 All right, good evening everybody. Welcome to the planning commission meeting of June 4th. This is our first meeting of the month. And as such, we always open it up to public comment from items not on the agenda. You gentlemen are here for a specific reason. I already have new interns here to observe. So I don't think we have any public to chat it up. So let's move right on to the preferred site consideration of 4259 Roosevelt Highway, solar site. And so Sean will take us through this, but just press freeze again and point it. So we had one application come in that scored high enough that we could do it administratively, which is in your packet information. This is the first one that's coming in which scored within that range that the planning commission needs to consider it. And so Sean has a short little presentation run through. We have the applicant that's here as well. We still have to notify the butters. So we are asking you to hold open your deliberation on this until the June 18th meeting to take any additional information. But we're also looking to you guys because we didn't really specify the process for the planning commission in terms of any additional information that you want. A site visit will have you because I think when you expanded to that range that you're going to look at, we purposely left it a little bit blank. And so I think you have a very good application, good materials tonight to look through, but we're trying to leave the door open for if there's something additional that you want, please let us know. So it's our first attempt. And Sean, you want to take it away? I mean, you walk through, why you chose your answer to the question was like a read up the question. Did you want to explain it? Sure, sure. My name is Jake Clark. I'm a project developer on board from the Watergy and the team that actually filled out this, the scorecard is not available this evening, so I'm filling in, but I didn't meet with them today to go through it and I answered anything I can to the best of my ability. All right, quick. So the first question is how much of the site would be visible from adjacent properties and you marked those four points where your team did. Yeah. So we thought that the closest resident to be concerned here would be the one to the north. There's a farm and there's a residence just to the north. Yeah. And so from that residence, if you looked towards the proposed project site, we don't really anticipate that there will be any visibility. There are a number of full grown sort of hedges of trees. There's some geographic features. There's a ravine with the brook running through north and south sort of parallel to the road at that point. Then there's another row of trees before that field, sort of in between where the road and the proposed solar array is. And then there's yet another row of trees. So we do think that it's possible that the array will be visible from that residence. So to the extent that it might be visible, we don't think that it could be more than 25%. Very, very small area through one section of the trees on the hedgerow. But where the solar array is, it's like down over a yellow one. Where the red line is, the land is close down from there. So that was the one point deduction you took on out of the possible five then. Correct. What's the distance between the field and the closest residence? I'm having a hard time hearing you all. You're not really close to your mic. Sure. Sorry about that. What's the distance between the field and the closest a butter? I would say about 1200 feet to the edge of the road. And that neighbor has expressed a lot of support for it. He thinks it's the right thing to do. And it's about a mile, a half a mile from the interstate. And you're gonna miss here from the interstate through where the high tension power line comes down through from way up on the interstate with the high tension line. As you can see the array, but by the half a second going down the interstate. Wow. For the second question, how does the site land use look? Like there's minimal disturbances currently used as a hay farm, but you just want to explain the second disturbance. Yeah, happy to. So we selected we'll have half acre to an acre of disturbance with challenging upgrades for accessibility. So we do acknowledge that there are some constraints on physical access to this site in terms of construction. And then for the life of the project, there are up to a handful of visits a year for operations and maintenance. But any disturbance that we anticipate here is associated with construction. You put in a, typically to construct a project, you put an access road in that's some kind of crushed stone or gravel. And then right where the project will be constructed, you put a lay down area for deliveries and equipment. And that's sort of another, it's a civil engineering designed hat, but it's just crushed stone in large part. So that's really the largest disturbance. The solar array is typically in a site like this, it's given post racking systems or the posts get driven into the ground. There's no need to change the landscape anyway, to disturb the existing fields. You're just driving posts in the track machine. So we don't see that as a disturbance that would need to arise under this question. And for C, it's in the northeast quadrant. Right. No. Yeah. We answered that one incorrectly. Thank you. Yeah. Rebiting that. Zoning regulations, some of the review, there were no deductions selected. We didn't see any in the area. Looked like there was, well that's the next question, but looked like there was a little wetlands in the rear of the property, but it was nowhere near the correct soil, I feel. Yeah, that was the next question, am I gonna review necessary? You know, I would not just note that this is very early stages in the site review process from a development standpoint. So before finalizing the state application package for the certificate of public good at the Public Utility Commission, we would be required to do a full environmental assessment, including all wetlands and dangerous species and sort of all the, any water resources that need to be protected would be covered in that assessment at that time. I know we discussed this earlier, but site access must be considered during the development of the Renewable Energy Generation Facility, and you selected it will be over 1,000 feet, and we agree with your selection. There's really anything to add to that, I haven't talked about that, plus the access bridge going over the creek. Right, so the access bridge going over the creek would most likely mean improvement is my understanding. I personally am not set eyes on it, but if that was the access point selected, it would be improvement, so yeah. And then the additional consideration, you didn't put any, any re-vegetation would occur in that area, I'm guessing because it was a hay farm to begin with, I think that vegetation or screening. That's correct. Was there all the questions? Yeah, T.J. Boyle and Associates will be heard by the next panel. Is that, is there a report from T.J. Boyle? We don't have that at this time, that would be, we do, they're the landscape architectural firm that would do the aesthetic impact analysis. That is done when we're ready to put together the petition for the certificate of public good, which is sort of after a lot more structure has been put into the deal and the project details. We're not at that phase yet. Questions, any questions? I have a question, I don't necessarily know the protocol for this, so stop me if I'm out of line. This is related to the other application. It obviously seems like they're extremely close together. I mean, it looks like they're on the same map here, just outside of the red border on the other application. Why, and I guess it comes down to the checklist, but they received a 15 versus a one. I think the only point difference was screening from adjacent residences. The closest residence that you have on that is a couple properties over, I think you can see the barn in the far right corner in the house. So it's just that a little bit farther removed that it's not visible, right, adjacent residence. What should the answer, correct answer for CB and what would be the impact? No, I'll pull your mic closer to you, that's all right. I think I understand that answer C was incorrectly answered. What should the correct answer be and what would be the impact on the score? They put down the village. Yeah, originally they put down the village. So it was minus five, but they were actually in the Northeast quadrant so it was corrected. I have a question. I'm having a tough time exactly picturing where this parcel is. Have a little better description where some other landmarks just. Okay, on the right hand, that's, there's a road there, that troops have in a Roosevelt highway. Where the red line is, that's my property. Just to the bottom of that, that's Elm Hill Farm. Okay. That's Elm Hill Farm. Okay, on the right rear then, thank you. So just a curiosity question. Is there any visibility of this? There's sort of steeper topography where Elm Hill Farm is sort of higher up. It really drops down behind it and you have this tree line here. Is there really any visibility as you come down this stretch of Roosevelt and it's like a 50 mile per hour zone. So you're moving at a fairly good clip, but. Okay, well, T.J. Boyle will be eventually doing a fuller analysis. The T.J. Boyle analysis would impact to be used from a larger area. So if you go up route seven, the next place is Elm Hill Farm. Right. Yep. He's on a hill. Yeah, this is. My house is on a hill and Elm Hill is on a hill. This is a hill. It's just. And beyond Ed Roy's, the highway drops down. Right. To the bottom of Bunsen's Pass. Where the array is, is down over a slight hill there. So you can hardly even see car lights at night from any place near that array. But it's very well shielded from just about everything. And there's, as you said, there's a couple of tree lines in between that would, the road further down and that corner of whether you're right is infuse everybody. No? Questions? I'm just curious from staff perspective how this all flushed out and played out for you. And then same thing for you. How did the application process seem and what was your experience? This is your, this is the first application. So I'm just curious what the perspective is from both. I thought it was pretty easy to run through and both of them were fairly easy as in, I thought the answer is lined up what they should. For the last point, we talked about revegetation. Now this application goes to the other one. We never really said what would be a good choice as revegetation. So that's something we might wanna add in the outline. We go back and edit that. I will say the staff right up was great. Like it was really nice to follow what you had for perspectives on the application. I saw Sean made that up. Nice. Very good. Your perspective? My perspective, the scorecard actually made it quite easy and less confusing than what we were trying for before we had the scorecard. There was some confusion at first of whether or not that site was in the northeast quadrant of the village. We went back and forth on that for a while but once it was determined it was in the northeast quadrant and that went away and not the rest had been pretty straightforward to think of. Good. It gives us a lot clearer picture of what you expected before the scorecard. I think the only thing that I'll offer just from listening tonight is I understand why they want to have wait until they get to further in the process to have T.J. Boyle do an analysis in terms of visibility but I wonder if they had done that before they got here if they'd still be deducting that point for visibility from the neighbors because they might not and they might have been able to have been done administratively because they're right on that cusp. So something in the business, what do you think of our scorecard? I should. Don't worry, we won't do that point. I'm the newest employee at Angkor I've been there a few months so the question might be better directed to some of the other folks on the team but I will say I think hearing from them this was as Duane said a straightforward process. This is an easy lift in terms of the questions that we have to answer and the questions and the things we have to think through to get to our answers so it's not a heavy burden. So I think what staff recommendation is is to hold it open until the 18th if there's any additional information that you can think of that you want to make a decision on the 18th we can ask that of the applicant and also we'll double check with the neighbors make sure that there's no additional materials that they want to submit to the playing commission and like to have you make a decision at your meeting on the 18th. So given that this is our first and I know it's been out there but I didn't expect to get one in the middle of wastewater but here we are anyway. I want to think about how we process these things because as we were doing the scorecard and talking about preferred sites we didn't really talk about the actual process I think we were gonna so here we are we're learning as we go and I think in some respects if you're not familiar with the area when we get these applications I think site visits are always good to get visuals and then again have the abutting land orders come and be part of the conversation as well and anything else you folks think in terms of how we address these we had the administrative one that's been approved that's the month's the ages one and we're doing this one as our first test case and Sarah tells me that I don't think there's any imminently knocking at the door for our review anyway. So we're gonna have to find a process that works smoothly for us. So I guess we'll- So where is this other site, the months in site or is that in relation to- It's a little bit south. It's really just- Right there. Down. So these two arrays are gonna be kind of next to each other that's what you're saying. Very close proximity. I'm interested. Oh, for the- We're here. The months in the arrays up to the end of that. Yeah. Right, because- Up the back. Yeah, the Valco line that comes through here. Where the other field is to the east of where I was at. There's- Is at the end of that field. It's not way out there. It's- Yeah, come- They're right there. It's down south. It's green from that one. There's that head row there plus that's handheld farms field there plus there's trees to the west of hers and there's a head row between the Elm Hill Farms field and my field. It's pretty well screened. Plus again, the topography drops off all across that first field. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I drive down that road every day. Yeah. So I'll take notice next time I go down there. So we will recess this for the time being on the 18th we won't get the rest of the information we need and then we won't deliberate that. Sound good to you? Hold on, I haven't quite done it for me yet. All right, make it that way. I'm sorry. I just got here and here, so that's not your fault. So we're gonna recess for the time being on the 18th we'll deliberate and wrap this up. Okay. Thank you for coming in. Do you have your next meeting? Do you have that? Yep, two weeks from today. After that, do they go to this platform? No. Okay, so if you approve then they moron to the service board and you do anything and stuff like that. Great, perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. May I quickly, Cindy, click our facilitator. Just tried to call me. I swiped, I can't answer the phone right now and I have a voicemail message. So I'm hoping that everything's fine with her, but just let me go make sure that she's still coming. Still coming. No, we'll charge forward and out first. I'm sure we can get it. We off the air for a moment or two of them? That's right. Are we taking a? They love to see us. Yeah. Or do you want to go offline for a minute, Bob? I'm more curious as there's any thoughts of future development around that property as you think about Roosevelt Highway and things going on there. We have to have the development further down on the right. Even though it is zoned, our cultural, that has changed over time in our community. What was the size of that parcel against? 50, 48. 50 private acres or something? Yeah. 50 private acre parcels. So he's living that development, you know what I'm saying, for that parcel, but that's his choice. Yeah, 55.9 acres. Oh, there she is. Gang's all here. Yeah, I just need to. Do we have one more mic? Cindy, yeah. I don't know that I can't. How would you like to proceed, Cindy? Would you like to come up here and sit? Would you like to sit? Just pull the chair up a little bit. I didn't know if you were ready for me now. Yeah, sure. Actually, I can mic you up. Let me just think this through. Thank you. I think I can call a gentleman. Just need to channel 17 or something? Yes, we're live tonight. Oh, excellent. Just no delay either, so be careful. Stay away from the camera. Damn, I hate that. I'm just going to... Do you want anything on the overhead or do I just? I don't think so. I'm looking for guidance about this to what would be most helpful for the commission. So, okay. So let me just pull, see how far of a tether I can take this. So, while you're doing that, maybe I could just introduce myself? Please, yes. So, hi, I'm Cindy Cook. Good to meet you. I saw some of you at the forum. And I live in Colchester on Coates Island in the summer in Burlington in the winter. Love Colchester. I do, in public involvement, regarding complex environmental and public policy issues, that's what I do for a living. I do it all over the country and I love it. And I'm happy to be of some service here in Colchester and just looking for your guidance as to how I can be helpful. And so, Cindy was kind enough. I think most of you were at the forum last Monday, the 20th. And also along the walk and talk. And so there's a lot of great information that I think came out of the walk and talk as well as the forum. And Cindy helps synthesize a lot of that information. So you have sort of pure raw notes and then you have this which sort of distills it and frames up a little bit better in terms of what some of the takeaways were from that night in terms of additional information that folks were looking for, questions people had, different thoughts and ideas about the regulatory process as opposed to solutions. And so I think what we have in the packets is this as well as sort of a path forward in how we take some of those solutions and narrow it down and sort of frame up the rest of the summer. But I think in terms of a debrief, it'd be helpful for me and Sean and I think of staff and working with Cindy to hear what your reactions were first of all to this summary, do we miss anything? It's great having multiple ears because we all take away different things. So just sort of thoughts on how that process went and things that we heard didn't hear. I know some people were pulled aside in the back and ears were bent. I see all ears just sprung back at this point which is good. But just, we've been mulling it over but thoughts. Who'd like to be first? I'll say a few words, sure. I mean, I think overall it was great. It was great to see 50 people there which was I guess not surprising. I was somewhat expecting the different variations of reaction specific to the sewer pro or against. So that was kind of confirming what I think I already knew of the general reaction of it but overall it was good as specifically in this summary and the conversation itself at the meeting to see or to hear the questions that arose in this context, whether it was where is the water tested or where are those facilities located or it just kind of brainstorming those alternatives. So overall I think it was well done, well handled, controlled and important to hear the input of everybody. We have a sign up sheet for people that attended. Yes, yeah. Is there any way to kind of map out where these people generally live? I mean, are they basically on Lake Shore Drive in that area or are they further away from the lake? I mean, I'm just not curious who was interested in coming in relationship to the project. Yeah, we could figure that out. And there were a number of people who didn't sign in. Let's just see. Any other thoughts? Anything from the walk and talk? That was good, I think that was really good even though we were walking out in the middle of the road. The police escort, we didn't lose anybody. One participant said it was brave of the commission to hold the walk and talk. And I don't know if he meant because of the traffic or otherwise bad. We survived, I thought it was very good. I think that's something that we haven't quite figured out yet, but I think we would hope to try and replicate again this summer as a different variation of it. Just letting people walk and pick out things and ask questions along the way. Some people, we got feedback that said, well, we should start later. Four o'clock was too early for people that have to work to be able to attend. So we may have gotten a bigger crowd. You off shoot that with a higher traffic volume so would want to think that through a little bit more but would try and look to do something like that again. And it may never get warmer, but the days are going to get longer. We'll look for a little bit longer. So that helps. Maybe after the PM peak rush traffic, any other thoughts? So I think this is served in draft form. So we have the survey that just ended on Friday. We're going to look through that and see if there's anything that we should be looking to supplement what people actually came out and shared with us about. So I think just stay tuned. There's probably a little bit more feedback and this is going to be sort of rolling feedback throughout the summer too. But just sort of to jump back to, I guess, we also provided you the notes, which was sort of, I don't know if anybody had any, skip ahead. I think it's fine enough to also draw genders in matrix. Some of the things that we want to sort of extract, maybe we start with energy and warm you up a little bit. I think what is, as we move forward, trying, for instance, looking at your next meeting and giving you properties, what some of the, give you room and space. I think the draft matrix that we have, let me just pull that a little bit of a work in progress. So we tried to take what we have and sort of distill it down into what possible solutions are. I think we did have at the forum, people say, well, you really need to look at the do nothing. So that's on the list, extend the sewer line, construct shared septic systems or community septic, town purchase of properties. Is there anything else that we should be adding to the list right now? This is extrapolated from the forum. And there may be one, and this is my list. But the idea of getting the state to revise their regulations came up a number of times. And that's obviously got some big unknowns to it. But I think that maybe should be listed as an option of having, trying to get the state to revise their regulations so that the town has much more power in terms of reviewing O and M of the septic systems. So I think at your May 7th meeting, we went through the way that you can't regulate your way out of that. That's not necessarily something that's going to provide a physical solution. I think the way that we had that framed was made for additional information. I think I'd slightly disagree with adding that to the list, but that's why, you're hearing two sides of it. I think it's important to demonstrate to the public that that's something that this commission is or will be actively considering in terms of, is that something that can be a part of the toolbox of addressing stuff? And it may not be a rise to level of an option, but it's something that we heard loud and clear at the forum that people really wanted the town to look at one way or another. Possibly a precursor to better enforcement, more teeth in the regulations, that enforcement becomes a viable option. Well, I think we discussed there's more teeth in the regulations, but it still doesn't allow us into private properties. It doesn't get us into people's homes. That's something I'd like to flush out though. I mean, is there incentives for people to self-report? I think that was in here about the town helping people fix broken systems if they're incentivized, they might report. And it seems like there's a whole data gathering phase that I'm not sure what's planned. I know right now our data's based on permits that have been issued, but I know we've done surveys before, can we revisit surveys, revisit campaigns to get people to self-report? Because before you talk about purchasing properties and shared septic systems, you have to know who's willing to offer their property for sale and who's willing to. Not necessarily. I think if you're going to take a look at this in terms of town purchase or properties, I'm not sure that it could be a willing buyout. I think there are different reiterations that you could look to of it, but I think you could have like the last person that has the worst septic system holding out. Are you going to let them hold out or are you going to use some sort of eminent domain to purchase properties and buy people out? So. Categories under. Different versions of. The willing sellers might be an easier process, obviously. One of the discussions was on the financial package for the sewer. They did not like the local option taxes. I don't know if that's really our thing, but if there was another financial package that did not include the local option tax. We also didn't have any real good feedback on there's at least six big players who are making sure to drive it. We haven't really heard from them. Would there be an opportunity for them to discuss money to help do the grant or the money chain funds and all that consideration considering that we'd have a lot of investment. And then on the other end of town we'd get more tax base. I don't know if that's beyond what we're looking at. If we just say best thing in the end is sewer line, but we're still on square one because we didn't have to change the finance. So I think that's into the potential funding. I don't think, in taking a look in, you guys could get very overwhelmed at the time that we have in terms of different reiterations of things. So the select board asked of you was to look at solutions for human waste for our pollution in the bank. And so I think in terms of financing or different ways of constructing financing options that's sort of to be continued that select board could take that and run with that. I think it's useful to pass along ideas, but it's really what would solve this issue. And the reason why I'm hesitating about enforcement because I think it's a moving target, I think you can be perpetually enforcing things. And there's some fundamental things with enforcement where you can't go on to people's property without their permission or just cause that I worry about offering that up as a solution because I'm not sure that you can take it to that level that you need to in order for it to be a true solution to the waste for our pollution. I think you can take a look at the regulatory process in general and I think part of what we had looked to was perhaps do another night just on septic regulation and have some folks come in from the state and present how we regulate septic, what septic systems are, what are the regulations for regular systems versus community systems and do a little bit more learning about that but not necessarily taking these folks and sort of putting them on the spot for changing state regulations. I think they can present the information of what the state regulations are, but I'm not sure. Well, I'm wondering if we do invite the state, they've had similar issues in other parts of the state that they can address and how it was addressed. It would be nice to know too, even if the regulations are adjusted or amended or whatever the word would be, if an O&M would even work on an existing property because obviously it's the way the regulation would be amended, but if it is, what difference would it make on an existing property too? Which would be a question for them. I think that's a good idea to have them on site. To the due diligence, to have the public's, the video available to the public to see what the regulations are all about. So I see enforcement and some of these other things as sort of nibbling around the edges, but we're looking for a comprehensive solution as best as we can offer up, giving the alternatives that appear to be out there. And I think they're up there, or at least to the point that we can delegate to them the next three and a half months, given that we have to have a package together by the end of September. So let's keep, and we have resources and there's studies that have been done. There's certain amount of data out there. I mean, do we want to collect data forever? We could, but I don't think that's going to be helpful. I think we need to keep in sight the constraints that we have in the end game. We need some a comprehensive solution or three alternatives to present up to this luck word. Does it have to be comprehensive though? What if 10% of the homes are creating 90% of the problem? So then the solution of doing a new sewer for 100% of the people is tremendously inefficient. And 10% is at the point of time. Maybe, I mean, it's not a static situation. We know that they all have a lifespan and they all ultimately fail. And that's what the data tells us, right? So we can't address the 10% in June of 2019 when we're looking at a long-term solution in my mind. I think we need more data. I think at the meeting, someone pointed out there's 300 homes, but only 150 are on the West side and probably only a third are failing. So then you can say now there's 50 homes instead of 300 homes and something like purchasing becomes more viable. And Pam and Sarah and I have been talking about getting more information for you all in terms of how many homes are we talking about that have systems that predate the septic regulations entirely or predate the scientific based septic regulations. So we'll get you that sometime in the next few weeks. And then can they be correlated with the highest risk areas like the West? I don't know the answer to that. The West side of East Lakeshore Drive seems like good. I think that would be a any problem question. Well, the majority of what we're talking about is a high risk area. It's either a high or medium risk area. The medium risk area is the non-lake side of East Lakeshore Drive. That's the only medium risk area. So at any rate, it's something that, again, we can give you the specifics in terms of as much as we know from the regulatory process. There are some that we are going to have absolutely nothing for. And I think for those that, geez, there's a home there that's a three bedroom home and they have nothing on their septic system and they're a 0.25 acre lot overhanging the lake. I think you can say, well, we don't need to know much more about that. It's probably not a good situation and spending a lot more time on it. So I think in some ways it might be fruitful, but in other ways, I think just to come back to, there's a reason why the whole area is a high risk area. Anything that you put back in there for a septic system is going to be detrimental in terms of depth to bedrock, high groundwater or just space in terms of necessary treatment. So you could spend a lot of time and effort going after evaluating individual systems, but when you're dealing with such a constrained area and looking at what sort of septic you could put in it, just about anything that you put into this area is going to have the same issues. So I still look at the financial package. It's like we'll go back. Yeah, I still look at the financial package. I mean, we're talking about town purchase of properties and still money. I mean, I don't, if we don't want to talk about money at all and we just pick out things that can work, we've already done that with the sewer. I mean, that's what happened. So I kind of lost how we were spending three months on this, discussing these different items. If we're not going to, and I understand when I should probably mix the financial package into it, but if we have all these restrictions on the property, the sewer pipe's the only thing to go, but we're not going to talk about how to finance it and it already got voted down at once. I don't see where the planning commission is going to come up with an idea to give to the select board that's going to progress that. You're not going to have the time to get into the details of, here's the community septic and it costs 2.2 million. It will take five years to complete in two days and three hours. You're not going to get into that. I understand that. So I think the best that you can do is start filling these categories with the things that you do know. For instance, town purchase of properties. Well, we can come up with through the grand list an estimate cost of how much that whole thing would cost. A timeline for implementation. Well, if you don't have a funding source, there's a very prolonged timeline for that. The effects on the character of the neighborhood, I think there are some pros and cons that could come out of that that we could list. So I think the best that you can do is take this matrix and not have definitive to it, but just sort of run through to the different pros and cons as best you can. Take community input and run with it. So maybe we shouldn't look at the thing as a whole, but more like this piece, this piece, this piece, the best case scenario. Because it's not the same all the way around the bank, correct? And you're going to have some areas where they could make use of a community system, correct? And you might have this probably, but there's nothing else left there, about a sewer pipe. Regardless of if it doesn't make the whole bay, we know for a fact that that will definitely take care of these guys. So I think we're going to take a look at community septic in terms of could you do a large system located on land somewhere in this area that could treat offsite properties? Or a certain amount? We'll have to see what we're dealing with in terms of we know that we have to aim for around 90,000 gallons per day just to serve what's out there right now for the whole area. Again, if you did a site analysis and found out that you could do 60, then you could start to say, well, so all of them that you'd serve, could you build it and just do the ones that are the worst to the worst? So I think what we're trying to do with this matrix is not to overwhelm you. We're trying to try and keep you more serve on task in terms of filling in with the information that we know. And then afterwards you sort of saying is an independent arm looking through these and saying, well, here's your best bet. It has a achievable timeframe. We know an estimated cost with it and it would solve the majority of the issues or something of that nature. You might get two that come to the top out of this. Maybe not just one. Can we go through these and have a value system and send in some value from length to single? Well, like I preferred site one to five, very expensive to moderately expensive, huge impact to the character, no impact to the character. So we put some metrics and value to it and add them up and analytically look at it that way. So a lot of it, some of it's gonna be subjective, of course, but I mean, you can fill down on, well, for example, the funding until if the grant list will be astronomically expensive. Could I make a suggestion though? Before you did do that, maybe you just fill in what you know about what potential funding sources are, what the estimated timeline is, those kinds of things and then start thinking about how to create some kind of a system for ranking because I think it'd be hard to do that before you know what you know and what you don't know. Since we added do nothing as an option, is there an option we should put on here about, since we just discussed our field trip, the best fix for existing septic systems? That's required now. That's what's required now, it's kind of, well, it's part of the required now, but do nothing means you're not even fixing them, but doing a best fix that addresses that there is an issue and they're trying to address it. I think that best fix would go in the glove with the enforcement following up on those that are marginal. I think Rebecca, what's meant by do nothing is not say we're not gonna require a best available fix when there's a failing system, it's just not change the current situation, which is that right now, if a system fails, you have to use the best available technology to fix it, and what the people that were saying do nothing were saying was just keep the current system. Okay, because that's how it says to me, to me it says, oh, you're not doing anything, you're not fixing anything at all. You say do nothing. Okay, so maybe we should change that to like no change, or, sorry? Keep the status quo. Yeah. Yeah. No, maybe there should be something that would do nothing, because if you do nothing, it means potential failure and pollution into the lake. Okay, so. And then it could cost a lot of money. I think how I interpreted that one guy's comment with do nothing was he wanted us to show everybody just how bad things would be if we didn't act on it somehow. Yeah. So. Actually, I think there were several people that were advocating for do nothing. I think that might have been the motivation of one person. I think that some other people think, you know, the status quo is okay. Any thoughts over there, Vahl? I'm listening, I'm observing. I watched that video twice. We start to finish, it was very interesting. I couldn't be there. When I, one of the things I think about all the time is that it's a perpetual problem. That if you fix A, B, and C, well, D, E, and F are gonna fail two years later. And JK and L are five years down the road. And if you're just doing the best fix on things that really aren't gonna be functional. It doesn't sound like- It's like putting a bandaid on tight. It's gonna hold for a while, but it's gonna spring somewhere else. If anybody saw the Popeye car, Marshall, he's got his hands going all over the place. It just doesn't work. So there's gotta be something in between. And we've been tasked to try to figure and look and muddle through it all and kind of just understand everything and see if we can. Something that'll work. And as much as I like to look at everything else, I also think that the sewer line isn't gonna get cheaper five years down the road if we do a best fix now. Five years, that's not gonna get any less expensive. So it's just an interesting conundrum we've been put into that we have to kind of analyze and figure out. And hopefully that we can make our lake nicer, which is the whole objective. Thank you. What do we, I know you folks have drilled down on the highlights of this worksheet. This one, is there? What do we do with all these? And I don't need to get off task here, but they're kind of just getting in the way for me. All these other ancillary things that we could take forever to source and surge. And on the one hand, I feel that an answer is sought, but on the other hand, we always just start chasing our tail and not go for the prize. How long do we go forward on monitoring wells for groundwater or what percent of equalized from wastewater together? Some of these things are sure readily available, but I don't want to get too lost in the weeds while we try and resolve a bigger issue. Well, I think the idea is that we're going to be doing some additional fact sheets to provide information. So there's a whole lot of information that people desired. And we're going to try and address that as best we can as we go through the process. And I think we had elsewhere in my staff notes, I noted some of the additional fact sheets that we were considering. There's other things that the commission believes that we should be pursuing for fact sheets too. And there's a lot of information that we could present in a clear or more concise way. And there's never going to be all the information that anybody wants. It's just the nature of public policy issues is you have to at some point make choices based on what information you have. So I agree with you. It's going to be an ongoing issue for this commission this summer of what information do you need and what information would it be nice to have, but you need to go forward despite not having that information. So I'm going to change gears a little bit on you. And I think we've looked at this slide a little bit, but also I think this is a next agenda item, but I think it's worth talking about in context of how we're going to get to where we need to be. And so this sort of lays out a timeline to get through those issues. So just to quickly walk you through this, looking at the next meeting as we can quantify for you with the buyouts cost and have you talk a little bit about the neighborhood character and what those impacts would be. We like to in July 2nd, have some folks in from the state to talk about what state septic regulations are and are not and how community septic's regulated. We have some thoughts and ideas on that. I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas on how we address that. Just a fact that you're talking about both individual systems and the potential community systems. Right. What's the life of a community system? Is it similar to an individual system? It can be, it can be with professional care maintenance, depending on the type, it might be a little bit longer. And then moving through everything. The reason why I've kept August squishy is with the community septic, with the site analysis, we need to go out when we need to do some auger holes and we need to do some sort of exploration of the Bayside hazelut piece for that. So we've had a really wet and not good fieldwork spring. So I think we can be a little bit squishy with August and still look to wrap this up in early September, but just sort of keeping it a little bit open ended to the end, gives us through everything because there are some other things that we didn't talk to, like development regulations. I think we start talking about the character, the area and additional information that people needed. A lot of people were concerned about the character of the area and how any solution might present the opportunity for people to redevelop their properties more so concerns with some of the redevelopment that people have seen. It's on the planning commission's to-do list for the town plan to take up the zoning regulations and to really start diving into redoing potentially the zoning for East Lakes Air Drive. So that's on the hit list. So we'll see which comes first, community septic or development regulations. We can morph this around as you choose, but gets us from point A to point B. Was there a question about July 2nd or was that just what we can bring to the table on July 2nd? So July 2nd, here's my interpretation and just to have this conversation with you is, I definitely heard some angst about current state regulations and what you can and can't do at the forum. I think we have some great folks and partners that we work at with the state that have offered to come in and give us sort of a septic 101. What's your septic system? How to take care of it? What regulations do and don't allow for and just offer some questions? I don't want a pound of flesh to be extracted from them. I don't want them to be the, they're great folks that work for the state. They can't change the state septic rules. I don't want to devolve into that. So I'm not sure. I want your feedback. You were all at the forum too in your insights and can we keep it sort of third prior neutral and just say, hey, we're having an informational, they call them septic socials. So it's been to be a pleasant experience. We have ice cream and such. You know, I don't want it to be, oh, finally we have a stay official here. Let's pound our fists and say, you have to let us go into people's properties and die test everything. I think it's useful to get at least everybody on the same playing field with, what are the state septic regulations? Because it seemed like there's a lot of misinformation. So I can see where that would be helpful, but where are your thoughts? Would that be helpful to have like a septic 101 or should we jump right into changing regulations? It's hard to talk about changing regulations when you have folks that don't understand what the regulations are. No, I think it'd be useful to have a state come in, explain the regulations. They may also see what regulations they may be changing in the future. We don't even know about it this time. I think it'd be a good question and answer period for us. So, actually if you could go back to that slide for a second, Sarah, working on it. The thinking here is to go through the major ideas, themes that we heard from the public forum and that you've all been hearing in other areas. I'm sure of these are things that are of interest and concern to the community. And so the idea is to walk through that as a planning commission so that come September you'll be ready to sort of synthesize things and summarize what are the key points on the different options and how to, so you can make some recommendations to the select board. And I have no idea what kind of forum or format you want to have those recommendations come in, but I think it means really thinking through each of the options and how these issues play out so that you can make thoughtful recommendations. Anyone else in the regular, for lack of a better word, the regulators showing up on July 2nd and we'll go back up on this one. First of you, yes, sir? All right. We want to eat on it. We'll just go, we'll get with black jackets or something. Well, I think it will be positive. We'll look to hopefully have somebody in about the lake regulations too. And there's a lake-wise program that walks people through where some particular considerations along the lake. Usually they do it at a person's individual property and they pop the lids for the septic tank, they mark up the leach field. I don't think we can do that, but I think that's where we're looking to do another walk and talk and it might be useful to have some of those situations available to us. I'll look to see if we can do a pre-show or anybody that wants to show up early that night. We'll see, or maybe we can get a few volunteers close proximity to us to do that, but. Any other thoughts? I have a question. Is this something that you're gonna be inviting the public, actively inviting the public to come to these or? Yes, yep, yep. So it's kind of a workshop-y kind of a... I didn't want to call it a workshop because I think that... Yeah, that's a problem. Is more sort of an informal meeting. I think we have the camera crew, we have sort of a static fixed setup here, but I think it's, these are all public work sessions. Yeah, I would just like, at every meeting, we had, of course, 50 is a lot to ask. I was delighted with 50 coming last Monday, but if we had 10 to 15 in that audience every night, because as I was saying just there earlier today, making the sausage is not pretty, but when you have to watch how the sausage is made, which is essentially what we're doing right now, you get an appreciation for everything that we have to look at and what would end the thoughtful consideration. And the input that we could get, continuing input on this. I'm glad that they came last Monday, but this is an ongoing process up until the time that we start putting pen to paper and sending our recommendations up to the select board. The more they're engaged in that process, I think the more they'll feel that we didn't do some backing. I hope we get people for that night, and all nights for that matter. But by the time we get to September, we're just gonna have to drill in and focus on what those three alternatives are. Fox, guys? It's a summer. Yeah? It goes by, hopefully we get a summer. It'll go by quickly. Going, I'm sorry to go back to this, but can we, at some point, go through this list and figure out what are just absolute non-starters and what are, we could put in the pocket. Boy, it'd be nice to know, but we don't have all night to talk about, we'll pick a number any minute, you know. I'm just really feeling the time crunch and that's needing to. Well, I think that was to still down into the summary, Marcel. So you could go into the summary and see sort of how we tried to group some things together. For instance, there was a feedback, I remember writing it down, tell the state to take a hike. We're gonna invite them in, in just a little high second. We're gonna do sort of the opposite because I think you guys have sort of talked about that and it's a good thing to get more information. But I think if you wanted to go through the summary notes that are in your packets and sort of go through that and we have that list as in staff notes of what sort of additional fact sheets we're looking for and add to that. So, I don't know, have we just, is there anything in that summary that was served? No, the summary's good, it's just the old notes. I think it was sort of the intent of the summary to try and pull everything together because there's a lot of the same that was voiced in those notes and some repetition but in different ways and manners. So separate yellow and black water, that's like a non-starter, right? Under the current state regulation, so you can't do it. Create a bounty for reporting septic systems. If you're going to talk about changing regulations and incentivizing, I don't know if the bounty's paid to the person that reports or... Is it in the budget? It has to select for it if we have a budget for it, a bounty budget. You know, kudos to people for getting creative and innovative and there's still the surveys to weed through just to see if there's anything else that you perhaps will add into it. I think what we're thinking is at this point, we can do a supplement to that summary if there's anything new that comes out of the, I think particularly there's an open-ended question at the end and I think that's sort of similar to the feedback that we got for the forum. So we'll just like to see if there's anything new to add but that summary does sort of synthesize all the different viewpoints and gives you a little bit of a path forward, so. How are we doing with place speak, Sean? I think we just need to push it more. I think we were waiting for after the last meeting we had and I think we just need to push it on Front Forge and Facebook. We've seen very little growth on it. After we've put it on Facebook and Front Forge, and if it doesn't grow that much, I don't know if we'll continue using it. Right now it's not popular. So I think what we're going to hopefully do is take this direction forward as you've sort of looked at tonight and push it out to folks. We do have that email list from signups and so we'll do something similar to what we did for Thoughts on Thursdays and push out some emails to folks, social media, Wastewater Wednesdays or something. We'll try and make it fun to sort of re-engage people because I think people were in the, we told everybody we were going to do the debrief and look for after this meeting to look for additional information. Trying to drum up that and know that the surveys closed we'll look to try and engage people in a different way. But open for ideas too because that online forum does not seem to be growing at this point. So let's put on a front porch forum. Are we going to announce our play commission meetings? No front porch forum? Give them an extra push there and say, well, this is what we're going to be discussing. I don't know. Put it on a Sunday, Monday night, something like that for Tuesday. And I think we also have about 300 people on the email list back all the way from the last Malts Bay initiative carrying over the same list plus the people who came to the last meeting. So I think once we push out an email to everybody we may see some growth. Keep on them. Any other ideas or thoughts across the table here? Okay. Is there anything else? Well, yeah, I'm just curious because you all have a lot in front of you over the course of the summer. And I'm just wondering if this process, if you're comfortable with it, that if you go through these topics, come September you'll be ready to put together some thoughts and recommendations for the select board as you've been requested to do. Is that, are you comfortable with this? Is there something missing? What do you think? Personally, I think I'm leaning already towards something in my head already. So I think this process is gonna either make me lean elsewhere or really confirm what I'm thinking. So I think it'll be helpful no matter what. Any thoughts? Mark, you were smiling down there. I thought of you. I just hung up on the data. I mean, if you're gonna talk about buying out properties if you're talking about buying out 300 properties it's likely not feasible. But if you can figure out that there's the 10 culprits I still think in science then there's always like 90% of the problem that's related to like 30% of the population. Well, see, I see it as this is a high risk area. This is like 10% of the population of Colchester. But aren't there like brand new functioning systems in there? There's a lot of new development. But those brand new functioning systems are eventually gonna fail. So that brings us back to this story. And that's why I keep circling back. 30 years down the road. It's not for a best fit that aren't even really functioning correctly even from the day they're put in. Best fit. So those would be the high risk. I mean, there's, I don't think it's genuine to see everything's high risk. Or say, even if everything is high risk you can still say these are the highest high risk. I just, I'm envisioning maybe as the hybrid solution because it seems invisible that we're gonna find a community septic that's gonna serve all 300. It would be surprising. Just a blend. And it would be surprising if we could buy out about 300. So there's probably some likely hybrid where we need to parse these, put all 300 properties in a spreadsheet and rank them. You know, that's known, unknown, high risk, low risk. But isn't that what they need to do? So we're working on getting you more information. And you mentioned earlier, or it's sort of the order of magnitude of the cost of buyouts. Amy and Sarah and I are gonna be working on getting an order of magnitude for you on that. And also a sorting of how old the systems are. How many do we know that have failed? How many do we know that we're never permitted? So we're quite old. Those kind of, that kind of- Well, to the extent that we can. I'd like to circle back to Amy first before we promise anything because a lot of the testing that was done by Stone Environmental as part of the EPA stay was done sort of in a double blind situation because as soon as we become aware that there's a failure or a failed system we as a regulatory agency are required to make people do something. And so there was sensitivity to that when that was done. And so we know that within this general area we have, let's say five out of 10 systems were failed but we, I'm not sure can parse that down to which specific parcels that is. So let's talk a little bit offline with that but I think out of the stone say there was in order for us to be voluntarily onto people's properties there were some parameters provided and I don't wanna go back against any of those. So we'll see what information we can provide you in terms of specifics, but. So in general, this format works for everybody. This is a good plan to work towards. Yeah, I mean this is kind of what we did for the town plan. We came up with something that we had to address each meeting to get to the end. I think this is a great start. I'm a little nervous of having all the information ready for September's decision making. Because it's gonna be a lot to digest after each meeting. I don't know how quickly we're gonna consolidate all that information. And I think what I'd like to do is I think we had our request on the select board. I think this is a lot to get through. And I want to have this done right. We'll see. We can't control the weather and field testing. If we need to push back the deadline a little bit I'd like that to be for only good reason and to clearly communicate and have a timeframe where there is a set date where we're going to have everything done finalized. But we'll work to the best of our extent to provide exactly what was asked for in the time that we were asked for and keep to this. But here's me saying that you guys have summer schedules to vacations, things would come up and we can't control the rain. So I appreciate your time and I don't want anybody losing sleep saying, oh, I haven't finished reading page 369 of the IWRM report. I stayed up all night before that. And it coming in visibly on caffeine. But we get to September, it's a time crunch. You know how I feel. I'm not adverse to putting an extra meeting. Just saying that from my perspective because they'll be going into budget preparations in October and they want something. And I think we can always find a reason to find one more leaf to turn over. I think keeping September in our head is a drop dead date is a good objective to work towards. And I appreciate Sarah that could slip a little bit but I'm that September firmly in my mind. That's for me. All right. I'll make my best guess with the information provided up until September. It's not that I personally think suicide is pretty black and white in my sense. I don't think there's a lot I could say greater in the sphere. Well, we'll see what we find with the community septic. Yeah. You know, I think unfortunately and sort of being rewind and perhaps this is information that would have been useful to sort of preface some of the community forum with is Fire District two had this sewer project. They determined that they couldn't forward it and gave it to the town and town picked up and looked at it. And then this was what evolved into the vote. There was never the sort of step back from it because it didn't start as a town project. We didn't have this usual process to it first and foremost where we say, well, where are all the options? We sort of took the option that was presented by the district and ran with them. And now we're circling back a little bit late in the process and saying, okay, well, where are the options? So it's a little bit about how we got here and how this doesn't follow the normal flow, but nonetheless. But that's very good people. That's right. It really did not go proper. So we're starting, we're kind of starting with like around. Here we are. Yeah. As the saying goes, here we are. Good. Now we wasted on waste water for the evening. Oh. Over many more to come. Flush out the issues. There we go. No, it's good to pull out the puns. All right. We got a plan. Thank you, Cindy. Thank you. Very much for helping us put some form to the function. And if any of you have comments for me at any point, I'm not sure exactly what shape my involvement will be going forward, but I'm happy to get your input and just want to be responsive to it and make sure that everybody in town is heard and their opinions are respected. So that's my job. Thanks and thank you. Thanks. So I guess we took here a number five with our future meeting agendas. And now for the big moment, minutes. Do I have a motion? May 7th, 2019. I'll make a motion and approve. Second. Is there any discussion? Hearing, you all set, Rebecca? I haven't read them so. No, go for it. All right. With that said, all those in favor? Aye. Minutes are approved. The packet information we've already discussed because that was the months and ages solar. And here we are. There's also a late ad. Burlington had a notice for combined development regulations and possible hearing coming up. So we'll just double check. It should have been added to clerk base and it should have been added to the drop box too. It was. Which one was that? I'll have to go back to clerk base. Burlington. Notice? Oh, there it is. That's it now. For four pages and seven days, no doubt. And with that. I'll make a motion to adjourn. Here we go. All right, well, second. Wonderful, all those in favor? Aye. Minutes adjourned. Thank you.