 But I got a few preliminary things to go through. So I think we can go ahead and kick things off. So I'll call to order the October 23rd meeting of the Mobiliar Planning Commission. We first have to approve the agenda. So planning commissioners. I need a motion from one of you to approve the agenda for tonight. And this is the agenda. I'm going to, I'll verbalize a lot more things than normal for Carl's benefit tonight. You know, Mike always sends out the agenda over email prior to the meeting. And so that's the agenda that we follow for the meeting. And the rules, we have to follow certain rules of procedure to conduct a meeting. And one thing we have to do every time is to approve the agenda. And we're supposed to stick to that agenda because that way the public knows and has notice of what we're up to. That's why we do that. So do we have a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. Okay. Motion from Brian. Do we have a second? Yes. I don't know if I'm allowed to yet. We'll, we'll give it, we'll give it to Carl this time. So he's there. It's, he's, he's on the books as, as doing an act on the planning commission now. So a motion from Brian, a second from Carlton to prove the agenda. Those in favor of proving the agenda. Say, aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Procedural hurdle passed. Next thing on the agenda is comments from the chair. I do have some quick things to go over. One's an update about. So Carlton, we, we recently reached out to the housing committee, which is, you know, one of the other, there's, there's many committees. In my, that are like ours in that they're, you know, composed of residents who do work, you know, and, and bring recommendations to the city council. And some of those committees bring recommendations to us because. A lot of the planning stuff gets fed by Mike had mentioned the energy committee earlier. There's the housing committee. There's some committees that that give us things to, to forward on to work on housing committees. One of them. It's a very important one. So we wanted to get to know those people better. So we reached out to them to ask if they wanted to do an informal get together just to get to know each other sometime soon. They're interested. So the update is that they're interested and I'll be getting back soon about a possible day and in you for that. I also want to check with people because I'm not sure that I will be making the November 27. Planning commission meeting and it's a few days after Thanksgiving. If anybody has Thanksgiving plans that are going to bleed over into Monday. I just want to check to see because if we have a few of those, then maybe we should cancel. But everyone who's here. Do you know. If you'll be available November 27. I'll be here. Kirby. I'll be here. Yeah, I think I'll be here. Yeah. Okay. I'll leave it. I'll leave it alone. But I will be getting back from Venice on that day. So I don't think that I'll be making the meeting. So, you know, Don't get too serious. Don't get too serious. You gotta get your priorities straight, Kirby. Oh my gosh. Can I also be coming back from Venice? Yeah, I know. I'll be coming back from Royalton, Vermont. That's, you know, that's a nice place to go. Yeah, that's exotic. Yeah, you can hang out on some water just like Venice. I'm going to have a worthy burger. Just visualize a gondola with heat and on a paddle board, you can do it. Yeah. Okay, so, so I'm going to leave that November meeting alone then just, just heads up. I mean, I, I might be able to make it. And then the last thing is wanted to get feedback and maybe an update from Mike about setting the hearing for. So Carlton recently we have been working on some, like some adjustments to the zoning regulations. There's been a lot of discussion about that recently and we had an informal discussion with the public at one point. But according to state law, we have to for, for to make changes like these, we have to set up a hearing where the public can come and give us feedback formally. And the whole process is, you know, we discuss it, we come up with some ideas, we put those out there for the public to see people are given have to be given 2 weeks notice. I believe it's 2 weeks of our hearing. And then they come and give us their feedback. And we don't have to do anything with that feedback, but we have to at least give them the opportunity. And there we'll vote on whatever zoning changes that we'll do, and we'll send those on to the city council. And so we don't have any power to make laws ourselves or to make regulations ourselves, but we make our recommendations to the city council and most of the time. Those things, most of the items are not very contentious and they do get passed, but occasionally city council will reject or change something that we send along like one item. But for these owning changes. There's a lot of technical housekeeping type changes that that's mostly been in Mike's territory, but I don't remember, but we've probably got like 30 all together, something like that. So anyways, that's coming up. So Mike. What's what day do you think is going to make sense for that. I had a meeting with Brian from CVRPC our regional planning commission, because they're the ones who are putting together the draft zoning map. And so he has gotten buried in a bunch of other projects. And so we had a conversation about our timing. So we also have a 30 day notice that I have to send to the state before the planning commission public hearings. So, but that can be done by email. So that's not as much of a problem. Putting things in the newspaper, which is a requirement for the hearing. There's a 15 day, but we always have to leave a week because you have to send it to the newspaper and has to get published 15 days in advance. So. Can I ask you a question. Yep. Because of the internet that doesn't truncate in any way. Nope, not yet. We have we have pushed for that. They have made things a little bit more flexible in a couple of places, including being able to have zoom meetings. So that's that's one of the pluses, but they have not adjusted any of those. They made a few minor adjustments. I used to have to send them to the state via certified mail. And so they finally the rear four years ago, finally let us just go and email it to them because they're all digital copies anyway. So we're all trying to figure out why, why do you need a hard copy when we can just email it to you. And they preferred the email anyways, because they have a big digital library. So finally, a few years ago, they did make that change that I can just email it to them. That's relatively quick. So if I'm going to be on, if we are going to have this on the public hearing for the December 11th meeting, that's our second Monday in December, then I would have to have it sent by November 11th, which is Saturday. So November 10th to those, their five groups that I have to send them to doesn't matter what they all are. That's a budding neighbor, a budding communities, regional planning commission, state, somebody else. So we'll send all those out by November 10th. So we're on the 23rd now. He said he needed about two weeks to finish up the zoning map. So that puts it November 6, which is the Monday before that week. So that's pretty much what we've decided on is the fastest we can get this in is December 11. And we'll shoot for that date. I'll probably ask, we may have to be a little bit longer on that day, perhaps, because it would be good for us. Especially if we're only having one meeting in December, which I'm, I know we're only having one meeting in December because the next meeting would be Christmas. And so we're clearly not meeting on Christmas. So, if we're only having one meeting, we really want to get the zoning draft to city council for January. And the reason for that is we want to get it adopted by city council before town meeting day, which is the first Tuesday and March. So we don't want to have public hearings before town meeting day and then have them try to adopt it after town meeting day because we might have new meetings and we've got to redo it all. So we usually try to set as a, you know, if it takes longer, it takes longer, but if we set a goal of saying we want them to have it adopted in February before town meeting day, that's why. So I would really like if we have a public hearing December 10 and we know we're not going to have another meeting in December that we stay a little bit later if we need to to approve whatever changes we're going to make, and then forward it to city council. And that sometimes if we get 20 or 30 people who want to provide comment, it can take a while to have a public hearing. And I know Kirby has done a very good job of really running meeting so we run 537 30 and that's it we don't go later but this may be one time I ask that we might need a little bit of an exception or a little bit of flexibility. But we're going to get that approved so we all can enjoy Christmas. Having this put behind us. So that's my timing for the hearing. I agree with I agree with that Mike actually because I think we should vote we shouldn't we shouldn't wait a month to vote after the hearing because think people will not retain as much. So voting either of the night of or just waiting and doing the hearing in January seem like the most practical ways. And from what you're saying about town town meeting day I do think that the ideal is to just get it done early December. So, let's plan for that and let's hope that we can get through the comments before 730 so that we can have some time to vote and discuss. But yeah, I think people should be prepared to do that. Okay, those are the those are the things I had to bring up just the little housekeeping things so I don't have anything else did anybody else have any announcements or anything before we move on. On the agenda. I just have a question for Mike. A week ago someone mentioned me in the flood recovery about the whole like why don't we just build the whole city up and I was like well actually the planning department is seeking to elevate certain buildings in Montpelier and they're looking for state funding to do so. I was just wondering like if that had gone anywhere since the last time you mentioned it. Yeah we don't have any money yet. You know it's it's always been and continues to be my recommendation I know there's a lot of people who have different views but I think the biggest thing is to if a building can be elevated literally lift up fill in the basement and you you leave the building. Three feet two to three feet above the base flood elevation that's the best solution to the problem. Because it really addresses any way that the flooding happens. So, because sometimes people are like well we should make more wetlands in the end. I have nothing against making more wetlands, but that doesn't stop a nice jam from flooding downtown Montpelier. But if everybody's buildings are elevated no matter why. If there's for some reason some some flood happens for any reason, the buildings are elevated. You know, it doesn't guarantee nobody will get flooded because certainly you can have a thousand year flood event that exceeds it but that's why we want to be a couple feet above and that's been my suggestion but we've asked the state to redirect existing money so everything operates in a fiscal year we're talking about the 20 fiscal year 24 state money we asked them to reallocate some of that money to help to let us use that money to apply it to help. In our case residential properties elevate their homes. That didn't get enough support so they have said they're going to take it up in the legislature in January to allocate new money towards that idea. So we just have to wait to see if it actually gets approved or not, but it sounds like a lot of people because it's not just Montpelier. We happen to be the ones who are really pushing the idea, but they want to put together a set of funds that people and Barry Hardwick Woodbury callous, you know a lot of communities have been hurt and a lot of people could benefit by having access to the funds to elevate their homes. So we haven't don't have it yet but it would help. And do you think it's like budget adjustment act that would be in there. Well we tried to yeah we try to do a budget adjustments. And some people have said they're willing to, they weren't willing to do it with the, and this is stuff that I'm not usually dealing with so I don't probably have all the words right. But some budget committees that have the right to reallocate existing funds, and they said no. But I guess that you can pass up the budget reallocation bill which the entire legislature could vote on so just because five people said no, doesn't that if 150 people had a chance to vote on it they wouldn't vote yes. So we there is another kind of opportunity to get in there and get some of this year's funding reallocated. So I think it's really important to know who can push and get some some things to change there were a lot of a lot of impacted communities not just in central Vermont, but a load low and a number of southern Vermont towns also got hurt so there are a lot of places that could benefit. And so the more communities that could benefit by having some some money available to help homeowners elevate homes. That's really where to get the bill to pass. So are the mob healer based legislators pushing for this or they are they heavily involved or is it mostly just the city. Our legislators are are involved. In fact, and Cummings is one of the key people who's on one of us has Senate appropriation. Maybe in the finance finance. So we have a few people who are in key positions that help us. And we're going to we've the city has hired and over the past couple years has hired a lobbyist to help advance bills that are critical to, you know, not only to the city but to most larger municipalities so this is I'm going to just take newbie just kind of role here but is there any like talk anywhere where there could be developed like make up maybe a mega bucks lottery ticket that was specifically geared towards like, you know, the impacted places so that we could kind of push those for people who could possibly fund something extra without impacting, you know, or a quicker quicker ways of money. Yeah, I think they've been doing some fundraising I think the state's sale of the. We are Vermont strong is going into a fund to help flood victims. I think I think that's one of them. So they do have some ideas at the state I know there's a lot of fundraising, Montpelier lives doing Montpelier specific fundraising but most of that has been targeted to the businesses who were probably the heaviest, most damaged. But yeah, well, I think we're open to, you know, city and state are open to any any ideas for being able to raise money to make a difference. We're looking for about $2 million for Montpelier that would only elevate some of the residential properties that doesn't get to the downtown commercial buildings. But it does help a number of single family homeowners who are currently homeless because their houses were, you know, they had two to three feet of water into their first floors and so they really need a lot of help to get back on their feet. They've got insurance money to fix their house, but the insurance money does not elevate their house so they're all like why would we put everything back to wait to get flooded again. We're willing to fix up our houses. But we need help elevating the house so we need, you know, some money to help elevate the house and then we'll fix the house so that's, that's where we're trying to help out on those. And then we'll look for different monies to help. There's a source of federal monies called BRIC. I don't know what the acronym stands for but that's basically does scoping studies to look at various properties and we're going to look to get some grant money to help get some studies of the downtown buildings because these big BRIC buildings, we're not talking about like pick up and elevate where Obashan's is that's, that's just not a project that's going to happen but you can't floodproof those buildings with floodgates. And but we've got to go through and have a professional go through and look at those buildings and provide a recommendation that says, you know, you need this type of floodgate here you need this type of backflow preventer you need this type of X, Y and Z. Floodproofing in order to keep this building safe in the event of a flood. And so then then once we've got a plan for each building in the downtown then we can go through and get money that says okay this is going to cost $300,000 to make this floodproof this building. To M&T Bank, if you ever go down the old Chittenden Bank, if you ever look at that there's you see these just these stainless steel slots. Well, that's where you go out you drop a panel in, latch them in and that floodproofs the building. Yep, the post office unfortunately they built theirs post 9-11 and it was really designed to be, I think it was designed to be a blast barrier and keep people from being able to drive trucks into it. Yeah. They actually didn't make it high enough it was wasn't flood wasn't to the height of the flood. They never asked for what we would do because we were told to do it higher because they weren't as high as base flood elevation which is why the post office flooded. But it was a flood barrier but it wasn't to the correct height and that was what went wrong with that one. So during the second meeting for the Resilient from Ophelia we had breakout sessions and some people from Water Bear are there are there any talks about like say Randall Street how they did it or any type of the individuals who for the 2011 with Irene or so that there's not you know reinventing the wheel that it could possibly already be there or are those things too obsolete at this point. Our planning staff has met very shortly after the flood with Steve lot speech who's the who was he just retired this year the planner for Waterbury and Barb far who was the resilience officer for Waterbury post flood so she helped them go through their reconstruction. And we got a lot of advice and recommendations from them on you know where to get money we're not to get money what are the projects that work well what are the ones that didn't work well and that's why that's why we're working to get state money and not federal money to try to elevate houses because they they they spent three years trying to get federal money to elevate their buildings only to find out that they really couldn't. And so that was great advice for us because we know you can't use federal money to elevate houses. At least not historic ones because the historic requirements are so high that you have to meet a cost benefit analysis and the historic requirements make it such that you can't meet the cost cost benefit and then you demolish the building. So FEMA is really good at doing buyout. Not very good at elevating building so if you want to do a buyout will steer people towards FEMA and if they want to elevate their house then we got to steer them towards some other funds that don't exist. And that's why we want to go to the state and say, make these exist because we're in a housing crisis and we can't go around demolishing. We have 35 units of housing. When we could save them by spending a little bit of money to save them. So. Okay guys I got to jump in and move, move us along the agenda. We have the consultants are waiting to talk to us. The next thing though is to introduce Carlton. So Carlton if there's anything you'd like to say about yourself. I'm very happy to be here. I've lived in Washington County for 20 years, worked in various industries. I am in Montpelier specifically because it's my retirement town. I'll be 50 next year. And I had done 700,000 miles trucking. I got into trucking after software to get rid of coworkers. And now I'm back to indulging community and and make a difference. Thank you. That's it. All right, that's great. Maybe we'll go through some of our introductions later on if we've got some time. Yeah, yeah, you get you get to know all of us. Gotta watch out for Brian he's really mean, but otherwise everybody's all right. Dude, well, I'm like sitting right here. I was first one to say hi to Carlton. I was the first one to say hi and introduce myself. Come on. I mostly chose you because you're probably the nicest person. Maybe maybe at all. Right, right. Okay, keep it going. And with that was segue into voting for the next chair and vice chair. I think it's there that attacking Brian is my campaign. So anyway. Yeah, so we have a we have. We had two reappointments. Aaron and Ari on even though they're not here right now are still with us on the planning commission. And, and Carlton took a vacant seat, which was left by John Adams. So with that change over. We'll do new elections for chair and vice chair. Who's currently Kirby and Gabe for Carlton's benefit. Gabe is right. Gabe Lodge and that's is our vice chair. And Gabe and Gabe is with us now he's he's arrived. So, I don't know. I'm just going to open the floor for anybody to have questions or to make nominations. I think we're in really good hands with the current administration I was going to move Kirby to remain as chair if you're willing to to keep it. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. And I think that I don't know if I can double nominate, but I mean I also and I'm willing to but also with Gabe. Work and experience in the industry is very valuable and you know, it's a handsome man, and he gets his work done so I think he should be the vice chair as well. All right, Brian. Well, you guys are doing a good job. You're wearing good hands. So I don't know if you guys are amenable to staying on as chair and vice chair. Yeah, I am I am I've been. This is for me for Carl and spend a fit. I mean, I've been on the planning mission a long time now. Seven, eight years something in that neighborhood so I probably will move along sometime soon because I want, you know, I think fresh blood and these things is important. We are in the middle of some zoning changes and the city plan and so stick in sticking through that, but I just so everyone knows and I think I've probably missed this before but I'll be transitioning at some time in the near future. But but I'm good with staying on for now. And Gabe, are you. Yeah, I'm okay. I think, you know, so Kirby and I that I had kind of checked in with Kirby because I will tell you that I do not want to be the chair whenever Kirby decides that he's done I have a lot of things going on. If there is anybody else that's interested because with the vice chair, as far as I can tell it does, you know, we I sort of see the agendas in advance. And then if Kirby were unavailable, you know, then I would make sure the meeting was was run. But if there's somebody else that's interested in, you know, in that role, I'm okay with stepping aside to because I whenever Kirby does decide that, you know, he's I mean he's been here Kirby how long have you been the chair. I've been the chair for three or four years I think. I mean he's he's had a good tenure he's going to stick through a bunch of these changes but if there's anybody else interested I am also okay with stepping aside, so there could be a little bit of overlap so I just would throw that out there. It's good to think about. It's good for people to think about. We'll have a leadership void sometime in the future and the shoes will probably be too much to fill but someone's got to try, you know. So anyway, okay so it sounds like we have a nomination from Brian for a game myself, we've accept, we've accepted that. The status quo is the is the motion. Mike do we need a second for usually you need a second for a nomination yeah. Okay, and we may as well play safe anyway so is it does Brian have a second to his motion to nominate gave nine. Second from Maria. Mike do you want to do the actually the facilitating of it since. I mean it doesn't matter for me to know it's fine for you to do it but you know, it really just comes down to everyone's in favor of the motion. Say aye. So, so before we do that though I'll say is there any anyone that want to have any discussion about the motion about. So the motion is to nominate. Kirby for vice chair and Gabe for Kirby for chair and Gabe for vice chair. Let the record show Kirby for chair gave for vice chair. And that's how Gabe accidentally became the chair. So, so, so we have there's you know, procedurally. Discussion time such I don't want to breeze through it without giving anybody chance anybody have anything to discuss with that. Okay, it's doing a great job. Thank you. Okay, so those in favor of the motion say aye. Hi. Can you post. Any abstain. Okay. So, five oh votes. For the continued leadership. Okay. And with that, I have a number of decrees. Just kidding. Okay. We've we've so now we've gotten to like the main event for the evening and that is as a group is who we have not heard from for a while have been working hard on. Putting some storyboard pages together so Carlton we've worked for a very long time. Putting together a city, a new city plan. That we've, you know, we've looked at. The chapters individually we've worked through most of the chapters that go into the city plan. I'm guessing Mike may have told you a little bit about what the city plans about. I, you know. We plan to talk offline tomorrow, which is probably the best time to go into the true weeds of it all. But just just to say that we've we've done most of the chapters. There's still there's still a little more work we need to do. But we've passed off the work that we have finished and voted on. To our consultant s e group. Who are putting the plan into a website format for us. That's the main thing that they're doing. And so they've checked in with us and there's there's eight and who's a representative. Who's going to walk us through the latest work that they've, that they've done. So again, this is, they've taken what we've given them and what we voted on already. And they're putting it into a website for Matt. Take away. Thanks, Cody and hi Carlton. Great to meet you and welcome to the planning commission. Mike, can you give me the capability to. Well, I would. Yeah, I think you can share screen. It says disabled. Oh, all right. But anyway, while you're figuring it out. Carlton for your benefit and then I'll kind of get into more general update. But I think Kirby and Mike have given it a pretty good introduction where we are trying to make a city plan that isn't the sort of like typical. Maybe dry your PDF that's 60 pages long and that nobody really ever reads except for when you have some sort of permitting or zoning issue that you really need to get into the details on. So we're trying to make a city plan that is through an interactive website called story maps, where each chapter will have its own little page associated with it so people will be able to. For example, for the economic development or historic resources chapter, you'll be able to go through some of the previous context understand why that specific resources important. There will be some interactive maps that show you maybe where the location of historic resources are, and then it'll launch into what the aspirations goals and strategies are for that specific resource. We have started this a while ago at this point but obviously with some of the existing conditions and mobiliar and just other process items. It's been a bit delayed. Mike and I were chatting the other day and we do have sort of an end of next year deadline for sure to make sure that this gets through planning commission review public review and council review, knowing that each of those will have some sort of time associated with. So I think by the end of this year, it would be wonderful to get a first draft of all the chapters into story maps to then go into future public review. We have, let's see, community resources, land use and maybe one other that have yet to be finalized for for our process. Mike and Kirby and everyone else is that might be one other that isn't quite there yet. Yeah I had economic development and energy that are mostly done I think we just needed to get the finals to you. So that that was the one of my note today that had to go and follow up on. Okay, so let's see this little window always. Okay, so the plan website Google folder is where you'll find all of the chapters as well as the working drafts and final drafts. So there are implementation strategies that. Well, that's keeping head I'll get there. But touching base on that john Adams thing Michael bring up our strategy there. So, okay, this is the existing story map chapters as they stand. So all the ones that are created I think they're yeah as we said two or three more will be added to this would be great if there was 12 just for numbers but there might be 11. So is what it is. The resources one of the first ones that we got finalized in a more polished way. Some of these other ones have either just small bits and pieces that are waiting to be done like some mapping data that we still need to get or still needs to be put into the system. I'll just launch into historic resources. So they all start with this structure introduction planning context synergies is how it relates to other plan chapters. Implementation summary and then who are the parts and players involved with moving these strategies forward. So you can see photos launch into planning context, where these interactive maps will come up showing these specific layers which relates to the text that you see here. So as people scroll through different information will come up. And then for each of the maps will have an area where a member of the public will. If they are interested, they can zoom around by themselves with these buttons here. So, each of the chapters will have this graphic here that shows the relationships with other chapters. Eventually we can add links in here. This is a little fun fact for each chapter. Then we get into the implementation summary where it's right now just aspirations and goals, and the strategies, because there are so many of them they will go into a separate document that we'll talk about in a second. That is the general template for each of the pages. There's some slight differences and photos and maps for each, but they all should look fairly similar. So for those who are interested in the full strategies for each of these chapters. John Adams had a vision to put together this interactive matrix item where you could go by chapter or by goal and I don't exactly know what his vision was here. But we do have an easy way to search and find exactly what you want rather than just a list of, you know, hundreds of strategies. So we do have someone who can speak with John and try to get his vision created and that's just a fancy interactive Excel or something like that. I'm going to figure out the back end of what we need to create that, but that is something that we will need to still develop, as well as there are statutory requirements for having a more static version of that document. So at the very least, we can at least link to a PDF before we get that created if it is taking a bit. I think I think it would be good to try to try to get that done. It seemed like people were really excited by the idea of it. And we, you know, I think you probably heard it and that John just stepped down from on a mission, but we still have access to him. We know where he lives. We can get him. Yeah, because I had my idea of what he was talking about when he was talking about that, but I probably not exactly what he meant. Right. Right. Yeah. So we'll set up a meeting. Some of the stuff he was talking about, I do know, like, we do have some strategies, right, Mike, that are the same strategy, but in different chapters. So I know what he was talking about was like linking those things to show something that would display how if you're interested in bicycle lanes and that might not be one that's in multiple chapters, but it might be just transportation. The designated downtown program, that would be one that, you know, being having a designated downtown gives you access to historic resources grants. So it's in the historic resources as we should continue to have our designated downtown because it provides funding opportunities for historic preservation. It's also an economic development tool as well. So it appears in the economic development chapter. And so yeah, there's ideas like that that appear in a number of chapters that he also by because it was going to be coming out of an Excel table we would have the ability to to label a number of things like we've talked about in the last two programs. Every, every goal, or every strategy was going to be either continue amend, or it's new. So, if we just wanted to go through and say what are the new things that we're recommending doing because sometimes that's important there's a lot of things that we do that, you know, we just want to note that there are different goals and there's a reason we have a designated downtown and if people want to know why it's because it helps us implement these different goals but there's nothing new that we're doing we're just going to continue doing what we've already done. And then in other cases if you want to have somebody asks well what new things are you going to do well then you could query this table to go through and say okay, what are all the new things we're doing with historic resources or that we're recommending. So I think that was what he had is because because it was coming out of an Excel table, we'd be able to have all these different cells where we could query different things which is really for the policy wonks. And Montpelier has its share policy wonks if you really want to drill into that and really ask a lot of questions, you can do that. If you just want to kind of get a get get an overview of all of the things then then we'd have the static PDFs that you could pull up and go through and and be able to see where they all plug in. So do we do we have any format so far for the like goals and strategies. No, we were setting up to I was setting up to meet with our. So our new communications coordinator came on. First, she'd been working part time up until July 1, and then she became full time. So we had been talking throughout the spring about the fact that we were going to be working together when she got full time so we could start to go and develop these tables. Because we had to kind of figure out how we're going to give a lot of information without confusing people and without all the know how do we make this. And so she was excited this was going to be a great project. July 1, we're going to get rocking and rolling July 10 we get flooded so we haven't sat back down to go through and decide but now. So we're starting to reach a kind of a pressure point where it's like, if we're going to put, if we're going to go to the public and start having public input. You know, if we can wrap everything up by December and we can start rolling out some public hearings on the city plan starting in January, February, March, then then we're going to need to have this done so I'm going to have to start meeting with her again. And this is a good reminder because I actually hadn't. I hadn't sat down with her on this topic and I should. Like is that mostly for the static version. That was for the static version she was going to help with the formatting of the static. Okay. Yeah, let me know if you want support we can try to create like a template or something like that but sounds like you're going to handle that with her. If you guys have ideas I'm more than willing to go and again, you know, I know we're working from, you know, our different budgets that we have and making budget recommendations going forward. We can certainly work those into the budgets as well if you wanted to take the first stab at it and we could work with her because I know she's busy as well I've got to check with her on her timing. Because, yeah, there's, there's a lot of communications work going on right now. That makes sense. Yeah, I'm happy to at least sit on that first call with her and then we can maybe make a game plan after that, or gets through meeting in person that makes a little more. Yeah, maybe we'll set up a zoom meeting with the three, the three of us or whoever else on your end wants to sit in and we can kick around ideas of how to make this. It's the easiest way to get this all put together. Okay, I think the last thing to just kind of introduce for Carlton's benefit and to give an update to everyone else is this home page, which I don't think it has changed almost at all for many months knowing that we wanted to kind of wait until some things were drafted to come up with some of those. Those narratives that we really wanted to show up on this page. So we still have this as the idea for the home, the hub site here. People will have links to the chapters here, potentially. Or we will just have them go to this plan chapters tab. We currently just has three of them linked, but we can update that really easily. So that's a decision that this group can help with the eventual interactive matrix that we come up with will be linked here. And additional resources that are mentioned in each of the chapters. So previous energy plans or renewable energy dashboards or something like that will be linked here as well. Yeah, by sorted by chapter. So this is still something that will need to be built out of it but I think it makes sense once things are developed to kind of revisit this. Yeah, I think the additional resources would have a couple other pieces on on the process we used in the, you know, I mean, we have a tab about this plan but we really would have another one in there that would kind of get into some of the background of if people were interested in some of those background facts of. Yeah, right. You know, the statutes in the requirement required pieces and why have a plan and but I would put together just a bunch of little pieces that would kind of go into there. Yeah, Kirby. You, you had mentioned a minute ago, getting some input from us on I think it was the plan chapters tab. And just if you wanted to elaborate more for the planning commissioners to think about what what input did you have in mind. Yeah, yeah, so this first page here, we had sort of an initial vision of having the plan chapters available right on the home screen so that there wasn't a lot of confusion you just sort of immediately saw them. Okay, because I haven't been in this program for a while. I don't know if there is a way to merge those sort of like embedded photos that we were seeing on the plan chapters page into this page but I think there is. So we can choose between if we want this more icon focused look on the homepage, or if we want this second page that has just whatever photo is being used on the cover of each story map right now. So I think it's both icons as a choice and then location as a choice. So, okay, whether to use like the photos or the icons, and then you're asking whether it should be on the main page or have its own tab or, and I'll say off the bat, I think I like having it at both so that people can stumble on on it their way. What I mean. But what do other people think about the options here. So, the icons currently appear in the about the plan section. Okay, that's just like the homepage. Yeah, so you scroll down scroll down and then you see a bunch of icons. Okay. And then the plan chapters is where the photos are. Yep. I'd like the photos. They're better than the icons. The icons seem a little impersonal and like governmental. I mean, you know, we're a small town so you kind of look at the photos and you recognize all the locations and it's just the icons seem a bit more generic and what was that. I said utilitarian and see. Yeah, like, we just got them off of some, you know, like MS word. I mean, sorry. But you know what I mean, like they just seem a bit. I don't know removed. Yeah, they're more sterile. But I like the pictures as well. I think it brings out the human is like they were saying and I think we do kind of probably want the entire website to be like that to bring planning to human level. I think that's been everybody's vision. Right, Mike. Anybody else have any more comments about that. So, what did you guys think about the locations of the buttons? Does that mean so it are we still saying that we're going to have both ways to capture the audience audience's attention and in the interface. Are there just going to be, is it, are we doubling the pictures or are we having different pictures as far if we're going to capture it in two different places. So, the way that this works is that these are little like cards, little like coded cards so we wouldn't necessarily be able to link to the same chapter with a different photo so I think, at least to what Kirby's comment is right now having the about the about the plan page, which is the first thing that people would click on, have the photo options here, and also having them in the plan chapters tab here. I was assuming by the way that, that there would be more content above the links on the about the plan page. But if we get if we don't think we're going to have any more content, then then maybe my suggestion is silly, maybe because it would just look like the plan page in both places, unless it's, but I was just thinking that it like having the option to link there from like the bottom of the about the plan page could be good if there's more content on the about the plan page. But if it's basically just two pages that are the same buttons then that would make us like a little bush leak maybe and maybe not great. So, that would be And could there be just say underneath the photo it's like a small blurb so you have as much informative information as possible. So they when they click on it they know that they're specifically going to it, rather than having to click on it and that be a waste of time for them. We could try to build. It sounds like, if it's going to be on the homepage, have it be more simple kind of get to the point. And then if we wanted to have a little bit more information, I would probably lean to putting that in the plan chapters page. This is the little blurb that just comes in from the story map but if we, we could just have to redo the layout a little bit here. But if people did want a little bit more of an introduction for economic development before they click on it we could certainly add that A little ball of worms is partially why we had put this on the back burner for a while and tried to get to these plan chapters. But we do really want to make sure that we put the energy and investment into this page that we want to make sure that it works as best as possible. And now we're seeing this as a link from the official Montpelier website. But if someone from the IT department or website development department wants to incorporate it a little bit more into the existing website we could also just say okay we're in the official one and not have this external site. So things to consider as we go forward but I think making sure that we have enough description of you know how we got here what the vision is some of the key terms that we're using aspirations goals strategies will be helpful for this site. And I'm just curious this is inside baseball possibly but is there a dual vision for mobile as well as desktop because some people use their cell phones some people use their their computers and it doesn't always look the same. It doesn't always translate. Yep, there is. I think there is a way to preview this site at least on my side on an iPad or an iPhone. So this site in particular and story maps does have they have their own functionality to make sure that it fits on different screens eyes. Thank you. I'm kind of with you curvy in terms of if they're going to be the same. If they're both going to be photos right if we if that's the instead of the icon stuff then does seem like redundant to have the same. Basically the same thing on each page and like good. I mean, kind of like improve remove to improve kind of keep it simple I like the little snippet it just has there, you know, I mean, it's an overview. It's pretty forward pretty approachable. If those pictures move to the about the plan page and then does that mean conceivably that the plan chapters tab goes away and you just access the plan chapters through the about the plan page. Well, I think the original, the original plan that we had for laying this out was to have the about the plan the introduction page. And it was really to set the stage for two major sections, the plan chapters, and the plan implementation. So, I mean, I think if, if I were making a suggestion, and this kind of goes back to the original layout which you guys kind of moved away from but the initial about the plan wouldn't have those tiles on it. It was really, it kind of start to explain to people, you know what, what are the storyboards. And if you go to the plan, you know the plan chapters link. This is what you're going to find in the storyboards and it's going to have an explanation of what the storyboards are and what's going on in them. And if you're interested in how we're going to accomplish our goals, what are our goals and how we're going to accomplish them, then that's what you would find on the implementation tab. And then we would have an explanation of what's an aspiration what's a goal and what's a strategy. And I think that was a little bit of how we had originally laid out the about the plan and it kind of got condensed down to what we have here. And we decided at a certain point we're like, let's, you know, I think it was actually Aaron, who had the idea of, you know, let's, let's not try to write the executive summary until we've written the plan. So let's go through and do our plan chapters. And when we're done with our plan chapters, we can come back to this opening page. And maybe that would give us a little more insight of, okay, now that we've seen the chapters now let's, let's do this, you know, let's do this about the plan page last, I think was Aaron's idea, because we really need to see the plan chapters all done, the implementation page all done. And then we can come back to say, all right, now how do we tell the public how do we teach the public how do we educate them on because we want them to come to this page first. We want them to get acquainted with what this plan is why it structured the way it is how it works and then tell people explore that you know there's a lot of exploring you can do in here to learn. And this is how it works and this is how you would navigate from storyboard to storyboard, or implementation strategy to implementation strategy. Maybe we follow Aaron's advice and leave this one till last again but I think that's where we where and how we ended up here. Like I think that makes a lot of sense. I don't know why I'm saying that too. But I think having only about the plan page like you're saying, explain to people that how they can use the website. You know, look at the plan chapter section to look at individual chapter, you know, like inviting them to kind of jump in and poke around. So, I don't. So I think after this green blurb, it just goes so explore the city plan so maybe having like a text right here. And kind of like giving people instructions on how to explore it and what kinds of things they might be able to find as they poke around. But yeah, I think that is something that comes after we finalized or looked at all the different chapters and have an overarching message, maybe. I think that all sounds fine. We had by the way drafted some intro language and I just I just pulled it up because it some intro language and some in language. I think it was intended for this landing page. And also a brief description of what aspiration schools strategies are which I sounds like that was probably meant for the implementation page. So that stuff's on the Google Drive. So, see, I guess that's where we were going. It's been a while. So we've to kind of refresh ourselves about what we're thinking. The one hearing from people is for now, maybe not having buttons on the landing page and we'll revisit it later. Once we know more about what kind of content we're going to have there. Another thing just to throw out there could be I just in general kind of like the idea of something being user friendly in a way in which you can get to the important parts like from different routes. Maybe not having big buttons though like dominating the page but maybe just having if possible like a small font thing to click on at the bottom of like each chapter's name or something. Maybe, you know, but until but until we get this page like I think fleshed out it's hard to know. What's the best thing to do with that. Yeah, when we had just talked about getting rid of these icons, but maybe still having some links I kind of envisioned like 11 small buttons and like a row that it was just it was less visually obtrusive maybe but still let people kind of jump right there. If they already know what they're wanting to look for. But no, I think, I think it makes sense to consolidate this get rid of the icons. I think as far as process goes, like I think the plan on your side is still to do some chapter review and content writing over the next few weeks and months and then maybe in early 2024. We can maybe set a session on this and we can even it's not hard to set up these pages so we can maybe try to come to you with a couple examples and see what resonates and what works from user flow perspective. And this is certainly not a final product. We can get rid of the photo can change the colors like we can we can do a lot here to to make it a little bit more grabby. But girls in your new. I was just going to say redundancy is always a great thing just visual redundancy, you know, and passive as passive as possible, but as long it's almost like a safety net people want to go to exactly where they want to go but they can be under other places but they don't want to get lost in the sauce, you know, and they can go back to where they specifically, you know wanted to go in first place. So like each page, like you said have like those key. You know buttons, that's a great idea. Right, right. Okay. Yeah, that's a great idea. Thank you. Let us know if you have ideas for like any like content drafting or anything like like if you feel like some of these pages need a description like, like we've talked about that a little bit tonight I think about like Mike and mentioned what he kind of thought the content of the information implementation page would look like. If you need our help with any drafting I'd be happy to volunteer to work on that and pass it around to other planning commissioners. If you need any, anything like that. Awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah, just let us know. I think next steps on our side are just to have me with john to go through the implementation matrix, continue to fill any data gaps or photo gaps or things like that that we might need to finish out these pages, and then continue to work with Mike on those final chapters getting them into story maps. So, it sounds like we might have it before the end of the year. There are I think land use might still not be written. But other things are really close. We're also probably going to do some sort of a contract extension as well. So, time and budget for more review and iterations of this school. Allow us to keep working on this for a couple more months. Yeah, I think wasn't, I think the original plan was to have it in city council in the spring or something, or maybe even earlier. The flood, you know, ruined all of our timelines. That sounds great. Anything else you want to show us. What is it the the link to those nine pages. I'll make sure that Mike has this collections link so that you can explore at least the text content and all of these should be updated with the exception of energy I think it's the old the old draft. So, we'll just be adding content to that over the next few weeks here. Do you recognize where that arts and culture photos from this on the painting on the ground. It looks like where Ron is for Langdon Street. Yeah. You know, I think they closed that they did like a music festival there a couple years ago I think that's Langdon Street. Like Langdon Street, but that that art's not there anymore. But I mean, I don't know if that's fine. We can preserve it. It's a great catch on, like, especially for some of these really like arts and culture should have amazing relevant up to date photography like there's so much great work in Montpelier we have some of it here but it's not all of it. So, if you do have I can crowdsource that for the planning commission. I, they, they rotate the this like on Lane Street particular they kind of rotate the art installation stuff there, which I think it's I think it would be cool for the website to have some of the old stuff too. It's actually I don't know makes a scene more vibrant that the arts kind of rotating. And there's new new murals to there's a muralist that has done some things recently. I'm not sure I know where she works but I don't want to say it but you know she's discussed it. So that would be a capture and maybe synergistic opportunity in every more life and eyes. Absolutely yeah feel free to send photos to Mike and he'll make sure those get along to our team but especially this chapter all the chapters should have great photography but this one would be really awesome to have as much as possible. Okie dokie. Well, thank you all. We will be in touch. I'm sure I'll see you before. Well, I'm not sure I'll see you all before the end of the year, but we will see each other again. Thank you for your effort and welcome again to Carlton. Thank you so much. We appreciate you and your time. Absolutely. Thank you for your coordination. Have a good evening. You too. Thanks. Thank you. So it looks like that's coming along. If anyone has photos. We talked about that before. I don't think I ever acted on it. I didn't dig through my photos to find. We'll not be there once but you could give those to Mike to pass along. They could end up on the plan. I think they also have access to loads of photos from up here alive. Right. Yeah. You know, I don't think they need our photos. I don't want to sneak your family on there or something like, here's your chance. Okay. The next thing on the agenda is for us to discuss the municipal planning. I don't even know if we're going to discuss it, but Mike's going to tell us about the municipal planning grant for 2024. So our recommendation so every year in the fall, the state puts out an application process for which is called municipal planning grants. They used to be for about 10 to 15,000 and they bumped them up to about $30,000 and now they've started to put more money into it finally. So these grants allow usually for planning commissions to do city plan updates, zoning updates. We do most of our zoning stuff in house now because we're done with the big update. But we can do specific plans in this case for this year. And that we try to get additional dollars to keep and finish up the city plan. They are wrapping up at the end of October, their current grant wraps up. So they're not going to have any money until January. But they're going to keep working on stuff because they've got some stuff that we had agreed to finish up. So the idea is that we then get will apply for this grant to keep them on for another year. The plan, the grants are 10% match. So I'm guessing my estimate with Aiden was that we're probably looking at needing 10 to 15,000 more to finish up the plan through next year. So this is, you know, significantly smaller, but it's not an unrealistic amount to think that the city plan was going to take 30 to $40,000 for us to complete. So they would be able then have a lot of help to be able to finish up through the process as as the public makes recommendations and makes changes. We can have them just go through and continue to make the changes on the on the website. So, that's a recommendation. So if we want to have a motion on that, we can approve hiring, putting in a municipal planning application to complete the city plan. And basically that's going to mean hiring a secret group. And you, you need to vote from us so that you can put that on the application. Is that, is that why? Yeah, I need to need the vote because you're going to have to sign it Kirby that says, as planning commission chair where that's what the planning commission has agreed to do. So it's usually, it's actually to kind of give, give you the comfort of knowing you can sign it, knowing that you've got the support of the rest of the planning commission. And then you stop by maybe tomorrow, if you're going to be in front of city hall, which don't let me forget, I'm in the police station right now. So, not for bad reasons, for good reasons. They've moved us out of the senior center and they've moved us into the community room in the police station so. Okay. So, at least okay. Yeah, I can meet you and meet you out at the out in front as well at city hall if you're going to be over there I can meet you at city hall as well. We'll call to now we're going to be there at 10. So, that's where I'll be at 10 a.m. All right. Yeah, maybe I'll meet you just out front just get your signature. If there's if there's any stalkers watching work a feed. Now they know. But it will be at the police station so watch out. Yeah, okay. Well, we have to vote first. So, everyone's good with Mike you're going to apply for as I understand what you said. A $30,000 grant from the state. It'll be 10 to between 10 and 15,000. Okay. So going for 10 to 15,000. For additional funds for SE group to do their part of the plan for us. So do we have a do we have a motion for my appeal or to apply for a municipal planning grant. To pay for SE group to help us finish the plan. We have that motion. I move that we, we seek that additional money to finish out the plan that we started. Thanks Mike. Okay, motion from Gabe. We have a second. Second from Brian. Any discussion before we vote. Okay. Those in favor of Gabe's motion. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed. Okay. So I'll see you tomorrow, Mike and sign it. And it's a lot better than sometimes in the past we've had to scan it and stuff. And it's a kind of a pain. So. That'll be nice. Okay. It is almost seven and we've made it through our agenda. And we have this giant backlog of minutes. So let's do it. Let's let's approve those minutes. And let's have a motion to approve them all at once. But I'll give everybody that we approve all the minutes all at once. But people may need a second if they need to look at it. Yeah, yeah. Maria, do you need a second before a motion? Yeah. So I like, I like the eagerness there. Okay, but let's let's let's take like two or three minutes to review the minutes, which are. Mike's email. Along with the agenda attached. So I'll come back in a couple of minutes and be ready to take a motion. I was just thinking about the stalker comment thing. And when I was walking in hover park this week, I did have someone walk up to me. And ask like, Hey, are you on planning commission? So some people, they know us from TV. It's true. It happens not the first time it's happened either. I'm pretty used to being fluorescent. So I'm okay. Yeah. So yeah, we're. We're totally famous on work and we get recognized. They also mentioned something about finding like our planning commission work through chat GPT, which. We've been entirely follow, but. I guess it makes sense if someone puts in some queries to chat GPT that it pulls off of. Mobular planning commission stuff that exists on the internet. Yeah, the minutes. It'll scrub it. Okay, we're all back. I read a mo move that we accept minutes. Okay. Do we have a second to the motion to approve. The minutes. I will list them specifically the minutes from July 24th, September 11th, September 25th and October 10th. Of 2023. I'll second that. Maybe a second from Maria. Okay. Do we have any discussion? Do anybody notice anything in the minutes to correct? Are they exact because I'm there. I'm looking at October 18th, October 21, October 11th, 27th, October 19th, September 19th of 2023. Do you see the attachments? At the bottom of Mike's email. I do. I'm planning. I have planning agenda. That's what I have you. And then when I go to the other. Mike, I have PC agenda. I just have planning agenda. I remember the ones that I downloaded for. It's not in my email as far as I figured out. Don't worry about it. He should be able to click on them at the bottom and pull them up. Yeah, it's, I believe I downloaded them. Let me, let me just look there. But it's since you, since you weren't present at those meetings Carlton it's, it's completely like it's probably best if you just abstain from the vote anyway because, you know, you weren't, you weren't there to know if they're accurate or not. You don't know walk. I can't be blamed. Yeah. Okay, so any more discussion, anything to adjust on those. Okay, those in favor of. Gabe's motion to approve the minutes from those 4 days. Say aye. Any opposed. Any abstain. I. Okay. That'll be on future minutes that Carlton abstained. And that vote. And, but it passed 401. To prove the minutes. Okay. Does anybody have anything else before we adjourn. Get out a little bit early tonight. I'll just make the quick note if there is anyone who's watching because the September 11th was the public hearing. And even if people's comments aren't noted in the minutes that I have them all recorded and we have them all in our file. So other than that, that's, yeah, that's it. That's the only other thing I remembered was the fact that we are the planning whole planning department is now in the police station. So if people need to come and see us. Want to chat with me, they either have to get buzzed in through dispatch or they can contact me in advance and we can meet them at the door to let them in. Because the police station is locked facility. So other than that, that's it. Bag of bonds out there. Well, welcome Carlton. Good to have you look forward to getting to know you. Great to be here. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. You're welcome. And I'll see you tomorrow. Okay. Okay. See everybody else in two weeks. Bye guys.