 We're really glad to have you, thank you very much to Ricardo for introducing the work we have done thus far in the public information session. We have a bunch of folks, instead of introducing ourselves because we have so many, if you speak, please just introduce yourself and maybe something distinctive about you. We do have 20 minutes. This is our chance to listen to you, so my job as facilitator is to just make sure that we have everybody share the air and nobody goes on too long and we listen carefully. We have a scribe, so Peter is going to take down what you are saying, and if we have a chance at the end, maybe we'll just read through to make sure we've captured things faithfully. I don't know if you've ever been in a circle before or had a talking object, but we have two talking objects here, and you have to choose. This one is called C Sparkle, and this one is Salmonella, so I want everybody to say after me, we want Salmonella, perfect, we'll use this one. So the prompts for you all tonight are, what opportunities in this area haven't you heard yet, mentioned yet, right? So we have a sort of funnel of ideas that are coming into the commission, or things that we're aware of, but we are very cognizant that we don't know everything, we're not aware of all the opportunities out there, you are some of our best sources of information, so please think in that mindset. Are there other ideas you'd like to share, and then what would you like to be part of in this area, in terms of getting involved in the action, volunteering, stepping out or things like that? So, and then the last one to be thinking about is what do you think other people in the community need in this area? So I've just loaded you with all four potential questions, but I'm doing that now because we have 20 minutes, and we may not get to go through them in order. So, speak now, if I hold your piece, you have Salmonella. Pat, inkly. I haven't heard anything about hardening off buildings downtown, and it feels like that's really important to do an assessment of, you know, the M&T Bank did it, not totally successfully, but... Does that mean closing off from water? What is hardening? They put in structures to close off for the doors, and you can do it with windows too. I have Salmonella for a second. Pat, thank you for that. One thing that we are not going to do very much of is respond, because we really want to hear from you. Please trust that we are taking this in. And in some cases, if you see my jaw drop, you'll know we hadn't thought about that at all. If you don't see my jaw drop, you know, we made you aware of it. Did your jaw drop? It did not. Carolyn Hrudinsky, and I'm supposed to say something about myself? No. I think there's a lot of parking lots that could be made a little more resilient. Yes. Ken Jones, I have Salmonella. I want to build on that. It's the state office complex. It has changed tremendously since COVID. And the pressures that used to be those parking lots have been reduced. But I'm not so sure what the state is doing with regards to the vast real-estate holdings that they have. And can those be reconsidered, repurposed, rebuilt in such a way to allow the downtown to grow? John Copan, this is a very small idea in one of the subcategories, but I'm on the Wrightsville Beach Board, and people come from there all the time. That's a great space to do some education about the waterway and how we use the waterway. So thinking about interpretive materials at Wrightsville and other places where we access the water, not just in Montpelier. I just wonder about, you know, when we were talking about Montpelier used to be so thriving like at lunchtime with all the workers in the state office buildings and stuff. And I'm just wondering about bringing people back to those office buildings so that they're in that Montpelier and the merchants benefit from that. And, you know, then people still get their work done. But I haven't heard much about reopening the offices and, like, you know, what's going to happen to all those workers. So I'm really interested in what would happen with that. Your name is Tim? Oh, Tim. Yeah, Glenn. What's all you thinking? Sure. I'm Jack McCullough. I'm the mayor. And I... The questions that people are raising about the state workers downtown, we don't know either. And the state doesn't know. And we would love to see those workers back downtown spending money. But if they're not going to be downtown spending our money, we really want to see all their real estate put to something more productive than waiting for workers to park their cars who aren't going to show up. Well, I work in a building that has no elevator, hasn't had an elevator, and maybe never will. I don't know what's going on. People live in the building. It's not the only one. I'm sure everyone here knows about that. I haven't heard much about, like, how to build buildings without having massive infrastructure get destroyed like that. I understand, you know, putting in vinyl floors and moving stuff out of the basin, but an elevator is really important for a lot of people. And I haven't heard much about what's going on and why they're so hard to fix. What's your name? Oh, sorry. I mean, Sean. I mean, is it a building that had an elevator that is now destroyed by flood? Yeah. Yeah, it's both residential and office. Got it. Kara Robacheck. I'm reminded of the fact that my son and eight or nine of his friends boated to popular high school at the end of last school year. And it occurs to me that the river and this building are very connected, and I'm hoping that some of the education can go through the schools and can involve the students. Bear with me. In the Czech Republic, a mandatory school subject is rafting. River rafting on rubber boats. Because it was targeted as an area of cultivation for outdoor recreation. So I think very much in keeping with your comment, it's something to look at in terms of really developing the river as an attraction through like cultivated sports and activities and high school subjects involving inflatable rafts. I'm sorry. I can't catch this. I can't get rid of this. Started with state. I also want to mention the federal office building, which is the former home of the post office, will be renovated in some fashion. And so that's a prime opportunity to rebuild that in such a way that is flood resilient and meets the needs of the city in regards to housing, whatever we need in terms of other services and how, and I want to get to that state thing, Montpelier has a lot of loud voices. If we can use our loud voices to convince our state partners that they need to listen to us because we can be a pain, do that and then use that practice to them work on the fence. So there are a lot of parking lots in Montpelier. Perhaps some people think perhaps there are too many. They could be made into these nice bowls that receive a lot of water and they could be skate parks and playgrounds and all kinds of stuff when it's not flooding. Rain gardens. I'm just going to remind, one of our last questions is what do you think other people in the community need in the area of adaptive downtown? Sometimes it helps me to sort of have my own issues, but it helps me to think about trying to guess at what other people might need. Thank you. I'm Gary Holloway at Salmonella. One of the things that was brought up in the previous forum was just the need to kind of get out of this combined sewer stormwater systems that are really impacting the neighborhoods around our downtown during flooding events. So I just kind of want to bring that point up again. It really does relate to Salmonella. Yeah. Get this anywhere. Do you have E. Coli over there? Do you have E. Coli over there? I don't have that. It's tempting to bring a whole collection, isn't it? So who let me ask a different question. How many of you have traveled even, say, to Barrie or much further afield into places that are connected to their rivers and have probably experienced or may experience what we just faced in July? And did you observe anything about those places that we could use? I see Pat. Oh, darn it. You flinched. You brought the painting. Venice. And Venice has a lot of water around it. And Venice has done a lot of what's called wet proofing to prepare for the water and just understand it's coming, it's not going away. I couldn't tell you what that was, but they've adapted to the fact that the water is rising and it's not going to change. Have Salmonella. I mean, Sean, I was in Oh, great. Let's hear the personnel line just since we're back to it. Hang on just a second. Hi, Elizabeth Parker here. I'm curious about what is being done to collect information on hydrological changes that have happened in downtown. For instance, the post office supposedly has a stream that is surfaced and is across the street from Clay's Church. You know, we're curious about what is happening with that and have not been able to get any information from the people who supervise that building. So we've also experienced a lot of structural damage of sinkholes that happened that caused natural pipes to bore through the foundation. And I'm just curious what information is being gathered on that nature around town so that we can understand and share with one another how the formation of the water underneath our buildings is changing because it's going to have a big effect on us as we go forward. Thank you. Thank you. This is Nathan speaking. Great question. So one of the things that I uncharacteristically responding, one of the things we're aware of is that the state is about to embark on a scoping study for this area about the Wundewski River and things like that, and we can ask for sure whether that will include the kind of question you're asking. So thank you for raising that. Yeah. I took it from you. I don't know why I took that from you. No, that's okay. You wanted to talk. I just wanted to get back to your prompt earlier. I was down to Jersey Shore last summer, two weeks after the flood here. And in a place that is a very thin island and gets flooded quite often, and they have made major requirements of any new construction that everything has to be well off the ground. And so what you see is houses that are built on pylons and parking underneath. Nobody has a ground floor entrance that's been built in the last 15 years, I don't think. I don't know what this town would look like, but it works and it's interesting. So it's something to think about. Before I pass it back to Jack, we are close on time. I'm sure we're going to hear a bell soon. You don't have to leave. If you don't wish to go to another group, you can hang in and see what the next group says. We'll see what we have for turnout. But if you wish to, at the bell, Watershed is back in the auditorium, and response is right next door over here. Jack. Thank you. Jack, look out again. I just want to point out that there are things that we can do right. There's a lot of damage downtown, but the new buildings that were built after our new code was put in place got through it. They didn't flood city center building, which was built back in the 1980s. And the transport transit station and apartments and there are a couple of other places like that that didn't flood. So we can be adaptive and plan for survivability. That's part of what we really need to keep doing. Thank you. There's a small city in Maryland that gets significant floods every five years, and it's a very historic town. It's not an atlas. It's in a river. What is it? Ellicott or Indicott? Yeah, Ellicott City. They've been able to maintain their historic buildings, regularly. So I don't know what they're doing and it's a tragedy, it's horrible, but they're still there. All right, so my last prompt if we have any time, and you can also respond to this in writing on the posters out there, email, any way you like. One of the things we are very conscious of is that the only power we have is given by you. You sort of called this into being. A year from now, two years from now, five years from now, if we have had an impact, we as a commission and we as a commission working on your behalf. We're curious to hear if folks can sort of visualize forward. Well, I wrote a whole story and it's out there if you want to read it about what happened and what comes next, what came in the future when we did these things. It's on the table, there are a few left. I gave them to all of you all in the council. Thank you so much. Paul Burns. I think it won't be that there are no more climate catastrophes. We don't have that power here, but that the actions that are being discussed here and in the different groups are having an impact, so therefore the flooding is less than it would have been in our downtown and buildings and other structures are not as vulnerable. Thank you so much. Even if you're standing, just get up, it's good for you. Yes, good to see you. You can just write it down on the side. Folks who care about Monculier do not have to sit, but you are welcome to find a seat. My name is Nathan Souter. I'm a member of the commission. I'm grateful that you are here tonight. We are grateful that you are here tonight. I'm going to be the facilitator. We have a scribe, so Peter Walk is writing down everything that you say. He's probably embellishing a whole bunch. Ricardo, spoke to you from the stage. Ben Doyle. We have Katie Trouts. We have Greg Gossens. Paul Carnahan. Okay, so we want to hear from you. We want your ideas. We want your understanding of new opportunities. We want anything you can share with us. I'll read you a couple of prompts in a minute. We're not going to be doing much responding. So this is really intake. Peter's going to record it. We are aware. We have sort of an idea funnel or a project funnel. So we have things that we're aware of what we should do about. But we're starkly aware that we don't know everything. And in fact, people who live here in this city who have numerous connections and networks are great resources. And that's you. So please give us what you got. To the prompts, I'm going to read all the prompts that I want you to respond to. So try and hold those in your head. Respond to anyone they feel good about. What are opportunities in this area that you haven't heard about yet that's the adaptive downtown area? Are there other ideas you'd like to share? What would you like to be part of in this area? So if you're going to take action, volunteer, step up, how might you do that? And then what do you think other people in the community might need in this area? We are going to, if you've been in a talking circle or use a talking object we have two to choose from. This one is called C-Sparkle and this one is called Salmonella. So I want everybody to say after me, we want Salmonella. Perfect. We'll use this one. Alright. So if I pass this to you, please introduce yourself and then let us share your information. I will do a little bit of managing if folks are going on longer. We want to hold space for everybody to move. Anybody can catch Salmonella. Thanks. My question is it's wonderful to plan ahead and I love all the information you're gathering and posting because we all need to learn. But I'm very anxious about not having any focus on some immediate resources. I mean, I read a lot about some places that actually put out these big, huge inflatable they put water in these tubes to have immediate way to keep water out of their stores. I'd like to see some fundraising and projects that deal with if it happens tomorrow I think pull out of the garage and put in front stores, doorways. Thank you. Thank you. I'm curious. Who are you? I'm Dan Jones. I am curious on this adapting existing buildings to flood resilience. Has there been a lot of research on that because it sounds like something that if we have it two or three times, it kind of the underpinnings it kind of gets into the wrought area and so I guess it comes down to the idea even though we have a beloved historic downtown is it really possible to insulate it? Yeah, actually sorry, Barbara Connery in response to your question Dan, yes there are quite a few resources from FEMA about things called wet flood proofing dry flood proofing we can protect our buildings you know, many of you are aware of the former Chittenden bank building now the M&T bank that has a giant flood gate at their entrance those are the kinds of things that I think we need to be looking at and producing we need to keep everything out of basements we need to keep mechanical systems out of basements so I think what I'd be interested in seeing is that we develop a checklist or some kind of working plan for the existing downtown and it may take looking at each building individually by developing a plan for how we can address flood resilience for each of the buildings and dealing with that I kind of agree but I would Sal, I'll follow I wouldn't want to put all our eggs in one basket and I've I've been looking at redevelopment of the downtown in what I call the pit I guess people notice the pit but you know the giant parking lot a big donut hole in the middle of Montpelier which is a complex real estate situation the time might be right to approach the competing ownership of that area so that we have a backup and as the city expands I mean we can expand into that historical district downtown it seems to me the ideal place to expand downtown is into that centralized could you just find the area you're talking about because the pit first starts from different places to the east of the state house the parking lot behind the thrush the post office Court Street this is what I love about Montpelier, he just said behind the thrush so the pit that Sal is referring to is bounded by Court Street the street that runs up past a pavilion State Street East State Street so that's sort of invisible area back there thank you alright I'm Rob Goodwin I think on that front talking about new construction downtown I think one interesting point here is that the biggest development downtown that didn't get built years ago was the new hotel and parking garage if you look at the water elevations of where things came and how that would have fared and how that was designed it would have been fine just doubling down on the fact that new development is really our opportunity to create the space and to create the economic activity and the housing resources in this town that are safe and also it's like a project like that we don't have a hotel right now there's no place for people to come to town go patron these restaurants at which lost a lot and need the business to really get back on their feet and so that project didn't happen I think for some complicated reasons everyone know here but I think we should remember that new development in this town although may not be the exact thing that we want it is an opportunity to not be in the flood plain even if it is built in the flood plain we can build it right from the beginning Paul told him that I wouldn't catch it so I'm Nancy Boone and I just wanted to throw out something in relation to what's out there that can help us know what the possibilities are the National Park Service has done an amazing amount of work with historic areas around the country and looking at how people are preparing for a flood how they're responding what kinds of physical changes are being made and they even though they're the National Park Service they're happy to assist communities and I've worked with several people at the Park Service who I'm sure would love to come and give a public program so that could be fun and just sharing information and building on our optimism so nice to see you can I go again? hold on a second is there anybody someone on the so I'm gonna stand against the wall there I can pause for a zoom question if there are some okay my name is Alaya Mourning and I grew up here in Montpelier I went to this high school and I recently returned to raise my young family here and one of the things that I'm really thinking about as we have these conversations is we love our historic downtown there's like a nostalgia inherent in this place and it's really clear that we're gonna have to make some really dramatic changes if we want to keep living here like the fact is we cannot keep doing it the way we've been doing it so I I'm curious about what are the conversations we need to be having within the community to get people ready for that reality amen I'm still Sal Fano everybody here seems to be interested in this topic obviously and after after the flood I did a little research on search terms like watershed management and that sort of thing and I discovered a report called the Vermont economic resilient initiative which was published in 2015 by a group like this one called Ireen which happened in 2011 so four years later and in it I mean it might be worth a read I think it's available on the PDF form or online because there are there's a focus on five projects where they they adapted existing infrastructure or they changed the their relationship with the river so several different solutions to problems similar to what we have and it gives you a good idea of what can be done and what it looks like and how it works so again Vermont economic resiliency initiative DERI I've seen that report that isn't good just to piggyback further some of the images you saw in the slides of architectural drawings or renderings of downtown or various river corridors those came from other movements like that that let's think about the capital area let's think about this river so there are a lot of concepts there are a lot of projects that have been at least studied enough to create drawings and action items and then they're waiting for those and we have Paul Cronahan knows a ton about the history of this area Greg Gossens has been involved in some of these projects so we've got some of that but there could be things we're missing so thank you for that that's great in reference to that Nathan the Sustainable Montpelier Coalition did a pretty extensive competition to redevelop the downtown sustainable and also more energy efficient way and so many of those addressed the whole issue because we didn't let them off the hook about our water issues and so many of those addressed expanding the water the floodplain and allowing for that to happen the big challenge was however and I'll bring this up is yes new buildings are great and they are above the floodplain but if you start talking about the big parking lot behind the state buildings the flood level is at least 10 or 12 feet above that that level so if we start building buildings that are elevated 10 or 12 feet above grade then what does our downtown look like Kasia you may have missed the introduction but anyone can catch someone else I picked up on that Hi my name is Kasia I am curious to hear what the state is doing and how the state intends to lead the way on their land that they own the state owns a significant portion of downtown and from what I see I do not see the state following their own best management practices when it comes to how they treat the river how they build buildings flood resilience and I would love to see the state demonstrate to us through their actions exactly and would love to see our community encourage the state to do so encourage is a nice word I would say fresh we are not responding but just to quickly say that is so key 40% of downtown is pavement controlled by the state and just so you know Pat Moulton I don't know if you know her but she is here she is the central Vermont recovery officer and Pat's had every great job in Vermont when it comes to community and economic development and get stuff done and we have definitely been a part of conversations already between city, BGS, Vermont Mutual there is obviously an opportunity with the federal building that there is just a lot of chess pieces and I think the state absolutely can demonstrate leadership and what a truly resilient downtown can look like and unlike Barrie where you have 40 individual homeowners and you have some grand vision the state could just negotiate with themselves and make that happen maybe maybe I just want to on Cassius word encourage and hold focus on their own standards one of the things that we could use your thoughts and support on you know each of these different partners we call them partners maybe a different approach different connections, different strategy sometimes you catch more with honey than with vinegar and sometimes as in the post office the strategy we were adapting is full frontal assault so far repelled so anyway we are trying to think constructively about how we as a community can get the most out of these ideas and your ideas on that are useful as well so you have a church you didn't have to someone know about it we won't use the disease spreading mechanism analogy here I'm Judy Walk and I'm a member of Christ Episcopal Church which as you know got a a lot of water again and what I'm learning is that you know the people in the church who are trying to figure out how the hell to build back better safer are learning a ton of stuff and I don't know that anybody is sharing what they're learning from wherever they're cleaning this kind of either professional engineers or funding agencies or pick one I wish there was a way to be sure that those people were telling each other what they've learned about the different kinds of wet and dry and all this stuff that you know to find a way that people who are trying to take action now have access to what other people have found out I have no idea how you would do that but it feels like there's an opportunity it has a good point can we connect through you? oh Katie can we connect through you to people well I'm sort of related because we talked about this in the first session but I think education is so important because not everybody is on the same wavelength as everybody in here and we have to understand that the water is going to come again and things are going to get worse and we have to be preemptive and it doesn't have to be bad it can be good oops sorry I love what you just said if you're okay to pivot a little bit what do folks think we need if we were to launch an education effort and we had some themes that we're going to talk about to the public what do you think we would need to cover what are the urgent ones that are misunderstood I'm Jared Duvall and just to build on the last two comments I wonder about some sessions that would kind of just present options for adapting existing buildings for flood resilience it seems to me like there's I don't know exactly what it is to play that it is probably almost like some kind of decision tree if X, Y, or Z is present then you know hear your options if not then hear your options and I just don't have a really good sense of how much that is known by the different building owners downtown I feel like what you were saying Judy like I'm aware of similar conversations happening at the Unitarian Church of Montpelier and I think that these are probably happening building by building to which common themes or common learning could be shared I think could be really helpful so that everybody doesn't feel like they're doing it on their own and you know maybe that's bringing in experts or sharing local expertise in kind of open forums but it feels like there's enough different options for what does this what does adapt existing buildings for flood resilience mean that it's worth digging deeper and sharing more knowledge it's out of note here I've been talking to a bunch of the downtown merchants and a couple of realities that I think we have to face is that many of the merchants are not owners of the buildings they're renters okay and one of the things that has been striking me in the conversations I've had is that I can't do this again so if there is a prospect of another flood it's not that what the building owner does it is this location of the merchants which creates a whole other category of learning and support so I think some part of this has to be around creating a sense within our merchant community that there is some kind of support being built toward the future of our downtown and that it is there for them as if another disaster strikes because without them like I said a lot of them say I can't do this I'm not going to bother so I think we have to take that to account so whether the building gets fixed or not and some of them are far from being fixed yet we've got a problem Paul Castello I think there's a like a fundamental contradiction of this kind of work between being holistic and looking for a big long-term solution that solves everything or being pragmatic and identifying things that will move the ball and I think that one question I have is the potential of the commission to provide leadership point to point rather than top down we're going to teach you folks what's good for the future demonstration projects like has there been a conversation with Efficiency Vermont about getting in line and trying to replace building by building heating systems and demonstrating that Montpelier is a place with modeling solutions for upstairs electric heating that's both climate friendly and also not destroyed in whatever next but happens like things like that tell a story that's good for the community to hear and also others but also looking at things like the doors and is there a pattern for doors we're not going to move everybody out we don't have top down control over the decisions of people who put sweat equity for generations in these buildings and who have livelihood we have the opportunity to set out markers that show some of the ways forward and also argue with the different powers that be one of the conversations in the other room was what's the authority of the commission and there's no authority to the commission but in truth because the whole community's had opportunities to throw their ideas at the commission the commission is empowered to represent the community and take bold direct sequential action that builds momentum momentum's more valuable than a final solution because the final solutions are going to take a generation that's my guy thank you Ken and then Ken Jones and I was at the agency of commerce post Irene so when a lot of this resilience discussion happened there I got to participate and one of the themes I think that's very important is resilience is a lot easier if there's an economic strength before the event so I would and I know this is an opinion that not everyone shares but maybe there's enough momentum we need to support economic growth in our downtown or else our economic growth will happen along the interstate exits because where's the next hotel going to be built there's one in Randolph right off the exit talking about expanding up in Berlin because we didn't want one here and if we keep doing that we're not going to have the economic strength in our downtown so when the next event doesn't happen it will be much easier for those businesses to leave so I really would like us to rally our support to say we may be building buildings that don't appeal to everyone's aesthetic sense but if it draws in more people if it draws in more activity that's what we're going to need to get through the next flood I think to not to Peter walk, by the way I think the thing that I think about a lot post flood is a bit of a counterpoint to what you said Dan not to disagree with you that it's that our merchants are facing a somber reality but in the immediate aftermath I was surprised anybody wanted to come back and I give a two shout out to Katie Trapp over there for rallying our businesses to understand what they needed to do to have good information because it was in short supply but the fact that everybody wanted to come back and their community rallied around them is one of our strengths and we need to figure out how to build from that you just talked a little about infrastructure and improvements after the flood I think it's worth mentioning that the city planning department I think did a pretty good job of doubling down and making sure that existing regulations said that substantial improvements required that when that equipment was replaced it goes to be above it's protected and I don't know that that hasn't necessarily maybe been as much of a public announcement that that was that that happened and that in the education front maybe something that can happen is like okay well this commission speaking for like those that are concerned about resiliency in Montpelier saying like here are the guidance here if there's a landowner that maybe didn't do this this is happening this is what the rules say this is what it has to be that's our bell, we'll hear from Barbara and there are pieces of paper out on tables there are post-it notes, lots of opportunities to give us input please don't be shy, I know not everybody wants to speak up in front of the group yeah, in reference to that I'm involved with the Unitarian Church in Montpelier and we went to replace our heating system and the city told us that it had to be two feet above the flood plain which was the flood level was our lower floor and so we kind of went berserk and had to raise all kinds of money and we were like you know really grumbling about it and then the flood came and our mechanical system was fine so you know you can definitely see the value of it I want to applaud the throwing and catching in here really good this season's about news team here thank you all for coming thank you