 first community meeting that is post the era of Paul Costello. For those of you who don't know, Paul was our long time your 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 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. We'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 probably convene 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 wanna work on and then to think about, okay, now that we've identified those priorities, how are we gonna 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 wanna 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 wanna 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 gonna 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. You know, 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 household 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, 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 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. You know, with that I want 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 fights 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 late comer I was running but 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. Cause 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 in 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 worked 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 cause 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 cause 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-Pice 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 Kaloske and we will be facilitating and serving as scribes for tonight's event. All right, Nick, if you could go to the next slide, 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 because 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 room. So with that, maybe we'll just go ahead and get started and people can trickle in as they get sent our way. So good evening, everyone. I'm Jenna Fulaski. I am the Community and Policy Manager with the Council on Rural Development. And I'm gonna be facilitating for this session on economic development, job creation and transportation. And we've got a lot to cover in the next, less than an hour, that's a lot of problems to solve there. And I've got Nick Kramer here with me from BCRD who's gonna be capturing notes. And then you all were introduced to our visiting team as we were coming into the session and we have Dan Currier from B-Trans with us, Josh Hanford who probably, it sounds like many of you already know from the Department of Housing and Community Development and Erica Hoffman Keith from Green Mountain Economic Development Corporation. I think that's our three. And really the goal of this session, like Don said, is start to capture your ideas for the future and for the climate economy in the Rochester area. And so a couple of things to keep in mind in this conversation, one is that we're talking about the Rochester area. So we wanna kind of think broadly of that regional perspective. And also we're gonna cover a lot, economic development, job creation, transportation and tonight isn't, we're not here to make decisions on those things, we're here to just brainstorm potential ideas for the future. And then those ideas are gonna be captured tonight and kind of all pulled together with ideas from that in-person forum, with ideas from the surveys and then next month come back to you all with here's what you shared in those forums and then get a chance to review and vote and set priorities among the ideas. So the great thing about tonight is that it's just a brainstorming session and we can think big and we can get creative and that's okay. And we just wanna get it all kind of on the wall so that next month when you come back to review you'll have some different ideas to choose from. I think unfortunately, well, maybe let's do this. Let's do a really quick round of introductions cause it's really nice to just hear who's in the room but our time is pretty limited. So we're gonna have to go kind of speedy through and I'll just call on you. And if you could kind of unmute and just name and the town we live in, I'd say if we're not all probably Rochester residents in this room. So let's start with Monica. Do you wanna introduce yourself? Sure. I'm Monica Collins. I'm wearing many different hats here. I'm a select board member from Hancock, long-time resident of the Valley and also part of the Feeding the Valley Alliance. Great. Thank you. And Vic. Hi, I'm Vic Robato. I'm a retired hospital administrator working in a number of volunteer capacities along with Monica and Feeding the Valley Alliance is one of them. And live in Rochester. Great. Senator Clarkson. I'm Allison Clarkson. I am one of your three state senators and I live in Woodstock and I serve as vice chair of Senate Economic Development Housing and General Affairs. And I have the pleasure of having an 8 a.m. meeting with Josh tomorrow morning. Excellent. Kinley. Hi, my name is Kinley Tenor and I live here in Rochester and work in recreation and leisure industry also active in youth engagement. Excellent. Representative Haas. No longer. Sandy Haas retired representative, but I am on the Rochester Planning Commission and I live in Rochester. Great, thanks. That looks like maybe Paula and Kevin was there. Yeah, I'm Paula Doherty. Kevin is my husband. We have a small farm here in Rochester. Wonderful. Now, a few of you have number ones for your name and so I don't know your name. I think let's go with, so if you have a one, either go ahead and speak up or rename yourself back to your name and I can call on you. But let's first go to Linda. Hi, I'm Linda Anderson. I am the Capstone Community Action and the resident of Hancock. I work on the Dean of the Alliance with Vic and Monica. I work with our rec committee in Hancock and my husband is floating around somewhere listening as well. Great. There's a, it looks like Anna and Diane. Hey, Anna and Diane here. We live in, well, Diane lives in Rochester. I am her daughter. I live in Hancock. Diane ran the old Hancock Hotel for a long time and I've just moved back to the area and I work remotely and mom is retired. Great. Catherine. Catherine Shankman. Catherine. You're frozen. You're muted. Or frozen actually, I think. Frozen, yeah. Oh, maybe I messed her up with the renaming ask. Well, let's go to Midge and we'll come back to Catherine. The unmute. Sorry, you got it. I'm Midge Scanlon, live in Rochester, long time now and an artist by trade profession. And yeah. Great. Thanks. And then I imagine our other number one here is Barbara Shendon, Rochester resident and Rochester Public Library Board and great owner association board. Excellent. Am I missing anyone? My name is Evelyn Brooks. Uh-oh. There you are. Go ahead. Yes. Hi, I'm Evelyn Brooks. Mama retired here in Rochester. Great. Thank you, Evelyn. And Catherine, are you there? Yes, I am. Great. I'm having a very unstable internet connection. So if you called me earlier, I apologize to Catherine Shankman. I also sit on a number of volunteer boards in Rochester where I live. I also work full-time for the Council on Aging. Great. Thanks so much. I think we've all experienced the unstable internet situation at some point in the last couple of years. All right, well, let's go ahead and get started. So in the next, we've got until 7.15, so we'll have to be kind of rapid fire brainstorming this evening. But economic development, job creation and transportation, first we're gonna kind of start with assets in that area, like what's working well, what's going well in Rochester, in the Rochester area around those topics, and then shift into some challenges. And then we wanna spend as much time as we can really in that idea space of, what can we do to take advantage of those assets and to address some of those challenges that we identify? So why don't we start with assets first and spend a little bit of time? Does somebody wanna start with what's going well in the area now, as you think about economic development and job creation? And either, I should say, either go ahead and use the raised hand function in Zoom or unmute and chime in or give me a wave if you're on the camera. Anyway, it's fun. PC fiber, high-speed internet. Great, thanks a bit. High-speed internet. Awesome. Other thoughts? Bonnie, did you have something to share? No, I'm just joining in, but I'm taking care of my four-year-old and two-year-old at the same time. So I was just gonna try to listen. Great. Right now, we're just focused on assets around economic development. Catherine, go ahead. Well, I believe that the Ridgeline Outdoors Collective is a tremendous asset. They were formerly called Rosta. We are certainly developing Rochester as a biking destination, and Kinley is very involved with that. And I think it has a tremendous asset, not only the trails, but everything that organization is doing to develop the community. Wonderful, thank you. Other thoughts on assets? Barbara? Barbara, you'll need to unmute. Yeah, I'm sorry. I think all the restaurants that we have in town are an asset. I know when I go to other towns that people are always happy to stop by either the cafe or the bakery or Maple Soul or Huntington House. I don't think a lot of towns have that. I just feel badly right now that a lot of people show up on Monday or Tuesday and nothing is open. You kind of an asset and a little bit of a challenge there as well. So we'll make sure to capture that as we get into challenges too. Other thoughts on what's working well now? Monica? Yeah, I would say just by the number of people that are here in these small communities, I would say engaged community members. Great, thank you. That is an asset. Allison? I think you have an incredibly rich cultural and artistic, I think you have great cultural and artistic assets. Any others before we shift to the challenges? Vic? Just the natural beauty of the area. It's a tremendous asset that kind of relates to what Catherine is saying about the Ridgeline Outdoor Collective and being able to connect with that in a very tangible way. But I mean, this is a tremendous asset, I think. Killings. A small town feel of our village. Small town feel. Monica, you had a hand up? Yeah, I just wanted to kind of, not quite sure how to phrase it, but I would say the interconnectedness of all the communities. Because I know that the majority of folks here are from Rochester, but there's so many connections in between with the adjacent communities. And I'm really happy that this effort was expanded out to include us. Great. Evelyn, did you have a hand up? It looked like... No, I didn't, but I would echo what Vic said about it. I'm looking out the window and I'm thinking you can't help but say that this is the biggest asset. But also to echo the last statement, for years we've tried to do things up and down the valley for the Quintowns. And we've called ourselves the Quintowns. And I think we need to develop that because we have so much to share with each other. So that's all I have to say about that. Yeah, that's great Evelyn. And hold on to, that's kind of, I feel like edging towards potential maybe ideas as we think about action too. Like one of the ways that we could really do that and expand on that. Years ago, God, can't think of his name. The big artist in Brandon. Warren Kimball. Yes, did, ran too, thank you. Ran two wonderful, or maybe more, three art projects up and the valley towns came together for them. So that was really good, you know? Yeah. Excellent, thank you. It looks like Anna or Diane has a hand up. Yeah, I was just gonna sort of also echo a little bit. Just being such a small community, I've always felt that it's a really supportive community. And I think that that's really important. I think in bigger places, you don't necessarily have that as an asset. People kind of do their own things. And while we have a certain level of, you know, that in the winter time, I would say, I do think that we do really benefit from a neighborly support network that I think is really unique and really special. Great, thank you. Kevin? I have this Catherine again. Oh, sorry. Catherine, Kevin just had a hand up. So I'm calling on them first and I'll come to you next. Thank you, Jenna. I was talking with a young mother this morning who has kids in school and she told me that our elementary school has broken a hundred kids for the first time in a really long time. And I think the school is one of our greatest assets and it's good to see it going in the right direction. Great, thank you. And Catherine? I was gonna say the school as well. I also wanted to say that, and maybe it's because we are located in this narrow valley. We are a resilient community. Our recovery from Irene was remarkable. We have outstanding volunteers who work in the community. There is tremendous generosity and concern for the more vulnerable folks in the community. I know that because I sit on the Rebuild Rochester Foundation. And so I'm very keenly aware of the help that we get from those who donate to that fund. Great, thank you. So, Midge, how about the last word on assets and then I've got to shift to challenges. Go ahead, Midge. I'm gonna say the park house, I think, is really quite an asset for the community. It allows people to transition from aging in their home. It's still to age in the community itself. And it allows them to interact with the community and not be isolated in any fashion. So I think it's a tremendous asset. Great, we can interact with them. What's that, Kath? Pierce Hall. Yep. So I always hate to cut off assets because I know it sounds like there are many in this area and I appreciate you sharing those. But I do want to shift and spend a little time to think about what the challenges might be. And so as you think about economic development, do you think about jobs in the region, transportation in the region, what are some challenges that you see? Midge? Robert, next. I see problems with the trades that there just are not folks coming up into the trades whether it be plumbing or electric. There seem to be a lot of carpenters, but we can always use more. But basically the trades in general, I think are have dwindled and I'd like to see work on developing that and bringing it back into the community as a viable option for employment. Yeah, thank you. Robert, you had a hand up and then Catherine. Yes, I mean, as someone who's been doing work remotely here since, you know, for over 30 years, there are some things which have been solved in terms of communications and such, but I think that we're going to be facing in the short-term problems with daycare and adult daycare, and in the longer-term the problems of lack of affordable housing as we're tending to have a gentrification of the valley. Yeah, got it, thank you. Catherine? Again, if I repeat something, it's because my internet is unstable, but I think one of the problems we have here is an imbalanced demographic with a very, very heavy end on aging residents. And I would like to broadcast or figure out how to attract more families. I'm glad that our elementary school has increased, but we need to go further than that. And we also have this high school building that several of us are working on a repurposing task force and we're now launching a feasibility study to vet the proposals that were set forth in that grant. So that is a challenge, but it's also an asset and we'll see how the town goes with that. Yeah, excellent, thank you. Linda? Limited public transportation options for people. Yeah, is there, can I ask, are there transportation options? We have the tri-valley transit, which provides limited service for folks who are commuting or like a Dartmouth region, but it's very, very limited. Okay, and limited in the sense of, like just like limited routes and just not. Yes, yes. Okay, great, thank you. Other challenges? Monica? Yes, it used to be that most people worked in town and that really isn't the case as much anymore. I know my commute is 40 minutes to an hour every day each way. And I think that really affects our impact on climate change. So I think along with transportation and jobs and affordable housing, I think all of those things really go together. Mm-hmm, thank you. Linda again? One of the things I've seen in various areas that I've done work in is struggle with communication, especially because we tend to be a bedroom community. So we are living outside the community during the day and it's hard sometimes to figure out how to connect with people and get them to know about the different resources and activities that are happening locally. Yeah, thank you. Dick? The sort of a spinoff on the demographics of there, which was mentioned previously, which is that the tax base is not growing and that becomes a increasingly a problem year to year as the towns try to struggle to just survive with very basic services. And in some cases we're getting into the, what I call the seed corn, and eating that instead of replanting. So we need to find ways to expand the tax base and whether it's the appropriate kinds of employers coming to the area or just population growth or other forms of gain tax revenue. But it's becoming increasingly a burden on people on fixed income particularly. And it's a real challenge. Yeah, thank you. And welcome to Kate. We're just talking about challenges around economic development and transportation in the area. Other challenges that people wanna share before we start to think about ways to address these? What about, we heard about the trades, people kind of not coming up in the trades. Are there other challenges around jobs or workforce or job creation that come to mind? Anna or Dan? I think, you know, having a lot of people doing seasonal or gig work can make it difficult for economic development. It's just not as reliable. As we know, as we've seen throughout COVID, you know, I think people in the service industry especially were greatly affected. And I think not having a lot of consistent year round well-paying jobs in this area can make it difficult for any kind of consistency for a lot of community members and can make it hard for people with lower incomes to make ends meet. And does it seem, and maybe this is an obvious question but just to be clear, it doesn't seem like there's a large part of the population in that region that is doing that seasonal and gig work. Is that fairly common? I mean, I don't know that I have an accurate overall picture but I would say in my experience growing up here, like I have definitely, that would be my experience and witness of people that I know growing up and community members that sort of continue to struggle. Do others have reflections on it, Vic? Just what I would call sort of the chicken or egg kind of phenomena in that there are multiple variables that determine our ability to mount economic development and housing, whether it's housing or recruitment or childcare or whatever, how do you get all of these going at one time so that you got everything you need to attract those elusive young families? So it's just, it's a really naughty problem. I don't know what the strategy is for, what comes first, second, third, or if indeed it's a matter of doing it all at the same time but that's certainly real world. Yeah, that's a great question and certainly not the only community grappling with that very question, I would say. Yeah, Katherine, you have a hand up and I think I saw Monica after that. Well, I think that because of the pandemic we're experiencing an extraordinary shortage of workers just around a lot of fields but in my particular field, elder care, it is definitely making an impact whether it's nursing facilities who are even taking people in rehab, whether we have enough home health workers to actually come in and provide physical therapy. By the way, that's another asset. We have a physical therapist clinic and a health clinic here in town but the shortage of workers in general whether it's the trades like Midge mentioned or people who are providing childcare or elder care, it is never been as competitive in terms of people wanting to employ and not enough workers so that salaries are going up big time but they still can't fill the slots. Yeah. So people are leaving and that's affecting our post office too and this is not just particular to Rochester but right now all the mail is going to Nashor, New Hampshire. So you can't even rely on Vermont to Vermont mail going in any kind of normal way and it's the private transportation companies who are hiring truckers and our mail carriers. So it's a very big change and it's got a huge impact not just only on a small town but on larger towns as well but because we are so far from so many services smaller towns are even affected more greatly, I feel. Yeah, good. Thank you. Monica, you want to hand it up? Yeah, I think Anna really hit on something and that is the lack of really good paying professional jobs if we want to attract families then you want to be able to work in town so that you can spend time with your kids go to their games if there are no professional positions that pay well then it makes it difficult. I mean, that was my experience here and so I work out of town. Yeah, thank you. Anna? I mean, related to that too is affordable housing for young people and not being able to get a well-paying job here it makes it difficult to buy a house here and with the rental market being what it is that's super difficult too. So even finding having moved back here luckily my mom rents rooms above the Old Hancock Hotel so I am able to rent one from her but there was one on Craigslist, literally nothing no options at all. So I can definitely see that as a huge challenge if we're trying to attract young people or young families. Yeah, Robert you had a hand raise it looked like looks like and then Paula and Kevin after that. Yes, I think in terms of getting more people working I think we are very isolated here and I think we need to bring the training to the workers here we need to have bring training opportunities to this Valley. Otherwise they're going to train elsewhere and work elsewhere. Yeah, thank you Robert. And I feel like you're starting to get into some ideas which I like because I want to shift there in a moment. I kind of last word unchallenged is let's go to Paula and then I do want to spend some time on ideas as well. Paula. So I think one of the biggest in my opinion one of the biggest challenges in the past few years has been losing the school. And at one point I think that the school was the biggest employer in the Valley. And I think losing middle school and high school has this snowball effect of not having young families not having teenage kids around to do jobs like work at the store after school or work at a restaurant after school or just be able to help in the community the way that it's nice to have teenagers and young adults around. And I feel like it's had this huge snowball effect on us. I'd like to be like hopeful that that will all change one day but I feel like that's been one of the biggest challenges economically in the Valley. Yeah, yeah, thank you. So I want to, unless someone who hasn't had a chance to share is anyone who wants to add a last challenge to the list. So let's go ahead and shift. So let me just first of all name that this list of challenges that you all just identified is pretty significant, right? These are some big challenging issues. And in fact issues that the whole state is grappling with in a lot of ways. But there are, we see communities all around the state identifying some creative local solutions to some of these things. And so I want to spend some time before we hear from our visiting team at the end thinking about what are some things that in this region could be done to address some of these challenges like lack of public transportation, like the attracting families, looking at affordable housing challenges around the trades and connecting folks to more high-paying professional jobs. What are some things do you think could be done in the region to start to at least chip away at some of those challenges? Any thoughts on ideas for action or opportunities for action? Ron? Yeah, you know, we're here in Granville. We're very fortunate to have the congressional delegation of Vermont pushing for the last mile of connectivity for EC fiber, for optical fiber. And we just recently opened a renovated 1871 one room schoolhouse on the basis of having it available for working from home, school from home, having health appointments at distance. And we really want to make sure that Granville, which is at the end of Addison County up in the northeast corner and in the upper valley in the origins of the White River, participating and offering its services through the corner school resource center to the entire community for job training, for classes and programs, for adults and children. And I just wanted to get that out there that we're online and available for programming. Thank you. That's great. Thanks so much, Ron. Catherine, you have an idea? Oh, maybe we lost Catherine momentarily. We'll come back to Catherine. Oh, there you are. There you are. Go ahead. I mentioned it earlier and I'll just elaborate a little bit more that we're launching the feasibility study of the proposals of the repurposing of the high school building, which really evolved from a community engagement process. So the plan is to put an adult day in there, a childcare center in there, a small business incubator spaces and co-working spaces, arts and learning center and a maker space. And we're also open to other proposals that might even be better with the result of the feasibility study. But that to me is there's a lot of potential there. And it does address the community needs. And as I said, it evolved from a community engagement process in which these needs were identified. Great, thank you. Other ideas? Mitch, go ahead. As far as the traits are concerned, I liked what Robert had to say about bringing them to participants. But I was thinking that the local businesses offering apprenticeship programs in a modified format initially to see who might be interested and to actively recruit young adults who may wish to change a career or find a different opportunity and also high school students. I don't know how many in this town have actually branched out and gone to other schools, but to approach them with the opportunity of this is what's being offered, would you like to check it out and explore that? So, great, thank you. Barbara, go ahead. So I'll first pour my library hat. We have been trying to create a library of things so that people can borrow things if they need things on short basis and stuff like that. But I always feel like people don't really look at the library as a resource. And we are right there in the middle of the town, we're probably the prettiest space when you can come upstairs and hang out. But I mean, we're always open to trying new things if people wanna come and use our space for other stuff. So I like to put that out there. And then in my other hat, I'm on the Owners Association for Great Hawk Owners Association. We have 90 homeowners up here, a good number of them are second home owners. So they're paying from that kind of tax space. But because of COVID, we've suddenly had an uptick of people who are coming and living here full-time. And I feel like some of these people are good resources and it would be great to tap into them because some of them are working from home and stuff like that and finding ways to get them involved with the community more. So I'm just putting that out there as a feeler. I don't know how much people would wanna get involved, but I feel like it's an untapped resource and it's figuring out the ways to connect people to be more engaged in the community. Cause I certainly know that all the people who've moved here love being here. So. Great, thanks Barbara. Other ideas on what happened? I have a... Yeah, go ahead Evelyn. I don't know, somewhere in the back of my mind. Did we or do we still have in the state of Vermont an incentive to move here that there was something that, was it proposed? Did it go through? I don't know why that's- We have it, we have it. It's the relocation worker program. It's for remote workers and people who relocate to work in Vermont. And what exactly, what do they get? How do you find these people? So I don't wanna get, we've got really limited time so I don't wanna get into a ton of detail, but I wonder Evelyn, it seems like you're kind of saying that could be a resource that we could draw from to attract people here. Is that kind of where you're headed? Yeah, the information about it is on the agency of community, commerce and community development website. And it is a program, you guys can be promoting enthusiastically. Okay, good. Great, thank you. Sandy. I just wanna point out, particularly for the benefit of the various state officials who are here tonight, that one of the problems with our Quintana area is that we're really in three different counties. And I can tell you from having represented Rochester in the legislature that we are nowhere. When you go to Barry for some services, you go to Hartford for others. And we're not talking so much about government services but we are talking about planning for things. And we tend to think by county in this state and it does not work for us. Thanks, Sandy. Monica? Yeah, I think the idea for really increasing awareness of the trades and trying to bring in more training in that sense and opportunities is a great idea. But I also think that we need to bring in more jobs that are professional as well. Because I am a career counselor in a graduate school. And most of my students leave because most of the jobs are centered in Chittenden County and in the Montpelier area by nature of what they do. But if they wanna live in a rural area, it's really hard for them to find work. And I experienced that myself on a professional level. What do you think? So not to put you on the spot, Monica, I guess maybe I'll ask this broadly. But as we think about ideas, what could be done to increase that type of job in this area or entice people, those graduate students to stay? Do you have thoughts on ideas that could be put into action? And you can answer that, Monica, or others too. Well, I do have a thought on that. And that is really trying to think about what types of companies might be attracted to being in a small area. There are also people who, now that we have better fiber connections, I think that is a great asset to play up. And because companies can now be more remote, not all the workers have to be in one place that offers companies a greater opportunity to kind of downsize their footprint in a larger area and maybe think about coming to a smaller area. Thank you. Any other thoughts on that before we went? Robert? Along the lines of bringing training, I am in contact with, I'm exploring possibilities of having a collaboration with either VTC or CCV in Rochester, but I think also, and we are looking at an incubator space, but when you graduate from an incubator space, you have to have some sort of larger building and that will be, at the moment, is we don't have any sort of butler buildings or that type of space that companies can grow into. And I think that's something that we need to explore of what's the possibility of developing the type of space that small companies can move into once they've gotten beyond the incubator space stage. Great, thank you. I'm curious about the transportation challenge. Does anyone have thoughts on what could be done to improve that access? Sounds like it's pretty limited now. Allison? Yeah, I'm curious that people didn't mention it because somebody did mention it earlier in terms of the challenges. And we definitely, as we look at our energy, how we're going to move into a clean energy economy, we're gonna want to madly be promoting public transportation and ride-sharing and carpooling and changing up some of our commuting habits so that we can carpool together or whatever. So I think that the idea of creating a transportation collective to both encourage more public transport, doing a survey to find out where are people going to go to Monica's point about commuting, the commuting community, to find out where people are going and how could they get there together and how could, I mean, it strikes me that it's rich for that opportunity. And I would just say on the workforce development, your kids feed into one of the best career and technical education centers in the state, which is the Hartford Community Career and Technical Education Center. And it's got leadership transition at the moment, but I bet they would be very interested in doing some kind of collaboration with you. They're superb and we're really lucky to have them in our region. But again, to go to Sandy's point, it's a regional thing and they're a little far away, but they are your, I believe, your career in technical education center and they're great. I'm seeing maybe that no, they may not be. Does somebody have that? It had been Randolph. When we had a high school, it was Randolph. It was Randolph, but now because they're in Royalton, I thought they went to, do they still go to Randolph or do they go to Hartford? Who knows? Either one. They're both, they're both superb. Great. All right, we've got a few with raised hands here. Let's go to Catherine and then Anna and Vick. Go ahead, Catherine. Catherine, are you there? Sorry about that. I forgot to mute. We have had some very successful businesses establish themselves in Rochester and sustain well. One of them is ITI and Bear Company, a publisher and advanced illuminations. There's LCS controls there. And we were the home of oatmeal studios. So it's, what I wonder is whether we in general have enough support for small business development across the state and whether or not those resources are being widely touted and are they free to help entrepreneurial types learn how to get developed? There are more people moving to beautiful spots like this. And because we have more bandwidth and IT access than other small communities, they are working from home. And of course that's been exaggerated during the pandemic. But we could actually go to some of those business leaders and create, I wish we had our own, a larger economic development focus. And I agree with Sandy, I think three counties because in my job, I have to work with three different counties and three different home health agencies and three different waiver boards. It's, she's right. It makes it very complicated. Is there like an economic development committee in the town or in any of the towns? I'm seeing no's. There, we have used Green Mountain economic development. Right, right. But we used to have a more local business oriented group that I think has not really sustained. So in terms of really coalescing the business interests that are here and to bring them into the conversation, I think that's really important. Great, thank you. Anna? Yeah, what I was gonna say kind of echoes what Catherine and Sandy were saying. I think there are really, Vermont does such a great job at providing resources. Like there's so many resources available, but as just like a normal person trying to navigate all that and knowing which resource to go to when can be really difficult. And like that's coming like as someone who can do research pretty well online. Just say for example, trying to figure out how to do like how to get a solar estimate for my dad's house. Like there's so many resources, but it's very overwhelming. And especially I think with economic development and businesses for sure, like just knowing the business owners that I do, they're really busy with their everyday operations. They barely have time to go on their computer and be looking and sifting through all of this information. So I feel like we almost need like representatives from those resources to be proactive in the communities and be like approaching business owners with ideas. And maybe this is sort of with maybe what Catherine was getting into. But I just as you know, I was also trying to run a small business this summer. I was growing flowers with my mom and it's exhausting. And like to have to also seek out additional support and resources on top of what your actual work is really, really difficult. Yeah, got it. So a more active kind of outreach to businesses to connect them to those resources. And we just got a couple of minutes left. So I'm gonna go to Vic who's got a hand up. Go ahead, Vic. And then in a couple of minutes here, we'll turn to the visiting team. Yeah, two things pretty quick. One, I did an economic development resource. I wonder if the five towns together could afford to support a person or part of a person to work with all the towns. I've had a chance to work with Josh Jerome on some other projects in Randolph. And he's many times over earned his keep. So I would really like to put that out there as something to consider across the town. The other suggestion I'd like to have some thought about is putting an electric vehicle charging station somewhere in this valley because we're gonna need it. And maybe something will come out of Washington that'll help make that happen sooner rather than later. But he certainly is a need. Great, thank you, Vic. Last ideas for action. It looked like Robert, did you have, it looked like you raised a hand maybe? Yes, I think along with, attracting, doing collaborations for training I think we also need to train business. We not only need to reach out to business leaders, we need to train business leaders. We need to perhaps have a collaboration with our economic development teams, the resources in the state to bring classes or whatever to Rochester so that people who are considering creating businesses will have some immediate guidance for starting businesses. Great, thank you. So we've got just about a minute and then I wanna turn to the visiting team. So maybe just two last comments and it looks like Anna has a hand up and these will have to be fairly quick comments. Anna and then Medj, go ahead, Anna. Mine is just really quick. I think just to comment on Robert's suggestion, I think also maybe even if it's not even bringing classes specifically cause there are classes available for starting businesses it's just pointing people in the right direction and connecting them with existing resources. I think we could do a way better job of that. Great, thank you. Medj, the last word. Housing, you can bring, you can make all this development but if we don't have any place to put anybody I'd really like to explore affordable housing some area in which that can be constructed and offered. Great, thank you. And I'd encourage you, if you wanna explore tonight housing even deeper, the next round of forums there's actually a forum focused on housing. So hopefully there'll be a chance to get into that a little bit deeper with some ideas. So we've only got about five minutes left here. This flew by but thank you so much for sharing your input and ideas. And like I said, there's a whole nother round of forums here on housing and the land resilience and the climate emergency. We're gonna kind of come back together and then break out into those sessions. But I do wanna hear from our visiting team just some reflections on the conversation, your thoughts, maybe Erica, do you wanna start? I'm very excited by what I'm hearing. There are a lot of really good ideas that are coming out of it. Things that struck me were private sector engagement. You do have some very good employers in the region. If they are not being engaged, that's an opportunity to find out more about what it is they're looking for in workforce and what the gaps are that they're trying to fill. From GMEDC's perspective, you're exactly right. We are supposed to be acting as a bridge to the resources. GMEDC has 30 communities that we work with. So any efforts such as has been suggested here with maybe a collective economic development resource that services several of the communities in the valley would definitely make those kinds of connections a little bit more streamlined. There is a model for that with the energy resources in the upper, I think it's the upper valley. There are several towns that share an energy coordinator. That would allow a more localized person on the ground to be responsive to the specific needs of the communities, but also that person can act as a point person for a resource such as Green Mountain Economic Development Corporation or two rivers out of Quiche so that your communities are getting the information in a more streamlined fashion. So that seems like a really excellent idea to continue with specific to the geography that you're facing in your beautiful Rochester Valley. The Quintown area is absolutely gorgeous. You're completely right. So how do you make that work for yourselves? And I think that's a good model to follow. Thank you. Dan? Thanks, I was writing a note, right? As you said that because I agree with Erica, I love this Quintown idea, right? And I'm about to write Quintown connector, right? And so anyway, it's something to think about. But I mean, so, you know, from the transportation side, you know, you know, right off the bat, what I heard is that you have really strong community connection between all your communities, right? You have a big valley, right? Very long, Route 100 cutting through the middle of it, right? You know, that's an asset. If you think about it, right? It can connect you. It can also divide you, you know, think about that too. But you also have challenges, right? You've got long commutes. You don't, like you, your job centers are mostly out of the community. I didn't hear a ton of people talking about, you know, job centers super close in the community. And it looks like the breakout room is going to end soon. Ew, it's so fast. I didn't know that we were going to get torn away. Yeah, that's okay. I'm asking them for more time. Keep going Dan. Yeah, no, this is what I really heard, right? You know, and so, you know, you've got long commutes. You know, you've got some higher housing costs, right? Those added together, you know, can really impact the community, right? It makes it hard to attract new people that don't have high paying jobs to live there. And so, you know, because if you add in housing plus transportation, what does that mean, right? You know, sometimes it can be really unaffordable. The, you know, but I did hear- Well, we are going to get cut off in 20, I'm so sorry, Dan and Josh, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize we were going to get cut off. In the next round, we'll make sure you both go first. I was asking for more time, but it's already in motion. Yeah, that's okay. But we're gonna- Yeah, that's okay, go ahead. Hey everybody. Welcome back. And I just got a message from the other room that they're gonna run a couple of minutes later. Well, we got automatically sent back. I feel we cut off some visiting team members and I'm so sorry about that. I didn't realize we were automatically coming back. Oh, sorry. Well, we could do an audible if, I don't know if it's too awkward, but we would be happy to listen to a couple of further reflections before we go on. I think we have a minute or two. So, Jenna, I'll follow your lead if that feels okay. I told Josh and Dan that they are gonna go first in the next one. All right. 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 Rural 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 Rural 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.