 Sorry, we already had our first question, which is a note that homelessness wasn't a word that sort of came up in any of the overview, and is that germane here? And I would say absolutely it is germane. I would say it's probably more the adaptive downtown is more of the infrastructure group. And so this is more about like the emergency response. So if there is homelessness that was sort of caused in the emergency response. I think also, Suzanne is here from the long term recovery group. That's really supporting individuals. I'm wondering what's being done now, but I saw I'm a resident. My name is David Hart and I reside. I live in Montpelier. But it seemed at first all of the disparate needs that came down with the water have siphoned and sifted and formed as quite often happens into actions that look great. I really commend the folks that are behind it. But one of the few parties that I think are stakeholders are the ones that do not have property, do not have houses. And unless we can figure out how to include them in now as well as in the future and not shift and push it into it. I mean, I really feel like people are just being ignored that are other human beings. That's my statement. Great. I really appreciate that. And I wonder, well, yes, go ahead. Sure. The task force and the city are as well as good Samaritan Haven and another way are taking some action to support the many people who were unhoused before the flood whose lives have become materially worse since the time of the flood. But you're right. It's absolutely, it's a huge burning question right now and there are people working on it. But I also shared that concern that the that's a basic part of emergency response. And so I came to this really out of a general concern for social support and mental health support as well as for supportive unhoused people in town in the wake of the flood. And I agree that that needs to be part of the conversation. The task force meets the first and third Wednesday of every month and the public is welcome at task force meetings. I would really welcome you to come if you aren't already doing that. I'm doing enough other things. Okay. I still have a concern. Yeah, definitely. Forgetting people. Yeah, absolutely. Residents. And this is a national problem. It's not just here. Right. But it's a burning. It's a burning problem in Montpelier. There are people actively trying to address it. And it is much worse since the flood in part because places where people had previously been able to camp out of doors are no longer available. Thank you for your work. And this is exactly the type of conversation we're hoping to have today, right? You're identifying priorities, identifying goals, want to hear from you all. And I love to know that this feels maybe like it's lacking in our early materials. Hi. I would actually really like sort of the outline that you were putting on it. You know, I've been hoping to see something like this begin to emerge. What do you see the process of actually getting this implemented? You know, is this council action? Is this, you know, do you have an action process that we should be involved in? I'm curious how you see this moving from here on. Do you mean, holistically, all of it or specifically the emergency response plan? The emergency response plan. The failures last summer, I think, pointed out what we really need to know. And the ground is still wet. Yeah. And December was a great, you know, second round of, oh my gosh, you know, we didn't have as many blue skies as the official term of learning as we thought. Kind of as it left a neon sign saying I'll be back. So yes, great point. And Mark, by the way, is introduced is also here from our work group. So this is something those of us on this group are very concrete thinkers. So we're actually quite excited to have this concept of a local over separations plan that it is done. It is like a science, you know, and so basically our thought is that we have already talked to the city and they are 100% supportive of basically us coming in and supporting capacity here. A focus on writing this plan, understanding the stakeholders and, you know, having like technical experts come in to support the creation of that plan. And so our timeline is potentially a little ambitious, but to have sort of it draft started to be drafted up by July by the anniversary of the flood. We have the bones of this plan. And the thing is we have a we have a current plan in place, but you might those who might be more familiar with emergency response. It's more of a continuing operations plan of sort of where do the functions of state government go and how do they continue. And what was really missing was the volunteers and the businesses and residents and what do we do and where do we go and who's the authority. And in the city, you know, there was actually no response to who specifically was supposed to inform people of what, who was supposed to call the National Guard, who was supposed to do any of the stuff that would be required to help get things mobilized. Yes. And so I would love to see something that could actually happen before June. Well, that's a great point. So of course we're going to be as moving as to again the December flood was a wake up call of this idea of blue skies. There's not that many blue skies for us that we really do need to be working fast on this. So our thought is get a contractor in who has deep experience in this, allow them to add capacity, you know, and but again, we're going to you're going to see some facilitated engagement of residents, businesses and volunteers, you know, what was your experience, what worked, what didn't work. There's also like technical stuff here to like software volunteer activation software again that exists. So we actually put something in place over a night here. Can we use that did that work or should we use this national software so there's a lot of details underlying that but that's the idea is basically the city's like yes please we need to do this. We want to move with Lackardy. Thank you for working with us on this and basically putting up a spotlight on one more thing. I know we talked about the neighborhood or community. Yes, Bob, having had some experience with the original can effort. The biggest problem is finding neighborhood leaders who will actually maintain this do the outreach, etc. So some form of rewarding or engaging people that will take on those leadership roles is crucial to, you know, so it's nice to talk about that, but there has to be an actually a concrete organizing plan for the leadership. Great point. So one other thing there are trainings, Vermont Emergency Management trainings for the folks who are going to be in charge of this in the city. And there's like an operations like, you know, center that's like, that crops up an emergency right so there are all these components that are sort of known and done there's trainings we're looking folks up with, and then you practice it right you practice that you see how it works. And part of that we've heard early in our research of the can network is just what you said it's hard to sustain it in between emergencies. And so, you know, that's the question is, how do you find those leaders, how do you keep the can network simmering in between times of emergency. So I see some other hands I also would love to ask you all that question of what would have worked better for you right like this is the sort of moment of brainstorm of, and do you have experience with the can network what are your ideas that might make a can never just so everyone's on the same page that's this local neighborhood like leadership right You have your designated neighborhood, you have a leader, you know, what everybody needs you know who got flooded you know who needs a supply right you know it's sort of like this like first pass alert and then support neighborhood by neighborhood, which we have had experiences, it was just alluded to in my pillar. Adrian. I'll just respond to that and have a question so in our neighborhood I'm the can leader. You motivated. So I think the can neighborhood started up so I live up off dear field off terrace. So hi, everyone who lives there. What are we Park Park West Park West, I always get all the mob killer Park West neighborhood. And so we had what worked really well for us was getting fed information so that we could feed it out. And so we created mechanisms of communication through. We have a Facebook page, but then a lot of folks were like well I don't use Facebook so we did a listserv so we collected everyone's emails. And then we got down to the lower level which is just going to talk to your neighbors so I know almost I would say 80% of my neighbors just talking to them and understanding what their needs are and you know, and you should. We did that when there wasn't an emergency, right so it's building that foundation and that relationship and taking the time and effort to understand your neighbors like, and then we had a little like a board. I don't remember we had those like truck those like, oh right we had the like a sandwich board sandwich boards for that was another way of communication so as soon as you pull the neighborhood we posted like flyers and information so as people walked by. You know if they didn't you know have email or Facebook or they don't want to come out and talk to me it was like more of a passive way to like communicate information so I personally like the can network. I think it was a great way to bring the neighborhood together and inform people that was not activated during the flood at all because we were not given any information to pass along to our neighbors so I think that was a break. That's an opportunity for improvement. There's no longer any city support for it so. Okay. Well even if I mean the structure exists, and so how do we continue to build that and think of a way to enhance it. And I think it was just information that we needed to pass along so I think there's just an opportunity for to improve. So first of all, thank you for doing that. I think that there are some elements of it that still live so one one component of all of this is either reviving reinventing re invigorating whatever the existing and old network and then sort of improving upon that existing structure. And that is one of the sort of alert methods that will go in conjunction with what the city is doing or what any other volunteer networks would be doing. There were so many things that happened this July that were. I mean a lot of them were initiated by the city and then the city didn't sort of stand up and take credit for those things so there were a lot of things that the city was doing for example, setting up the hub, and asking the parks department and Montpelier alive to sort of run that thing was an effort of the city. And a lot of things happened because we got lucky. We had some of the right people in the right places at the right time and they just made it work. So part of the work that we're doing is figuring out who is aware of the can network, who is part of the volunteer hub, what did the city do, what did individual businesses do that did or didn't work and then trying to piece all those things together into the tool kits that we're talking about and put that together into one larger more robust plan. Sorry before we go there I think Adrian did have a question. I think I don't know if it's part of your plan. I hope it is. But one of the things that was missing during the response was an opportunity for improvement was including the public health department. So the state public health department. I work in public health. That's my background and in the world of epidemiologists. They have emergency response plans to respond to these emergencies and that is what they do for a living. And it was lacking in terms of our PPE, our public health response, our safety for our citizens so they don't get sick. They did get sick. It wasn't necessarily reported through the health department or through the hospitals but it was an unintended consequence that could have been prevented and I hope it's going to be part of this plan. Thank you very much. I was just, what just can stand for and what is that? Is it community action at work? Capital area. It was originally capital area neighborhood. Capital area neighborhood. There you go. So much to learn. Okay. Thank you. But look that goes back to the 2009 great financial crash when there was a lot of worry about seniors et cetera not having services support. It was a way of trying to organize the neighborhoods to check in on people who might be having financial difficulties. And I think it speaks to, and Adrienne brought this up as well, that not everybody communicates or receives information in the same way. And so while the city was putting out messages and Monterey Live was putting out messages, there are folks that just don't receive messages in that way. So we have to sort of diversify the way that messages get out even if it's your next door neighbors knocking on Ms. McGillicubbie's door to say, what do you need? Here's some water and this is what's happening, right? And that's the beauty of this, right? I think our whole concept here is Monterey Live is small enough or large but we're small enough. Now what Adrienne just described is your experiences in the, you know, can leader is you get, you know exactly everyone in your neighborhood and what they need and how they get information. Be it a knock on the door or social media or an email. And the only way to do that is at that level of granularity and it layers. So that's like the surefire way that everyone in that neighborhood is getting communicated to. And then there's like layers from there up to the city and then the state and great point about the public health. Dan and Adrienne, I hope you'll welcome a call when we get to that and we reach out to you and say what, what experience and knowledge can you help share with us? We still use that structure in our neighborhood all the time. And by the way, I do have the database of the original leadership. Thank you. That'll be super useful. So I wanted to also make a pitch for having social services and mental health be part of the any planning for emergency response. And still in my therapy practice, I'm still, you know, obviously still it isn't that long. I'm still supporting people and picking up the pieces of their traumatic reactions to the flood. And I'm sure that's true for any therapist in the area. I would love for there to have been a, and for there to be kind of a structure to mobilize a much more organized response. There's a group of trauma therapists from the Burlington area who I know we're reaching out down here and kind of trying to send essentially sending therapy missionaries down here to try to provide care to people in our community. And it wasn't really, I think that they figured it out, but they figured it out in a very granular way. They figured it out through being a clear any kind of clear network for how they could connect to our community and find out what was needed and send who was needed and do stuff like that. And, you know, I have 10 million ideas and probably anybody working in the field that I work in has 10 million ideas about about how this how this could be done. But it's a really, you know, mental health really is one of the other words that wasn't mentioned in the at least in the larger conversation. And visibly, it's a very big piece of how all of the communities affected are responding and reacting. Thank you very much for that. And thank you for noting that it's another, it felt like another absence because we actually have had many discussions about the role this plays and even just drama, you know, how to acknowledge it in big groups like tonight, you know, in the proper way. So thank you very much. Yeah, and I'm totally happy to be, you know, I have time to be involved in this conversation. Fantastic. Thank you. But before we move on, I'm going to walk out of the hall and ring the bells. You're welcome to stay here. But if you wanted to make sure that you hit somewhere else, it's going to be time to move in just a minute. Give us like a minute 30. I just quickly want to make a pitch to like, I mean, this is, I feel like excellent feedback. Exactly right. Right. And the goals of this kind of group coming out of it are things like that comprehensive response plan, right, that is actionable for businesses, individuals in the city, right. The neighborhood network that helps with that neighbor to neighbor assistance. But also like this, this thing that Suzanne is really leading of this long term recovery group. I just want to talk like really quickly like what that is like, we've seen incredible response to support businesses, right. And the municipality, but really what to be frank, like, you know, I think the original narrative coming out of the flood was like our downtown businesses are devastated and in very it's all residential, right. And in fact, it's a much more complicated narrative, right. 400 individual households or individuals applied for FEMA assistance, right. And so across the state, this is not like Montpelier inventing something new. There's systems with the agency of human services. Leah is a representative from Capstone was working on part of this to really set up, you know, you've got if your house gets devastated, you've got insurance, you've got FEMA, you've got the state fund of last resort, and then you have your neighbors, and you're never going to be made whole, right. And so this final gap is the work of this long term recovery group. And it's not just it's financial resources, but it's labor, it's materials, it's support, emotional support, all of those things. And so I just really encourage you folks, as you're kind of like spreading the word about the work this commission is doing. There's an opportunity for everybody to engage engaged right now in this long term recovery group. We need more members in it, and we need additional energy. So I want to give a space for anyone who wants to get up and move to watershed or downtown. Thank you so much. This is exactly the type of conversation. And this is not the end. Nice to meet you. Judy Walker is my name. After pupil. Sure. Where's the apple? Thanks a lot. We're just going to give another minute for people to turn over here. Thanks for those who stayed. We'll get even get more into it. So we'll give it a minute. We'll get started and we'll let people join as they come. Hi to the newcomers and thanks for those who were part of our last round. We actually just had a great, you know, feedback session, which is exactly what we're looking for. So just another recap. This is the emergency response preparedness, you know, how to be prepared in light of the next, the next one, be it flood or whatever it might be. And we just had some amazing conversation around the community action networks, local sort of neighborhood alert systems. Some people have had experience actually currently be on those and some gaps and, you know, great feedback that was identified. And we have Suzanne here as well as a resource to talk about long term recovery. So I'm just going to open it up to folks because we just had a really robust and I could tell there was more ideas percolating that we didn't even get to. So, yes. I would just like to talk about long term recovery. Great. And I don't have my prop with me tonight. I wish I did. It was a tape measure. But the tape measure goes up to here. Okay. That's how high the water was in my house on lower State Street. Okay. We are still not in our houses. We were put through the meat grinder with FEMA and SBA and everything else. We are struggling. We're really tired of this. I'm unhoused still. And FEMA is not helping me get a place anymore. I just want people to be aware we're still out there in pockets. And we have nowhere to turn. Thank you so much. And Andrea can attest to that. She came down to visit my house. It's unbelievable. It's shocking. It's not just Ed's house. The many houses in Montpelier are almost unlivable. They are unlivable. And our neighbors live in places that we would never see. Anybody want information on that? I'm an expert. I'm a FEMA expert, SBA expert. I'm a whole expert on the whole process. How many people in Montpelier? How many people do you know in the same situation? I believe there are seven substantially damaged homes. That means more than 50% of their value was damaged. And that means you have two choices when you're substantially damaged. Choice number one, you have to elevate it two feet above the current flood level, which nobody knows yet, all right? Or demolish at your expense. Hey. I really appreciate you sharing that. And it exposes so much of the complexities and the human elements. So if anybody wants to contact me, get any kind of information, you're never going to be whole. Never. And flood insurance is not good. Flood insurance will pay for maybe a third of your total damage. So if you're ever flooded, you're never going to be whole. I cannot thank you enough for sharing that because we need to hear this exact story. And that's why we have a long-term recovery group. But as you're saying... I mean, we're nowhere. We're eight months in and we're nowhere. Some of us are ready to move a little bit, but we're told we can't move. All right. So this country has had so many natural disasters. It should be a seamless process. You're assigned people that work with you through the whole process. I was on the phone yesterday for four hours with SBA because their portal to send them information wasn't working. This is the many stuff that happens. You just want to bang your head against the wall. Thank you. I'm so sorry you're going through that. And your experience does help. Because really, as someone said earlier, over 400... So seven homes, as you just mentioned, substantially damaged, over 400 homes affected. I kind of think that's not really well known by your neighbors. I'm staying in Barrie. And the situation in Barrie is just horrible. Horrible, horrible, horrible. It stunk so bad for weeks after the flood. I mean, those poor people. I mean, I feel lucky compared to a lot of people. We are collaborating with Barrie in some ways. And we hope to deepen that collaboration. We really want to use this to sort of make it better the next time. So I'm a good resource on how to navigate. I really appreciate it. And you mentioned layers of maddening bureaucracy is part of your thing as well. And that's what we're trying to investigate. We just got off a call with folks from the Department of Financial Regulation who are doing some research on other tools in addition to flood insurance because there's this acknowledgement that they don't make you whole. And what does that look like? Could that be for the city to buy, for the city to be umbrella, for residents, right? So I think there is an acknowledgement of what you're saying and trying to support. So what happens is every time you go a little step, you get a new person. So you start over from the beginning. I have my story memorized to every word and every inflection in my speech about it. And it happens all the time. Well, I appreciate you being here and being willing to say it yet again to us because it does matter. And I'm lucky I can still laugh. Thank you. Thank you. I'm really encouraged to hear of these conversations with the Department of Financial Regulation because I have an idea rattling around in my head that has to do with better ways to help people get resources after the flood. You know, maybe it's a formal insurance program, but we've also seen an outpouring in this community and we know people who weren't affected who want to help, people who were affected who want to help, but flood insurance might not like to put their money toward that again. What might we do with that energy and those resources? I wonder if there's some sort of community driven grassroots mutual aid style local insurance product that would be legal to create and that would give people some sense of assurance that there's going to be something there for them and it's going to be less traumatizing to access it than other more conventional resources. This is an idea that I made up, but I'm really glad. It's mutual. Yeah, like insurance tool. Great. It's on the list. It's on the list and we will take the seat of your idea and see what's there. See if it can go. I love it. Thank you very much, Kate. This is how I cope with this is what are their ideas? How can we move forward? How can we sort of keep moving, right? Which is my own personal coping mechanism in the light of disaster. Yes. Hi. I'm Katherine Progo and I just want to tell a tiny bit of our story because I don't know if it's been brought up or not. We live up from our college and the groundwater seeped in through the basement. We had a sun pump in the wrong spot. My husband and I stayed awake 38 straight hours with two shop facts. We were thrilled, lucky, came out way, way, way better than everybody else. But in terms of preparedness and adaptiveness, I haven't heard anyone mention up on the top of the hill. He still got flooded. We're nowhere near the river. But just, you know, I know we're not alone. In fact, that's literally my personal experience up on the hill. My husband and I, we borrowed shop backs from our neighbors and had exactly the same 36 hours that you did. And it was shocking, you know, because we weren't, we were not expecting that at all. And I think what you're saying is part of this general alertness of we are living in a different world now. It is a wetter world. It will always be wetter and we can need to be adaptive in all these ways. And maybe there are, you know, again, like lots of talk about like lifting up utilities and as a reason we can all do that together. And this idea of maybe all of Montpelier can be privy to these conversations because they might be strategies we all want to. It doesn't have to be necessarily located by a stream, a river, a lake. It can be groundwater driven in terms of preparedness and setback. Exactly. Thank you. For the people on the hills, I'd be worried about landslides. Yeah. Which would be, yeah, pretty much deadly. Right. Right. Yes. No, go ahead. I'll pass for the moment. Oh, I don't think anyone else has a comment. Okay. Well, I was just going to say, first of all, that I had a somewhat similar experience also at a higher elevation. My sun pump kept up. I was very lucky. But you're at 100% with you that nobody is completely, you know, safe. Well, yeah, and the thing was, I mean, we're sitting there thinking, what about our neighbors? Because three of the four neighbors were all gone. We couldn't even go check on their houses or anything. So when you think about preparedness, that's great. But if you're holding on to those four, you can't really go out and leave it. Yes. That's a very good point, by the way. And we can maybe get into that again with this group. In the previous group, we did talk a lot about the idea of this community neighborhood action, which is a way to be connected with those neighbors as the first line of defense, sharing resources, calling saying, can I go into your basement, check out on your utility or whatever it is. So this is what we're very excited about is we just feel like we've got the momentum in the small enough, ready enough community that we can do that layer and that level of granularity that might support what you're saying, at least from neighbor to neighbor. Please go ahead. And then I was also just going to circle back to what people were saying about public health. And I also work in public health for the Vermont Department of Health, so maybe we can talk a little more later about how we can collaborate. We'd love to. And back to sort of the idea of this local emergency operations plan. The idea is you build the infrastructure and you build the relationships, including with the state folks, public health, right? Like all the different levels when you're not in an emergency, so that when the emergency strikes, those relationships are there, you know who to call, you know who's the authority. We heard this. So we've heard this so much. I think we'll still hear who is the authority to say yes or no. And there was confusion, you know, and that's why there was like, not like, yes, this is the declaration of what to do with, you know, PPE or with mucking out or whatever that is. So I think that's really focused on that as we create the plan, as we help create the plan. Can I build off of that? Thanks. You know, so during the emergency, I worked for the state. And so we were in age of commerce. And so we were finding ourselves in the same kind of position, like who's responsible for responding to the businesses or responding to. So we, we kind of made up the playbook a bit as we were going. I mean, the state does a really good job in terms of its emergency respondent to saving lives and, you know, clearing roads and things that have to happen first. But, you know, that plan, like for the 48 hours after, like how do we support the businesses and the property owners with consistent information, you know, and then to get through kind of the now, unfortunately, there's a lot of experts in town. But, you know, having that roadmap of not just, you know, locally here, here's our roles, you know, Katie and Alec were kind of making up, you know, like all of a sudden, they're assigned, like you're in charge of businesses, you're in charge of residents, like having that in the plan in place and what's the role of the Chamber of Commerce or what's the role of these other entities regionally or statewide. So, you know, whether it's me or, you know, somebody else in that position assigned at that at different agencies, it would be helpful for all of us to know. I love it. And that's exactly the vision here is, like, very clear expectations. Now, with enough time to actually practice, I mean, that's the thing that's beautiful. They have trainings and they actually do practice, you know, exercises, everything from a sort of more of a intellectual tabletop of who's on first, this happens, who do you call and who's in your, you know, speed dial to actually, like, practicing a full activity of, you know, this disaster happens, what do you do? So, having that established and then even, like, working it a little bit to make sure, and you're right, the city, the state, businesses, volunteers, this is what we've heard from a lot of people, too, of just, like, who is in charge, you know? Practice it. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. We also have to be thinking about the technology we have and the technology we're going to have available to us, and the main storms of that intensity usually come with wind, and the one we had didn't, and so we kept power. So the sun pumps worked and the, you know, the shop vats worked, but we need to be thinking about, you know, what happens in the storm that's more like a hurricane or a tropical storm, Irene, where you also win and you're likely to lose power. So setting up those systems in advance as well. So moving. Yeah. Really good point. Being realistic and very... Can I just add that we were in conversations with Plainfield and they brought up a point of, like, cellular problems. Like, actually, we're not so, like, various cell phones, but satellite phones. Like, having another form of communication beyond, like, when the cell phones, cell powers go down. If you can pick up a satellite phone, if you'll remember those big clunky things, what can you do about having some form of communication? Not sure that's a solution, but, you know... Yeah. Well, we've heard people mention sirens and stuff and there's a real variance of opinion on that one. I'll say. Sure. Some of the things that I hear people talking about is sort of one of the elements that we've talked about, for example, knowing what happened to you last time and then during Blue Sky's times, thinking the next time the water comes, what do I need to do so that you already know ahead of time if there's wind, if there's power outage, if there's a forest fire, how am I going to respond to those things and sort of not just knowing your own... So that there's... The city has a responsibility. Volunteer networks will have a responsibility, but each resident and each business owner will have, in some way, their own responsibility to know what you individually are going to need to do and then, once networks are in place, be able to communicate that ahead of time. For example, if on December 18th was it when that had happened, if we had already known from previous time because we'd had the perfect situation and enough time to prepare, which we didn't, but for example that, oh, this business needs this many people to get stuff out of the basement, these businesses, this is what we need, then when there's a flood of volunteers, there's already, the volunteer hub already knows these things. For example, all right, you take two people to Botanica, three people to Anna, four people go to Julio's or what have you and similarly with various neighborhoods that type of pre-planning work during Blue Sky's and then working on the exercises in between allows us to kind of be prepared when it happens. It's going to take a lot of research development, implementation, and then keeping it alive because what happens to these types of plans in a lot of areas is you go years without something and then by the time it happens, everybody who was experienced from last time has already died or moved away or whatever. Maybe this is probably your stakeholder analysis but I'll feel bad if I leave this room and don't say it. The school should also be involved. When there's any type of delay in opening or whatever they have the technology to send out to every single family in Montpelier and Roxbury, so I just want to make sure that that is part of here. It might be, but I don't want to assume. Thank you. This is why we're having this meeting now. This is all in the preliminary stages of development. We've got our goal, we've got our priorities. We want to hear input and now going into the actual writing development phase and again, there will be opportunities for, I love that you bring it to life that example because that's the exact point of like, what do we need to do? There are actually checklists, for example, that exist already that we've been looking at and developing, maybe like expanding upon for business, for a resident, you know, what are your needs and I think we can do that back and forth, but I think that's where we are not going to develop this in a closed room. These have to be really responsive to the proper parties, you know. That's a good point about the school. Sorry, just not much. I'm thinking, so are you partying with the Vermont or what is the management, because that's, I mean, I'm assuming they, right, the responsibility is like, I would assume. So they would take a leader role, but I have no idea. Couple things. We have some folks that are part of MRS management and tangential to them on the commission. So we're in sort of like a real flow of information there. And then two, we've gotten incredible advisors who have already sort of like just said, here's everything I know, call us anytime, you know what I mean? And they're the ones saying, you know, we have a training that's for, you know, must take for anyone, you know, who's the municipal leaders who are the captains when this thing happens. And of course the folks in the city, you know, city government who are those people are very responsive and say, yes, sign us up for the next one. So yes, and the beauty of this is every town has to have one of these in place and we do have one in place, and it's the first pass. It's like the continuing operations, right? Like what we've all seen now is it must be so much broader than that to do all the things that sort of mark and we've been saying, you know, for businesses and residents. So that's the part that is not like mandated, but it's done. Let me just say that it is done. We are not creating this from scratch. You have to have a robust plan like this and we have templates and advisors who are going to help us. To speak just a little bit more to that. So the city, for example, the city has an excellent plan for what the city needs to do to maintain the city's assets and continue the operation. Police, fire, yeah. But it also cannot be our firefighters and police who come respond to the flood needs, in my personal opinion, because who's going to respond to a fire when all the firemen are mucking out basements? We need police and fire to be there to do the work but there have been so the city has a good plan it's just limited in scope and doesn't include what are we going to do at your house when it's full of water, right? So there are other communities in Vermont. Bethel is one example that has a very robust plan. They unfortunately kind of let their plan die but at its inception it was it was a really good plan and sort of laid out the volunteer networks will do this. The government will be responsible for doing this. The government will be responsible for doing these things and so we're using that as a it's not a jumping off point but it's a great reference point for us. Yes. I think we're going to build off of that. Sure. I was just going to say the other thing that we can think about is the sister communities that maybe are like in this last flooding event that we had like Addison County wasn't hit where you could get equipment from or get supplies from or fans or whatever it is it's not always going to work that way because it might be a snow storm that impacts the entire city. It could be a flood but I think it begs us to kind of think about that a little bit because there's certainly a lot of across state borders New Hampshire and New York where it might be able to build those relationships a bit so if you have an emergency are you still aware and supportive and you've had that connection? That's a great idea. I love that idea. Thank you. I do keep thinking when I see the photos of what happened in Maine recently I keep feeling like if we were three years down we would be in such a much better position to sort of offer them our experience and our tools but we're still working it out at this point. And we're actually thinking about the creation of the Emergency Operations Plan as potentially a template that could be fill a whole PDF for every town of Vermont because we do feel like we've got the energy we've got this commission and every town needs one of these and very few actually have them as big as we're thinking about this one so we really actually would love to accelerate progress elsewhere. Has there been discussion about how to keep the momentum going? Assume the next flood isn't for 10 years. And everybody's going to disperse and nobody's going to be here. How do we keep this going so that there's always somebody that's prepared or somebody with institutional knowledge that knows what to do? That's a great question. The answer is no we're not because you're not going to let us do that and we're not going to let us do that. That's a very high in the sky kind of notion but it has to be written into the thing of what is the schedule together every six months, every 12 months what have you, rain or shine do tabletop exercises do broader live exercises or what have you. And one cool thing that we've been learning is we're getting to know this language and this plan and you know what it is all about is that it's like really the in an emergency you need the captain and the deputy right and they don't need to be specific humans they don't even need to be specific positions it's actually more about the personality manager under stress also choreographer and so you can sort of write that into this emergency operations like plan and then you know center and that those people could be even changing depending on you know turn over and other things but to Mark's point is you have to have a practice schedule you have to keep to it because again this isn't just for floods this could be for anything. So that's one very mechanical I think answer to your question as far as momentum I spent a lot of time thinking about that bigger picture question how do we really get consensus and rally our community together around making big possible changes here that are really going to make us more resilient more you know flood ready for the next time you know probably even more in the watershed adaptive downtown groups big projects maybe that we've not been able to move to completion yet they've been in every plan for the last 35 years why and that's a big part of this commission is understanding where did it get stuck and can we unstick it and I believe every point about keeping momentum and energy is the only way we're going to really make major change that could really truly make us more resilient and public education is a big part of that I think we we're seeing is a lot of these projects are related to flood mitigation and no one's connected those dots it's like we've been able to move X forward if we come together and say you know what that saves this many feet of flood you know storage next time around which means this many millions of dollars and sort of like savings and heartbreak and really tell that story and connect these dots we have a moment now that I think we have to take advantage of to make systemic changes that will last you know on their own so anyway that's just a more philosophical I think response to you because the public education piece of this I think is going to be critical and you'll see that in the next year as this all rolls out just a two minute heads up I'm going to ring the bells in a couple of minutes so man okay I just want to ask if you've looked into the incident command system at all because the structure you were just describing with people stepping into those rules is that that is like that is the incident command system absolutely and actually I happen to personally have had some experience post Irene in government and the V trans incident command centers was sort of like what made that response happen and I just talked to Scott Rogers who actually was national life now who is just like doesn't live my failure but said put me in coach I'm ready to advise you all anyway you want I want us to succeed and he was in charge of those incident command center so just to just to show you a little bit of like the behind under the hood what we're doing in the commission who we're talking to and it's amazing who's coming out to say I want to help however I can and it's that sort of expertise that's just been invaluable thank you I have a question over here comment if not Adrian go respond to this gentleman I think this is like like should be actually at the forefront so to answer that you should be able to answer that first and thinking about where this lives and how do you put it into policy so that it's held accountable over the long term so I mean is it a part of the city structure like this plan like where did like this should be part of your planning right now because this needs to have a home yes so who is going to own it I think it should be a big key I think it should be part of a policy that is held accountable that is required to have those two annual you know whatever but I don't know if it lives in the commission I don't know where it lives but I think you the part of this process is that should really be like on the top rather than like going to do all this stuff like where is it going to live and who is going to own this because it could just die I've seen programs like this die and it's terrible yeah it's such a good way I just wanted to speak to that for a second the commission isn't met as you've heard Ben sort of say it's not meant to be necessarily a permanent structure but we're more like a catalyst or an incubator and so the example of this plan there is my this one it's like this is a little bit less tricky because it's super concrete there is literally a plan that will be a product and then we will have an exercise and this one is more straightforward it really needs to be embedded in the mechanics of city government and that's where it's supposed to live that's where it's supposed to live by like all through you know works to management and that's why the first conversation we had was with the city and I just want to say again like it was an incredible conversation because they said thank you yes we know we need this and we could we really appreciate the capacity we've so much to do we would love to spend all of our energy on this and we just simply cannot right so I think they really as partners bless you it's sort of added at a capacity but we got that by an early so that they because we said let's just no assumptions here we're not going to go right help you right this big plan you know you know consultants in if it's not going to become embedded and you know let's just make sure not mincing words from day one and really we're all on the same page about that but it's a very good high level point I believe every project this commission touches that you'll hear all these different groups they're gonna have different answers about where they live what's long term you rang the bell okay thank you so much everyone this is just the beginning thanks keep it coming