's some pretty big issues that pretty soon after your next meeting, you're gonna need to get to that. How are you going to make decisions, especially those big ones? And the third issue is what you call cooperating. The big difference between co-housing and the other two is the amount of cooperative activity which includes actually being on boards, et cetera. But it also includes community gardens and working on exterior buildings, et cetera. And again, one of the problems with co-housing where cooperation is a big thing is people getting older and not being able to do it. And what happens then is that the younger of the old people end up with the burden of doing almost all the work. Well, let me stop you there. So I went to, when I went down to Massachusetts to do this workshop, it was a three day co-housing like a conference. And I figured Alma, Motters, UMass, I might as well go down and see what's going on down there anyway. And so they have one that's Pioneer Valley Co-housing. It's been around for over 20 years and they are aging out. So they're trying to figure that out. The houses are great. They're not suitable for aging in place. They've got stairs. They've got angled walkways. They don't have garages. They've got parking lots. So the group, because there's now, I think only two younger families in there now, they're talking about buying land across the street and building a senior co-housing community so that they can go over there and then put the houses up for sale for younger families. So part of that thinking of having intergenerational and then having seniors over 55 and then hopefully having an assisted living that's quite a different approach to it would be ideal because at some point in time, yes, you're going to moving on but then if you have an intergenerational, their kids grow up. They go off, they go college, they go wherever and then they kind of say, okay, well, there's a home that's free over here in the Silver Maple. Why don't I just come over here? And they don't really need to leave that immediate area but it's enough to deal with just Silver Maple let alone trying to manage intergenerational. They also have found that the workload is quite different. So I took a day-long workshop in only senior co-housing and it's a very different approach. So besides the garages up in the Northeast, you also have contracted out work like plowing and shoveling and mowing. And while that is decided by the group, it's also a lot more common in a senior co-housing arrangement. So I don't really see there's a huge problem with that but yeah, people will go through transitions and they have different agreements. So if your house, you move on to assisted living and then you have a home, you offer it to intergenerational, it would only make sense if they're nearby and they don't have kids and they're over 55, they could come in and take over your home. I mean, you're gonna leave it to them anyway probably. And then you can just go from, and if you don't have someone and somebody in the intergenerational doesn't wanna get the house and it goes on the open market. Bill? What was your groups thinking about why they wanted to have it over 55 instead of Silver Maple being intergenerational? Sarah. Where's Sarah? Well, I- We talked, we really had a lot of discussions about this. I was following up on something you had said at one of our initial meetings, which was that in communities which are intergenerational, the needs of the children in the community tend to drive the community decisions. And I would like to be in a community where the needs of seniors drive the decisions. Right, and this is why the other reason we're considering not having it all one or the other because kids do drive the decisions in a young family's community, which as it should be. And then the over 55, you have a lot different needs, a lot, it's a whole different set of requirements and needs, that was the reasoning. But if they were adjacent, it wouldn't be that far away and you could have a choice. But the intergenerational would probably not be single level. They may be a little bit high, a little bit more if so the family has three kids, they might need three bedrooms, not two bedrooms. So there would be different needs for the structures as well. And this is all just kind of thinking. A lot of this will come together as people have discussions. On the screen, what was included or not included, just go back one or two frames. Let me see where's my fingers. So it stopped me when you. Yes. How much? Yes. So can you estimate what the average square footage is? 800 to 1200 square feet, that is the general, that's a round figure. That isn't written in stone, that's just to put us all in the. So call it a thousand square feet or $200 a square foot, it's $200,000 structure. You probably get to invest close to $100,000 in infrastructure and per structure. You're probably talking about a $300,000 purchase. Yeah. And this is why thinking about having double duplex, I don't know a quadplex I guess, homes joined together, it would be a lot less expensive and it could look great. So if there is a consideration of people really needing to have a less expensive home, then that's a possibility because there's certainly gonna be a lot cheaper because you're pouring one foundation. You're not doing four separate ones. And so the utilities then serve all of them or is there a way to save costs on utilities because of that with different meters or something like that? Possibly, I mean I think each one would have to have its own metering. Yeah. But we're mostly just talking, efficiencies of scale with the building and I'm just assuming because I just saw that the other day, I was like, oh that's pretty interesting. So I don't know. There's research to be done, that's why it needs to be involved. There is one other consideration that links to what the gentleman vacuum was saying about people are gonna die and they're gonna be at open houses. The one thing that we've learned, you guys are sort of representative of this, is our generation has very few options in Montpelier periods that don't exist and there are a heck of a lot of other people that are younger than us that are gonna be facing the same situation. So I'm less concerned about dying at 80 and have nobody to step into a house. There are gonna be plenty of people who are interested in the same sort of physical space and community. The challenge around cost has to do with how many households wanna buy in. It's not gonna happen with six. It's just because the cost of the infrastructure is prohibitive for six households. 12 is sort of the minimum. It's much better to share those infrastructure costs across let's say 24 households than 12. It's gonna be a lot less expensive. And if some of the conversations that, excuse me, Carrie has been having with city and others about what's possible, the land costs could also be far less than if you were gonna do this on your own. So there are opportunities here that exist within the city. But in order to make it work, there's at least 12 households have to be part of this. And that means more than just us talking to each other, means at some point, people are willing to put money on the table for some of the things that she described and are willing to commit to making this organization, whatever that means, work, whatever the process for making decisions and so forth, each of those has to be determined. And that's, and you guys are sort of the first group other than the five households that have been meeting to really have an opportunity to say, yeah, you're not, I wanna be part of this or I wanna explore this, I'm serious about it. It won't happen with five households. And the other reason is because if it's a resident driven initiative, you can design it. You can say, yeah, you're made to a design, to a floor plan, to a location, to, it's about anything. But if a builder comes in, knows he's got a market, they'll build what they want and they'll make a 20% profit on it and then you gotta take it or leave it. I mean, and I've looked at some of the take it or leave it and frankly, it's not where I'd like to be. I'd like to have a little bit more control over I wanna age where it's beautiful. I wanna look out and see a field. I wanna be able to see friends and go next door and not have to slip on the ice and, you know. I have rails to get one house to the other, but. How long has the five, have the five households already been meeting? We've been meeting for a year, but we've had people in and out. So our group that has been the five, I'd say we've met pretty much ours, but maybe Sarah's a secretary. So we've been meeting maybe for about five months, just the five of us. We've had all kinds of conversations. Who are we? Do we wanna be co-housing? Do we wanna be intergenerational? Do we wanna be senior one? What do we wanna be? And so it's a lot of conversation and then a decision-making comes like okay, we're like the board and what's our next step and the next step is to have a meeting and see who else is interested in becoming involved and then go from there. So there will be escalating investments and we're assuming that this is going to be pretty much both self-financed and supplementally financed because most of us have old homes that we can't really necessarily easily age in place. We'll partner with a bank or a financial institution to get involved and then we'll go from there, but market rate is about where we are because the affordable as designated by the state is maxed out in Montpelier because I've talked to two entities who said, don't use my name but we're maxed out on affordable housing with French Block, with the Christ Church and with Taylor Street. So that's where we're talking market rate but market rate doesn't mean a half a million dollar house either. I mean it's Montpelier and what the builders have said that some of them that don't wanna build here is because the building costs are just as expensive as they are in Burlington but you can get half the amount of money for them. So income levels in Montpelier aren't what they are in Burlington. But we have an aging population and we really need to consider what are our options. Our options are either staying in our homes and while our house is totally unsuitable, our neighborhoods changed. People have moved away, our next door neighbor turned into a rental and the house behind us is no one. So it really, you know, you can be part of a neighborhood that it helps each other out, basically where there's a villages model that I think some of you want to vote, saw the table, I'm gonna send around, I do the email for the Montpelier downsizing group so I'll be sending out their information but you can age your place here and they can be part of villages. But then you have your immediate community as well as having the community of Montpelier. So that's kind of where we're thinking. Is there anybody else have any questions or suggestions? Yes sir? I guess the thing that will affect the timeline one of the emails is how long you have to talk about it and get to the point. Right. And if you want to have this done by 2020 you have to have the primary decisions of the structure done in six months from now. That's doable. It is doable if people agree that they're gonna do that. Right. So my first comment is I'll put $100 in, no problem. It's not enough. Right. Well, I have to say the initial recommendations. Does anybody here know John Ryan? Yes. So we've been working with John and some of us met his aging successfully salons. So John, I had long conversations, he says, well, you need to get deposit, initial deposit of $1,500. So we pass it around to our group and it was like, oh, too much. So we have to kind of look at that. And then he said, then you need to increase it by $5,000 so that you can actually make something happen. You can actually buy the land. You can actually do something. Because if people need to make a $300,000 investment, that's a made up number, but it's not gonna be, it's not off-line ordered magnitude. If people are gonna, if one of you wanted this, you're gonna have to make a $300,000 investment. Putting in $100 now to have a vote and everything, he's gonna have too many people who really aren't going to follow through or be interested in it. He's right, maybe $1,500 on this at least go to $5,000 at stage two. Okay. Non-refundable. Non-refundable. Non-refundable. And that separates whether you really have a dozen people who are willing to buy built houses or whether you've got 50 people trying to make decisions for the 12 who eventually will. And that may not get done in two years. Yeah, I think that you got a good point there. I would add one other comment to what Tim just said. That Carrie has been very modest about how she described her involvement. She's been, even while she was getting rehab for knee replacement, she's had her foot on the accelerator for more than a year. And it's also clear that she is not the sole driver. This is not a one person show. So in addition to 1,500 bucks, you're also putting yourself into the mix in terms of time, energy, ideas, a willingness to collaborate with people who maybe we don't all know and create a community. That's not easy to do. But what's not gonna happen is she's not gonna be the person to be the driver. Not without a lot of help. And part of this is also you're making a commitment of time and energy and yourself in addition to the money. The money's in the, is very in my opinion, it's very representative of a commitment. Well, I just wanna say something about the fees, this initial fee. And I would disagree with you. I would think that there might be some real advantage to $100, $200, whatever it is, and to begin to get a larger conversation going. And then when you up it, you'll have the benefit of a lot of ideas from a lot of people. And a lot of people change your minds, not change your minds. But if you, you know, capital or the initial thing is a lot, maybe 5,000 or something. I think you will win all of that out and people don't know each other. And it's, I think that that, you know, the initial smaller amount could be very helpful in igniting some, you know, discussion. You know, it depends which way you look at it. It's a good question. For instance, on one end you have the people, whoever they are, that are gonna say, okay, we're often running 2020, 2021. Here we are, we're putting in money and let's get to it. And I think as opposed to, let's say people are putting in 100, just for instance, who, okay, now are we gonna then repeat what these folks have done for a year? And where are we gonna be a year from now? It's then the end of 2019. It all depends what the timing of it is, you know. Well, and a really big consideration here, I think, is your so-called partners. But, you know, if you're gonna get the city involved, that's a whole other thing. But then that's also a subdivision. So we would, you know, we wanna make sure that, you know, you're not gonna have an undesirable, you know, adjacent, you come in, well, I don't call it a community, but it's a hotel or whatever it is at your location. And that was the whole point of trying to get the city involved because, and I have to, in full disclosure, I met with the Parks Commission on Tuesday night and they're thrilled. So what's that? And they're thrilled. I met with the Parks Commission to kind of propose an idea for a park in a particular location and in the city park and they just said, this is great, why haven't we seen this before kind of thing? They have no money and they have no ability to manage a park, they have no financing, they have no, they don't have enough people to make that. Oh no, I was told that. I was just, you have to have their approval. There is so much city land intent that is not taken care of. The idea of the city taking on more public land is there's no money and they can't take, the city doesn't take care of what it does at this point. The discussions of whether or not the city's in a position to do anything financially is an important conversation but that's not what this is about. There's an opportunity to create an over 55 community with adjacent city owned park land. What that means in terms of cost is a big question mark right now for everybody but they're interested. But there's also, and also I'm not that knowledgeable about who do you go to first and who answers, who is responsible and all of that but the land that we've seen is not currently managed by anybody. The land owner, maybe people walk on it but there's not any management of it per se. I can talk about some kind of city owned land. No, no, just the land they're looking at. I just want to just agree with this gentleman here about the amount of money that you need to get going. I think you've made a very good point. I saw a co-housing community, just going to want to add one thing, that got a lot of money up front because you need that in order to move forward. Not just you need the money for the banks. You need the money for the commitment. You don't want to have people just chipping in and sort of lurking. And the issue is when do you make that decision? You've tentatively said it'll be at the next meeting at least for 100. That doesn't mean that that's really your commitment but very quickly you do need to call for real commitment, real money. But let me just suggest, the time to do that is when you are really about 95% confident about the land that you're going to buy. Because the one that I actually put in my $100 to learn, they ended up not getting the property that they thought they were going to get. Yeah. Yeah? And so the people who put in a lot of money were screwed. Yeah. So you have to, too? Getting the property, or like damn sure you're going to get the property is the point where people really should, at that point, put up the real serious money. But then there are the imponderables. The example that I'm going back to is the one a year or two ago, which was up at the old Necky Building on the top. The Main Street. We were really, really very, very interested in that. And there was all kinds of discussion about, wow, pocket community up there. And I think Davis came in from Burlington, well-known developer. Jeff Neck. I think Jay was involved. Jeff Neck. Jay Ansel was objecting. Jeff Neck. Well then what started to happen were the imponderables, meaning the adjoining landowners starting to get all upset about all kinds of issues about adverse possession and you name it. And so there are all these sort of unpredictable parts of any part, and that happened to be that example, but you can take any example in our community and you can bet that working around the corner is going to be somebody or somebody who, by the way, they're going to be, that's why they need you. And they use your legal ability to talk about legal. I don't know about legal. Well to echo Alan too, is that that was the other, the other reasoning for approaching the city about a park. So you don't have the NIMBY when you have a city park nearby, you know, in a neighborhood that hasn't had much going on. So that was part of the other thinking. And when you have a small community of over 55, well like really, you know, we're going to be really creating a lot of trouble, right? It's like NIMBY. Oh, not in my backyard. Do you have a tentative site now that you're? I don't, I can't really speak specific here, but there's one that's particularly good. So I've talked with a landowner a number of times, I mean, he's really open, so we'll see. And I've talked to other landowners too, so. Can you be talking about the site at this time? Yes, yeah, because it will be a, it will be a, It'll be a flow meeting, not in a bridge. You're right, right. The serious comment though is, I think it probably makes sense to have a low number to get people to that meeting and to hear more and then. And then after that, you go up from there. That's a higher number. And it might be that you have to sit in and listen and offer some ideas, $100 buys you that seat. But it doesn't buy you a vote. Well, that's a good point. There's a real estate development saying that I've learned is so true, time kills all deals. And if you mess around, because you can't get the decisions, you lose the opportunities that you have. Yeah. And again, the time frame, this gentleman's right, the time frame is very aggressive, but it's only doable if you can make decisions when you have to make decisions, compromise when you need to compromise. And that's gonna take people who are committed to the concept and committed to taking a risk. Because Jeff, as you said, what's the alternatives if you wanna live in Montpelier? Okay, I'm gonna throw out one other point too while we're at it. As I'm observing this, for instance, the five people were meeting for a year, right? And the five people were shuffling around and making their decisions. And five might've been interesting, right? Well, now you've got the hundred people putting in, call it all of a sudden, 40, 45, 50, exponentially more complicated. So what I would advise is a really excellent facilitator who can help with where are we going and what are we doing, but it's important. Let me just throw in the, I'm met with two facilitators in Massachusetts. One of them is almost free because she's looking at time because she's so interested in this and so involved in it. And there is another guy there who would probably charge a little bit more, but he does the most fabulous workshop on sociocracy that really conveyed how it works. So yes, you're gonna need that. And so some of these deposits, and as they gradually would increase, are educational. I mean, they're to kind of bring us together to kind of say, oh, so that's how it works. And, you know, why start reinventing the wheel when you already have people who know how the wheel is done, you know? So yes, that's possible. And they're not an arm and a leg. And there's actually somebody in town who just moved into town who does have a big background in sociocracy. But this is a great discussion. I mean, I really appreciate everybody's input on this and questions and involvement. And I certainly hope we're able to bring up a core group together to make this happen. So I guess it's kind of the time for hand raising. Who would really be interested in coming to that December 8th meeting? Great, you're looking for it. Oh, thank you, that would be great. Okay, it's $100 per household. That's the easiest way to, you know, to explain it. Thank you, Alan. And really getting people involved who have a lot of expertise. I'm just trying to, like I say, just move it along. I'm not a expert on most of this. And I haven't lived in Montpelier much. I mean, I moved in 2002. But I was on the road a third of the time for work for, you know, until like 2013, you know. So I just haven't, I'm now starting to know people. And so I apologize if I don't know everybody, but I should know on this front. But thanks, everybody. On your way out, if you would not sign the sheet of paper, if you would not sign the sheet of paper, if you would not sign the sheet of paper, if you would not sign the sheet here, please do that. Yeah, that's the only way I can be in touch with you. It's just made to the order of the Jeff Roberts Italian trip. Eh. For you, I mean, just why not? I mean, what it will be is just, if you bring a check, Jeff, I can't pronounce his last name. It's a long Polish name. He lives in Moortown, but the company is Gravel and Shea, who he worked for. And he has particular experience in this field. And I talked with him, and he gave me some great advice over the phone, no charge. So I think he's a really good, a good choice. So he would, he said, yeah, I can, I could probably take, you know, whatever funds you get and put it open a bank account with the firm to do it. Well, the LLC we would need to file. We're, we'll need a little advice on that, because some people have said you need this before you need that, and then somebody says you need that before you need this. That's why I hire a lawyer. Oh, thanks everybody.