 we're good. Okay. Recording in progress. Excellent. Welcome everyone to the town of Essex Planning Commission. This is September 28, 2023. Oh, we've changed the format again. So I don't see any amendments to the agenda. Are there any that are on the copy that you're in front of us from the staff perspective? No. Okay. So moving forward just to note, John Mangan and Josh Knox are remote and and Bevere, myself and Georgia are present in the room. So at this point, we would open the floor for any sort of public comments that anyone might want to make to us on items that are not on the agenda, which tonight's agenda is the town plan discussion. But if there's anything else, if you're online and you'd like to just raise your hand using the reaction function on the bottom of the Zoom session and go to people because I don't see participants. There we go. Do we have audio? I don't know. It's all from six o'clock. So can you all hear us? Yeah, we couldn't hear you and then suddenly we could. So someone must have unmuted something. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. So just to restate then the first item on our agenda this evening would be public comment. I don't know if that was heard, but if anyone has anything they'd like to share with the commission or items that are not on the agenda. And tonight we only have town plan discussion. Please raise your hand using the reaction function on the bottom of the Zoom screen in the room. Let me check. I think we're good. All right, then let's roll right into the town plan discussion. Catherine, I'm going to look to you to lead us through what you've gotten. All right, so let me tell you what I'm thinking we'll do. Starting in the introduction, making our way through to chapter four point, I'll point out anything that is new, whether it's comments I've received, Trevor and anyone else. I guess, John, I know you sent comments, but I didn't have a chance to look at those yet. So if you want to pipe up with your comments, that would be great. So I will go ahead and pull up introduction. So for folks that are watching, we will, the flow that will follow is Catherine will present the planning commission will bounce ideas back and forth. And then I'll look to the audience for questions or comments. So we're going to we're going to just sort of similar flow to when we look at an application, but a little more relaxed. This little bit bigger. Okay. Once again, my computer doesn't show red. So I'm going to be follow you. Can you see okay from back there? Do you want to we can turn that on? Would you want to turn this table work? Okay. So I think a notable change, although you all have actually seen this in a couple previous drafts, but including that declaration of inclusion that was adopted by the slack word earlier this year. And with that in mind, just trying to weave in language that supports this where applicable and what appropriate in in the plan. I think there could be more of that done. Marguerite is supposed to be helping me with that. And I haven't haven't gotten anything from her quite yet. So I saw that the declaration of inclusion is is in the plan twice. Yes. And that was I'm glad you brought that up because my initial thought was that it should be here in the introduction. But then I thought, well, maybe it fits better in the community part, which where it shows up again, that's in chapter two. So I don't think we necessarily need it in both places. I think you're right. Question is where is it belong? Well, I mean, but maybe it is also nice to restate it as well. If people forget to read the introduction or something, then it's you will have it in chapter two. Yeah, I think it's one of the things that I've noticed when I was first looking at the town plan, like when I first started working here was that I didn't read the introduction. It's like sometimes the introduction just like in my mind, like in a book sort of optional. And that's it's not optional in this case. So anyway, that was just something I didn't address in these. And maybe it's just me that thinks that way. So maybe we don't have an introduction. Maybe it's called something else or, you know, or we, like I said, maybe it's just me. Let it ride for the time being. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I think we hit some other redundancies too. So it's just yeah, well through. Okay. All right. John and Josh, speak up if you have questions or comments as we're going through this also Trevor and Trojan. Sounds good. So you know, another thing that I've tried to weave throughout is indication of where we're trying to seek state designations and actually got some language from the state of, you know, put this in and that's what see a little bit there in that. So I think the other the changes that I got from folks really were more editorial and through in this section versus content. If I remember correctly, so correct me if I'm wrong. And Trevor and John, if you have something that you want to type in, type up and share, go for it. It looks like that the some of the changes are the ones that I suggested. I'd wondered whether you'd gotten that at time, but it looks like you did it like that. The whereas just now was a suggestion from me. So it looks like you've got mine. Well, that I think that was actually Josh, who did that one. Oh, Josh. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought that was John. Josh. Yes, I got it. Okay, cool. Yours is all incorporated. Yeah, that's that's the other Josh. But my only question I had, and it's just because it came up so much in the other chapters is that and of course, I've only been here for five years and say the you want the town center designation for the Essex town center area to just add a couple of sentences that maybe more explicitly defines what that area includes. Yeah, so we do that in chapter, I think it's chapter three, when we talk about the land use. But I think especially if we're talking about the introduction, maybe that is a good. Maybe would it be enough just to point out and see chapter three or something like that? Yes. Yes. I think if we make the introduction, include everything that we're referencing, and I think it's just an issue that it it's in longer than an introduction, maybe talking about whatever. But that's yeah, I don't think it's a bad call out because what is the Essex town center? Right. And if people haven't read that master plan to they're not going to have any idea. Yep. It's good. Anything else? I have a couple things. Yeah. Most of my stuff was either just suggested rewording of things or some grammatical things, but the couple that I wanted to bring up on the very very beginning, line 10 and 11. You know, just I know early on, we, you know, we were constantly reiterating that a phrase better connected, more cohesive. And then to be great in the beginning, they're online 10 and 11. It says more cohesive and better connected. I know it's minor, but I just think that, you know, we talked about really nailing that exact phrase home throughout the entire document, but it's changed there. So I don't know. You mean, is it the order? You mean? Yeah, just more cohesive and better connected. But, you know, we were talking about like really drilling in people's mind, kind of like the catchphrase of better connected, the more more cohesive, you know, but I think changing around like that, it loses, you know, we want, we want to keep it consistent everywhere it's mentioned. It was that and see online 105. It mentions a reduction of outdated content. And I don't know if that was intentional. It seems like we would remove all outdated content, rather than just reduce it. Yeah. Okay. I didn't know if that was really there was some stuff still left in there, but No, I mean, there's yeah, there's probably some outdated in that we don't have anything that's updated. So like there's the economic development plan is pretty old. But that's what we have. So I think that should be removed. Okay. And then the rest is just minor stuff that you can review offline. Okay. Great. Thank you. All right. Are we good here? I will go to chapter should have switched the share. Okay, so I think the biggest change. So this is the action plan. Biggest change here is that the Economic Development Commission submitted their goals and actions. So that just came in today. So I haven't even really had a chance to look at it. Except for putting it in the document. So so to be that that seems to imply that Essex is a fully rural community. The first one to be a bee. Not to be if you want, but I'm just curious. I mean, it seems that that's implying that there's and when we're really, there's a lot of Essex that's not rural. Right. Man, I'm feels like it's an all inclusive statement. Whereas and we have we have portions of the community, the rural portions that are not so I would agree. What does it say? It says maintain Essex's rural character while increasing and diversifying economic development, emphasizing startups, agriculture and home business and retail. So, you know, it's as it says, a combined has a has a multiple presentation. It's not just rural. So I'm yeah, I would agree with that. It almost seems like you could remove the beginning of that sentence because it's on the focus is on economic development in this entire section. So it seems like it starts out with, you know, increase and diversify, you know, economic development and so on and so forth, or that would make more sense. And possibly adding another one that says maintain those areas of Essex that are still rural in presentation. Yeah. But again, this section two is just on economic development. Okay, correct. Yeah. Well, and, you know, it looks like what they're trying to say here. Is they want to diversify more of the economy. So, you know, emphasizing certain things, so startups, agriculture, home businesses and retail, which at least those first three can be more in a rural setting. Right. Where so right. So the focus here is doing those things in the rural area, maintaining the rural character. Yeah, that's what that's trying to encapsulate. If that's what I'm how I'm interpreting it, but I don't know if that's considering that it's coming from Essex from the Economic Development Commission, that makes sense. And having served on that committee for a number of years, we won't talk about how many that was not anything that we ever really addressed. So it's kind of a missing piece to to have economic development thinking about that piece in a rural area and making sure that it can be without changing the role of character. I think Ken Signorello was maybe wanting to speak. He's he's on the EDC. Okay. See, I don't have the screen up right now. So he is here. He is here. Ken, do you have can you provide some input on that? I can. So the first thing we recognize was that most of Essex is still rural. If you look at a map and you can see quite clearly that it's mostly forested and or open land from an area perspective. So that was important to recognize. Secondly, we realize that agriculture, forestry, those are economic activities. They happen in those areas. So that was the other thing we recognized. And yes, we did want to emphasize particularly those sorts of things that we listed there as to be. I can't quite see it all your scrolled a little bit. I can only see two. Emphasize those aspects that we listed the other home businesses. Oh, I guess it's too sorry. Thank you. Yeah, we talked about home businesses. Yeah, that was what we thought should be emphasized going forward, considering that that is the bulk of the area of Essex. But what would what would the thought be about changing the word character to areas? Thinking. I think if you're standing in, in, you know, in the middle of the the Essex experience or something like that, it doesn't feel very rural. That's not the area. You're right. That's not the area that this is referring to, for sure. So I mean, if we can find a way to to really focus that on the rural areas, maintain the character of the rural areas. Might be good. Change it. OK. I'm not going to jump in unless you guys ask. So I don't want to interrupt your flow. Well, we're not. We're not at this point. Can it might, especially if we're in something that you've worked on, please, you know, say something because I'm we're not necessarily watching the hands and stuff. This is hot off the press, but it happened this morning. OK. Any other things that actually have answered your issues? Is there anything that you'd like to call out for us to view since you're going back a little bit? You know, you listed the neighboring towns and you kind of left one out and forgot about Milton. Yeah, we only have like a teeny corner of Milton. It still is adjacent at one point. You're absolutely right. It is when I drive north on Brigham Hill Road. Where do I end up? Colchester first and then very quickly, Milton. Yeah, very quickly, Milton. So I always think of it as an adjacent, not so much at one point, but it is true. Technically, it is at one point only. Yeah, if we if we lost the relevance of that. So with this from this from chapter, the introduction. Mostly like when we talk about how we're compatible, our zoning is compatible with the neighboring towns. I mean, if you did Milton, wouldn't you also have to do what's that other town over there in the corner? The under hill, is there one corner where like I don't other health is not you have to go to Jericho to get to part of Essex. That's true. That's on the road. That's right. But that's Jericho. That's Jericho, yeah. And that is listed. So I double check and make sure. But I know when we send out our notices to a budding town, we do send it to to Milton. And that's out of it. Yeah, but at one point, no doubt about it. Yeah. That was all I noticed up to this point. All right. So they added a bunch of actions that they're actually pretty much all new. So we have updating their economic development plan, which I think is a good idea, because that's 2010. Um, so follow the action items for the new town center. Oops, I'm sorry about that. Create a marketing brand as a town, which is something that I think Gene and Greg were just talking about today. So I think that's that is something that's something that Select Boards is interested in as well. And so the next one is once that brand or the logo is done, update our signs, collaborate with organizations that inform current or local current and potential businesses about vacant spaces, think about incubators, collaborate with other economic development commissions and committees. Always a good idea. Establish a relationship with the Expo and the Champlain Valley Fair, which is any of that in the town? Is anyone what? Is in any part of the Expo in the town? Well, the back entrance is, I know, exit out to a that's in the town section. So I'm not sure if there's a portion of the property or not, other than the entrance and exit at Fargate. I don't remember what gate number it is. Right. So I mean, it's mentioned as a regional economic driver, as opposed to our NECOC driver for our town. Is the EDC still a joint mission or is that a? It's just a town. So we do have some city people on it. It is just for the town. And it's an EDC function. So I don't see it. See an issue with that perspective. We do own part of the tree farm with the city. What comment? I think at least the next two are about Saxon Hill. So that one will be interesting because there's got that's going to be almost egg or chicken, right? Is it we're going to change the uses in the RPDI to allow facilities or we're going to look to create a facility and then use it to drive. I mean, it's. Are you talking about 2.10? No, not 2.10, 2.11. It says include creating a regional facility related businesses to attract users. Prease revenue to the town. So that would be probably in conjunction with an overall RPDI revisit, not something that could be done independent and even necessarily, you know, that's a potentially big one. Yeah, I would venture to say that maybe we're not quite there to say that as an action. Is that what you're? I think developing a plan with a road map and stuff is fine, but it wouldn't be able to go to implementation without potentially some very significant. It's just like the ETC next, right? We put a plan in place, but we don't have the infrastructure abilities, capabilities yet. We don't have the, you know, all the pieces worked out. As long as this is nothing more than a plan at this stage, it could help drive potential changes in the RPDI. But I don't see how a lot of it could be implemented. As long as there's not an expectation of implementation yet. Yeah, I think there's a statement in here saying that we're not necessarily going to get to all of these. Ken has his hand up. Is that go ahead, Ken? Yeah, if you read it carefully, it's referring strictly to the recreational aspect. So that's mostly the town property right now. That's pretty intensively used by a lot of mountain bikers and the town currently gets no revenue from that at all. So this was looking primarily at that, you'll notice parks and recreation is listed there as the lead responsibility. That was the thought. There's just a lot going on there, potentially other properties as well, but really we're focusing on the recreational side there. It says that right there develop a plan for Saxony Health Recreation Trails. Yeah, I was going off from the next sentence. And I do remember you mentioning this during the workshop that we had. As a potential idea for revenue. I think there's merit in it. It's just... This is an eight-year plan, right? Sure. Got eight years to do it. Thoughts, questions? Josh or John? Let's keep rolling. So 12 is create alternatives for commercial transportation from Saxon Hill. Since you can't go on 289 easily from there. What did you say, Kev? So it's create alternatives to solve problems resulting from the abandoned vent of a commercial transportation outlet from Saxon Hill Industrial Park to 289. Yeah, put it back in play. That's that the verb might not be create, it might be develop. Yeah, that makes sense. Because I don't think we can create, we can develop. Plan. Or investigate. Investigate alternatives. Investigate. Is that okay, Ken? I'd like to develop better, however. Well, this is the short-term option. Medium term on this, yeah. So we put medium term? Yeah, medium term is probably good. Yeah, it's you got medium term already on it. What we're missing are that potentially unless public works is part of community development. We're missing public works, I think in this. Mm-hmm. I got in that makes sense. Yeah, I agree. Chapter one. Yes. I am also not able to see the most recent updates on this. I just got this today. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, the most recent stuff. Yeah, most recent stuff is what Catherine has shown us. Yeah, this is just of the 24th, I think because she didn't. Yeah. She's combined information, you know, information so forth. I hate to say it, but we probably need public works on that last one too. Okay, because it's building maintenance and so forth. Traffic. You know, the traffic patterns, the recommendations for beautification and so forth, but that's, unless there's already a plan for restoration through the buildings theme. It's, yeah, really just the water tower. Yeah, so that and that's, we know from past development attempts, public works has had significant input in opportunities and or barriers. So I think we can't ignore them because of that, you know, infrastructure enhancements would have to be, they'd have to weigh in on. Could also be valuable to collaborate with Colchester. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because they have, what, two thirds of the fort or more? I don't know where does that fit. In here. Maybe as a bullet, not as a responsibility, but collaborate with Colchester for cohesives and that becomes better connected. There already a neighborhood plan for that area? There's, the zoning district is pretty tight for like historic elements, but I don't know how that coordinates with Colchester. But so there is already something, but that's, that was really old, I think. This is just kind of feeling to me more like needing a neighborhood plan for that area that deals with. Like it's not just economic specific. It's just everything. Much of it is because the much of the portion that's in Essex is warehouse space. Okay. So it's, I mean, a lot of the economic opportunities that have been attempted in there have been shot down because of infrastructure limitations and zoning limitations. You know, there's one primary landowner or was and, you know, attempts to put grocery stores or other facilities weren't able to be done because of what's there. So historic buildings. Is that, does that come into play there? Yeah, I mean, that's what we're, one of the things we're looking at is assess the historic and commercial elements are there, which I think is a really primary thing. That's, but to your point, Catherine, I don't think we should, we should try to do this independent Colchester as far as maintaining the, the cohesiveness of the four as a total base. But nothing that, none of that, you know, collaborating with Colchester is not, is not contrary to any of these goals. I have a suggestion for you to make that easier. Yeah. At the very beginning where it says create a development plan, say a creative development plan in coordination with Colchester, then it would apply to all the items. I think that's fine. That gives them, either way, it just calls out that they're part of this. Sounds good, but I'm not sure what agritourism is. And what's that? Yeah, yep, yep, yep. First of all, you should know that Burlington hosted the International Agritourism Conference. This last year, agritourism is something that's very big and actually started in Italy. Basically, it is combining farming with tourism. Farms generally start hosting or host families and people to visit and stay there and they're involved in the agricultural operation to some extent at the very least eating. And it's a way that we can leverage the agriculture business that we have and add tourism to it. So there's a couple of different characteristics that are a little bit different from the two separately. I think you even had somebody who recently applied if I'm not mistaken for a parking lot or something in an agricultural area because they were going to be doing agritourism. So it occurred to me that you might want to define just what agritourism is in terms of zoning and use rules. And then you could actually have that definition and then say, okay, agritourism as a use is allowed in these zones. So it's a combination of agriculture and tourism happening at the same location. Okay, thank you. I hadn't heard that term before. It's a huge, huge tourism driver in Italy. It's getting... Well, they call it agritourismo, I think. And so that seems to be clear. 2.16 seems to be clear. What is 2.17? Explore Essex? That's not... So the Explore Essex Festival, I think. And that just parks in right to... Yeah, so I think that's like the manager's office as well and community development. Tammy Getchell is the... Yeah, we weren't sure who was the driving force behind it currently. So yes, please fill in whoever is necessary. I'm curious why we're being specific about that one event. It seems like they want to do that with any events they have. Is there a reason? Yeah, we focused on that because we were hearing that staff was dedicated rather intensively to this operation this year, particularly it's growing. And it's, how should I say, promoted as an economic engine and driver, bringing a lot of people to the area. So we just want to make sure that the effort that we're spending is worth what we're getting. Would be, I mean, it sounds fine, but it'd be interesting to hear what thoughts are on how to do that assessment. You know, the cost to put it on staff cost is fixed and you can figure that out. If you were to ask me, yeah, that's a good question, a very good question. If you were to ask me, I would count up the hour spent and find out how many people attended. That sort of thing, that's going to give you some measure. It's going to be your cost and some measure of benefit. And you'd have to identify what those benefits are so that you recognize them. Do we, is there still the section about building as a brand? Do we, that was in the old one. I wonder if this would fit part of that. Because it does seem like a brand building. It is, a community building. Yeah, so maybe as part of brand building. I didn't, I don't remember seeing it, so maybe it's gone. But that seems like maybe that could be one of the best. It's, it's, it's the, it's the very first item. Is it building as a brand? Cause maybe rather than. Just scroll back up and you'll see it. Yeah. It was a goal being its own action. Maybe. No, it's not a goal. It's, it's number one and two, I think. Because that does. Maybe not one, it's maybe three and four. Yeah, three and four. It's, it's one of the top ones. Maybe number three. Maybe three and then number four. Yeah. You know, with the logo. Such a long time ago. Yeah. Yeah. I think the, so something I haven't done is talk about Explore Essex and other community events in the plan. Yeah. Um, so I think we need to put that somewhere. So, you know, so this is supported, this action is supported by, I mean, this, whatever. In any event like that, to know, if, if you're hosting an event with an expected outcome, that should be, that should be quantifiable. You know, if the idea is to have a thousand people show up so you're promoting Essex, then you've got a measurement that you can, you know, put the hours, the staff hours against a thousand people. But if the idea is that you're going to get two or three businesses in, that's a long-term effort in what, how do you measure the effect of, you know. That session with Explore Essex versus, I mean, again, so what's the, what's the, the goal or the target of the Explore Essex or any event? Great. And that's to the point of assessing the cost and benefit. I guess right now to Ken's point, the only counter for the staff hours or the, the justification with the staff would be, would be the attendance. But is that the goal of the, about Essex is for attendance or is it to have something resulting from people coming there? Multi, it's multifaceted really. So, yeah. So it is not just about attendance, it's about supporting local businesses, local organizations, you know, like amp-dots or historical society. It's about building Essex's identity and brand. Essex's brand. Huh, that's right. Georgia pointed out. Well, I can see how it would also be a community event. It would be, I mean, maybe not really the same as like the junctions growing the 4th of July, but similar, in a similar vein sort of to build. So it does seem like that would be a hard, hard thing to quantify in a. Are there other events that are promoted that use, and as Ken said, that this seemed to take an excessive amount of staff time or seem to, are there other events that are put on by the town that also take staff time that are in along this vein? And there have been a couple of things. I think for a couple years we did something with Juneteenth, but that is not so much the town anymore. That's more private. It's doing that. So it makes sense. The recreation department does a lot of events, but that's I think a little different. That's very different. And before any future commitments to continue, is there sufficient time to be able, once this is adopted, to be able to say we're not going to put it on? And this will go back to Ken. Is this that last piece before any future commitments to continue? That would imply that you're not going to do another one until you've done an assessment. Or it becomes more volunteer driven rather than staff driven. Like a lot of events are like, for example, the Memorial Day Parade, an Essex Junction is almost all volunteer driven, but supported by the Parks and Recreation Department other than the other way around. Right now there's very few volunteers that are creating these for Essex. There are plenty who are involved in the event itself, but not in the legwork of going out and getting all the donations and contacting all the businesses. All that's being done by staff right now. Originally it was done by the Essex Business and Professional Association. Well, I'm just wondering with the way this is phrased right now. I don't dispute the idea of determining if the costs and benefit are not sure that there's an easy way to do that, but I'm not, you know, to say is it still worthwhile? That's a question. But is it to be done before we commit to any future events? Or do we just commit to doing it to see if it's good to continue with or look to transition to a volunteer? The feeling was before moving forward to make the measurements, but if you feel you want to soften that, I mean, this is really your product. So, but we felt kind of strongly about it that based on what we were getting for feedback, it's a lot and really should be reconfigured possibly if we're going to continue with it. So I will tell you that the intent is after that event happens that there will be that time to assess and evaluate. And that's already built into the plan for the town. So there will be that. I don't know, you know, as specific as like a cost-benefit analysis. I'm not sure that's where we were going with that, but that there's no reason to not include that. Saying that we feel like after the event that it is worthwhile, planning starts much earlier than March. Yeah. You know, when this is adopted. So maybe that not to soften it per se, but to say explore the benefits of continuing with the Explorer Essex Festival, period. Same effect. And that would be delivered then to the manager's office and the select board and so forth who really makes the decisions. Of benefits and costs and very, you know, I would say the cost is should be in there as well. I mean, that's that's the factor to have in. And I want to lose what the what the EDC said. They want to determine whether or not it's it's they're still value added. Is this still delivering value to the community? Sufficient value to cover the cost. Yeah. Are we still talking about the farm? No, this is the Explorer Essex Festival. The what? Explorer Essex Festival. Oh, OK. I rest my case. Is it founders this year? It's at the park there. Foster Road Park. Well, that's part of it. It's it's actually a week long event. So there's passport week, and then there's community day. And the passport week is that way to support local businesses and nonprofits. And so, you know, that you can go to the historical society or the museum of the forts and dots. Also, several local businesses and get a stamp in your passport book. How about instead of Explorer, we do we change it to assess? I mean, that's a more to me. That's more active and to not to lose Ken's point about that that the EDC felt strongly about it. Let's actually do an assessment of the cost of benefit. I mean, that seems to be more definitive action. And it's not the planning commission. So that read OK to you, Ken. I like that. Yeah, yeah, that's that's the idea. Yep, exactly. OK. OK. One more. Looks good as written. OK. Wasn't there a 19? I could have sworn we had a 19. I guess we get back. No. So, you know what? I didn't put one in because it was in somewhere else. Oh, OK. And so I don't have your email in front of me, but it might have been about the DRB maybe or. No, no, definitely not that. Shoot, I'm going to quickly bring up the document and look. It was early on, I think. OK, I'll have it in a second. Sheets. It's often the two point four. EDC town plan. Here we go. OK. Early on, you said, huh? Development, EDC next. Secure the town's center designation, right? You had that. Create the marketing brand. We got that. Signs, collaborate and sales opportunity for Incubator. Had that. Rebellion and Consider Opportunity Collaboration. Milton, you had that. Established relationship CVX, but you had that. Development plan for the tree farm, that was there. Development plan for industrial growth, that was there. That was there. Create alternative to solve problems. Rebuilding it. That was there. Four is there. Can you find a new activity? Maybe my number again. OK, we'll know in a second. I do have 19, though. Review tax incentive, right? You have that. We do the review the tax, current tax incentive programs, right? You have that. Assess the report and potential economic impact of the community resilience. By the way, if anybody doesn't know, that's the 3050 law that just got passed. Conserve 30% by 2030 and 50% by 2050. This must be it. No, that's there. Learn about advanced manufacturing technology. What did we miss? I have 19. Well, let's move on anyways. You can focus this, so you can touch base with Catherine. Yeah, we can talk tomorrow. Ken, if that's OK. And we can find the missing number. Absolutely. I just wanted to be here to make sure I can answer any questions considering how hot off the press this was. Well, you've been put to the task so far, so this is good. I'm glad you're here. Yes, thank you. You guys ask for it, and I delivered it. OK, what else have we got? Now, we're in Chapter 3 now, Catherine. Well, yeah. I don't think there was anything new in transportation or the rest, if I'm correct. So, yeah. Unless anyone else has any comments and any other actions, goals or policies. So, Chapter 2. Actually, I have one question. Sorry, Chapter 1. Yeah. I'm just curious about the actions I'm seeing look great. By the way, I'm curious, is there like a priority list of them? How are we identifying that? I haven't done one of these before this way, so I'm just not sure what the expectation is. And I'm thinking to myself, there's a lot there. So, I'm also wondering what's feasible, in terms of everything. Human resources, approved budgets, or likelihood of an approved budget, and so on and so forth. Or is it just a big wish list? Yes, I mean, I know that you may not ever get to, or you might do a few things from there, but there's no guarantee, you know, anything's going to happen for that matter. Yeah, I mentioned, you mentioned earlier, there's commentary in here, but not everything will be addressed. It is the big wish list, it is what we think about. And in some of these, it's called out that it's, that the various groups that are, that'll be focusing on it. So, it might not be planning commission on some, it's going to be public works, or Parks and Rec, or whatever. But... Yeah, and there's also timeframes on them. So, the short-term ones would be the ones that we'd be more likely to get to, I would say for the most part. Some of them, though, if maybe it's medium-term, it just takes a long time to do it, so... Yeah, and there's no definition of those timeframes though, right? I mean, I looked and didn't see one anyway. So, what's the term really mean? Yeah, I feel like there was, but if there's not, that would be good to add. I mean, I think it's really... You know, this is an eight-year plan. So, I would say we're talking about, we want these things to be accomplished within that timeframe. And some of them are ongoing though, so that's just going to always be something we do. But short-term, you know, would be like one to two years. And then, or maybe one to three, and then... So, like when we start looking at amendments and stuff, again, we want to make sure we go back through and look at all those things short-term, first. Yeah, right. And then stepping the next ones down. Yeah, I'm like, for example, we have that one that mentioned coordinating with Colchester. Well, do we know... What if Colchester's not interested in collaborating on it? No, then there goes that action plan, right, kind of gets blown out of the water. But I guess that's fine. If we go back to, this is just kind of like a wish list, then there's nothing wrong with that at all. But I think it is a good reminder that these aren't supposed to just be dreams. We're supposed to really be working on them, so we have them here for a reason. Yeah. In our case, these wish items, these to-do items, are what will help drive us to do the zoning and subdivision updates in the next round of regulations. This is sort of a roadmap to try to get those in play. Yeah, and it should be the roadmap for the other boards and committees that have now provided their feedback. Did the committees that provided feedback provide a priority list? If I may. Yeah, I can. Go ahead, please. So things that we can recognize right away, like for example, the very first thing we saw when we were looking at the old plan was develop a brand for Essex. So that never even happened, so we put it in this plan again. So yes, it's an eight-year timeframe. We realized that anything that says long term would be in that range seven or eight years out. Anything that says medium would be about four years, and short term would be, you would start out at rent after the town plan was approved. So in terms of priority, it's not which would you do first per se, but it's more you do the ones that need to be done faster first. Okay. So I guess there is a priority list per se based on the timeframe. Yes. That's coming from the EDC. That's the way we interpreted the situation and recognized right away, and especially from the conservation controls. Also, we noticed that a good third of the items that were in the town plan from before never got done. So it's not like they have to get done. But I think part of that has to do with the short span of time between town plans. It used to be five years. That's what I mean. Yeah. Now it's eight, at least. My first time to this rodeo, so I don't know what to say. And quite frankly, we had some other town-wide issues or distractions going into this, that sort of impact. Didn't we really? What could that be? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so lead us through. All right, chapter two. There had been a discussion at a previous meeting about what you will see being the right term, see. And so I had a couple ideas. Josh thought read us would be the best. So that was a suggestion. He's had a lot of free input into this. I think we should do something. Other than what Josh suggests, because he's just had a lot of input. Too much. I'm sorry to burst everyone's bubble, but I do have one more quick suggestion on the page that you're looking at right now. Let's scroll back down to historic background, please. Yeah. Considering we were just talking about the distractions and things that we've faced in the past six years, the sentence ethics is one of the few Vermont towns whose boundaries have never changed is no longer accurate. So the historical society is working on doing a revamp of this section. So I would expect that they would either remove that or cut that. Are you right? The whole section. That whole section, except for, I mean, they didn't feel comfortable with that first part with the pre. About 1000 years ago, please. Yeah. So that's what I came up with, just looking at some stuff that we had, just doing the, when this, before the CERC went in, they did an archaeological study and found remains. There was been some found up in Saxon Hill as well. So that's where most of our knowledge of pre. So based on your comment in the doc, are we not getting this from them or they're just not being receptive? They're just slow turnaround. I spoke with UB Norton the other day and he said they were getting close. So they know their timeframe that we need it by your next meeting, essentially. So hopefully that'll be coming quickly. I'll poke him again. Maybe just put a note. They don't deliver the strike that. No historic. Yeah. I mean, we could just basically keep this, but update it where it needs to be updated, which is fine. But I think there's enough in here that talks about a six junction. And I feel like we need to change the focus a little bit. That was one of the things they were instructed to do. All the demographic stuff, I don't believe there's anything new. There, economic development. Some of this is updated. Some of it isn't. Gene is working on this. Like too much about global foundries, for example. I'm going to get rid of. There's one sort of philosophical thing that is kind of difficult town of Essex in that we want to promote mass transit, but at the same time, really, with the number of people, it's not like you could ever have a bus system with buses coming every five minutes. So it is kind of auto centric. We're in a way almost forced into it. Like these statements to support the development of Route 15 and Route 117, well, how much development would the town ever really want to support? I mean, if the state, you know, how am I trying to put it? If like someone said, well, let's make 15 into a four-lane highway all the way through the town of Essex. Is that what people really want? Or, so maybe it's not good to just make the blanket statement that you support any improvement to those roads, but I want to say like reasonable improvements or, I don't know, but I mean, it's kind of a difficult question. You're talking specifically the sections. Yeah, is it in the economic development section? In the subsequent upgrades to major. Yeah. So 2 as 0.3. Oh, to back in the beginning. Say, okay, so some intersections are going to be signalized. More than 83, yeah. So traffic continues to grow, and then 10 years ago, I guess the plan is only eight years, but 10 years from now, it's worse. Support like widening intersections and really widening roads then, and which is very disruptive. Or the other direction is, is it traffic calming and brought up? We put in just things to reduce traffic. Oh, oh, yeah. I mean, I'm not in favor of restricting, but what I guess to your point is what is upgrade? Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say that that. What are upgrades? Or that somehow or other that at some point the town would want to, if radical upgrades came to be necessary, which might be 10 or 20 or longer years away, would you want to consider that? Or really go to something, take traffic calming steps or steps to provide, I don't know, on demand, mass transit, things like that, as opposed to just going with the whole expand the highways. So here's a question. I mean, is this, Catherine, this 2.3, is that really referring to the state? Do we know, is it referring to the state portions of the roads or the town portion of the road because they're treated differently? And we know that with 117, there's a push to improve it. Or if we improve the truck flow from Saxon Hill down to 117, there'll want to be improvements there, such as potentially a light with North Williston Road and looking at ways to potentially straighten the road up in various areas in one area down where you get to Barbara Farm where the road's washing away. I mean, that to me, those would be support B-trans upgrades to major arteries would be whatever B-trans does. Yeah, well, this is a holdover from the last town plan. So I don't really know. Yeah, well, I mean, maybe it's just a little too philosophical. Yeah, I tried to touch on some of that in the transportation part of the plan. And I think that I feel like this is kind of jumping immediately to the solution without first kind of thinking through the problem a little bit more. And I think there is, you know, it's attractive to think about we can somehow build our way out of congestion and somehow just build an extra lane and all of a sudden things will go more smoothly. But then you just find that you just have more traffic and you've used up people's yards and you just have more congestion and you've pushed the problem to the next five. So I think what I was trying to get at in the transportation part of the plan is we really need a transportation plan where these topics can really be professionally thought about and feasible alternatives can be provided to decision makers to decide, okay, well, one approach is we can make the roads wider. It'll have these pros and cons and these costs. Here's another approach. We can try to look at encouraging alternative transportation modes. We can do transportation demand management with businesses. We can here is kind of like our suite of different options with the different costs. How would you like to pick what you select but really pull up the town plan with a transportation plan that it helps really get some of these? Yeah, I mean, I agree with that. I mean, see, I just, what I'm trying to say is that I wouldn't want to just go in lockstep without, you know, the DOT wants to suddenly, you know, expand, you know, add all sorts of lanes and things where so many other places have gone down that road and it's turned into a disaster in that you build all these things and yet there's there's still lots of plenty, lots of traffic and still congestion. I don't know. Yeah, and I think also having so congestion and just getting people where they need to go quickly is one thing, but we also want it to be safe. We want to provide people choices. There's this whole, you know, we still want trucks to be able to get to business. You know, we have all these different pieces put together. We still want to maintain the character of the town. But let's go back to what this is. This is this is a call out box. So these are going to be essentially bullet points under any economic development. Yeah. So the yeah, these these are what was important at the last town plan for economic development in the town. So this doesn't actually get into the detail. I think if we're covering transportation plans or goals, let's let that be with that in mind, Trevor, do you feel that I mean, recognizing this is more of a yeah, I'm an economic point of view. We want to have, you know, the the upgrades to the major politics, whatever those upgrades would be. We do. It's just that my only concern is that, you know, you don't just want to give, say, the state DOT carte blanche to do whatever it wanted. Well, they have it in their sections. We don't have a lot of say in sections. Well, yeah, but I think just just so we don't get get stuck tonight too too deeply in this. I mean, this is this is looking as carryover. I think I need some work, I think. So we could just highlight it and either we either take it out because this is a call out box and address it and really address it in the transportation section. And I know that the transportation section does do that and mentions about auto centric and not auto centric and well, maybe it's OK to leave it in, but it's just that, you know, upgrade might mean like, you know, there's small upgrades and there's real big upgrades and just that. But it's true for economic development. People do want, you know, it's a hard question. How about we change the shell to should and that softens that sentence? I mean, that softens that statement by a lot. OK, that's fine. And it doesn't it doesn't lock us into any because otherwise it's a shell which there's a big difference between shell and should. Shall as you do it, should is consider it. Right. And then we don't have to change that box and the impact is there and we can still get into depth in the transportation. And I think, too, in looking at the rest of this economic development section, there are changes that need to be made for sure. And it's not just getting rid of all the talk about global foundries, but it's also, you know, I think some lots of changed about how we do handle getting people around. And maybe we need to talk more about housing is important for our economy. So there I think this whole section really is in need of a lot of work. But I think I think in here, if we're talking about transportation, we need to update this section to really say what we what we want. And then maybe these actions do get to change. And also is the is the order correct? Lately it seems like housing has been the primary. What is what is things? What do we want people to see first? Is it housing or is it infill development with existing industrial commercial zoning districts? Yeah, I think also if it's kind of going to the solution of this saying something that suggests what the problem is in there, like upgrades to major arteries to reduce congestion or to mitigate truck impacts or something that kind of suggests what why are you doing this if you want to if you want to kind of go right to the solution or alternately say something like we want to address truck impacts along these roads. Or we want to increase congestion time, whatever you want so that it's clear what is actually the problem you're trying to. But we kind of do that, right? I mean we talked in in previous sections about changing the addressing the trucks leaving Saxon Hill and the access to no longer access to it. So we're bringing a lot of these things up. Think about it. I guess that probably just chew on that a little bit. I mean this is economic, it's economic from an economic development perspective is producing truck traffic appropriate is signaling dangerous intersections appropriate 15 and Sand Hill Road. I mean that's also part of this upgrade. But any of the things that that you do that affect another part of the plan can always be referenced you know in in the plan see economic developments. Or see the traffic section. We also got some redundancy between three and four. Four says state and regional efforts to develop the transportation links. Well I don't think we should necessarily be intellectually limited to what the state did to us when they changed their mind about. But that's the state and regional efforts would be would be 15 would be 117 because 117 touches Essex Junction touches us touches Jericho it's not Essex it could be something. So I was looking at this as you're looking at this a little bit maybe maybe there's some redundancy in three and four without having specificity for three or does give you some enhancement of transportation links which major artery in and out of Essex is a transportation link in and out of Essex. If I could make an offer. We're taking bids. Okay so it says economic development on top so I can't speak for the committee obvious commission obviously but if you want to punt this section to the economic development commission our next meeting is on October the 5th I think. The agenda hasn't been published yet we did punt it and they didn't do anything. Okay I wasn't oh I think what might have happened is the chair just cut this all out and just had us work on the action items so maybe re-asked. Okay well I was talking with Jean today sort of in desperation because we need to get this section done so I will talk to Jean and have her reach out to the chair. The uh like I said the agenda isn't isn't done yet and the only item we had on it is going to be our work plan so I think we could probably sneak this in. Okay and either way it's you know this is still visionary so at a visionary level the details aren't necessarily required yet and I'm hearing your thoughts about it so that'll help actually I want we won't be hitting it blind yeah great thank you that is good yep. Continue what time will we get we've got 7 18 so let's see if we can get through our sections by 8. And also if any commissioners have have you know thoughts that you want to chew on feel free to send them to Catherine you know outside of the meeting but let's let's see if we can get through it's hard sometimes we start drilling in on words basically. It's really hard to stop talking a lot to say about everything. Okay so I know Kent you have a lot to say about transportation. Maybe the main highlight yeah what do you what do you need help with. Oh I know Dustin you had a concern about this. Yeah I'm looking at 11 and I'm really wondering about that that sounds that sounds really challenging. Yeah that is Dennis Lutz speaking from the from the great beyond. Well he's still with us but not not as our so I know like Erin has a different view on this. Erin Martin their new public works director and I I think it is an interesting topic to to discuss of maybe we have a lot of private roads and we have right we can do that in like a PUD or in the scenic resource. Yeah I mean we've we've we've got something that talks out private roads can only have so much they can only be so long you know. Yeah I wasn't really sure what that's really trying to say if it's really trying to say we want to discourage new roads from being built then maybe we should just say that but I'm not sure if that's really what it's saying I'm not sure what the what the objective is. Well I think we've had the cases where we've had where we've had new parcels created either either a division whatever and private road is created to them. Is this to try to prevent the the spaghetti lots or whatever the the term I don't know. Yeah road frontage and so forth so I guess that I would like to kick this back to Erin and see you know what this means and if it really means anything to us to agree. The last piece that makes it seem like it's linked hang on a second Ken it makes it seem like it's linked to our you know the earlier statement full of ABC of you know maintaining the rural character but fostering it seems to be both maintain the the rural character of those areas but it's also potentially prohibit the fostering of new our agriculture use or something like this so what do we yeah I'll see what I'll see what Erin has to say and you had something to add to it yeah it occurs to me that this ties in pretty nicely at 171 and dealing with forest boxing keeping them integral so you might want to consider it in that light like over okay that sounds good what do you think about okay all right um let me go through like some comments I had yeah I mean I think we want to try to resolve what we can here tonight um I think I was feeling like where you go online 1447 there uh go back up where it talks about Essex being a hub of transportation my guess is that's kind of a holdover from Essex Junction I feel like the town of Essex is really on the periphery of the urban area it's kind of the edge of the urban and rural so I feel like we're not really a hub of it so I think I would maybe change or to even kind of highlight that we're we're really on the on the edge of the you know kind of the suburban edge and so so this is the first line that says it historically so it talks about historically and I was thinking that that meant more Essex Junction so then you've got the next thing well even Essex Junction because historically it was it was Colonel Page and and old stage there was the hub okay so I mean oh that was the old yeah the brand I mean something and obviously Essex Junction um was when did Essex Junction come into existence originally I don't remember the date I mean when was it incorporated as a village 18 so I don't I don't see a challenge with it with the historical aspect of it okay but you do say in the presently um you you you know you call that out um and maybe we we we don't have that we don't have the real rail system anymore early within the town that wasn't called out in the historical review first place so yeah but we have reasonably close proximity which a number of other towns in the area do not have right the part of this like I we crossed out rail lines that you could say access to rail lines in Interstate 89 so we they're really close to Amtrak yeah you go down just a little you go down a little bit lower I'm sorry are we still up we're done with that we can go let's go let's go um does it show my comment that goes with that gray box because then I don't have to try to read it um yes I think that seemed to me kind of like to thank you that's much easier for me it's pretty um it really it's kind of talking about two different aspects here and maybe we could somehow combine those together a little bit um better and give a sense of just linking them better as it's all part of one system and we're kind of um maybe hopefully transitioning from more of an autofocus and we're trying to have more of a multimodal holistic focus so if that's what we want to say or I don't want to lead us in a certain direction anyways that's what that kind I might be in a minority but I would not want to say we're shifting to say we're including okay where do we want to shift or are we kind of happy with where we're at for eight years I'd say we're happy with where we're at okay yeah um you know I think I would consider drastic changes to to similar to what has happened in some of the streets in Burlington would be completely out of care so you're driving along north uh riverside you know the designated bison it isn't a dedicated lane anymore it's it's bikes have the full use of the road on the oven on the back of the North Manuski off from Riverside it's just I think some of the things I think we need to we need to work towards collaborative environment or incorporating multimodal transportation but not replacing I would personally I don't want to shifting away from autofocus transportation to conclude but I know that that's not an incentive by others it's reality I think you mentioned it or whatever I mean our infrastructure right now is is it would have to be drastically changed get away from vehicles and we'd have to have a different different infrastructure for buses and so forth we don't but what we want to do is accommodate not necessarily reinvent well I don't think you're gonna have any situation where somehow motorists are limited on what they can do because you've created a sidewalk or a bike lane or something like that and now the challenge is when we when we had the discussion about is the biking a transportation effort or is it a recreation effort that's come up before recreational recreational biking paths can be however they go they can be under there's no there's no requirement for really for it to be direct transportation biking needs to be more direct you're not necessarily going to have a transportation bike trail that goes a mile over this way a mile back that way it's it's there's a desire to have it follow the roadways because those generally tend to be the most direct from point to point for transportation bike purposes but but the the I like that the multimodal idea is that somehow the the future would be that somehow it's safer for bicycles and pedestrians on the highways of of Essex I'm not restricting the auto capacity but making it easier and safer for somebody who did want a bike to work and and you know I think that's kind of the idea of what want to go to I mean well that's what I'm saying the philosophical thing is just that we're really kind of stuck with the automobile here and but that we gotta like do the incremental steps to make it possible for people to change well and I mean you can see the evidence of that working as you get out over towards St. Michael's College and the the bike lanes that they are putting in there are you know separated from the road but follow the road yeah yeah and so it's that kind of thing that lends itself to what Dustin's talking about with transportation as opposed to recreation and we've had these discussions before transportation bicycling is in conflict with a pedestrian recreation this is this has come up when we were talking about years ago about putting in a transportation center from Susie Wilson it was it was a conflict between anyways it's a big it's a big topic I like the way it was written because it's it's talking about what's coming is a greater need you know and we have to we have to accommodate it in the future which is I think pretty much what you just said yes yeah and I think also using this part of the plan to kind of set the stage for kind of the the direction we'd like to go but then really have a more detailed planning effort later with a transportation plan with a specific bicycling and pedestrian component to it to where we can really spend the time to think through the details and the implications and you know what do we know about the safety characteristics you know what do we know about how many people would really use transit we haven't done any of that investigation yet at the at a detailed enough level we really need to do that before we can make informed decisions of is there actually the demand for people to walk in their neighborhood and then they go over to walk to school is there the demand for that or not the demand for it so and that that is an action item that we have yeah in this plan yeah I know one of the one of the tools we have to to future proof us to some degree is requiring easements to develop whether there's logic or at that particular point in time we get the easement so we can potentially pull the trigger in the future yeah yeah and I think that makes sense in trying to also use a bigger planning effort to connect some of the other dots like if we really want transit to work unless the bus is going right past your house and going right to your destination you need to walk to the bus stop or you need to bike to the bus stop or you need to drive the car to the bus stop you need to get on the bus go to where you're going then again walk or bike or somehow get to your destination so you need to think about the infrastructure that's going to actually support the transit use and that might actually be one of our biggest reasons for developing bike and pedestrian infrastructure is so that transit can work we also have to remember as Ken said at the beginning of the process is there's a significant amount of Essex town that is still rural outside of major major population centers right and I mean the town is pretty small and it's pretty flat it's not that difficult to get from one place to another on a bike but it might be really uncomfortable or not feel good with the traffic and maybe a lot of people would do it if if it felt a little bit more comfortable but that would be part of the of the planning process to try to work through um I'm going to go online Patty has her hand up Patty do you want to offer a comment uh yes Ken you hit the nail on the head um not only is our population aging but they're very fit and and the the brand Essex brand uh on our side of town on Sandhill road all these neighborhoods on Sandhill road that are all going solar heat pumps they're saving for electric cars they want to walk they want to take the bus they do want to drive their electric car but that highlighted area where it says Essex public's road roads will continue to be primary infrastructure blah blah blah you can down zone and have like Jeff spec a well-known planner he goes around to different towns he's he spoke at UVM you could keep route 15 like your co-worker said on the planning commission that your cohort I don't know his name the new new person um you could keep the width of route 15 the way it is you could even have on street parking which would force these commuters to drive slower which would then enable to Kent for what Kent just say I said have that you wouldn't have to really build any new infrastructure the traffic would be slower and trucks would go elsewhere because this this this is a neighborhood community big trucks trucks will go elsewhere we don't want to attract big trucks we want to go electric this town is forward thinking very highly educated and if you ask the residents they're going to agree with you Kent 100% 100% thank you really nice people agreed with me I'm not expecting that and I'm what I'm trying to do is just provide you know some different options and then try to get a sense of where is the where's the pole with it and to me I feel like really encouraging more of a planning a focused planning effort later I think is probably one of the key things that I would recommend from the the transportation transportation action items and it seems like um the chinden county regional planning commission and probably work with us in 2025 to work on developing some of those plans so at this point if we can provide enough direction and information to get that steered in the right direction then we can kind of set the stage for delving into it more and more detail so I just brought up the the little word cloud you know if we're talking about what we what we heard in there the public visioning you know people you know the biggest thing there is the bike pad connectivity addressing issues on route 15 is big mass transit um address the CERC I think that is more like the lack that the CERC didn't was not completed um you know planning and maintenance school traffic but yeah resilient grid a lot a lot of things there that I think I think what you're talking about and I think what's you know in the plan already is supportive of those those things and I think anywhere we can try to call this out in support of where the direction we're heading is it's good and this is what we heard from people yeah yeah I figure I mean it's not like a zero-sum game that somehow you improve things for pedestrians and you're gonna take something away from motorists um you're you know I think going at it first what are people interested in and looking for and then really looking from a safety perspective too um to me well probably for most of the public you're thinking much more about congestion and how quickly can I get someplace I'm much more interested in the safety part of it and if somebody has to wait a little longer they wait a little longer but it's safer and that's would be my preference but not what most people are thinking about when they're in traffic so but we need more data to really look at that and provide a safe place whether it's fixing broken sidewalks or having lighting or whatever it is so that people can actually travel places um safely they just did a thing in Wales it's very controversial they would reduce the speed limit on all urban streets for 20 miles an hour and they and people are upset but the thing is they estimate that we'll save two lives annually you know it's safety yeah and in some ways you can reduce congestion that way too by having slower speeds and it allows you to reclaim some of your road space because you don't need the roads that are as wide but yeah some places are really focusing in on the in the safety effort and making that a huge priority um having a real um like called like a safe system approach where everything is focused back on the safety part um and it ends up improving people's mobility options too they feel more comfortable walking kids can be more independent and people who are older can be more engaged in them hey let's continue on um what other highlights to hit here um oh i okay so one thing i thought might be helpful when talking about the primary challenges related to transportation and i don't know if you can click on that first box up there to just kind of highlight it is you know this this area of Vermont everywhere around here it's been very autofocus for a very long time everything's kind of grown up around it we have a culture around it that's that's a challenge of trying to come up with even reducing just traffic congestion um and there's not an an easy way to somehow solve that problem um i think it might be worth kind of talking about or at least thinking about um and we do have some really good options here we we're relatively flat it's a relatively compact um town that we have it's we do have a lot of good options moving forward and things can happen very incrementally there doesn't have to be some pendulum swing that all of a sudden anything's drastically different um but to me as i think about the challenges um that's that seems like a challenge to maybe highlight um so that's why i mentioned that there um and so are you suggesting adding another bullet point to that yeah i was um i would actually suggest a separate bullet point because the last item you have in one of those bullets the impact of regional food traffic because quite frankly that's that's i think one of the biggest issues to be dealt with is the to and from going through it's not i don't believe that the community traffic itself is that significantly dangerous or crazy or better i think when you add the community traffic and then you add the volume of traffic that uses sx as a through throughway pass through right twice a day Monday through Friday and basically all day Saturday and Sunday that to me is a bigger issue a bigger item to be looked at because we can do all the we can we can encourage sx to walk ride a bike ride a bus as much as you want but that's not going to have any effect on anybody outside of the community i'd like to see the if we can differentiate the two and see if there's a way to to truly assess because quite frankly if if it is you know 90 pass through that might be a case for revisiting sections but i mean that to me again are we gonna are we gonna try to re-engineer something that we're not going to be able to affect by changing the the structure i i'm not arguing against any of this for study purposes but is it going to affect the primary contributor whether it's truck traffic or whether it's just through you know residential through traffic from other communities i think some of that would kind of reveal itself if we had more data about the congestion about where the crashes are happening where complaints are um i would even think doing traffic counts um at the esic jericho border and and see what the you know the base on the time of day what because that's that's that's the through way out of to all places beyond and even potentially um oh you can't really do it on the village side because there's a huge traffic that goes to school there so anyways i that that to me is differentiating between residential traffic and pass-through traffic really i think the term used regional through traffic i think it's pretty significant in what we how we guide ourselves going forward but you would also need to do probably 128 yeah i understood and any of these things like this to look at you know where's the traffic going anyways yeah so yeah no and if if it gets congested in one area does do motorists have an option of picking a different route and they can somehow get around the congestion or then yeah are they cutting through neighborhoods or do they have a different suitable way to go finish the connection to the cirque and all of that traffic coming from underhill and jericho and cambridge would take ellen martin parkway out to ellen martin you know ellen martin drive to ellen martin parkway and he hit 289 yeah and there could be specific odds or specific intersections that could maybe be improved but you also have a just a whole town-wide thing that we need to look at to transportation plans on the dock like a yeah transportation so ken i would suggest if you want to i mean this is not up to me but if you want to try to tweak this a little bit and like add in some some other language i think i'd like to get together with bair and to talk about it okay to see what goes yeah i think that's and i just mentioned also when we're talking about challenges i don't know if this fits but um nobody's talked about plowing the sidewalks i don't know and that's probably a labor and cost issue but just from my own perspective my kid rides his bike to school and then in the winter we have to drive him because that's a good that's a good point yeah maintenance and trying to have the facilities if you go to the effort of building it you should really have it available all the time and like all the sidewalks in my neighborhood the bike path none of it so just can't use it five months out of the year may i who's that this is ken go ahead ken thank you um i just want to remind you guys when you're thinking about this section to try to remember some of the more rural roads now i know i don't want to bring them out road well let me say this first first can't you mention that most of the town is flat you need to get out more a lot of our road there go up bixby hill road you'll find out it's other even even old stage road is not that flat so i live on brigham hill road believe it or not it's a through road for two times a day it gets a lot of traffic coming from melton and coming into town um it gets a lot of walking people a lot of bicycle people so i want you to also please consider the more rural roads and um and how they interact with traffic especially ones that happen to also be through roads thanks that's a good point because also in areas like that it can be very dark at night and night starts very early sometimes there are no lights yeah so it's that can be really really challenging and in the winter when you're trying to walk on the road you know it's yeah it has a lot of extra challenges a lot of dog walkers my bike my wife's got an electric bike she's out there almost every day on her electric bike and um yeah it's it's a problem so from my perspective if you're especially if you're gonna talk to air and i would really i would call out the regional through traffic it's a separate item to be addressed assessed to be assessed for impact and potential because the traffic is gonna happen anyways can i add something too sure i just wanted to add that if you guys want to blow $12,000 it would be so worth every cent i mean i could contribute a little if you want to hire jeff speck um who would he actually travels around the country and and he hates traffic engineers he hates them because all they do is traffic counts and and they don't look at the whole picture on on what the the the community wants a healthy walkable community where they feel safe to walk and everything at night whatever just like uh ken signorala was talking about but but basically for $12,000 i already got a quote i've been writing to him back and forth i i've pitched gregory dugon on this because look at hamberg new york hamberg new york has the same size town as we do and they um you know i think he only charged $10,000 back then but 10 years ago um they had just trucks it was like move 15 and sand hill big trucks and it was awful nobody wanted to bike or walk or you know buy their electric car or put in ev stations they they you know so they quick the new mayor quickly turned it around and he said no more trucks and he hired jeff speck who came and they made the new york times and all they did was keep the road narrow not widen it they didn't spend all this money on sidewalks and everything but they made the economic driver putting parallel parking in front of businesses along say route 15 we had more businesses along their main street because route 15 is our urban core and it was such an economic boom all these small businesses now they have 56,000 residents as of this year and they are one of the most highly um diverse and wealthy uh communities and that over 10 years they now increase their population not by building houses but by making their main street route 15 they took over the route 60 which was the town highway the the state highway for new york the mayor said no we want that highway to be ours and it is thriving look it up hamberg new york if you want to blow ten twelve thousand dollars let me know i contact i can contact him personally thanks okay thank you that's how much we get how we do it on chapter two i don't think there's a whole lot more that there were comments on okay he'll skip through a couple of those okay tell me where to stop yeah you can keep going okay you can keep going down to where there's the implementing solution um and can you click on that little box that goes with it yeah so so where i was going with this is it kind of is sounding like the town is very limited to do much of anything on our own to address traffic problems and i'm not sure if that's really what we wanted to say here i think we do have it depends on the scale of what you're talking about right so following a sidewalk you know that's things that could be really important to somebody that are at a small scale um you know other other things like that um i realize it's it's is harder for us to unilaterally do like really big projects but maybe we could reword this a little bit and maybe talk more about how the town collaborates with the other partners to address concerns um and maybe more of what the either the town's role is or what the town's role would want to be in dealing with our own uh traffic um so i was kind of curious on where where you're maybe going with that or um that was kind of my my thought was it to give you know say a little bit more about what the town's combat is um or we can kind of you know maybe the town does rely much more on state and state projects and we really don't want to have much of a of our own so some of this is is falls back on her but maybe maybe the target for this paragraph is what the town can do because this reads like what the what the town can't do yeah so what can you do what can we do yeah um and it might not be much you know but this is what we can do and this is what we need federal help whatever but change the i mean i hadn't really pulled up on that but the way it reads looking at it here to me it's there's all this stuff we can't do anything yeah okay that's good i can i can talk with Aaron and kind of work um we just try to see if it's other it goes back to what you were saying earlier about updates upgrades what can we do versus right yeah i was thinking in the in the public transit part i have a really long comment there more i was just trying to get my ideas down um i think for most people the biggest alternative for them that's not a car is going to be public transit and really trying to highlight this section a bit more and talk about the things that we can do to try to help make transit work better for other people it's you know not much transit service through the town but we do have some but we can make better connections to it and it doesn't have to be done all at once it can be done over a period of time so you can walk from your neighborhood for 10 minutes to get out to the bus stop and then you can ride the bus and you can get where you need to go or is that 10 minute walk out of your neighborhood so annoying and difficult you're just going to drive because you probably already have a car so but how do we make it easier and adding in just that context a bit more about you know what can we do to support transit and that really is a is a viable option that can work for a lot of people you know whether you know whether you have a car and you just prefer to not have to drive it all the time or you have a disability and you'd like some other way to get to where you need to go so I was thinking about adding in some more in that section to just highlight public transit a bit more I think that also just makes a really good case or just generally increasing pedestrian and bike infrastructure because it increases the catchment area for public transit so then as you have more and more people riding public transit you can get more and more routine service too because then you know the buses are more full and then it works better and you have this positive cycle so I wanted to highlight that part I think that sounds good and and I think remembering kind of in a different angle but like what Ken was saying about there is a lot of rural ethics that it's might be pretty hard to get to transit so what what are some other options for the more rural areas so it's not just you know like I'm probably not going to ride my bike to a bus stop for where I live because I live out in the middle of nowhere but maybe there is some other option for me that could be looked at yeah in some places like transit organizations have an on-demand right system that they'll go off the route a certain amount if you call them ahead of time and that can work really good so maybe like when you're just at something like that and maybe it's time to relook at relook at if you look at the park and ride Richmond it's a destination or the buses either coming in the area or whatever or so with our rural area maybe with a parking facility for those folks who want to use the bus to go to the other areas it's similar to again similar to the park and ride Richmond which is a destination for transit and we do have a senior bus here and maybe looking at what's that schedule I mean I'm extending or enhancing that service in some way yeah so that maybe it could I don't know make sort of regular runs to a hub where they can connect where people can connect with another would that's electrify that van well in trying to trying to make that that as there's more demand more service will be provided which then makes it easier so then there's more demand and trying to get trying to just move that in the right direction you need these steps you know so that you know if there's enough demand there will be more bus service because it'll be profitable but just keep in mind as we've said over and over there's a significant rural component as we've identified from the beginning of the discussion that it isn't necessarily the fact that we're going to get more riders because we can't get them here so it's this is this is one word we're going to have to potentially create a funnel system before we're going to get more people in make it a convenient process you're not going to write you're not going to if I'm going to drive eight nine miles or five miles get to a parking ride I'm going to drive the other five miles go or go so I have complete access in my schedule so it's it's a it's a longer term process but it's not just yeah it's not just increase the number of riders and we'll get more buses we have to increase the opportunities for the mask for the transit opportunities for people to use transit in order to increase the ridership chicken egg I think also you know people make decisions on where they're living for a certain reason you know if you want to have a big garden you're probably not going to live in a dense urban area and if you want to be able to walk and bike you're probably not going to live way out in a rural area so people already kind of make those decisions and it is going to be really hard to serve people in rural areas in any way other than a single-occupant vehicle it's just going to be really really tough and it probably makes most sense cost-benefit wise to really focus on the more dense areas and then it also encourages more people to live in those more dense areas too and that can sort of fit our development pattern of really trying to have more development where there's already development and keep the rural areas sort of protected from that by having a higher level. That's talking about increased development we've already got a lot of development so I mean I'm just saying whatever we do shouldn't be exclusive it should exclude areas of the town you're out there we're not we're not going to plan for you we're not going to accommodate you in the plan because you're way out on Osgoode Hill road we're going to only accommodate the the folks that live in the town center that I think that's that's that's where we miss and that's that I'm I'm not giving up my vehicle yet and I do don't live that far out but that's that's it's a choice thing and the bus goes right by goes right by my street so I don't need I don't even have a five minute walk but the timing of it's not convenient so the ridership will increase the difference a different time but if you only can get a bus every half hour anyways because the ridership's low and it doesn't support more but you also might find that it works for you sometimes and instead of having to have two cars at your house you can make two with one you know or it's you know but it'll be a different sort of situation for each person so bottom line you get it that you go you're going to enhance that section exactly all right that was it and I think that's it oh and then format wise I was thinking that some of this more recreational trail focused near the end maybe shift that to a different part in the in the plan and try to keep this more focused on the transportation related biking and walking but things like cross-country ski and snowmobile trails you want to keep them in this section you don't want them in this section okay because I was thinking about just moving those more to like a parking rack or and I think that would coincide because because especially when we're talking biking and so transportation biking is different than recreation like different design different needs different the different funding the two conflict so I think there's there's I think there's there's value in having them be identified separately yeah yeah what did you say transportation biking yeah I heard that part and what was the last sentence that there's value in addressing them separately yes I agree yeah I agree too they have different designs different whole approaches yeah and there might be some situations that are that serve both purposes and then those it's different design that's okay and there's different designs for each thing you can have a facility that works for transportation and recreation at the same time that's okay but I think it does help to kind of separate them out a little bit I mean especially things like the horseback trail and things like that we don't need that transportation section so anyways those were like the key things I was thinking about and I think that covers pretty much yeah that covered the part I was just thinking that I mean we have a senior bus but maybe what we need is an errand bus that will pick up people to do local errands and drop them off and come back to pick them up at whatever time they because the senior bus is specifically for seniors so 60 and maybe the senior bus could occasionally make a trip to the medical center no this is I mean it's a great a great point and I think that's that's what would really help to have a better planning effort to really figure out what do people want to do and there's so much I think latent demand for the services that people just don't necessarily know ahead of time it's like if before you build a bridge somewhere you don't know how many people are going to go across it you can kind of guess ahead of time if you plan it out well but I think we need more of that planning effort to figure out what are these other services we can all right education so no comments on this except for Josh had I think it was really this first section here um it seemed a little bit like they were well this was provided from the Essex Westford school district so it is not staff's language I I did pare down a lot what they said but it's it's uh maybe two what was the word you used gosh I said it read a little boostery which is you know isn't the worst thing if it's coming from them but the rest of the rest of the chapter is sort of clinical sounding about here's the data here's our plan and this is three cheers for EWSD which again may be perfectly warranted I think at least three of us on the commission have kids there but it didn't seem to fit in terms of voice with the rest of the plan there was a tone shift there was this effort yeah it was a little abrupt okay so I think that makes sense to try to tone it down or yeah does anyone want to take a stab at that Josh volunteer I mean yeah I can obviously not on the fly right now but yeah I can look at that yeah not yeah not right now that would be pretty tired actually yeah yeah not allowed and we've got more to go here so um okay so thank housing and back to the comment of a park and ride off a two-way there's no way a bus is going to be going out of there we're talking about you like a like a destination for for bus to pick up because it's it's in on the landfill road and it's a tight turn and if you redesigned okay anyways okay so I think I think the rest so energy is still getting worked on not the stats but the more stuff so we should have something next week from the energy committee and updating this and then flood resilience I think there were any comments on that so are we good to move on to chapter three John Josh I'm good yeah yeah yep I'm good okay chapter three all right this is how we relate to the land so we've got a lot of stuff here about natural resources aesthetic resources um and I think the big part at the end is is really land land use um you know we've got some maps that are still being worked on that all that are going to be good I think um I had a question that I didn't actually email you that came up afterwards there's a section that talks about there's two sections that seem to contradict each other and I wasn't just sure if maybe town zoning laws were in direct conflict with state laws around the siting of like a renewable energy because it seemed like there was a contradiction there and it I was confused and I didn't know if it was tape or if I was um it's the line 501 to 506 uh predicting sighted siting standards until such standards are in place so it's like we have a plan where is this old language it's talking about we need to have stricter siting standards and the town will have little say until we do but then in the previous above it said that they were only available they were only able to be cited in um the industrial and commercial districts but I didn't know if this was just old language or if so I I mean I couldn't even get just by renewable energy generation that means like solar right yep okay yeah schools in in the past you shouldn't have to have a passport to tell states state regulations but when we had concern in responses I don't know any value in responding but we've used criteria in our relations to form a formal response negative response to the proposed antenna yeah and with my computer doesn't seem to if we were to have an enhanced energy plan I think that's discussed in the introduction chapter a little bit so which we we developed one with s extension and the regional planning commission is saying that we can't use that because it's the data is too intermingled so they're proposing to do a new one for us starting in January which is great so what if you have an enhanced energy plan that could go in either by reference or in your town plan which would give us a lot that gives us a lot more say with the state process when they review these renewable energy projects so in that we would have maps saying this is where we want to see it this is where we don't want to see these things happen and that would actually that would be really helpful for us but right now we don't have a say in it is it much because because it's in the zoning right my nose was bleeding I know there's something about like you know telecommunications big chapter on that but I think I think it's worth taking a look at that in here and just making sure we're not missing something or contradicting so I will I will take a look at that maybe I might reach out to you okay yeah I'll see if I can find where I thought and I very well it was in some places that was restricted so the other change here is that there's you know finally this Act 171 language is in here so this has been vetted by various folks so you have not had a chance to to look at this I don't believe I sent that out so that just kind of got finalized I think today yeah so um so that's something that I'll make sure I get that to you so you can look at it but you know the goal here is to try to meet the requirements of Act 171 we also already had a section here where we talked about for us and said they're important so it wasn't a total rewrite so but I think it's pretty good and one of the goals really is to have some action of what are we going to do to try to protect these big forest blocks and connectors and so what we have action plans and some suggested ways to go about that I'll won't get into that at this moment but I'll send that out make sure that's posted for the public as well so nothing as far as I can really recall I think there were a couple little maybe typo we can't or not typo but like clarification things that that people had oh I moved this stone water tower section to the next place where we talk about town building and the next chapter where we talk about town on town buildings um so so land use is I don't think there was much comment on this does anyone want to chime in on with anything okay so I think that's that's it for chapter three chapter four last chapter there's new language about the IT department in here Georgia had some comments about the public work section so that includes you know public works but also goes into storm water and water sewer so we worked together a little bit and just reformatting the whole section so not really adding a whole lot of new language but maybe it's clarifying some things so all this park stuff I think you saw um so I I think it reads better now um and I think that was your assessment yeah I just found sometimes this sentence is very long just how long I'm reading them yeah so I mean there's a lot of stuff that's underlined but some of it is just kind of moved around a little bit so I'll make sure you get a chance to look at that I didn't really change the focus of of what we're trying to get at there who is just making it more readable hopefully useful so commissioners how did this this process work I mean Katherine bet stuff to us and well before the meeting um a chance to look through it if you get it back comments and stuff back to her John Josh did this did this round go okay for you I think it went okay it's a lot to cover in one night um we didn't get the chapter chapter one action plan stuff before the meeting but I think it was a good exercise to go through during the meeting as well um you know we probably could have spent even more time on that chapter it was really good but I just I worried that four chapters well I was hoping that everybody had bought the cover yeah I was hoping that everybody had gone through you know Katherine got stuff to us earlier um you know before tonight obviously and the idea we'd spoken about the last time around was her to get them to us when she had them so that we could do our detailed review you know before tonight and tonight really was a was a summer where there's a lot of new information tonight but we kind of had to do this lift you know Katherine you've I mean you guys feeling comfortable with the progress I am yeah so just a reminder of next steps so regional planning commission is reviewing the town plan on the 15th of November which means for that process and also for meeting state requirements we need to have our draft finalized by I think it's like the 13th of October you have a meeting on the 12th of October so my thought was that that meeting the which is your next meeting if this gets approved that doesn't mean you can't make changes at the public hearing and the regional planning commission might have some suggested changes as well um so I think we still can keep working on refining things but we just need to I would think at that point our refinement should wait until we've had public hearing and until we've got comments back yeah I would say in the only case where maybe you know if Kent is still working on some of the stuff he got direction from tonight or or me as well you know we can do that kind of thing um we have conflicts with applications in the next meeting I think we only have one application right it's the the old pump road one coming back yeah not on the consent agenda okay okay are we good questions georgia never no this is a lot I mean this is this is a good it was long I agree with you john but I do feel it was I feel it was pretty productive and this is this is the other side of our this is the other hand we wear it so this is the the other lift you guys did a lot of work on it so I mean the shows shows getting it to this point the heck of all the work yeah and been great having you know some planning commissioners but and also other boards and committees being a part of the process yeah it's been great and still on can still on can thank you for your input tonight and the stuff you got to her ahead of time you're welcome we get to move off from town plan okay this is this was this was very uh positive so we now have to move for the minutes we need uh the next item in the agenda is approval of the minutes from September 14th so I take a motion for the minutes of September 14th I'll make a motion that we approve the minutes from September 14th on second to most moved by Georgia seconded by trevor is anyone want to offer any amendments to the minutes as as written hearing none all those in favor of the minutes as presented signified by saying aye aye aye minutes pass five zero um don't believe we have any other business we do have uh an approval letter that needs to be signed Catherine do you want the three of us here to sign it and then Josh John or anybody else to come in later yes let's let's shoot for that if that doesn't work we can send it out electronically I can tomorrow if needed oh thank you that would be super okay with that any other business um just one one thing I um didn't really check in with you after the select board and I just in and I have talked but the select board approved the zoning regulations um and actually you're recommended changes that or you're not the issues that you've had some problems with um they accepted those so that was like the reordering of the rpdi buffer language no changes to the language is the reorder um getting rid of the garage sale parking requirement and then um the fences stacked fences and the height of the fences they did request that you take a look at that again not the stacking fences necessarily but height and I don't know if you've seen like their little hubbub sort of about electric fences like there's there was an article yeah so you know maybe taking a look at that planning commission or the slack board knows that they can't make you do anything but just said if you want to look at that at your next round zoning regulations about electric and barbed wire yeah barbed wire got taken out the slack board took that out but they kept the language which you were fine with that actually Ethan Lawrence has suggested that change at the select board so it's pretty close to what you had said what you had proposed but yeah yeah okay that's it with that take a motion to adjourn move we adjourn again all those in favor hi hi hi opposed motion carries five and a half to zero or is that