 And so we will start this meeting of the regional planning commission. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Because I know we have a quorum, right? Just. Amy told me we did. There is no consent agenda. So we can move right on to the deliberative agenda. And. Is there any, since we've got the call to order and the attendance, is there any changes to the agenda? I don't see any hands and, um, Amy said there's anything else going on. She saw a hand. So that's good. Um, so now we move to public comment period on items, not on the agenda. And I do see one and I recognize the face. Chuck Lacey. Um, If you want to check if you, if you want to speak for items, not on the agenda. Sure. I'd like to speak to your work plan for the next year. Oh, that will be later than check. This is for. I'll speak more generally then. Regarding your 5,000 unit housing goal. I'm not going to talk about housing. I'm not going to talk about housing. I'm not going to talk about the specificity. The expectation of outlying towns. I'm thinking first of Jericho where I live, but probably other similar towns to Jericho. Uh, the Jericho select boards. And I'm talking about, you know, Going decades past has a long standing practice. Um, And discouraging housing for low and moderate income people. And the majority of Jericho, you can build a 10,000 square foot house by permit, which is half as big as Patrick Jim. But on the same lot, it's illegal to build a 3000 square foot house with three one bedroom apartments. And the majority of the housing is available. To lower and moderate income people. The justifications cited by Jericho include town character. Jericho is an example. Of a national problem that I'm sure you're familiar with. Um, with respect to housing equity and fairness. Um, I think Jericho select board has said they did not sign on to the 5000 dwelling goal and sees no particular obligation for Jericho in meeting that goal. Until you hear otherwise, I think you need to count, uh, count Jericho out. I think if you were to bring specificity to the goals, but for outlying towns. And meeting the regional goal of 5000. I think we can have a better discussion. Uh, in Jericho and other towns like Jericho. About whether we intend to be participants or passive observers. In solving the regional housing problem. Thank you. Thank you, Jack. Madam chair. Yes, sir. I just want everybody to know that tonight. I'm the Essex junction alternate. And you know, everybody's used to seeing me do the town outside the village for Essex and Tracy's here to do the town outside the village. Representative. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Uh, I see a comment from Bard. Yeah, I appreciate Chuck's comments. Um, Bard from Richmond. So, um, it's interesting. Uh, I'll just observe that it's, um, There's a two or three tiered question here, which is not just select boards, but then planning commissions. So at least in our town, the core, you know, the real work on the zoning happens at planning commission first and select board second. So. It's probably even more complicated than a single elected bodies opinion. It's, um, It's planning commission where it's started. And for what it's worth in a similar size town. There is support at the moment, at least in both the select board and planning commission to deal with it, but, um, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I think the substantive progress is slow. I would say that. Thank you, Bard. All right, Chuck. Well, I'd say in Jericho, the planning commission is not in the town charter. That's really the select board that's responsible. They're planning commissioners, staff to the select board in effect. And, uh, You know, the, the, the planning commission, they're planning commissioners, staff to the select board. Um, They're planning commissioners. They're planning commissioners. At least in Jericho are the responsibility of the select board. So when you've met one town, you've met one town. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Um, This is an ongoing issue. So I, you know, I don't need to, you know, discuss this at the regional plan. You know, for. Take the regional planning time discuss this week. We'll discuss it tomorrow night at the. Uh, Jericho select board meeting. Okay. I think we need to move on then to. Uh, Oh. I don't see. I think it's item three, the public forum for potential FY 23. Okay. Yeah, we need, I was looking at that. Wait a minute. Minutes usually next. Sorry. So this is the, we. This is the public discussion. Yeah. This public discussion. All right. Is anybody here to discuss the, uh, FY 23 UPW projects and obviously Chuck, you've, you know, um, Spoken on that as well. Uh, Is there anyone else from the public to talk about UPW, um, projects. Don't see any other public, uh, comment there. Um, So without, uh, any public, uh, input at the moment, we move on, uh, which would have been the consent agenda of which there was none. So we, should I say. Sorry, Charlie. Sorry, Catherine. Yeah. We got a question in the chat. Uh, what is the UPWP apologies for that. Thank you for pointing that out, Mr. Arnold. It's our unified planning work program. So it's basically our annual work program, uh, for next fiscal year. And, uh, we're kind of taking some early comments on that now. Um, I think we're going to move on. Uh, I don't know if there's any input, uh, before that committee starts going the next, uh, few weeks. Because the, um, Applications are due on the Friday. As I understand. That's correct. Uh, okay. Moving on then, um, we have the minutes from the November 17th board meeting and reading it. It feels like so long ago. Um, Do we have a second? I see Garrett's hands. I have corrections, but if other people have, they can go first. Oh, don't see anybody. All right. Um, Something doing different. Yeah. Usually same with Catherine's corrections, but, uh, you know, I didn't just. I thought, you know, I'd give other people a chance. But I do have corrections. Um, On page four. On line 40, we, uh, have, uh, on line 47. We have overall Chittenden County population grew 8% and from 156. That, I think we should completely eliminate that line. And then go to page five. Which is, um, St. St. Page. Because that is also, uh, Line 46 on page four. And then we're going to see overall Chittenden County population grew from 1 56 to 210. Uh, In 2010 to approximately 160 K. And 2020. And that's the repeat of the line. And it makes more sense in this paragraph than standing by itself. sentences that. I can email you and we can delete one of the sentences. Okay yeah because I to my mind the it's belongs in the over Chittenden County population growth belongs on nine lines nine and ten on page five as opposed to page four and line 47. Thank you. Okay actually I get it now. Thank you. You're welcome. All right all those in favor of the minutes with corrections is noted say I or raise your hand. Well thank you all the motion passes. Is there any abstentions? Oops need your has a question. No your hand is up. Are there any abstentions for November? I abstained since I was not present. Brad Holden Underhill. Thank you. All righty um we're going to move into one of our discussion items which is the equity assessment report review. Yeah thank you Madam Chair. I'll so we sent two links or documents. I think we had the short version in the packet and then longer the full report was a separate link. I don't know if you had a chance to look at it but I can share if you want to look at the executive summary just what I was going to walk through that with you if that's okay. And so you may recall that last year we sorry this time let me take a moment to make sure I can see you all here. Can you see the document now? Yes. Okay. I'm sorry I'm playing around with my screen here for a second. So as you remember we or may remember we contracted with a creative discourse last year as an equity consultant and they've been working with they formed an equity leadership team. You may remember some appointees from the board Mike and Jackie and Elaine Haney from the Essex village and Justin Rabadou from he's an alternate from South Burlington. We're on that committee and we kind of concluded most of the public work at a November 6 equity summit. So and then they've documented all of the work there's a lot of engagement that happened outside of that summit. So in the in this document here there's some background about the issue of racial hierarchy and systemic racism and unequal resource distribution so wasn't going to spend a lot of time on that but just so you get some flavor of where the consultant team is coming from. So they gave us three I'm going to get down to the recommendations just so you have a sense of where we are now. So the first category of recommendations was about centering justice equity diversity and inclusion in our work. So this is a little bit more this first set is all internal looking. We're going to follow this up in our budget but the first item was hiring an organizational leader so a staff person kind of focused on this and then as we go through here you'll see why that's probably important. The second idea was to expand that equity leadership team to include some external folks and and be more diverse. The third item was more ongoing education and training of board and staff. So we did a little bit of that with the board last year more of it with the staff establish a process for conducting many equity audits ahead of key decisions or projects. So I think that's you know something we've had a little bit of that in our our public participation plan where we kind of do some early evaluation to see if there's a need for extra engagement. I think this is a step taking that process a step further which needs some work and feel free to interrupt me if you have questions about what that might mean for us on any of these and then kind of focusing a little bit more of our resources on engagement and relationship building at the front of all projects and you know I think as we've tried to digest that this may not be needed for all projects but maybe projects in different geographic areas of our region but I think it's a good point in general more investment in our engagement work. The second category is more external facing about prioritizing connections with diverse populations so an idea here about can we make you know our formal we have a lot of meetings between committees and board meetings can we make those more open to different people from different backgrounds in our community so that's something to think about sorry sorry about that and about how to go about doing that also is going to require some work and you know which things we can do that and and which things we can do part of it and then this is participating in external group activities which we again have done some of always more to do there create opportunities for external particularly BIPOC and people with marginalized identities to engage and intentionally inform our work again we've you know done some spots of this but I think how to systematize that and get that better is some opportunity for more work there and then finding opportunities to uplift and celebrate BIPOC led organizations again something we've done some of and we can do more of and then the third category is I think really following up from that equity summit that we did in in November you know can we do more things like that and have learning opportunities for people working in the region on this convening leaders and just and then also just the connection with the municipalities so under the equity leadership team you know gave some input into the draft of this back at the end of December we kind of got this right around Christmas time I think and you'll see in the next I don't know any questions on this but I was gonna say quick long story short I am recommending in the budget adjustment and the revised mid-year UPWP that we do budget to hire a staff person to specifically focus on this work in the coming months but any quick questions I want you all to be aware of this report its recommendations and Charlie yes sir it's Mike thanks for that can you maybe expand a little bit on number one and specifically we had talked about the possibility of making a board position and that was I'm going to say discouraged I don't know if that's the right term or not by the equity team that we the consultants we worked with and the other thing too is that we had a discussion the executive committee meeting last week about the fact that this report these recommendations focus on race as opposed to more globally economic issues and one as long as well as race can you touch on that maybe a little bit yeah thanks thanks Mike for and I think let me talk the first idea first yeah there was some good conversation you know about like should we try to get you know just like we have a you know a transportation another something good example we have a business seat you know conservation natural resource seat on our board and an agriculture seat you know should we have an equity seat so there was some discussion with the consultant team about that and I think they had some concerns this is my interpretation not their words exactly but they had some concerns about kind of not doing the work but just kind of leaping to that point and that it might feel kind of like tokenism and maybe not be an effective first step but I think this in this second category the first recommendation to hear about our meetings and things I think this is probably putting us on a path where maybe that is one of the outcomes maybe we have a board seat maybe there's a seat on the tack that's focused on equity or or some of our other committees so I don't think we know exactly how this is going to evolve but like I do think that kind of remains as a possibility it just wasn't one of the first steps that they thought we should take with regard to that and then and your second point about the focus on race is a good issue to talk about and I think when we've had a creative discourse at the board meeting previous I think we've had a little bit of conversation in this regard but it's I think from from their background and working on these issues and difficult and challenging issues they've come to the conclusion of kind of a race first approach to dealing with inequities and marginalized communities in in our community and so Sue McCormick gave me an analogy that was kind of helpful for me to think about because at Mike's point is good like we are we are talking here about how to really hear from people and we've always had these title six requirements from federal requirements to engage marginalized communities and underrepresented communities the question is how to do that more effectively and those categories are not just race they're ethnicity they're abilities they're genders you know just income right so there's a lot of there's a lot covered by those categories of underrepresented or marginalized communities but their feeling is that if we talk about race first it will benefit everyone and the example that they gave me was talking about the American with Disabilities Act if some of you may remember back to I think it was 1990 right and all of a sudden we had to do things like put in ramps at sidewalks for you know people that were in wheelchairs right like that was not a requirement before the American with Disabilities Act and their analogy was yes that was about people with disabilities but it just it didn't just benefit people with disabilities it also benefited the rest of the community so that you know kids on a bike or a mom with a stroller or dad with a stroller or a guy making a delivery on a hand truck was also able to benefit from all those ramps and accessibility improvements that got made and so their analogy was kind of like this is a little bit like that if we make it better for people of color to engage that will also benefit all of the other marginalized communities in our community so I don't know if that's helpful to you it's helpful to me to think about that as an example but and it is I think like this is going to be a recurring issue of you know how focused and narrow is this versus how broad I'm sure we'll keep coming back to that as we think about how to operationalize some improvements yeah thanks Charlie that's all I was looking for yeah thank you Mr. Mott I I'm trying to think how to phrase this I think most of the folks on the board know that I'm pretty darn liberal that being said I found number one really offensive not towards us but to claim that using Robert's rules of orders is confusing and inaccessible to marginalized people the implication there is as well they're not capable of understanding it and I understand that we're dealing with pendulum swings and various different points but number one far less than any of the others really bugged me and I felt a great deal of it was inappropriate on their behalf not so much on ours thank you thanks for that Barg. Thanks Garrett it's Barg yeah you know I wrestled with this a little bit I will say I've seen like if you watch Congress using Robert's rules of order you know I've seen people get lost like an amendment to the amendment to the amendment no that's out of order because you can't amend the amendment to the amendment you have to go so I've seen that happen but honestly in my experience in Vermont I haven't really seen that happen I've seen it used in a semi-structured or semi-formal way so I sort of stumbled on this one a little bit that you know perhaps a parliamentarian strict approach to Robert's rules of order would be off-putting and inaccessible but generally the semi-structured approach that I've seen has been actually probably helpful that gives some structure and you know without saying who it's confusing to or inaccessible to just an observation about the difference between the strict adherence and sort of the practical adherence that I've seen and for that matter if you're going to play baseball basketball football whatever there are rules and I'm not saying we necessarily have to have strict rules however there needs to be guidance for how things are discussed otherwise it's a complete free-for-all so anyway the for me the biggest implication of that I felt was completely bigoted in what they had to say which rather blew me away thank you any other comments or questions on anything in the report at all yeah I do have one if nobody else does I miss that who says that was John John first we I think we need to be a little sensitive to sometimes we get lost in cultural differences you know Robert's rules for instance is something we're all used to as a culture when you have people from a foreign land come to our land they do things differently back home and the culture sometimes can be confusing and off-putting and that can actually make it discouraging for them to participate you know one of the easiest analogies I can use is just when it comes to medicine you know culturally if you see a doctor that is understands your culture they can treat you better because they have an innate understanding of what you go through where someone from a different culture certainly can do medicine wonderfully but if they don't understand what your real problem is because they don't understand what you're trying to say that can be an issue and that's very much a problem in the medical industry when it comes to to different cultures so I do I understand all the thoughts that were put on the table here but I read it as in just needing to understand the cultural differences can and how welcoming people feel um budding up against those cultural differences can be a roadblock to participating which then can be a roadblock to our understanding and doing the right thing by all of our constituencies out there so we need to be a little careful that way and it's sort of with that in mind that Charlie I wanted to bring up I haven't had the discussions with the folks who wrote this and it's their report not ours so I get that we don't need to be overly concerned about a lot of little details because this is not our report it's their report to us but in number two I wanted to understand how these words were used um and the first one in number two the greenish um they use the word um experts and a number two of uh the green number two they they use the word um authority so I'll read the part the parts of the paragraphs that I'm I'm looking at I was wondering how the how I'm supposed to interpret the words of experts and authority um where in number one um it's the middle of it it says make changes to these procedures and processes and even disrupting the typical meeting structures and locations is critical to shift away from dominant culture as the norm and instead create new norms where community members especially people of the global community and other marginalized groups are regarded as the experts so I is that experts in their culture and we're supposed to use them as a way to understand where they're coming from are they trying to say that their opinion should then be above everybody else's because they are the overall experts I kind of think they're talking about the form or not the latter and in a similar sense in the second one um the second to last sentence says they also serve to disrupt the centralization of dominant culture and creates a space where marginalized culture is uplifted as the authority so again are they talking about the authority as in trying to communicate what the real issues are so that we understand them better and can understand what our constituency their our constituents are getting to or are they trying to say that these marginalized groups should be the authority and we need to do what they say so people are going to read this people generally read an executive summary first and never read the actual report so I'm trying to understand what is actually trying to be said there um the two examples they gave I believe it's the former and not the latter that they should be listened to as experts in their culture to tell us what it is that's important to them and why certain things don't work or do work or are they trying to tell us that that we need to put um these constituencies higher above the rest of our constituencies and consider them the experts in authority so I'm just trying to understand what it is that they're trying to tell us here Charlie any insight into that yeah my impression and um I don't know if Emma and Brian are on here too they've been doing most of the staff work with creative discourse if they have deeper knowledge than I do on that uh please pipe in but my impression is that um that this is coming from the context of trying to address equity issues and so yeah I think you're right John that it's the former like you know we should listen to the people in those communities about what's important to them and they're the experts in what how things affect them and we shouldn't assume how it affects people that aren't engaged right so we need to increase our engagement there so I think it's that's my impression I don't know or Jackie or Mike I don't know if you have other impressions okay I agree I just wish as a wordsmith um it was again for people who are just going to read this haven't been engaged in the process I haven't been at these meetings when you read that you can read it both ways and that's sort of where hard feelings get put in and you know maybe they don't say to your face but they go right away thinking something that there shouldn't be thinking because it's not what the what is actually going on and I just wish that they had um wordsmith those things a little little better to um really tell us what it is that they meant yeah yeah so just just some constructive feedback again it's their report not ours but that is something I just kind of wanted to bring up thank you Garrett um thank you I agree with what John said there I was not well written another piece to address I think is the comparison between a board position as a yeah at large commissioner or a staff a staff position showed a misunderstanding of how the RPC works um it's not you know staff is in support of the commissioners and yeah of the board members not the other way around and of course we all listen very carefully to everything staff says what except maybe Charlie um but uh thank you any other comments or questions Catherine if I can oh okay Mike sorry I just want to pick up on Garrett's comments because we had quite a bit of conversation about that uh in the I know in the equity leadership team or and or the executive committee and I think I think where we ended up is the staff position um is one that um you know that person can be involved with staff and look at all the projects and and give the input right there and make recommendations to the board so that's a that's a um an important and probably more beneficial I don't know if I'm saying that right um but it's got more uh input if you will to projects to look and see through the lens of equity you know the the impacts that might be going on I I happen to agree with Garrett I think a board position would be good but like I said that the consultant team as Charlie said kind of downplayed it more as a it would be seen as a token gesture and what would what would then happen um you know going forward is that the only step you take Charlie I don't know if you want to pick up on that kind of rambling or not not not rambling but um no I think and I think part of what I was hearing from them was um that we do need to do more staff work to prepare um you know whether whatever we're looking at a policy a plan or project um and the engagement work to do work um to address equity so that um if we did have a seat on our board devoted to that topic area that there was work done that they could um feel supported I think they were worried about a board member just kind of by themselves without support from the staff would you know feel tokenized and not um not have enough support to make a difference in addressing this issue again my impression not not their words that's on us to make it work isn't it yeah and uh and I think I think we definitely feel that at a staff level that we you know there's more work to be done here that we are really not properly staffed to accomplish right now well thank you I mean this is a very good discussion is there any more before we move on to the next uh item on the agenda stay tuned stay tuned yeah that's right uh saying that we have um hey Barbara I mean Catherine I'm sorry it's okay Charlie the air gets funny all the time we all look the same sorry you know I'm what can I say I'm getting old um I don't recall it on the agenda in front of me but uh we have an open position on the equity leadership team we'll talk about that later I'm going to do that under your report Charlie um thank you for bringing that up that probably would have been a good thing for me to remember when we talked about changes to the agenda apologies for not remembering that Mike um yeah so I don't know Madam Chair if you want to address that topic um to be uh transparent Justin Rabidou has left employment with the city of south Burlington so there is a vacant seat on that equity leadership team uh that's available I don't know if you want to talk about that now because we're talking about it equity I I think we can it makes sense just to fill it rather than you know break this discussion up and then put it in the executive you know executive directors report makes sense to fill it in now so I guess that's a question to the board members is there anyone who might be interested in filling that seat now that you heard how much fun this could be I was going to say who wants to come join Jackie Elaine and myself you know this is barred I have a follow-up question and this is informed by three other groups this is the fourth group that I um at least tenuously involved in dealing with diversity equity inclusion and people are using these words in different practical ways so I've started to call out the question we say diversity equity inclusion who are we talking about and here it seems strongly correlated with racial equity and then the other groups just and I'm not saying this is good or bad it's just an observation when I called that out in our local town what do we mean does it include the other things like gender identity religion cultural identity people said oh it's all that and started talking about other things and in another group I'm working with the state its first emphasis is race but is also interested in gender disability and other things so it's just an interesting question an observation that sort of first the scope and then within the scope what is the relative prior differences that seem to appear to me I don't know if that's a useful observation or and I will say just to be clear that I think we're more in that third category where the consultant has recommended using race as a introduction put to addressing equity issues across the full spectrum and really into it's nobody wants to speak up tonight I'll pass it on to Charlie and Catherine yeah and happy to have a deeper conversation if somebody you know wants to kind of talk about it before volunteering and I would think either um Mike or Jackie would be the ones to talk to you about that because they are in the on the you know board as well as the leadership team okay next is the draft fy 22 upw to be mid-year adjustment and budget discussion so uh hello again uh I'll take you out in front of you the mid-year adjustment for those of you who may not be familiar just I'll kind of review our cycle uh in the spring our UPWP and finance committee and executive committee all kind of work on our budget and work program we adopt that in May of each spring for the following fiscal year starts July 1 and of course as we go through the year um or even at that time there's typically some things that are tentative uh you know we there may be some conversation uh that we're not sure how it will play out with the town or with the state agency uh so there are grants that are pending and so uh in the mid-year uh and there's also projects that either you know get started or don't get started in the mid-year we come back and try to do what we call mid-year adjustment and try to right size our budget and work program to be more accurately reflecting what we're working on in this fiscal year um I typically if it's okay with you Madam Chair I'll pull up the budget just because that maybe gives kind of gives a broad overview I think a good idea and and I always feel sorry for doing this to you all because I feel like I'm taking you into a spreadsheet too much but can everybody see that now okay um so this is our budget the front side of this or the first part of it kind of deals with our revenue sources and uh most of these rows align with different grant agreements with either state agencies or municipalities um and you know you'll see some adjustments here and it's really about us kind of right sizing where our staff hours go there's a lot of detail behind this um and so you'll see you know we kind of right size the regional planning grant to reflect what we're actually getting lines row six here is reflecting a new agreement that the legislature approved in the springtime kind of after we put our budget together to help municipalities with pandemic recovery I'm just going to kind of try to highlight the the large changes here um the MPO funding agreement is pretty much on level with with uh where we were you know one and a half percent off um with the exception um that there are some additional consultant projects I think you all got an email from me a couple weeks ago um I had a conversation with Chris Jolly at Federal Highway uh who uh just trying to reconcile where we were and in terms of our federal funding for our MPO budget um and he identified the fact that there were several hundred thousand dollars uh available uh to be programmed uh if we could uh so I did send out that request like hey if you've got something you know for FY 23 that resulted in a handful of also how about this year FY 22 projects um which if they had local match um seemed to make sense so um and I don't know if I should review it here but there's um I think five projects one is uh to uh deal with Amtrak coming to Burlington in June that uh doing some extra work in Burlington just about wayfinding and how do people get to and from the Amtrak station where do they park how do they find a bike how do they find a bus uh those kinds of things um one is a tentative project in Charlotte to help them get started on looking at their town highway garage and Eleni help me if if I get stuck here one is uh looking at the um possibility uh kind of a technical feasibility of uh some sort of transit intercept facility at the in the south end of Burlington where the Champlain Parkway is going to land um and I'm missing the fourth one it's the Ishar Lot Village traffic calming okay um yep thank you and then the other one is the Winooski ADA transition plan thank you um and so yeah and then Charl and then Colchester Colchester right and I apologize I missed one project so if you could uh as you consider a motion on this uh considered that uh with what's in the what's with what's shown plus this additional Colchester project um to kind of refine their pollution control they're sorry their phosphorus control plan and kind of delve into some more detail in in 10 10 sites I think around the town so there's uh kind of with that edit um and and if you could give me a little bit of space there may be a couple little tweaks you know a little bit of dollars or hours here that we might need a little bit of adjustment um so um so that's the MPO work and that's why the um sorry just what I was really kind of focused on here was this $249,000 increase in consultant dollars that's what that is um that um and according to federal highway we have at least $500,000 available in this in this right now um so this is not um even depleting the resources available um and I think as I noted in that email we have probably a similar amount of new funding coming as a result of the infrastructure bill that um congress and the president passed over the last couple months um so that's previewing um this elderly and people with disability summit is a new uh task here uh with v-trans uh funding to do in um I can't remember sometime next summer I think June July June um and then there's a couple other new pots here that came out of the legislative action as ARPA money was flowing one was uh some extra brownfields money so we got about a hundred thousand dollars of brownfields um and another one was uh helping municipalities focus on energy project implementation um and we hired Anne Janda to work on that work um so this was a significant amount for us to have increase our staff to help municipalities focus on energy projects um and then um others smaller ones yeah I think um this uh this COVID impact on uh racial sorry I'm looking at this 168,000 COVID impact on racial health disparities um this came up late last year with the um Vermont Racial Justice Alliance got a grant from the Department of Health and they needed a fiscal agent so we're just acting as kind of a pass-through entity to work on those um racial health disparities and and then there's a pending project here about healthy community design and equity also from the health department any questions sorry I'm I feel like I'm down a bunch of rabbit holes hopefully this is helpful but um on our whole revenue side um it's about in terms of our operations which is kind of the staffing supports a hundred and fourteen thousand dollars more there's uh five hundred thousand dollars more in the consultant which is not just transportation but some of these other things like like the racial justice alliance is part of that um so overall our revenue side looks to be up around 12 percent any questions on this side or I move to the expense side sorry I have a question now I've been pondering this between the Department of Health's work on um health equity they have a group that sort of works on that um there are folks working the agency of human services numerous health organizations have to do health community health needs assessments including home health agencies and hospitals um and I'm sort of wondering if feels like this is a new and expanded role but maybe I've missed something in the history of the CCRPC's role in the context of those other entities and how they approach um community health and health equities and disparities um I'm going to say somewhat um I think we've yeah it started relationships with like the medical center and the department of health um probably going back to the original ECOS plan going back 10 years ago um so some of this is um I guess follow-up from the work that happened with our ECOS plan worked 10 years ago bar but but there is what happened I think what you're really seeing is more money flowing into the system to address these issues and then them looking for more partners in how to do this work yeah it was really more on like the racial health disparities and it seems like there's attention and stuff flowing there and so far there is what I would describe as a paucity of of data um and so it just I just an observation I'm not saying it's good or bad I you know there is this emerging um emphasis on health disparities and inequities and I'll observe that our department perhaps has its own bias that health equities and disparities are not limited to race they are also associated with disability and age and there is substantial evidence in both of those um so it just it's similar to the earlier conversation of you know are we talking health disparities and inequities are we talking racial health disparities and inequities just kind of an interesting question yeah and I'm sure we will come back to that in various topics and definitely an increased focus from the federal administration is part of what we're also I think feeling here any other questions on the revenue side of the budget okay um so I'm going to try to scroll over here to the expense side sorry I'm acting like you have this as a piece of paper but this is this used to be a big piece of paper so on the backside was the expenses um so I'm really highlighting um and I made reference uh earlier to the um the equity staff position um and I highlighted these cells here to note that this budget does propose um this hiring an equity staff person for the the last few months of the fiscal year and also primarily because of the clean water service provider work which you know we've kind of talked about a little bit over the last couple years that's going to kick off in earnest in FY 23 um and I'm also proposing to bring in a somebody in our business office to help with that additional increment of administrative work that's going to be going on in that arena they won't exclusively work on that but there's just a another chunk of work coming to our business office that really needs help so there are to be totally transparent two new positions proposed in this budget amendment um put to be clear on and that's kind of the budgetary impact um so that those those increases are really have to do with the new positions not raises or anything um and then the rest of the expenses force I just adjusted to really try to right size that'd be more uh clear um with what our expenses look like um the expenses uh the internal operations go up about four percent the overall consultant 17 percent so overall about 11 percent we end up um and I'm gonna get to the fun indirect rate conversation that I feel compelled to do each time um so we started this fiscal year with a projected budget of minus 37,000 uh with these changes it looks a little bit more optimistic we get it down to negative 22,000 um and uh for those of you not familiar with our budget um this is not because we don't know how to you know take revenue and subtract expenses it's really because of our indirect rate so we do an indirect rate to apportion our indirect costs across all of our grant agreements um and for FY 22 um this rate well for every year it gets negotiated with VTRANS and as our kind of um the as part of their well responsibility to make sure we're following all the federal rules um and in FY 22 we're in a little bit of a under collection year um and if you so we have this table down at the bottom here kind of showing the history of our indirect rates what what we were approved for which means what we bill and then what it actually was and you can see that each year we either under or over collect um and we appear to be caught in a little bit of a two-year cycle or two years we under collect and then two years we over collect um and where we've been trying to um kind of reduce the swings um you can see like back in FY 17 we had an $85,000 swing or FY 19 a $52,000 swing so we've been trying over time as your each year goes on to reduce these swings but um I just didn't want you to be concerned about a negative budget it's actually planned for because we over collected two years ago in our indirect rate costs so we're now under collecting to try to be fair to those funding agencies sorry that was maybe a lot more detail than you wanted and at the very bottom of this we also give you a little bit of cash balance report so at the end of December we were you know $660,000 in our accounts any questions on the budget yeah and and let me know if you want to delve into the work program um that's a lot bigger spreadsheet um Jackie looks like a sane person that's like the one downside of being on that committee how do you look at that spreadsheet I'll stop sharing this any other questions or comments on the the mid-year adjustment budget all right I don't see any hands so we will move on to the initial climate action plan and comprehensive energy plan uh highlights and staff comments sorry madam chair before I move on can we get action on the budget right with this with the understanding that there's that additional coal chester project and we may have some minor technical edits actually apologize for the loss of focus there uh Garrett is this an MPO vote or RPC a full thank you so do we have a motion to accept the the mid-year adjustment and budget change as changed I'll move Garrett okay thank you Andy all those in favor um say I or raise your hand either way sorry so the global warming solutions act was enacted in September 2020 right after that the climate council was formed and they put together a climate action plan that was adopted on December 1st they're calling it their initial plan because there will be updates and there's required updates every four years next slide so the global warming solutions act has several requirements for emissions reductions culminating in 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 and this graphic just shows you the different sectors and those targets next slide so the climate action plan is organized around these five areas the biggest piece being the emissions reductions and then there's two areas that focus on resilience and adaptation to climate change there's a section on carbon sequestration and storage and a section called cross cutting pathways so I wanted to be sure to include this slide uh because there was a whole process in putting together just transition uh equity lens and there's a lot to that all of the actions were filtered through this but the most important thing to think about is that the actions were prioritized so that the people who are most impacted by climate change are addressed first next slide so along with greenhouse gas emissions reductions the plan also put forth what they're calling a carbon budget and to begin looking at carbon sequestration as part of the equation this is a kind of a complicated table I just wanted to put it out there so that you're aware of it of the different sectors for a carbon budget the forest sector is extremely important for carbon sequestration and the plan points out that there is a decrease in the what they're calling the carbon sink in the forest sector and that we should do further investigation to find out why but that protecting our forests for their carbon sequestration is extremely important next slide please okay so I am going to go over the pathways and actions for emissions reduction first is the transportation sector there the most emissions come from the transportation sector the first pathway is calls for electrification of I guess what they're calling light duty vehicles which we would call cars I guess cars SUVs trucks and to electrify 170,000 of these light duty vehicles by 2030 they propose to do this through regulation expanded incentives continuing programs for lower income folks to participate in electric vehicles more easy charging and more outreach and education so in addition to that they're looking to electrify medium and heavy duty vehicles very similar through regulation incentives but also looking at idle reduction systems as well and then the third pathway is to reduce vehicle miles travel the big the big action that is proposed is for V-trans to create a transportation implementation plan that focuses on things like smart growth strategies establishing specific targets for vehicle miles travel increasing public transit and then if possible free public transit expanding Amtrak and really ensuring that the complete streets program is working as well as it can so the second big sector is buildings and thermal that is where the second largest emissions come from our heating and cooling of buildings and the big push in the plan is to weatherize 90,000 homes by 2030 there is a workforce development issue there that needs to be addressed they also propose energy and financial coaching possibly on-bill financing which would put the cost for weatherization on to the utility bill and efficiency standards for rental properties as well as zero energy ready building energy code by 2030 next slide so this is actually not from the plan but from a memo that the climate council sent to the legislature asking to use some ARPA dollars to assist with developing work workforce for weatherization as you can see in order to meet the goal there's a lot of people needed to do this work next slide so the second pathway has to do with reducing the carbon content of fuels and the big proposal here is for a clean heat standard for fossil fuel heat wholesalers that includes natural gas essentially what that means is that they would be asking these folks to either diversify from just fossil fuels to other renewable fuels or to diversify into doing things like selling cold climate heat pumps or purchasing credits in lieu of those things next slide so the electricity sector the big push is for either 100 carbon free electricity or 100 renewable electricity by 2030 secondly enabling all of our monitors to choose electrification this means everyone has to have 200 amp service in their homes and focusing on utility load control programs if everything electrifies there needs to be some load management and grid optimization involved and then next the agriculture sector there are quite a few recommendations here they're all reasonable excellent recommendations I won't necessarily go through these but they're all geared towards reducing emissions and enhancing the sinks of greenhouse gases so the non-energy sector there's three things there they focused on the first one is reducing emissions of refrigerants second is reducing process emissions from sunlight conductor manufacturing which actually produces really high greenhouse gases and then reducing fugitive emissions from wastewater treatment facilities which essentially means making sure that the flare systems in the anaerobic digesters are working properly okay so now we're moving on to resilience adaptation carbon sequestration and what they're calling cross cutting pathways so there were so many recommendations here I only pulled out the ones that I thought were noteworthy for municipal purposes so these are these are the ones having to do with land use there's a big push for low impact development smart growth walking biking public transit also a statewide conversation about land use possibly putting together a committee to look at developing a statewide land use planning policy possibly creating a statewide planning office and making significant revisions to act 250 to support compact settlement and then the next grouping here has to do with supporting local energy and resilience projects so putting some funding towards climate and energy planning evaluating the enhanced energy plans that municipalities have to make sure they're doing as much as they can supporting electrification of municipal fleet vehicles actually adding some resources to rpcs for weatherization efficiency natural resource planning and requiring municipalities to collect fossil fuel usage data and importantly making sure all utilities provide similar rebates and incentives which now you know different utilities have different incentives so it's not the same across the state and then lastly forest health and conservation really again making sure that our forests are healthy that there are programs for landowners to know how to manage land and climate adaptive ways and enhancing support for municipalities to maintain forest blocks possibly authorizing a and r to have statewide jurisdiction over river corridors and all kinds of development there okay so that was a lot what happens now is it goes to the legislature they're going to be picking the areas that they want to support first what their priorities are looking at ARPA funds to fund some of these things the climate council is going to be looking at how what kind of data they want to look at and track as well as ensuring diverse appointments on the council so the climate council continues to meet they have a calendar meetings are open to the public and there's also a place to provide comments if you have ideas suggestions okay do we have time to go over okay so the comprehensive energy plan uh is different from the climate action plan this is something that happens I believe every six years um next slide please um it's through the department of public service it some of the things that are that the comprehensive energy plan focuses on overlaps with the climate action plan uh and then there's some areas that are are totally different but they did um sort of work in tandem so that they understood what each other was working on so these are the targets for the comprehensive energy plan I only highlighted what's new in this plan as opposed to um the 2016 plan uh and what we noted with the these new goals is that this comprehensive energy plan shifts its focus more to from short-term renewables to decarbonization um so that's going to change the focus a little bit next slide so the areas that the comprehensive energy plan focuses on is electricity transportation and thermal next slide okay so for transportation and land use uh the overarching goal is to increase the number of electric vehicles in Vermont to have 100 light duty vehicle sales in Vermont to be zero emissions by 2035 and also to prioritize transportation demand management slide so the recommendations are similar to the cap in um accelerating EV sales continuing programs for lower income folks to participate also facilitating EV market share through supporting um charging and managing the electric grid impacts from the increased um increased use of electricity through electric vehicles and then the next pathway has to do with cleaner vehicles and fuels so increasing vehicle fuel efficiency while we wait for you know everyone to have an electric car it's important um to really encourage uh fuel efficiency and low carbon fuels next slide and then also enhancing the integration of land use planning into transportation decision-making frameworks um so it's really important to reduce vehicle monies travel through uh support of compact and mixed use settlement and then increasing transportation choices um the plan does mention you know kind of we already invest heavily and transportation demand options and should continue to do so our our feeling as staff is that more needs to be done slide okay so thermal and process energy has um the following goals and the big recommendations here are similar to the cap which is weatherization priority net zero energy code by 2030 again a clean heat standard for heating fuel providers this exactly the same as what i mentioned in the cap and encouragement of cleaner fuels such as advanced wood heat next slide so lastly and and maybe most importantly this this slide explains why the focus on so much on deep carbonization rather than um increasing goals for renewable energy uh we are having some hosting capacity issues uh we actually have pretty high solar penetration however it's limited by our substation transformers um typically what's done in this situation is to upside substation transformers but that costs millions of dollars there's other things that we can do such as promoting battery storage and other ways to manage grid load uh but one starting point that the comprehensive energy plan suggests is that all utilities have maps such as green mountain powers map where we can look at where we can really see the bottlenecks and where we need to focus citing solar energy in in a way that works with the grid most effectively okay so that is my presentation now that was your confirmation thank you it uh there's a lot of material to cover there are any questions or comments at this point so and i'm trying to find this uh presentation or the suggested plan and it's not up yet or this is the first version of it how will we find this are you talking about the the comprehensive energy plan or the climate i went i went to the initial vermont climate action plan on the official vermont government website there climatechange.vermont.gov the links that you had in the presentation there and none of the links are operable okay i will put a link in the chat here great it may be the same site but i when i go deeper there's nothing really material lies on there that's uh good working yet okay any other questions or comments well and is working on this virginia has also put the uh comprehensive energy plan in the chat thank you that works great comments questions is there any discussion in about how much this is going to cost to do anywhere right uh so there there are some if you look through some of the recommendations there are some dollars that are estimated in there for some recommendations some recommendations just say consider funding there's a lot of considerate funding throughout the document so it's really under the legislature you know looking at all of these things and prioritizing so this is at the state level anyway this is going to come with other uses and things like that in other words we're we're sitting here right now with an unprecedented amount of money that's coming from federal deficit spending sources which is raining down on our state and um that's going to run dry pretty soon and so i'm just wondering when we start to talk about the very very significant goals for evs and the amount of infrastructure spending that's going to be needed to be able to support those not to mention direct you know um uh incentives that's got to be a huge amount of money and it's going to be competing with other very worthwhile needs areas such as childcare and workforce development and all that kind of stuff so i just was wondering if you know those are very lofty goals but um how much money is it going to take for us to get there the question we do know there's 25 million um coming from the federal government over the next five years for um ev charging we we don't make a very big contribution as a state to every one of those federal dollars but somebody does any other comments questions well yeah i have one this is bar again i'm sorry um you know picking up on this question of the investment of ev charging stations i'll just observe i've been wrestling with a long time about what it's going to take to upgrade the transmission system to support all the charging stations and electric vehicles right that um we've talked about this before that there seemed at least some level of disconnect between what we want to have for electric vehicles and charging stations and the transmission line capacity to support them if that was certainly something that came out of the presentation on the vec shoes i'm not the deal yeah the balko balko yes yeah if you remember we had them here a few months ago yeah talking about that very issue these there's a lot of issues for the legislature to wrestle with here for sure and the administration will stay tuned and money will run out after so many years truth yeah and i'll just add that um so we are embarking on the eco's plan update so we will be looking um internally too at our energy plan and trying to get it up to speed with comprehensive energy plan um and just thinking thinking through and i i imagine um we probably won't get into too much detail about the grid challenges but we'll definitely highlight that like we did to velco and and we did uh to the comprehensive energy plan as well in the chat there is a comment from the public if um you know we if you wish to hear it because we very seldom get a public comment yeah yeah so the comment is um is there a recommended split in funding between eb charging versus focusing of mode shift to public transit which would have bigger equity benefits to zero car households concentrated in communities like when you see in the old north end um i do know that increasing public transit and making public transit possibly free ongoing is is a recommendation um i'm not quite sure about the the funding yeah my guess is we're going to have to see how the legislature balances those i i don't know the answer to that yet um so yeah stay tuned mr armel thank you it's a good question yeah the funding of um transit is a real issue because uh like when they've tried to gmt out to the rural communities with uh when the gas prices dropped and covet hit i mean the the number of people using transit certainly dropped to where it's not economical for gmt but certainly at the same time that's something we need to consider going forward and and not lose that momentum of having transit in other areas other than the the inner cities so any other comments or questions um for and and certainly you know i'm going to observe as i think matt michael did about the transit for gmt i heartily agree that you know to maximize the use of public transportation it should be free the shuttle that runs from uvm downtown back up gets heavily utilized for that reason you know and people would be using the public transport a lot more you know and we're talking pennies it's it's been unconscionable that we're trying to run it out of the fare box uh you know this is a public service in the same way that if you're going to change over your cars from gasoline power which are just poisoning the planet to electric you want to encourage it and you want to accelerate it to the extent that if it was affordable if the government and and uh there were resources where you could swap one for one a new electric vehicle for an old clunker uh the gas fuel and clunker then it should be done for the sake of uh right now because of the immediacy of the need of the urgency but the cycle track issues and uh dealing with the walkability within dense uh impact dense development are things that are also needed and rather than prioritizing the car-centric communities that we've built and we can do that it's been difficult the south bernicom has had a real arm wrestling match over a cycle track on market street it never happened because of course the bike and pedestrian committee wanted it but the remainder of the city said we can't do it it's not friendly and yet if you built a cycle track separated people will use their bicycles more you will send your kids to the downtown if you create a network of these sheltered bike lanes you will find people will be using bikes more and more and that begins to move the needle away from where we've been prioritizing 60 foot rights of way for cars and all that other stuff uh we need to make some changes along those lines we can't just go from a gasoline powered car society to an electric powered car society and say that we've saved ourselves and planted its healthier lifestyle with the cycle tracks it's healthier with the public well maybe not during a pandemic but I think it's better for us all for human life um and for our enjoyment of saying um that we encourage those alternative methods more and more rather than keep paying heed to uh a hundred and twenty two-year-old technology thank you chris i certainly agree with that um any other comments or questions they don't see any hands or any other comments um since this was a uh an interesting discussion i'm sure we will be cycling back to a lot of these things as they become more specific in the whether it's in the upwp or some other work even uh climate action and uh energy plan uh implementation plans um next is a um discussion on the legislative priorities review and legislative debriefing so um in your packet i have a kind of a two-page table we've kind of committed to the board every six months to kind of review uh legislative policy priorities kind of uh at the beginning of the session and then we'll do this again uh probably July after the session uh ended and we see what the governor signed or not um I don't know let me know if you want me to share that if that's easier or um but I won't share it unless somebody asks but um these are pretty much the policy uh topics are pretty consistent with what you saw six months ago uh clean water still tracking that uh the transportation bill in general uh you know we track that a bit each year to see what's happening uh you may have seen a number of legislators are supporting a bill to what I think they call the transportation innovation act to kind of follow up on a lot of the conversation we just heard um I'm not sure how much traction that will get um in house transportation and we'll so we'll be watching that um transit financing it's a little bit of a different topic um this is something that was in our work program in the last year marshal distal on our staff uh worked with a consultant and gmt and v-trans we delivered that report to house transportation last week and senate transportation the week before um so they were both interested in hearing about transit financing options again following up on the conversation you were just having about uh either fair free transit and or reducing the burden on property taxes your municipalities municipal budgets to support transit service um one piece of information I will share out of those conversations uh with regard to the idea of continuing fair free service which we've had since the pandemic started is the disparity between the cost of doing that for the rural transit services in the rest of the state versus our urban transit service in chinden county and to give you a sense of that issue it's about five hundred thousand dollars ish to make transit in the rest of the state fair free so they get five hundred thousand something dollars historically from the fare box in chinden county that number is 2.2 million and so um I have the impression we'll see how this shakes out that they will probably likely continue fair free service in the rural transit system in the rest of the state um and I think it's a very open question as to whether they will find 2.2 million uh to support the gmt service in our core uh in our gmt service area um in the core chinden county so um just heads up on that issue I guess just because we heard a little bit more detail on that um yeah sir sorry do you have any information on on ridership and you know how many rides we're talking rural some kind of a of an analysis of cost per ride if you will I did not it would be much it's cheaper per ride in in chinden county than it is in other areas but that may be my prejudice too yeah I don't remember seeing those numbers my call I saw was kind of the budget numbers um yeah if you're really interested we could follow up with ross at v trans and get him he probably has a quick breakdown you might be able to share okay thanks yeah I guess I'm sorry I'm seeing elaney nodding so I think between her I will try to follow up with ross um and share those numbers uh after this meeting um the fourth topic area um the perennial favorite of act 250 reform hope springs eternal um and so uh we'll see um and again you saw this notion of act 250 reform mentioned in the climate action plan there's there's some pieces there's several bills proposed in that area I do expect it does seem like there's enough of a priority coming from both the administration and the legislature that I expect they'll move something forward we'll kind of keep following it out to see what it is not clear yet what it is although I expect it's likely to be something that makes it easier for villages around the state to have housing development without being subject to act 250 but again we'll we'll see if that actually comes to pass broadband is the fifth topic we have on here um and particularly interested in seeing if they can make some funds available to chitney county municipalities that are not members of communication union districts cud's will keep tracking what's happening with any climate change implementation bills there is a lot as you just heard there's a lot there for the legislature to chew on and they will have I'm sure a lot of conversations about what to move forward with see there's another topic kind of related happening in the public utilities commission a rule change about forest protection which is kind of related to that sequestration topic and dispension so monitoring that following a little bit of what's happening with the cannabis policy particularly around needs for municipal zoning and there's also a more fiscal issue about whether municipalities will be able to share in some of that revenue particularly if they are hosting a retail establishment project specific tiff is I think it's also coming up in senate economic development right now um there may be equity related bills um I don't I think we you saw some mention maybe an and presentation about um kind of an environmental justice bill uh that seems to have some momentum which a lot of other states have and we don't um municipal self-governance is the 11th topic on this list um this is uh something that particularly vlct is uh and a number of our towns uh have also supported some level of this of you know do we need to go back to the legislature to ask for every charter change on every specific if a bunch of other towns have already gotten that permission so I talked to ted brady I think they're going to try to advance some things there open meeting law hopefully you saw the legislature started to address what happens in town meeting and I can't remember if that bill also might open the door for 100 virtual meetings going forward or that may be under some further discussion I don't like to see the uh them if nothing else to allow fully remote meetings from december through march because that way you know it serves a lot of you know it's you know does the greenhouse gases vehicle miles travel daddy that but it's also public safety issue so that people don't have to have at least one person even in the town hall during those kind of uh you know uh weather events so that people can stay home and uh you know protect them and stay warm at the same time yeah my understanding is that sort of on the sidelines for more discussion um and they were just comfortable moving forward that what we're working with right now through january 15th 2023 so we can see what's going on with covid at that point oh barb you're saying s 222 did allow fully remote meetings that was just signed yeah this is brad um the governor did do that as well as um the same um provisions um waving the petition signatures so you could just basically fill out a form and get on the on the ballot thanks for that good update brad thank you thank you for tracking that more closely than we are appreciate it um uh and the last few uh the rental registry bill i think looks like the legislature's taking that back up we'll track that a little bit um and then a couple more just funding bills um still we'll be asking i think the um the uh first capital dollars to support the startup of the regional dispatch center um and then the final one and this is kind of a new one is that um we're having conversation with uh legislators about how to fund rpcs um there's a formula and statute uh that they have not withstanding been not following for for 20 years um and our funding uh from the agency of commerce uh from the property transfer tax it's not really changed very much in the last 20 years so um they were very um committed to investing in us last session uh and in this fiscal year um we're hoping that continues and this is kind of a question of how how that continues but um again as you saw from the climate presentation there looked to be more asks of us in that arena um to to help move things forward so we're kind of monitoring what's happening there and i think the same thing's happening somewhat on the housing side too so between climate and housing um it does seem like some more demand um that is my quick summary of the pending policy and is anyone aware of anything else that we really should be tracking that's not on that list uh oh dana yeah i just want to point out that um to circle back to act 250 the way i'm looking at it for this session there's really going to be unprecedented pressure on um local permany and state permany act 250 to ease restrictions um for housing development and if the board members who are on the vta listserv and get these great weekly updates on what's going on in the legislature is great but for the board members who are not on the vta listserv i would really think it'd be great if you guys could keep us posted on um the whole regulatory relief issue around housing on the local and state levels because i think it's going to be quite an interesting discussion this session yeah it will be and yeah it's hard to tell exactly how that will play out but yeah we'll keep monitoring that um and i will i'll regime and i will kind of talk about the best way to maybe provide updates um dana for the rest of you who are not on the vermont planners association listserv um there's a weekly update that comes uh from the vermont planners association um and maybe we can just maybe excerpt particularly on this act 250 housing topic area um that portion and would you all be interested in getting a weekly little legislative update like that i certainly would yeah okay all right well we will we will do our best to share right regina probably just looked at me cross-eyed but um she's yeah she's um and regina's taken on a little bit more responsibility with the vermont planners association uh the chairing their legislative committee so so she's in a good spot to see what's going on there um we'll try to i was going to say sorry charlie but i think the regional dispatch you know may have more precedence this year too because our our local fire department notified both underhill and jericho that they're having you know they had to increase their budget by 20 000 because the state police dispatch has said they cannot um continue to service them in fact is right now because the williston is so underserved that they are just doing the absolute minimum amount of dispatch they they can do to the like our local fire department and rescue thanks for sharing that that's helpful yeah so that the fact is the 20 000 is to get the last lot the children dispatch had open so i mean i think that they're going to be more more of the uh the smaller ones that rely on state police dispatch that we're going to be looking for some kind of dispatch thank you uh any other uh questions on the prior or comments on the priorities for charlie before we move on to the the next item which keeps charlie talking i apologize and i didn't um i didn't ask about any feedback from the legislative briefing on or that we had in early december but it seems like it was so long ago we'll move on uh so um the one thing in my report i just wanted to give you a heads up that we're having a public meeting on the 89 study with a particular focus um actually i'm kind of following up on the climate presentation uh really focusing on transportation demand management strategies and and kind of um uh how to address climate actions um so it's kind of an interesting process we went through with a a strategic model uh an econometric model not a typical um for those of you who've been following npo work we you know use a a traffic demand model that we've you know used to project traffic volumes and this was much more of a policy oriented uh economic based model about what makes people make different decisions so um we'll share that probably in february with you all to kind of give you some feedback about how that public meeting went and where the 89 advisory committee landed on those topics but that's the end of my report i'm chair thank you charlie the your committee and liason activities and reports are um available via link or by it within the packet for depending on your preference so we'll you know with that said we can move on to future agenda topics yep and on the second page of your packet or as again as i think about on the back of the agenda um there's some tentative future board agenda items so um they're there uh the hazard mitigation plan is coming up uh for kind of review and adoption in the next couple months i just mentioned the 89 study looking at the tdm results um also also thought that we give you a little bit more detail about that transit financing study um it's out there publicly now but just so you're familiar with what it is and um you know you may want to engage on that at some point um and we'll have probably a consent item on the transportation safety performance measures that we have every year uh at your next meeting um and then most of the other stuff it gets a little bit more administrative you know kind of getting ready for budget and work program uh fy 23 uh executive committee nominations and things like that um any topics or items that people feel like we should try to add to a future agenda sorry i know we gave you a lot tonight and you're exhausted so thank you for sticking with us yes thank you everybody um next is members items and other business and you know at the risk of carrying this on before adjournment uh i want to thank barb for what he talked about about how the planning commission works uh chuck has some really cares about affordable housing there's no question about that however um because he sees the select board as the one who makes the final approval of zoning regulations just like most other towns um he's focused on the select board rather than the planning commission work which is unfortunate because then he doesn't get the picture like we were talking about with the climate action plan in act 250 everything is focused on low more dense um building rather than plunking something down in the middle of it you know 10 acre lot uh out in the open space area where you're going to have all the transportation issues and the climate issues and everything else rather than actually being affordable you're going to need transportation rather than putting it within the village center the planning commission has been working very hard on um making changes to ad use and using the uh state uh better govern better neighborhoods protocol and stuff but unfortunately chuck wants things done yesterday by the select board but so i appreciate the time that you know i felt that i shouldn't just let it look like jerrick always a real outlier in terms of planning but you know but i didn't want to you know i didn't want to really take people's time at the beginning either katherine i would just observe okay that even though we follow robert's rules that in that instance that a parliamentary inquiry should have shut that comment down because it was something that was on the agenda secondly we also received the public comment in the middle of our agenda when there was no opportunity for the public to comment so we are not rigidly adhering to robert's rules and i believe that uh you know we use it to guide our decisions but i don't believe that we use it to exclude because if we did we would have excluded that input i can i observe jeff i think that's um really well put and in fact i conspicuously was out of order when i was commenting on a public comment arguably like so it's an example i think of where robert's rules are guidance to perhaps a light sequential conversation as opposed to closing things down and notwithstanding the comments earlier that they can be offputting for people who aren't familiar or people from other cultures yeah we support and take uh you know comments when they come if it is all related to what we're discussing thank you if is there any other members items or other business from anyone if not then we can entertain a motion to adjourn garret all second garret's motion to adjourn all right thank you all those in favor say hi hi thank you all it was a very good meeting and really some nice discussion yeah thank you all very much appreciate it along everyone thanks kathryn good night