 our first community meeting that is post the era of Paul Costello. For those of you who don't know, Paul was our longtime executive director, 21-year tenure at the helm of VCRD. And we just last week was his last week. He's moved on. And so we are adjusting. He's not with us tonight, but we are really excited to have a new executive director, Brian Lowe, as part of our team at the Council on Rural Development. So welcome, folks. We will give it a minute or two. We always find people sort of trickle in as we get started. So I think we're really going to get going in a couple of minutes here. So if you'll just bear with us, we're going to let people gather. If anyone wants to use the chat to introduce yourself, sometimes that can be a nice thing to do. If you are in Rochester or one of the surrounding towns, maybe let folks know what part of the region you live in. That can be a helpful thing for us to just get people placed. So if anyone wants to introduce themselves in chat, that would be great as we get going here. And by the way, I'm John Copans. I'm the program director for the Climate Economy Model Communities Program here at the Vermont Council on Rural Development. It's wonderful to see all of these faces gathering on the screen. You know, as an organization, we've had to adapt to these different times. Normally, we would be gathering somewhere in a group space. We might have shared a meal together. And to be honest, we miss that at VCRD. We really love getting together in person. But we also feel like it's really important still to gather even in an online way and to keep doing our work. So a huge appreciation to you all for being willing to get on a screen tonight and spend your evening thinking about Rochester and the surrounding towns and how we rally together as communities. All right. I feel like I should go ahead and get started because we have a very busy evening. And Nick, you know what? If you want to go ahead, I think we're going to share screen with some slides. The first slide is just an agenda slide that'll be helpful for folks to see. But here's how we're going to structure things tonight, just so folks have a feeling for what's ahead. We are going to just spend 15 minutes as a whole group gathered. And then pretty quickly here, we're going to get out into breakout groups. And we're going to really have the meat of our conversation tonight will be a set of two different breakout slots, four total breakout groups. Because we're doing two times two, as you can see there on the agenda. But I want to give a little bit of context in some opening remarks before we go into those breakouts. And so let me just grab my notes. So this meeting is convened by an organization called the Vermont Council on Rural Development. I'm a program director at the Council on Rural Development. I've got some co-workers who are helping with tonight's events. I want to just quickly give you a sense of who we are as an organization before we get started. Our mission as an organization is really to work with communities around Vermont, with Vermont's small towns around the state to help them achieve their visions for vitality and prosperity of those communities. And we do that primarily as an organization that's a facilitator and a convener. We have hosted town-based conversations in probably over 100 different communities in all corners of the state of Vermont. As Paul Costello used to say, we've probably convened more conversations than any other organization in the state at the town-based level. Nice to see some nods there from Senator Clarkson. That's good verification. And what we don't do when we come into a community is we don't come in with preset solutions for what's best for you. Instead, what we do is we provide a vehicle and a conversation for you all to come together as a community or a set of communities to think about your future, to identify some priorities that you want to work on, and then to think about, OK, now that we've identified those priorities, how are we going to get them done? That's really the core of our work as an organization. We're neutral. We're nonpartisan. We're very intentionally nonpartisan because we think that's fundamental to our work in building trust in communities and in being this facilitative organization. Tonight's conversation is part of a program that we call the Climate Economy Model Communities Program. And man, that's a mouthful, isn't it? But I want to just tee up for you a little bit about what when we use the expression climate economy at the Council on Rural Development, I just want to give you a little bit of context around that. I've come to think of the climate economy in a few different ways. The way that we started thinking about the climate economy was that when we think about this global challenge called climate change, there are all of these nations and all of these businesses and organizations that are trying to figure out the best ways to tackle climate change, essentially to wean our economy from fossil fuels and to figure out new ways of doing things and new ways of living that don't contribute to climate change. And essentially, that's like a competition, a global competition. And Vermont can compete in that global marketplace. And if we can figure out the models for tackling climate change here in Vermont, it's going to create job opportunities and economic opportunity here in Vermont. There are whether, let's say you figure out a new way for Vermonters to use less energy while still heating their homes. That is something that you could market out to the rest of the world. So there's tremendous job opportunities in being the place that solves those problems. But here's another way that I think about the climate economy. I really think about it at the household scale as well. Efficiency, Vermont, who's part of our conversation tonight, every year or so, they do a report called the Energy Burden Report. And what it shows is that Vermonters spend nearly $5,000 typically on their energy costs as a household. And half of that is just filling up the gas in their cars and trucks. And so if you think about a typical household budget, that's a big piece of the pie. And there's opportunities for households to achieve savings there. And honestly, when we help our households save money, what we do is we invest those dollars back into the economy. Because what people do then is they have more money to spend on other things in their community. The final way that I think about the climate economy or that we might think about the climate economy is really, I would say, most informed by the last year and a half as we've grappled with the pandemic. What we are reminded of over the last 18 months is that Vermont's really not an island. We suffer or benefit from all of these trends that happen globally. And the pandemic is a real example of that. And as we think to a future, you know, let's take an example. Vermont has become a more attractive place for people while with remote work becoming a real possibility for more people around the country. And frankly, rural places like Vermont, because we're a little more spaced out and we were seen as a safe place to live. What we know is that our communities, all of a sudden the houses in our communities are getting more expensive because people are moving to our rural communities in a way that they never used to. And what we're actually already hearing about is other people moving to Vermont because of climate, because of climate trends around the United States. The wildfires in the West have people picking up and moving and Vermont is increasingly an appealing place to be. So I just share that as an example of the kind of trends that we see, both nationally and globally, that Vermont is gonna be impacted by. And so with the reason I'm sharing all of that as context is when we talk about the Climate Economy Model Communities Program, the question that I would frame to you all, to Rochester, to Hancock, to Granville, to Stockbridge, to Pittsfield, like the Quintown region that we think of when we think of this conversation. What I would say is, how do you think about the future of these communities? What does a vital region look like, a prosperous region look like, and how do you plan for some of those changes that we think are coming? And how do we do that in a way that's not divisive but unifying? That's the real mission of our work in this Model Communities Program. With that, and I wanna make a quick note about the Model Communities Program, we only go where we're invited to go. And it was the Rochester Select Board actually that said we would like to participate in this Model Communities Program. And with that, I actually wanna quickly call on your Rochester Select Board Chair, somebody I've gotten to know a little bit. We share a passion for spikes, actually. Dune Hendricks is just gonna say a word of welcome. So Dune, if you wanna go ahead and unmute, it would be great to just hear a welcome. I don't think I am muted, am I? You're good, yep. I'm good, all right. Well, welcome. I guess I'm the latecomer. I was running that, but I'm here I am now and thank you all for being here. I'm hoping we have representatives from the larger community ranging up and down the valley because really this is much more than just the town of Rochester. This is gonna take teamwork to move into the future and working together, sharing our energy and our ideas. And I would hope that one of the goals, the tasks that everyone here could go away with is how to inspire and enlist more people to join so it doesn't just fall down to the same collection of people that are always carrying the load because it all matters to all of us and it affects all of us. And we're very thankful for John's offer to come and help guide exploration of what we can do to be proactive moving into the future. Thank you, Dune. We are, and I have to say for us as staff at the Council on Rural Development, the opportunity to get to work in communities like Rochester and the surrounding towns is really a privilege. We feel so lucky to get to meet great folks and your point about sharing the load is really right on point because actually the next thing I wanna do is thank a few folks who carry some load in terms of doing some work in the community. I've had, we engaged a steering committee at the beginning of this process to they came up with the name Rochester Area Climate Initiative and they came up with some plans in terms of launching this process. But I wanna give a shout out specifically to three folks who've been real allies as I've gotten my feet under me and making connections in the community. And that's Catherine Shankman and Vic Robato and finally Jeff Gephart who's the energy coordinator in Rochester. And just a little mention of Jeff Boyd. He works so hard in terms of doing, thinking about the energy opportunities for Rochester and he's really been a great partner in this work. So just a big thank you to that team and thank you Dune and to the select board for the invitation to come to Rochester. All right, I've gotta quickly do a couple more things here. We are really honored and maybe just stop sharing for a second, Nick and then I'm gonna ask you to share again because it would be nice for us to be able to see more people. As part of this opening process we have a visiting team of folks and I want to recognize them as we get started. I'm just gonna run through these names quickly because we gotta stay on schedule here or Alex Tolstoy from the preservation trust of Vermont is with us. Becca White from Efficiency Vermont. Dan Courier from the Vermont Agency of Transportation. Erica Hoffman-Keyes from Green Mountain Economic Development Court. Josh Hanford, a neighbor from a neighboring town who's the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development. Peter Gregory, the director of Two Rivers Aduquici Regional Commission and Sarah Peary from Green Mountain Power are here with us tonight. You'll get a sense of the role of that visiting team as we move forward but huge appreciation for them for quote unquote coming to the Rochester region tonight to listen to all you have and to provide some perspective. So thank you all as visiting team members. All right, Nick, if you could bring, oh, and let me just quickly mention and introduce our VCRD staff too. We've got Margaret McCoy. We've got Alyssa Johnson. We've got Nick Kramer and we've got Jenna Kaloski and we will be facilitating and serving as scribes for tonight's event. All right, Nick, if you could go to the next slide, you know, I wanna just give you a little bit of quick context about how this process is gonna roll forward. We are tonight, it's the kickoff of this process. The real goal of these breakout sessions is to get your ideas for the future of the Rochester region. We've got some topics for those conversations but let me tell you, those topics are not meant to be hard guardrails to the conversation. Any ideas that you've got for the future of the region are welcome. We will facilitate those conversations tonight and we've got scribes taking careful notes about that. And then coming up November 1st, we are gonna come reconvene a group of folks at all of you and more my hope is to make some decisions about the priorities you wanna work on as a region. And what I will do between tonight and then as I will take all of your ideas, I'll sort of map them out and identify some core areas of work and I'll bring them back to you. We'll probably have somewhere between 10 and 20 different possible ideas of areas of action and you'll make some decisions with dot voting. We're hoping that'll be in-person at Pierce Hall on the evening of November 1st. That's a Monday evening, so mark your calendars. And then a final formal step in the process is after you identify those three priorities, our hope is that many of you will sign up to do some work. And just like Dune was saying, some new folks hopefully get involved as we go through this so that we can share that load. And then we will bring task forces together to really do some strategic planning around those priorities and then move towards implementation. So that's sort of the general game plan for this process for tonight's conversation. Oh, actually Nick, bring up the next slide before I get to tonight's conversation, if that's all right. Not everybody wants to be on Zoom. Not everyone wants to participate in a meeting. I just wanna mention that we've got a couple other ways to get the ideas into this process. We've got an online survey and we've got that link there. We're also having an in-person forum at Rochester Elementary School on October 12th. That'll be pretty similar to these online meetings. Any of you are welcome, but I would really encourage you to spread the word that's happening next Tuesday evening. And then just to mention that we do maintain a website for this Rochester region climate initiative that I would encourage you to check out. We'll keep that updated as we go. All right, so now with that, I think it's time to get into the breakout groups because that's really where our action is gonna happen tonight. And let me just tee up what we're gonna do in those breakout conversations. The first two, Nick, you can go ahead and bring up the next slide actually. Oops. The first, Nick, if you wanna bring up, I think the next slide has some directions for us for the breakouts. Yeah, there we go. So here are the first two breakout conversations. Number one is around economic development, job creation and transportation. Number two is around energy opportunities for towns, homes and businesses. And what we would like you to do, this might feel a little complicated, but it's really not so hard. If you can rename yourself with the number of the breakout group that you wanna be in, and I'll show you, maybe I'll do it for myself right now, I'm going to go to number two. So you see how my name just, I just added a two in front of it. If you can do that to pick your breakout group, that's gonna get us started here and we will put you into those breakout groups to get things going. So remember, one is economic development. Number two is energy opportunities for towns, homes and businesses. And then the facilitators will guide the conversation from there once you are in your rooms. So with that, all right. So welcome back everybody. Rather than take too much time, look the value in these conversations is hearing from you all. So I think what I'm gonna ask Nick to do is bring back up our slide. Sorry, we're doing this a little on the fly because we now have two more breakouts. One of them is around housing and the other one is the topic of the other one is the land resilience and the climate emergency. And one thing I meant to say earlier Ron, some folks are really interested in food and agriculture and that second breakout around the land and resilience I think will be a great place to have that conversation around food and agriculture. So we'd really encourage folks to head there if that's what you're interested in. And I think you all know the routine here, which is to just add a number before your name and we will get you reassigned for the second round of breakouts. Really appreciate everyone's participation. And for our facilitators, we are coming back for a very quick closing at 8.25 and folks that'll be five minutes because time is precious. We're not going to come back and talk for too long but 8.25, we will come back here for a closing session. So I think- I have a question to you, John. Go for it. Our session- Recording in progress. We've been here from all of our visitors and I was wondering if they would be willing to put their thoughts down as notes to go to us whether in chat or another way but we would really like to hear from all of them. I appreciate that, Catherine. And you know what? We will certainly give them that opportunity. We'll follow up with a visiting team. I'm not sure it'll happen in real time because that might be too much to ask of them but we'll be sure that as they want, they'll have that opportunity to share some reflections that we can share out to participants. So thank you. So to get into number two breakout, the land resilience, how do I do that? So you try to read, if you know how to rename yourself, you do that to add- It's got a number two already. So- Oh, you're good. Great. Thank you very much. All right. And I think Margaret is gonna go ahead and reassign us. So if she hasn't already started that. Yeah. You know, everyone still has their same numbers from the first round. Ah, okay. So folks, you have to actively go in there and confirm or if you're all set, so maybe let's give it a minute here to make sure everyone is happy with their number. Look at your number, make sure that's where you wanna go. And if it's not, if you can change it, that's great. Or wave at us or just unmute. So maybe we'll take off the slide because it's a little hard for us to see all the screen. But remember, one is for housing, two is for the land resilience and the climate emergency. So I'll say that again. One is for housing and two is for land resilience and the climate emergency. If everyone can go ahead and actively change that number, if it needs to be changed, leave it if you're leaving it. And if you're not sure, then, well, here's what I would say is if you end up in the breakout, that's the wrong breakout, just speak up and we're gonna send you back into the main room and you'll get reassigned. So it's not a big deal. We can just send you back into the main room and then you can get reassigned. I'm gonna send people over now. Ready? Ready? Yeah, why don't you go for it and then we'll just correct it as needed. Okay. That's great. All right. Thanks Margaret. Recording in progress. Hi everyone, welcome. This is breakout number one officially. So we'll wait a couple of minutes and let folks get sorted out to the right places and then get started with our conversation. Thank you all for being here. If anyone's having trouble getting to the right place, feel free to just leave a note either in the chat or to just go ahead and unmute yourself. But it looks like most of the folks I'm seeing on my screen are number one, which is an excellent place to start. I think I'm supposed to be into their list of stuff. All right, I'll send you over Peter. Sure. Over. Goodbye, Peter. It's good to see you briefly. With a real send off. Anyone else who needs to be time warped into group number two. All right. Well, we have a small enough group. I think we can go ahead with a brief introductions as well. So again, I'll just go across my screen and mentions folks names. It looks like we had some folks who stayed from earlier sessions. So again, thank you for staying with us for the second one and to anyone new, welcome. And thank you for being here. My name is John Sands. I work at the Council on Rail Development. And I'm going to be facilitating again, this conversation is around housing, but really a broad interpretation of that. But again, we'll start with introductions. And the first person I see is Eric. If you want to just say hi, Eric, I'm where you're from. Yeah, OK, I couldn't tell if you said Eric or Erica. So my name is Eric Hoffman Keith. I'm with Green Mountain Economic Development Corporation. And I'm part of the visiting team with you tonight. Thanks so much. Then I have Sue. Hi, I'm Sue Roboto and I'm in Rochester. Awesome. Thanks, Sue. Next is Robert. Yes, I'm Robert Mayer and I'm in Rochester and I'm I'm on the theme field and also the I'm on the school board. Great. Thank you. Next day, Maureen. Yeah, Maureen again, and I live in Rochester. Thanks, Maureen. Next up is Allison. I'm Allison Clarkson. I live in Woodstock, but I am one of Windsor County's three state senators. And it's a pleasure to be here and serve as Vice Chair of Senate Economic Development, Housing, and General Affairs. Perfect. So just a note for everyone who's listening to our conversation tonight. Thanks for being here. And next up, I have Dune. Oh, we can't hear you, Dune. I was going to try and do it with sign language, but I don't know what that was. Yeah, I'm living in Rochester and involved on many fronts from the select board to the planning scene and all that. Great. Thanks, Dune. Next is Evelyn. Evelyn Perksma, I live in Rochester. Thank you. Next is Vic. I'm Vic Roboto. I live in Rochester involved and I'm retired and involved in volunteer activities. And it's great to see you, Alyssa. Thanks so much for your help with our grant that we got. Nice to see you. Thanks, Vic. Next, I have Jenna. Everyone, Jenna Colastia. I work for the Council on Rural Development. I live in Huntington. Thanks, Jenna. And so everyone knows Jenna is also our designated note taker for the evening. So everything that is said tonight, we are recording this, but we'll also be captured in all of the notes. And that's part of what we'll come back to reflect on. Next up, we have our first visiting team speaker. I am assuring Josh. Hi, Josh Hanford, Commissioner of Housing and Community Development. And I was a longtime resident of Rochester. So no, many of you. Thanks, Josh. Next up is Alex. Alex Tolstoy, Preservation Trust of Vermont. Thanks for having me. Thanks. Next is Makayla. Yeah, I think maybe some mic issues there. So waving to Makayla and others on the screen. Thanks for being here. Next up is Midge. Hi, I'm Midge Scanlon and I live in Rochester's village. Thank you. Dan. Dan Currier. I'm with VTrans and I'm part of the visiting team. Thank you. Oh no, I made my screen different. All right, we're back. Sandy is next. I'm Sandy Haas. I live in Rochester and I'm on the planning mission. Thank you. Kate. I'm Kate Seeger. I own and run Camp Kula Leighton Hancock. Thank you. Christine. Hi, I'm Christine Mary. I live in Rochester. I'm on the planning mission with Sandy and I'm an educator here. Thank you. Linda. I'm Linda Anderson. I work with Capstone Community Action and I live in Hancock. Thank you. Jeff. Jeff Gepard. I live in Rochester, Vermont. I'm an educator here. I live in Rochester, Vermont. Thank you. And Catherine. Catherine, if you want to unmute and say hi, but otherwise we're saying. Okay. I have an unstable connection. I didn't hear you call my name. Catherine. I live in Rochester. I sit on several volunteer boards and I'm an elder advocate and case manager. And I think one of the few social workers in the Quintown area. Very busy. And I'm really excited to be part of this conversation. Again, if you were in earlier form, it's going to have that same structure. So we're going to start off with talking around assets related to housing, move into challenges and then finally spend the bulk of our time looking at opportunities and ways that you all could get involved in potentially making change in this area, both in terms of maybe some of the energy efficiency topics, but also just in general housing needs for your community. And we have a fairly small group. So if folks would like to use the hand raised function on zoom, when they have something to contribute, please feel free. I'll also keep an eye out on the screen for hands up and give some time for folks to just unmute themselves. But to kick things off, we'll start with assets. So does anyone have something to share in terms of assets for housing? Again, not only for Rochester, but also for the broader region. Yes, Sandy. We have a beautiful. Historic housing stock, especially around in the Rochester village. Wonderful. Thanks, Sandy. Other assets. The park house. Rochester. Thank you. Catherine. I think you're a little delayed Catherine, but if you have something to share, please feel free. Yes, there are multiple apartment complexes. There are a number of apartment complexes. That are. For a low income affordable housing in Rochester and in Hancock. There's not enough, but we do have some. We also park house is now a section eight. Project base of voucher. Location. So through the Vermont. State housing authority. We have a lot of people who have been born and raised and lived in this area of their lives to be able to afford the park house. So. Yeah. More though. Great. Thank you, Catherine. Other folks with assets to add around housing. Yes, Allison. Just to tag on the sandbays. We have a lot of people who have been born and raised in this area. And many of them are in a cluster downtown, which is of course what many towns long for. So you have a walking community that's very vibrant. And, and a cluster downtown development. So those are, I think huge assets for as you look at. Accessory dwelling units in houses that can be developed. And as you look at big houses that can have a lot of exciting things happen to them. So we have a lot of people who have been born and raised in this area. So that's both in terms of what's currently in the community, but also maybe it's potential for future projects or adaptive reuse. Other ideas from folks, what's working in terms of housing in the community? Yes, Midge. There is a small. Affordable housing development behind. The green and Hancock. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that there's a few homes there that were put up and. As affordable housing and. Seems to be a pretty good setup. Wonderful. Thank you. Yes, Robert. We can't hear you, Robert. I floated the idea a couple of times is in our, our repurposing the high school discussion is to. Relocate the town offices. And that's a good idea. Because maintenance on that building is becoming. Increasingly difficult. And repurpose that land for housing development. For low income housing. Great. So I'm hearing maybe two things, maybe some assets in terms of existing land in the downtown area. And also Jen was taking notes, but some real specific ideas about potential future project. So definitely we'll want to bring that up again. I'm thinking in terms of sort of the glass half full versus a glass half empty, there's, there's demand. There's potential demand. So, you know, you think about. Those who are willing to put money up or take a risk in housing. You know, we've, we've got opportunity here. Physical issues separate, but. Yeah. Opportunity. Thank you, Vic. Others with any ideas. I don't know. If audio isn't working, feel free to type things into the chat. And I can read those out to the group. If there is any ideas, folks want to contribute. Robert again. I actually have more of a question. I mean, I'm, I'm disturbed that we have a lot of. Of. What were previously rental units becoming Airbnb. And I'm wondering if at the state level. There are any incentives to, to making those into low. Low income housing. I don't know that I can answer that question or candle. If we'll even answer it tonight, but I will say that sounds like maybe a potential challenge or something you want to know in the next few minutes when we move into that, and then maybe thinking about brainstorming solutions, but definitely noted as a pattern you're seeing. Thank you. Catherine. I wanted to say that another phenomenon that's happened during the pandemic when our. Our housing stock soared in value market value is that people that were previously renting. Had tenants decided to sell. And so then those people became homeless because there was nothing available for them to rent. And so the homeless population has increased in Vermont as well. And so that's what we're looking for. And so that's what we're looking for. And so that's what we're looking for. And so that's what we're looking for. And so that's what we're looking for as a result of the pandemic. Yeah. So again, it sounds like maybe some challenges. Just to know and make use of them in community. I see a hand up from Erica. I just had a question more about potential resources. Within the community. Is there any. Existing. Funding that the town has that they put forward toward housing or anything like that. No. Another thought with someone in the previous session mentioned. Great hawk. I don't know. That's a, I guess. Housing association of some sort. I'm not really clear. And it seems like it's heavily second home ownership. I didn't know if there were any opportunities there in terms of. Accessory dwelling units or something like that for a year round. Residential spaces within the same community. Great. Thank you. Is there anyone who wants to add on or speak further to that? That's a good thing for you to follow up on, but I, there are covenants in the, in the community. That may bar accessory dwellings, but that's, that's through down the line. Great. Thank you, Sandy. Maureen, did I see a hand up? Yeah. I. Yeah. One of the problems. I mean, I live right down the hill from hawk. One of the problems is that those units that are. Not their houses, they're not units really. That aren't being occupied full time or now almost all being turned into Airbnb's, which. And we have no rent real rental housing for lowly income people in our community. Very little anyway. Yeah. Hearing a couple more of those challenges. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's both in terms of trends and then maybe some of the outcomes in terms of like a lack of rental stock. Before we do do a deeper dive on challenges. I just want to do a final call again for assets, just housing stock in general, the community. And again, we're not limited to this thought around climate resiliency, but also if there are specific things that folks feel like do really relate to energy. Yeah. So I think one of our assets in terms of our housing is, is our community itself is that we have a very caring community. People who will come together and have come together to make sure folks are okay. As well as our high speed internet. That is a nice draw. And can make those who might want to come in, come together to make sure that we have a very caring community. So I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point here more permanently. A nice draw for those folks. Yeah. Wonderful. A couple of very important assets for the community and housing. Josh, I see you have a hand up. Yeah. I mean, I was going to bring this up, but. Rochester village has something that many small rural villages would like to have. And it's infrastructure. You know, there is village water and sewer so that you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, the villages of a similar size, they don't have that. So there was quite a bit of effort a few years back to bring that to town. And that is a huge asset to the community. Wonderful. Thank you. And I know Peter Gregory said their last one also very expensive asset. So very exciting that it's already in place and not something the community would need to consider. Does anyone have a final thought on assets before we move on to the next slide. So I think that's a great question. I think we're going to be free. But with that, I think we've heard a couple already around maybe occupancy. Potential challenges with Airbnb. So what challenges are facing the community in terms of housing? Again, both big picture and then also with this eye towards kind of climate economy. Yes, Linda. That's what everybody is talking about. The lack of sufficient units capstone. Has a housing counseling program and we're struggling significantly to be able to find housing. But the other thing that we're really working with the community over in Randolph and are hoping to engage further within the White River Valley. Is the issue of shelter options for individuals who are finding themselves in a situation of homelessness. They don't exist locally. So there is some work that's being done. But there's a lot more to be done. And if there's anything that's interested. On this call and learning more about the work and how we can talk about what to do here in. The Valley, I'd love to have you involved. Great. Thanks, Linda. I think it sounds like a couple of important topics, both around occupancy and shelters. And then again, maybe you being a partner moving forward. I also see that Jeff wrote in the chat that capstone is an asset. So again, for that asset list from earlier, the organization itself being a partner. And really bringing a lot of value. Vic. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just wondering if. If there's an inventory of what land is currently available among the five towns. For housing construction. You know, there's a lot of the land is either national forest or flood plain. And, you know, it's very steeply sited hills. So I think it would be good to find out. And maybe the planning commission knows this, but I think it'd be important to know just where do we stand as a partner. And I think it would be good to be able to build that. Yeah. So hearing some challenges just in terms of geographic constraints, both in terms of, you know, physical geography of being in a valley surrounded by hills, but also land ownership protected land. Do you making some movement? Does anyone have an answer to Vicks question. Briefly. I don't have an answer to Vicks question. But I had another. Yeah. I think that's one of the challenges of developing housing stocks. And this is something that we've had some conversation at the planning meetings recently about is the. The zoning regulations that restrict the development of multiple. Residences on. On one lot that require subdivision and that perhaps. Provide a way to develop a secondary dwelling without having to split their property in two or three or four. Wonderful. Thanks. So both a challenge and then maybe some potential opportunity. And looking at ways to address that. Thank you. Other challenges. Yes, Catherine. I was thinking along the same lines, just that, that doing said, so one of the questions I have for him is in terms of our infrastructure. Do we have limitations in terms of developing lots? It's one thing if you develop your own lot and it's not separated to sell it to somebody else, but if you were going to have. Tenets, you know, dwelling on another building is the zoning restrict that as well. And how does that fit in with our infrastructure limitations in the village? That's not an appropriate question for this forum, but I just wondered if that was part of our challenge. It is. That's what I was alluding to. And then what I just said that, that you are, you're currently under current zoning, not allowed to have more than one dwelling. On a individual lot. You can have a connected. A lot of people are saying that, um, that is what less than 30% of the size of the main dwelling. I think. But, um, but yeah, that's, um, There are some challenges there. Another challenge in terms of just overall and speaking to what Vic mentioned is the between national forest and state forest. I think 40% of the land mass in Rochester is, is public land and not, not open for development. So we're limited in that respect. So, um, I'm not sure what that is. Um, I'm not sure if it's a, uh, Mitch. Yes. Um, I don't know much about the town of Hancock, but I do know that the, you know, we, there's that large Chesapeake building that has been rotting into the ground. And, um, it is in a prime location. I know that, uh, there's a very antique, uh, marble, Uh, owners in the back of the build building. Um, I don't know who owns it and what the story is behind it, but, um, Rather than putting any housing back up into the hills. Um, With those two spaces. And, uh, So, um, I don't know who owns it and what the story is behind it, but, um, Rather than putting any housing back up into the hills, um, Um, With those two spaces and especially Chesapeake. I mean, it's the building is just rotting and there's, it's going nowhere, but down. So, um, you know, it would mean dismantling all of it. Um, but, um, There's a lot of land there for some affordable housing. Yeah. So challenges around. It sounds like some quality or just poor quality buildings, but this particular note around location and again, thinking about energy and this smart growth and wanting to concentrate the development. It sounds like that's particularly acute when that land is, um, right in a place that maybe would be a really good option for building. Thanks. I see Jeff and then Vic, if you have your hand up again. No. Okay. I would also bring up that, um, the age of many of the houses and Rochester village as well as and, you know, around the hollows, um, They are old. And they, in many cases have not had an efficiency standpoint and maintaining those houses, living in those houses, going forward is going to become more difficult all the time. And a lot of help and a lot of work is needed on those existing homes to keep them liveable and to make them more affordable. Great. Thanks, Jeff. So, uh, you lost you a little at the end there, but I think hearing about the age of the housing stock and, um, maybe some lack of efficiency updates and, and the real cost burden of that moving forward. Um, Maureen, I see a hand up. Yeah. I was wondering in terms of what Dune said, what regulations we have around tiny homes on wheels. I mean, they're becoming more and more popular around the country. I saw one. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm actually on Bethel mountain road in what seems like a quasi, um, trailer park. But. People could. If the regulations are different, put those kinds of dwellings on to their property. And I was just wondering, do we have regulations around those? And what are they? Yeah. I'm not sure it sounds like it might be in the same bucket around the subdivision piece. And maybe just a broader look at, you know, some of the things that we need to do in the future. Um, I don't know if that would be a challenge if that isn't specifically allowed, but maybe could be. Um, thank you. I also just want to read out, Linda has some good comments here in the chat with other challenges. Um, one that the cost of construction is a big barrier right now. Um, and in particular the need for more folks, um, working in the trades to kind of help with some of that. And then also a note that environmental concerns can also be raised. Um, other folks challenges. Yes. Sue. Well, the cost of materials, but there's also a deficit of people in the field, the construction field who are available. I mean, just try to get yourself a new roof right now. You know, or plumbing or like, I mean, it's just all the trades are, there's not enough of them so that if you want to build a house, it's even more difficult. Um, to build a house. Um, and this challenge of even if there is the desire to build some of the technicalities. Um, we'll go back to Sue. Um, is, uh, mentioned that, um, we have a very elderly population and it's getting older. All the time. And there's a lot of people who are living in big old houses and, and can't, can no longer take care of them. And you know, there just might be some. So it's a good opportunity to have a, so a challenge around folks, maybe who are in a larger residence than they need and kind of getting the support to stay there. Maureen, um, along those lines also co housing. Can we look at co housing among elderly people who might be willing to have a younger person live with them or maybe. Develop resources around that. Yeah. So maybe a potential opportunity around supporting and exploring, promoting more. Anyone who hasn't had a chance to contribute, have anything to add, you know, again, just around challenges, around housing generally, or in regard to kind of this energy efficiency piece, right? Well, with that, we'll launch kind of forward. And this is really the bulk of the rest of our discussion for the evening, which is really thinking about ideas and opportunities. And these aren't necessarily things for the select board to do, or to make a list for anyone. But what are things that you all as residents and community members throughout the region could participate in that, maybe would help make some changes. And again, it doesn't matter if it's super practical, we're gonna come back in November and think about what really are the most important ideas. So really this is just an open brainstorming session around what are ideas and opportunities for improvement for housing for, again, Rochester and the broader White River Valley region. Catherine, I heard a shuffle. Are you kicking us off? She's muted. Oh, go ahead. Oh, you're talking to me? Yeah, do you have any ideas? Oh, well, I actually was, I was struck with some of the ideas that Erica Hoffman suggested at our first breakout session with respect to the town developing some resources and even a real plan for developing housing, including a revolving loan fund. And I just would like Erica to speak more to that because it had potential, I thought. Wonderful. If it's okay with you, Catherine, I'm gonna say let's write down that idea of developing some municipal resources and Erica at the end, when she reflects back, I bet can share some more details about that. So thank you. Other folks with ideas? Yes, Robert. Well, as I have a building owner in town, and I guess I will be looking for resources to either redevelop my office, which my business is winding down into either low income housing or offices. And I don't have an obvious place to go to for seeing what resources are available. So I think making is sort of centralizing and making those sorts of resources available to the community. So we know, and it can be just posters or whatever, of here's a quick list of if you wanna do this and this and this, here's where you can go to see if there's help that you can get. Great. So it sounds like some go-to guides and resources. Can you say a little more would those be for specific projects or for renovations? That's specific projects. I have a building, it's gonna have to come up to standards for either, if I was gonna develop it for low income housing, multiple units, that's a challenging task in my mind. Otherwise I would go into develop it as offices. But again, I don't know what are the obstacles and I don't know what are the resources available to do that. Thank you. So in particular thinking about this idea to convert something into housing, what are kind of those steps and checks boxes that need to be filled out. Thank you. Linda. A couple of things. One is some of the things that have been brought up as potential options around housing are boarding houses. I went back to the old boarding house model. Some towns have zoning issues again. So I don't know if that's an issue for Randa or for Rochester or not. I don't think that's just an outstanding. But that might be a model that could be adopted, especially in some of these bigger older homes. Another issue that was kind of interesting that came out of housing team meeting that I was at was there was a developer there and they asked that a lot of tenants that would move out and move into different regions out of like the Lebanon area. And the reason that people were moving, I found was there wasn't nightlife. So nowhere to go to meet people. So something to really think about as we're having these conversations about how to revitalize our area is what's available for entertainment and that enrichment to your life. If what we're trying to attract is families, young kids, what do we have to offer beyond school? What are the fun things and what are the things that people will want to engage in outside of work? So that's another employment opportunity potentially as well. But just a couple of thoughts. Thanks Linda. A lot of different opportunities. Again, really running the gamut. And I know we talked on music and culture as actually an asset in our last session. So really interesting to think about how to leverage that to support families in the community. Midge. I don't know if I broke any laws or not. Doom would have to let me know about this, but I ran a boarding house for probably 25 years. I rented rooms in my house and I've had 99 different people live here for that 25 years span. There was people came in, there was as little as just the night and all the way up to four and five years at a clip. So we shared common living spaces such as the living room in the kitchen and dining room, but basically I rented the bedroom and the use of all those other spaces. And it worked out really, really well. It was a great way of utilizing keeping, keeping a large old home. And had lots of single folks moving through here at the time, people in transition. That was the main key. And whether it be a divorce or getting out of school, I had students from the law school in South Royalton live here and people who worked all over the region as well as local singles moms with kids. So it's an option. I mean, as I said, I don't know what the zoning is as far as that's concerned, but a lot of these big old houses, it is a way of making an income, keeping your home and sharing your home. There are a lot of big old houses in this town and with single or only double occupancy. So... That's great, Mej. Thank you. I think a compelling anecdote around, this may be being worth investigation. And again, clearly as a model that works and maybe is there opportunities to expand it. Yeah, I highly recommend it. Wonderful, thank you. I see Catherine. Well, speaking of those kind of houses, there's one two doors down for me that's in unbelievably good condition has been sitting vacant since April. It's got a huge backyard. I'm just wondering how we can get someone in there. It's owned by a bank at this point, to actually translate that into housing opportunities for the village, whether it's a shared living model like the park house or something else. But, and the backyard connects to another empty house that is owned by somebody, but there's a whole row that going along School Street and Bellamount Road that is all potential housing. So it sounds like some opportunities around potentially investigating ways to get some occupancy and existing structures or figuring out why folks aren't living there. Well, I mean, if you put that together with Robert's idea of re-locating that town offices down to the school building, then that would be an incredible elbow of potentially affordable housing. And it actually connects up with other affordable housing units that already exist here in Rochester behind the old firehouse and then one on the other side of Fred Wilts. So there is affordable housing and there's potential for more if we as a community can realize that we need this and maybe invest in it. Great. A good nugget there on the end around maybe some opportunities for community dialogue and really identifying and need for housing and building some consensus and momentum around that. Vic. Just to sort of take what we talked about earlier in terms of available land and put it into an action step, which would be to inventory the available property among the five towns upon which housing can be built and where there are zoning restrictions, what might that further open up if those restrictions are relaxed? Great, thank you. So an inventory of potential locations for building and then also doing that kind of next step consideration of really what are the full details in terms of maybe infrastructure zoning to actually make something be plausible. Thank you. I'm also just noting we have a comment discussing, again, the real need a wait list of over 90 individuals for one bedroom apartments. So again, that asset of potentially wanting to be in the community, but some of the challenges around finding places to house those folks. Anyone again who hasn't contributed yet who has ideas for anything the community could think about with relation to housing? I guess one thing that maybe it was brought up earlier but the extent to which housing has been bought up for use as Airbnb units is definitely a growing problem. Great. It's not a solution, but I don't know if we'd brought that up, that is a stressor on the housing stock. Yeah, stressor on housing stock and so maybe thinking about action ideas of further understanding that in terms of maybe doing some studies or working with folks and then maybe there are ways to think about a policy solution around that if it is determined that it's something that's impacting the community. Vic, I saw a hand and then Catherine. It's related to what Dune is saying and this crosses over to economic development issue is our established hotels and ends have to conform to various fire code regulations, et cetera. Not so Airbnb's and maybe a way to sort of address both issues, if their economic incentives or disincentives be put in place to sort of restructure that the balance for those two sets of our economy, make more apartment availability and more fairness between the competition between Airbnb's and the bed and breakfast and hotels. So it sounds like there's really an opportunity to go to town with fire code. I don't know if we have anyone on the fire on the call, but maybe they're really excited about that. That's great though. Thank you, Vic, thinking about again, what are those consistencies between the different types of housing options and different types of uses? Yes, Catherine. That's exactly what I was gonna say was to put to and Vic said that the combination of the impact of Airbnb on available housing, but also on our accommodations industry that have to meet regulations that Airbnb renters do not have to meet. And I guess the other thing that I've heard a lot from my friends who are landlords is that the laws that regulate the landlord tenant situation, and I'm not a landlord, so I'm telling you from the experiences that are reported to me, is that they're heavily in favor of tenants so that people who have been burned by tenants and it took an enormous amount of resources to actually get rid of that tenant, have been afraid to rent anymore. And so maybe in terms of the state of Vermont looking at greater equity that considers what the landlord's risks are. Great. Thanks, Catherine. So also, we've been talking kind of generally, but some folks brought up, I see landlord risk pool has jumped up as an idea, so maybe that's the action opportunity from that idea, Catherine, that's from Linda, but also thinking about, we've been talking broadly about housing, some new construction, maybe some retrofitting with thought to kind of climate economy and resilience long-term. Are there any ideas folks have, particularly focused on the idea of maybe not just how do we address housing, but how do we also best position this whole area for the future? Robert. Well, I think that we need to keep in mind that we want to try to keep the cluster development so that we're within walking distance, but not all our communities in the Quintown are within walking distance of each other, so we need to address, not necessarily transportation out of the valley, but transportation within the valley. Great. Thank you, Robert. So opportunity around clustering development and also around thinking about transportation solutions and maybe how they can build some of that connectivity, particularly to maybe more rural areas. Jeff. So this, I guess, is on the challenge side of things more so than an idea for a solution, but we really need to find a way to connect low-income homeowners with the capstone programs, the weatherization program, and we need more participation in those programs for at market rate as well. Great. I saw a thumbs up reaction from Linda around the opportunity to connect folks with existing resources, so great idea. Thank you. Catherine. Well, I was reading recently in the Herald about Vermont Climate Council's objectives that are being formulated and I don't know the certain date they'd like to have net zero on all new constructions and at another certain date, they wanna make sure that the seller of the home has met all the updated energy upgrades before they sell their house and that cost would not be passed on to the buyer. So that leaves people who own homes, especially as Sandy said, the great older home stock that we have with a huge financial burden, especially when we have this large retirement population and the cost of upgrading. So I feel that I think we all like to move towards more energy efficient houses, but the means by which to do that is just, is not, it's not accessible to most people, people who are working on Vermont wages. I'm not talking about second homers. I'm talking about people who've been, you know, living and working in Vermont. So it sounds like some opportunity to figure out ways to make upgrades more accessible to folks who may be lower income. And again, maybe some of that is some of those municipal options Erica talked about or just some other ideas, but figuring out ways to remove some of the cost burden. I'm not even talking about lowering middle class people, you know, who are on retirement incomes who have it all balanced, can't afford the, you know, to go into the mortgage situation again and everything to bring their homes up to that particular standard. So, you know, well, it's great for the climate council to think of these things. We need to create the infrastructure. It's like, if everybody bought electric cars, we couldn't charge them. I mean, there's got to be some level of building more infrastructure so that the changes that need to happen to accommodate climate change can actually happen. Great, thanks Catherine. Christine. This is something that I think has been revolving in a couple of our conversations, but I don't forgive me if I'm forgetting the name, like a revolving municipal loan that would offer maybe low rate loans to homeowners to do the necessary efficiency upgrades or to construct and or build or renovate existing large homes into units for lower income housing. I think that would be a great, that's an idea anyway for helping us with that sort of cost piece that seems to get in the way. Thanks, Christine. Robert? I do want to say that there was a revolving fund. I don't know what its current state, I haven't been on the slack guard for a little while. Dune, do you remember what its state is? I'm not sure what revolving fund you're talking about. You're not talking about the rebuild Rochester. No, no, there was a revolving loan fund. We'll probably need to check on that. The other thing I wanted just as a general comment, we need to look at long-term, this has always been a problem in looking at schools or town resources and such. Those projects which have been most successful have been also the far scene. We need to be thinking not only for the immediate for a few years, but also five years, 10 years, 15 years down the line. We're going to have a demographic shift. There's, we have an aging population, but they're going to age out of the community potentially if we don't have resources to accommodate them. And if we don't have the means to transition them into different housing and care situations. Thanks, Robert. Maybe one or two more ideas from folks, again, about opportunities and then want to make sure we have a lot of time for our visiting team to reflect back. Other ideas, again, ideas that maybe haven't been brought up thus far or anyone who hasn't had a chance to contribute one more. I think we can get one more before we go to the visiting team. I know they are enticing and you all just are riveted and excited to get there, but I think one more idea or opportunity. Yes, Jeff, we can't hear you, Jeff. Yep, go ahead. Well, one of the things about weatherizing is that weatherizing can't be off-short. It has to happen locally. And so we can and should be looking at housing from a standpoint, not just of the housing itself, but the income and the good jobs that could be created by getting a real campaign and a lot of homes upgraded. Basically in the state, the Office of Economic Opportunity has been where weatherization services existed, at least in times past, and it was part jobs program as well as weatherization. And we just, we need that model to work here in this community. Thanks, Jeff. A wonderful note to end on kind of this dual idea of both supporting weatherization, but also looking at the economic development and jobs opportunities from those positions that would be doing that work and how that can also support communities. Thank you. Well, with that, like I said, I wanna just give a little extra time just so we can make sure to get a little more time with our visiting team. So again, just thank you all for the ideas. We're gonna hear folks reflect back, but also just know that Jenna has captured all of this and this will am track if anyone can hear it. Sorry. You know, come back to you all and you'll be able to vote and prioritize at another meeting. So first off as promised is Josh Hanford. Hello, thanks. You know, since I wasn't in the last one and there's a lot of folks in here from the last one, I'm gonna kind of combine a few of these reflections because I think, you know, both the assets are really related to, you know, the isolation of the Valley. You know, a lot of those are unique to Rochester and the community you've done a lot to be self-sufficient, you know, to be resilient and sustainable and have built your own systems to deal with that. And then on the flip side, a lot of the challenges are that same thing. You're isolated, you're a long way from jobs or other resources. And a common theme is that because this area covers three different counties, you're often flip-flopping between different resource providers. You know, I think with the RPC and the RDC, they actually cover the whole region collectively, but that's not the case with the various non-profit affordable housing providers. You're on this fringes of three different providers, Wind & Windsor Housing Trust, Down Street and Community Development and Addison County. And so you lack sort of a consistent go-to housing, affordable housing developer partner, if you will, because of that. And, but yet some of the ideas are sort of the same. I think, you know, on the first, the Economic Development Jobs Transportation, it was interesting, a lot of the assets, we're talking about the beauty and the natural resources and outdoor recreation. But when we talked about jobs and opportunities, that didn't come up once. And I think that, you know, we're all talking about these, you know, professional, high-tech jobs and missing right before us is, you know, the National Forest, the trails, all this work and that there are economic opportunities there. There are jobs there. It's part of the reason why you're having more short-term rentals. It's part of the reason why the housing stock is stressed and there's opportunities for those economic development and those jobs to serve the local community. You know, kids coming out of high school, folks that don't need, you know, an advanced degree can be an opportunity and a business owner in that field. And so I think that's an area to look at. And the one piece about sort of this five-town economic development, community development coordinator, I think is a real important thing to explore. You all have opportunities with the ARPA money, the local money to choose what to use that for. You know, that's a perfect place to everyone if it's a common need across the whole valley to do something with that money and make that a priority. That's right before all of you. I think switching into the housing, this I wrote down on the economic development side is that, you know, I lived in Rochester for 14 years. So I know a little bit of, and what I experienced was sort of the modest second homes that were built in Rochester in the 70s and 80s turned into the full-time affordable housing for the local working folks in town. That all over the Harvey's developments, all over the places, yes, there's second homes mixed in, but those modest second homes turned into your full-time homes and there hasn't been full-time home building since then. You know, modest, affordable homes for folks, all as you're getting is more dispersed higher end homes. And, you know, unfortunately, some of the land use regulations and things have changed. I don't think you're gonna see another Harvey's development up in the flat hollows where you can build those sort of homes. So you've got to focus where the infrastructure is. You know, the water and sewer in Randolph Village is the prime opportunity. And, you know, I don't know the limits, but I would argue that most of those are set to the homes that are there, three, four bedroom homes all over the village that have one or two people living in them. So likely you have the capacity to add ADUs, to add small rental units. And yes, the zoning can and should be fixed. There's incentives out there. We have them through the department. Zoning for great neighborhoods, it's called. There's planning, there's grants that come with it. There's a model for towns to upgrade their zoning bylaws to be pro-housing growth. Because the reality is some of these other big properties, whether it's the Hancock property that had a lot of investment in it with the state tried to save that years ago, the challenge you're gonna run into there if you build 30 units, there's no water or sewer. So, you know, you're not gonna be able to get that density there to make that a cost-effective solution. So the little small infill developments in your infrastructure area, which is your village, which is your smart growth location, which is, you know, less travel and, you know, carbon burning and all that are the opportunities that I see. And what's interesting about the short-term rentals is you heard from Midge on here, they're not always short-term. Folks go in and out of short-term and long-term. Some people stay for months at a time. So just be careful about saying those are all just for people that are here for a weekend. Many people stay in those and rent for months at a time. And you're right about the challenges of the tenant landlord law and some of the experiences with COVID with the year and a half eviction moratorium. There's a lot of folks that have said, I'm never running again. And there's a demand for people to come here. I'm gonna switch to short-term rental. So another thing that the town can explore with ARPA funds and other places is incentives to help people make these small apartments with the condition that they're for long-term, affordable housing. The state has a program that we do that. It's one, there's a Rolving Loan Fund that already exists that's available through Wind & Windsor Housing Trust who serves this region. There's funding to help people fix up their homes and to make apartments available for folks, grants and low-interest loans. So that exists, there's resources that could be shared there. But a housing committee or a housing study, there's also templates for communities to form a housing committee and what the goals of those committees usually are. One of them is a needs assessment, available land, developable land. And I think that Catherine mentioned it. It's surprising how much affordable housing is in Rochester Village. She has done a lot of work to ensure that people can find affordable housing and have vouchers to pay for rent. And I think it's an under-appreciated sort of, no piece of data for the town. So yeah, I think that was my just here. So thank you. Thanks, Josh. Nice to have the local expertise in addition to the statewide expertise. So appreciate you sharing. We'll go to Alex next. Yeah, thank you. It's pretty incredible the similarities I heard from the last group to this group. Again, it seems like the Village Center is an area for opportunity, but it's also kind of, it is a challenge, right? Of finding the spaces within the existing communities for growth. What I heard a lot in this group was the willingness for innovation and change and kind of looking for new ideas to solve these kind of common challenges. So I think that sounds great. And as Josh said, with that kind of smart growth within the existing community, you're tackling a lot of the other issues that we're talking about of, reducing our carbon footprint, promoting the downtown businesses and things like that. So I also heard that a lot of the challenges are local challenges, right? It's local zoning restrictions. It's different possible funding opportunities from possibly existing revolving funds. The need for local contractors, we're seeing that all over the state, but really I think that's a local issue, right? Of working with the trades program at a high school or something like that to bring in more young people into the trades. Again, I think you're all completely up for the task, which is something that you should really take stock of and appreciate that you have a community that's that willing to work together. So again, thank you. Great. Thank you, Alex. Really appreciate it. We'll go to Dan next. Thanks, and like Josh, I'm actually gonna add a few things from the transportation portion as well. And so that didn't quite come out in all my comments. And so one thing that I heard, just for the transportation side, like there's this lack of public transit, you know, it's true there's one bus a day. And so I suspect ridership like ridership statewide is way down, you know, we're only at like 50% ridership anywhere in Vermont. And so I'm sure it's low demand and that schedule, you know, it's probably not ideal for a lot of people. And so I was looking at it before this meeting. And so, but it's also a resource. I mean, if, you know, we talk a lot about first mile, last mile and transportation, right? And so if that public transit line is your hub, right? Is there a way to bring community members into that center to access that public transit to get to some of the, you know, medical or jobs or we're just shopping that they need outside of the community. And so for people that don't have cars or have one car in their family. And so it's something to think about, you know, if you think about transportation, you know, we also talk a lot about how land use and transportation go hand in hand, right? Strong, dense land use can encourage transportation, especially public transit to exist there, right? You've got a lot of people, got a lot of demand. We can run a public transit line more effectively. You know, you can also bring in more people interested in like say switching over, you know? So if a public transit line is there, then they don't all have to own, you know, a car. You know, we then make that more efficient, you know, saving green house gas emissions, you know? And so when you go down, you know, and if housing and switching around your zoning really comes to the, you know, the top of the cream here, you know, think about making it more friendly for public transit as well, as well as people that may wanna commute from your community. And so, you know, can you get, you know, can you offer a place for them to park, to make it easy? Is there a community center? I'll, you know, the talk was a little bit about, and I'm sorry, my notes are a little scattered here. You know, there's a couple of community centers throughout that have this high speed internet. That's a great place for community members to come, you know, and do their telework, right? And so they don't have to do the transportation every single day. And then, you know, the last thing I'll just mention, you know, is that, you know, if you're gonna increase the density in the village, please think about pedestrian safety, you know, it's sidewalks, it's, you know, bus stops, you know, improving and making that more accessible would need to be done as well. And so. Thank you so much, Dan. And we will turn to Erica as our last visiting team member. I don't, I only have a couple of really discrete things to add to what everybody's already said here. One being, it seemed like there was some thought that there may be a revolving loan funds lurking somewhere. I would find out about that. That's who knows what it was set up to do, but for both the economic or any of these issues, it might be a resource that is available. So find out more about that. Additionally, you might wanna look at as a whole region, you know, the valley itself, there's a model that's coming out of the upper valley now where the private sector has come together to establish specifically a housing fund. It wouldn't have to be the same value or anything like that, but there is a model there and they're working with the community loan funds of both Vermont and New Hampshire to provide some structure with that. So it might be looking at how that model might work for a level of funding that would be more appropriate for the Rochester, the greater Rochester, the Quintown area. There was a comment about environmental concerns. One thing, very discreet item, the regulations within the state have changed in terms of the Brella program, which is the Brownfields redevelopment, a lot of other letters, which I can't remember what they stand for right now, I should remember. However, the changes that previously, if you did not enter the Brella program prior to ownership, your options for redevelopment funding and environmental assessment funding were extremely limited. Some of those channels have been changed. So specifically for properties, I heard somebody talking about a property that was rotting into the ground, which I always go, oh, that might have some brownfield issues. Look into what's happening with the Brella program and that's something that your RDC or RPC can help you with. And finally, a very discreet thing, the Keys of the Valley, two rivers and several, two rivers out of Quiche and several other local entities have put forward this resource. I keep getting muted. Can people hear me? Okay. Keys of the Valley, I'll put it in the chat. Thank you so much, Erica. And just in time, it sounds like the other group has finished up as well. So we'll be heading back into the room. Thank you all. Appreciate all the comments and feedback. Hi, everybody. Welcome back. I'm just gonna bring things to a close and do it really quickly because I know we all have things to get onto here. First of all, huge appreciation to everybody. I suspect you have other things that you might prefer to do on a Thursday evening, a nice Thursday evening than be on a screen. But what you're doing is you're showing a commitment to the place you live in. And that's what our privilege is at the Council on World Development is to be part of conversations where people come together and think about their future and think beyond their own home and family and think about their community and what they can contribute to their community. And I will say this, in the conversations I've had as we've started this process, the thing I'm just struck with, it's true across the state of Vermont. It's really true in your valley. You all have a deep shared commitment to the place that you live in. You feel passionate about it. And not only are you passionate about the place you live that is a really beautiful place, you also are willing to roll up your sleeves and do work for that place. And that is a powerful thing to be a witness to at the Council on World Development. Our next step in this process, as I've said, is gonna be November 1st. Our plan and intention is to do that in person where we'll gather, we'll grapple with the ideas that you've come up with and you will decide on some priorities for this work moving forward. And any help that you all can provide as we look ahead to that November 1st, how do we broaden that conversation? Who's not in this room who should be a part of this conversation? We will be a partner in spreading the word and doing that. And so stay tuned as we give you sort of the tools to spread the word to all of the Quintown region about these next steps. Tremendous appreciation to the partners, our visiting team who took a couple hours out of their busy lives to be part of this conversation tonight. And in particular to all of you for being engaged and involved. Really appreciate it. And with that, let's say good night. And we will see you. And I do see some questions about logistics. We'll be in touch about that as we figure out the parameters of that event on November 1st. So thank you so much everybody.