 Joe, you ready? Okay. Let's go. All right, we'll call the meeting to order. And the first item on tonight's agenda is public comment. Joe, I'm looking at you, nothing? Okay. I've been allowed to do it, so I don't even have anything to do there. Okay. Inadvertently left off the agenda was city update. So we're going to do that even though it's not on the agenda tonight. So, Eric? Yes, I just wanted to do a brief update on the, I mentioned at the last meeting there's a joint meeting with city council planning commission and the housing commission at the council's August 6th meeting. Really, the main purpose of that meeting is for the housing commission to discuss their recommendations on inclusionary housing and replacement ordinances with council. There's not necessarily a direct role for the planning commission other than to be there to hear that discussion. So you are encouraged to attend if you're able so you can hear firsthand what the discussion is going to be about because ultimately we will be tasked with developing those regulations going forward. So that's, I just wanted to remind you all of that for that August 6th meeting of council. Can you, I'm going to try to be there but I have something at 7.15 or 7.30 that night. Okay. So maybe I can just drop a step or Jesse and email asking if they could be getting the agenda. Sure. I know that's also going to be a public hearing for the pool, so yeah. So that might be important. Right. So let them know that. I will be there, so I'll be getting the information firsthand myself. I will, I plan to be there as well as the liaison for the housing commission. Okay. For us, I will try to take some notes and report back if there's anyone else cannot make it. You'll be sad if it happens to be first though, right? It would be great if it were first. So that was all I have for that, I think. I'm able to come as well. And I can't, is it going to be at Orion Community Center? I'm sure. I think it's going to be here, yeah. It is. I think so. I think I asked about council meetings start at 6 o'clock. That's correct. Okay. Next item, approve meeting minutes of July 12th. I have a motion in a second. I'll make the motion to approve the minutes for July 12th. I guess I'll second it. Okay. Any discussion? Bring none. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Next item is follow up discussion. Economic Vitality Master Plan chapter including edits incorporated from discussion of 7-12-18 meeting. All right. So I do have like some talking points that I'm going to go through. So if it's helpful for you folks to have that. Feel free. But don't feel like you have to look along. It's just if you, if it's helpful to have that, then you go. All right. So economic vitality sort of first thing up. Last time we talked about the vision statement and specifically for this vision statement, we're spending a little time on it because the city council did have a question about whether small town feel was still right. So I put in here the brand story. Just so you've got it in close proximity to be able to sort of figure out if that helps you with this or not. Then you've got the original vision statement there and then two options. My recommendation is option two. I think it just helps succinctly get to the point. It's our city, not a city, not a small city, not a large city. And it doesn't have the sort of subjectiveness of small town feel. So that's my recommendation. The second option is there too, but there, that definitely is starting to get a bit away from what the whole sort of public input and getting to these vision statements to begin with. So it might be going a little sort of too far, but. One of the things that Regina and I talked about in context of the master plan development is the potential of not even necessarily including these vision statements and tying them so directly to the strategic vision, at least in each section. So instead potentially putting the strategic vision statement with that additional information in the introduction. So we can also include the brand story. We can include the strategic vision and talk about the context of when and how the strategic vision was developed. Instead of trying to associate each section with that vision statement and maybe kind of disassociating it a little bit from the content, the actual text of the document and more have it in the introduction of here's where we're coming from with this plan. That's why we have the sections we do based on this community process to develop the strategic vision instead of, again, waiting until each section to include that. So it's not, maybe doesn't set up the section quite as much of saying, well, here's what the vision is. So that's what I should expect in this section. I like that idea. Yeah. So that's something we can do. So we don't lose sight of the actual work that was done through the community process. We can also bring in, as Regina mentioned, the brand story with some of the branding and all of that in the introduction and kind of put it in context of what and how it was developed. Perfect. Great. So with that, do we want to sort of think about this now or do we want to just sort of put it off until it gets in that other form? Introduction chapter. I'd just assume for it to get into that form. I agree with that. I mean, I'll state my opinion, which is I agree with Regina's recommendation. Version two fits the best. And I think it's a good compromise from our conversation during our last meeting. But I'm fine with tabling the final thing until later on in the process, especially because we are missing several numbers tonight. Yeah. I'm sorry. Maybe I misunderstood you because did you, were you talking about going through this and waiting for this until it's incorporated? Just those options for the vision statement. Like we can talk about those options if they feel right tonight or we'll see them again when they get incorporated into the introduction chapter and we can discuss it at that time. Okay. I thought you were talking about the whole chapter thing. And you were like, yeah, another time. So then I agree with it. I agree that we should have discussed this when we get to this part. Yeah. I agree with Terry. But I also, you know, as Palace said, I like option two. So last time you did not have an introduction in this chapter. So generally, does that work for folks? That's from 1700 to the present in two paragraphs. So the only, it's not even worth mentioning, but the third paragraph in 2004, that's when we got the TIF, I think that's when we got the TIF approved and the financing started. Okay. The project actually started earlier than that. Right. Like the whole thing started earlier. The whole planning, yeah, started 99, 2000. I don't think it's a big deal if you keep 2004 because that's when the financing, that's when we got the TIF approved. Okay. There will be like more of a visual historic timeline in the introduction that gives a little bit more of kind of what went on, you know, when the mills went down and what happened in the 70s and 80s and then how you sort of got into this. So there'll be a little bit more first chapter. Yeah. Okay. I did hear from downtown when you see there, okay, with us using that photo, but they don't know who took it, but they said, go ahead and use it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a note for that. So is it, are we talking about this photo? That photo we have permission because somebody in my office took it, but the next page, page 13. That one right there? Yeah. Yeah. We don't need to decide if we want to use it or if we want to use it right there at the moment, but just so you know, since I had it highlighted, we do have permission. Okay. Did you look at, there was a photo someplace of it's superimposed of the old and the new. Yeah. I think, I don't know if Dan Higgins did that or who did that. I believe that's correct. Yeah. I believe that is who did that. Yeah. That's kind of an in-picture. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe that's for the intro. Yeah, I think that's where I put a placeholder for it. Yeah. But yeah, that picture is super cool. So we'll definitely make use of that. All right. So moving on to economic insights page. So there's two bullets in here to talk about. Sorry, I'm just going to get to it. At the last meeting, Abby asked for a little bit more detail on this, the need for square feet of office space. You're on page 15. Yes. Okay. Thank you. I'm like, thinking this more difficult for myself because I'm in the Word document instead of the PDF. So she wanted to know, that's interesting, but it doesn't mean a whole lot without sort of some context of where we are today. What is our need? How much space do we have? So I looked into Allen Brooks and Minor there. They do lots of research on real estate in the region. And they come out with a report every six months. So those numbers based on the square footage and the surrounding areas is what we've got now. But they also talked about generally, we've been a bit oversupplied on office space for a number of years. So in reading that, I was a little bit like, I'm not quite sure how much, how real this need will be in the future. And I see you shaking your head. Where did that 380,000 square feet of office space come from exactly? The economic development plan. But where do you know what their source was in determining that area? Our economic development plan? Your economic development plan. A lot of their data, they used some forecasting from Esri Insights, which is, Esri is the company that does ArcGIS. It's a lot of like sort of data, mapping data stuff. So I don't necessarily want to say that's inaccurate, but Allen Brooks and Minor, they're doing like real time counts and sort of keeping on top of what's going on here in this region pretty accurately. So I'm guessing that they, that would be a pretty big hole in our economic development report if that, because they're basically giving us a recommendation for how they see potential in our area. So I would have hoped that they had looked into it in some depth. But I'd also be curious, the Allen Brooks and Minor report, that is a regional report rather than a local analysis. No, it's a Chippin County report. But I guess I'd be curious too in terms of trends of office supply moving into more urban environments versus suburban trends, because that might be another thing that they may have been factoring in. Well, I think they're probably factoring in that the economic, whoever did that, that projection. It's just like doing population estimates and housing estimates. They expect that population is going to go like this, so to meet that, you need this kind of office space. And right now we do have a glut of office space. Will that change? Who knows, it's going to be a while. Personally, I think it would be just as telling in this report to say there are whatever it is, three million square feet of office space in Chippin County, here's how it breaks out, or here's what it's going to share, right? Because we're not going to, because we're all built out, we're not going to see, if we do need 380,000 square feet of office space in Chippin County, it ain't happening in Winooski. I mean, there is potential for some office-based development in Winooski. Yeah, but it's not going to be huge. True. But I suppose we need to, like, if we put the statement in about, that was originally written about new office space was needed, then we are trying to attract people to build office space. If we don't say that, then that's not there. And I guess it comes down to what our goals are. But I mean, I would make the argument that, I mean, we certainly don't want high vacancy in the area, and we don't want to be trying to attract something. I mean, we're trying to create over-supply, but on the other hand, I think we would like to see more vibrant businesses moving into our city. Yeah. Maybe it can be framed without throwing in the 380,000, that, as the area continues to grow in office spaces needed, we strive to maintain or increase our share. And here's what our share is now. Something like that. And that way, it leaves the door open, I think, for future growth, but also tells. Yeah. And I think this, it's interesting because this, we should keep this in the back of our mind as we get down into the goals section because I think the concept of this plan is to stay a little bit like, we want, we want more local businesses, and that can be industry, that can be office space, that can be retail, that can be, you know, more restaurants. So we may not necessarily need to get down to this kind of like office versus industrial versus something else, kind of new business. And still be, keep that concept forefront. We are here, we're a great place to be, kind of, place. Right. Although some specificity at times could help us achieve greater goals. I was just thinking about, we've talked about becoming a tech hub before, for example. In order to be a tech hub, you got to have office space to attract tech companies and even stating somewhere, we want to be this tech hub, we want to create more office space for tech companies to be able to benefit from our, you know, urban environment, whatever. That can be a positive thing for us to achieve that goal. Right. I think we're like, as Regina just mentioned, in the goals, not to jump ahead, but goal five kind of gets to that notion of targeting economic development resources towards high-priority industries that demonstrate regional and local employment opportunities. So in just kind of keeping it at that higher level, so we may I mean, this is good data and I think it's important to have data points that talk about specifics, but because we're only talking about the office breakout here, it may it's kind of one piece of the picture. Sure. I think I agree. I mean, this might not be a place to go into that for sure. Although once we get to this goal area, I do think we have to think about well-level specificity we want and I think if we really do want to be a tech hub to be bold enough to say we want to be a tech hub, maybe an important messaging piece that we want to convey in this plan. If that is what we want. So potentially as an option, instead of listing the specific numbers for office, maybe we want to look at the various sectors that are important. So like talking about, you know, tech is going to be important, you know, retail is important, industry is important, whatever the case might be that those are the types of uses that we're looking for to help diversify our economic impact on the region. How recent are this data? In the red. Yes. That is just from, where are we now? July, from the June 2018 report. Oh, that's new. Yeah. It comes out in December and June of every year. So as we're talking about it, I mean this, this section retail office industry I mean it really is heaviest into office. I think it needs to be more generalized, more broad. Yeah. Yeah, we can do that. And this is, you know, this section is going to end up being much more, you know, much less text and just actual data points and infographics. So we can do that. Yeah. Like this whole section we can just be, do a little bit more of like these are the industries that exist in Winooski right now. Percentage wise and just give a little bit more of a insight from it, from that perspective more broadly. I think that makes sense. And then talk about future aspirations and goals Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then the bullet above this bullet again more specifically we're going to, we're going to change a lot of this and you won't see this text. Sorry. On page 14 the one that starts with market capture. Is that the bullet you're referring to? Yes. Or the one that starts with market capture, regardless of what page you're showing. Yes. And there is a sentence N that talks about competition with Burlington. So for the handouts that you have it'll be on page 14 the very last sentence starting on page 14 continuing on to page 15. Thank you. So we have deleted that sentence but just keep in mind we're going to sort of reframe this whole part. You're talking about the sentence that started additionally in Tokyo and it can be that sentence. Yeah. I would like, I think like the overall feel I get reading this section is like and I think that sentence contributed to this but it's more like well these could be opportunities but here's why we might not have an edge in them and it's more of like a, it doesn't really lay a very clear strong path or vision so I don't know exactly how to convey that but I feel like we have to identify and I don't remember exactly how it came across in the original economic development plan but like convey where is that we see an opportunity to stand out and where we think you know we I like to have a more positive framing you know we have our, we talked about the vibrant restaurant scene in the tech space and maybe distinguishing ourselves in the arts or entertainment space. I'd like to bring some of that content into this section so that we can lay out a more optimistic The comment that I received was that that last sentence is just very negative that like hey don't even bother trying to mess around with those Berlin Tony. Especially when there's an alternative. Exactly. To me and this goes back to when we started down there we really geared towards identifying and going for retail and commercial services that served our population as opposed to trying to you know and I'll say compete with University Mall but get retailers in here that can serve our population base and that would include things that we've talked about hardware store, grocery store you know etc. And I also just want to point out just to be clear that's not, that sentence isn't something that Regina came up with that was from the economic development report I just want to just to make sure Regina doesn't get blamed for anything. I don't I mean should sort of an assessment of our current restaurant scene and reputation for being a foodie destination be covered in this economic vitality section and all. I mean that seems pretty critical to our downtown businesses and it's a big subject of conversation we've had in the past I know Mike's brought up you know that's been great for Wyniewski and that's largely how we are seen by other communities as a place to go out to eat Mike's brought up the fact that that can be something that can be great for a while but doesn't necessarily stick around forever if you don't have something more to attract people to downtown and so like in thinking about economic development there's one like you know writing about what that is and how to encourage it but two what are the other opportunities to make sure that that lasts like be it bringing in entertainment or other types of businesses into the downtown so that you know has some staying power and I feel like considering how important that aspect of our economy is to our reputation it should be mentioned probably should have brought this up last week but didn't fully occur to me until reading it again that's fine and you'll have more time too so okay awesome that's really great feedback so we'll definitely get that worked out and so on the infographic pieces it's helpful to have these kind of conversations before I sort of hand it off to the person who's going to do that so this helps to really like tighten it up and figure out what we really want to relay in there and so that's awesome thank you alright so then down to the goals and objectives to explain what's different from last time so if you recall at the last time you saw this we had pretty much everything that the economic development plan had in it and it had three tiers of things it had goals it had objectives and it had actions so what I tried to do was just to bring this all to one kind of level of statement and basically started with the goals that were in the economic development plan and then tried to bring in some of the objectives up into that goal statement so the red text that you see here is what's kind of pulled into those goal statements then the other idea is to so that this isn't just kind of like a list of statements that are kind of sort of up here but it's kind of pie in the sky without any real context that people would you know it would it's without discrete actions you're kind of like the audience is missing what you kind of mean by any of these so the thought is to sort of bring in make this much more visual and bring in like whether it's a map or a chart or a photo of what is an example of an action underneath each of these so that's the concept and at the beginning of each of these sections just being very clear that there are other out there are other plans that exist out there for when you ski where a lot more depth happens right at the start so I'd love your thoughts on the statements themselves and the visual options what do you got other thoughts so on one we talked about if I remember correctly at the last meeting staying away from specific things in our action items so I'm wondering instead of saying ski small business loan program which is a specific thing maybe say something about you know available financing opportunities or resources yeah something so because if that program should change or drop yeah but I think it's important that yeah this isn't necessarily a direct response to that but I guess you know when we started this process like for those of us who were here six months ago a year ago but in our earlier conversations you know there were certain things that some members the commission were pretty excited about and we felt like that was going to be a core part of this document like we talked about the arts district or being a tech hub or we had a number of other ideas and I guess I think like looking at the level of specificity that we've gotten here we're kind of opening the possibility of a future conversation but we're not really like sticking a stake in the sand and saying like we want an arts district and there are reasons not to put a stake in the ground and like declare that but I think we should really think about what our high priorities are things we really want to be made clear to send a public message like this is something we want to happen and then invite feedback on that topic when this goes out to the public and like yes we do want an arts district because I feel like the way that this is phrased we're not going to get feedback on that topic because it's more just like a broad yeah and obviously we can't go into depth on everything but I just think that we should really think about where like what our like big priorities are things that we do want to invite comment on and be willing to sort of state some of them really directly yeah don't disagree I'm just wondering you brought up arts district would that be that's one of these things that I think could be in a couple of different areas so I'm wondering if it would be appropriate to hear or in the community services section or both I mean if it's it was I agree with what you're saying Pals it sounded like it was something that was important when we started this process and Heather was working on that I think so I think it should be in both places so one comment I would make and I don't disagree with anything you've said a lot of that detail where these particular items that are very important to the planning commission we can build into the implementation program and be able to then point back and say okay that goal too in the economic vitality section we're going to pursue an arts district when you're talking about the implementation program you're talking about something that doesn't actually exist within the staff it will, it will actually it's going to be a part of the plan there will be an implementation program that is part of the plan that talks about how we achieve these goals and objectives so that may be a way to get to those really specific items that are still there's been discussion that there's been interest in and engagement in and that way we can use the implementation program as a way to solicit the input from the community as well I guess this brings me back to some of our earlier conversations about what is a municipal plan and what's its function and it has a lot of functions and we talked about that and different communities have kind of treated the document differently for some it's very much of an internal document it's publicly available but it's used to kind of inform conversations and have to decide how the city employees go about their day to day work and other and sometimes it is a regulatory requirement but other people have really used it to influence the public's perception of their city and it's written in a way that's meant to be really accessible and create branding both for residents as well as tourists who are interested in the community or potential developers or businesses that might want to be coming to the city so I think like if we are trying to be as accessible as possible like I would I don't want it to be a footnote in an implementation plan I want it to be like stated really clearly in the list of big goals but you know we might be changing or evolving the way we see the plan but I guess that's where I thought we kind of worked earlier on So I wonder if there's a way to and where it would go is right up front either in the goals and objectives or some place lay out the overall goal is you know we want to be a welcoming community you know all that stuff and again for economic development maybe it's we want to enhance the economic opportunities through a diversified community that includes businesses arts, districts you know walkable you know and that may be a bunch of different chapters but maybe just a broad statement that identifies some of these things that we've talked about in the past you know and then we can get into the goals a little bit more specific right I like that although I guess we still at the end of the day need to be able to deliver feedback to them writing it about what those specific things are she doesn't know well no but I think we talked about so the things we've talked about is you know attracting high tech companies arts district walkable community again I'm going to go back to you know commercial services that serve our population maintaining our restaurant profile in the region being a foodie destination so I think we've talked about capitalizing on the diversity of our population in terms of our businesses in terms of food offerings and small local businesses that offer something unique from other surrounding communities that's a competitive edge that we have and I don't know how exactly how to put it but being a place where people are wanting to stop and spend time as opposed to a drive through community better signage for parking yeah and I see and I'll let Regina chime in on this too but I kind of see everything you just talked about as part of the implementation to be able to say these are the specific things we are planning to do with this plan because they're supported by these various goals and really get into the detail of you know we want to create an arts district or we want to create better wayfinding throughout the community so that people can stop and stay where does the implementation plan structurally go is it at the end of each chapter is it one section of the implementation plan at the end of the plan where is this if it was up to me and the way I've done it in other plans is it's the first thing it's the introduction and then here's your high priority implementation but you know again we can there's no there's no order that this has to go in specifically yeah I'd say there's no order but we do have to do it right like we have to come up with what that is so it's either we're coming up with those things either when we do each chapter ideally because we've been thinking about it or we kind of keep things almost in like a as we go through each chapter maybe we do one of these little brainstorming things at the beginning and then kind of have it in a parking lot or something and then we kind of build it as we go and then wherever it lands in the long run it lands in the long run if that makes sense so it's I'll go back to the idea throughout a kind of a general statement after the introduction part of this about these are our overriding goals and then let's get into this does that not make sense to you or does it I mean it's I think it sort of does I mean I think big sort of overarching goals to me are a lot less specific than saying we want an arts district like in my mind that's an action and it's like I probably am just like conditioned to not be able to break from that or something but it's just a matter of specificity we can say it however we want to say it but the more we just keep sort of adding like higher level goals at the top I don't know if that gets us to something more like on the ground like what are we going to do where are we going to go so do you think that you can implement or get into this chapter of the stuff that we've talked about so that it is stated that you know there is and I get a little bit confused I guess about the function of the missing plan is it to say is it an arts district or is it more we encourage you know expansion of the arts or something like that I think that's our decision what level of specificity we go into but again we want to be careful that to me the municipal plan is is a you know 10,000 foot look at things so how specific do we want to get you know I mean we don't want to say we want to do an arts district and we now tie someone's hands to that because it may or may not happen we want it to happen but yeah I mean the really tricky thing about these plans are that there are a ton of things that the municipality has to do and the sort of it's difficult to kind of at the end of the day in an implementation component of a plan help the city council understand the amount of within your resources that you have how much you want to put into keeping the train going without derailing and how much to really try to go do something new great and awesome and I think it's important to have the eye on the new great awesome so that the city doesn't and end up with big buildings in the middle of town or something but it will be one thing to be able to say in this plan these are these really great things that we want that might just be a list that sits there and goes nowhere if there isn't an effort made to figure out what does that mean in terms of resources how much is the city really going to give to that it might be hard in a comprehensive plan to get to some of that but we can kind of I mean we can sort of just keep this stuff I think in a parking lot because once we get through this is the very first chapter and we want a tech hub we want an arts district we want to make sure we can get more stuff downtown to keep it going and thriving when we get in the other chapters we're going to want to make sure that water and sewer lines are not breaking in the freezing cold we're going to want to make sure that the river doesn't erode away or we encroach on it we're going to want to make sure that we deal with the Elmwood ash or whatever the heck that thing is you know it's like there will end up being a whole lot but I think it makes sense to sort of have these things identified and we can as we sort of work through each chapter maybe we kind of just keep this list rolling and then we kind of figure out how we do that how we marry the goals that we're kind of comfortable with in each chapter with what we're actually going to do so then I propose that as we go through this we are keeping a separate list called things we definitely want to make sure do not get left out of this plan yet TV TV TVL alright I'm calling it that things we definitely want to make sure don't get left out of this out of this plan okay yeah so I think we can we should you know maybe we kind of give every time we're sort of going into a chapter we give a little space and time to this list and add stuff and then it'll be wrestling that list will be difficult at the end but I say we try alright so we've got we're 40 minutes away from eight o'clock so we want to try to put a wrap on this infrastructure thing I don't want to kill the discussion but are there key points that you wanted our feedback on from the remaining section of this economic vitality just overall it would really help to know if the statements are kind of feel right going in the right direction were there any that anybody else read that they thought that doesn't sound quite right I mean I don't I feel like I could agree with all the statements or I feel like they all feel fine just in terms of that level of specificity they are so high level that just seeing them out of context with the rest of the plan I do sort of feel a need to get to like one more level of specificity but I think that might happen on its own once we've developed more sections because they will all function together so I guess I'd say like this is fine for now in my perspective but I'd like to see how it all comes together as we continue to work yeah that's a really good point too I think it's a bit of a challenge to try to figure out if this is the right level of detail without being the first chapter so we may get into more detail in other ones and then need to revisit this to have it be compatible or we may be at a higher level in other sections and then realize that this is out of whack with that as well so that's a really good point it is a little difficult and economic development or economic vitality it's a challenging section to start with as well so some of these questions and some of this may just work itself out as we get further into the development of the plan but it's a good point none the less that we don't want to lose sight of okay so I didn't have any other specific questions on that chapter okay let's move on always interesting municipal infrastructure okay so this chapter so first and foremost we need municipal staff to really take a look at this so I think that's happening we don't have those comments yet but we'll have those comments and get them incorporated but so for the most part the introduction gives sort of a little snippet of each of the things that are kind of talked about in this chapter it includes transportation parking wastewater water storm water energy communication services and we may also end up doing a little bit of hazard mitigation in here because a lot of that is sort of storm water related and kind of just ties in a little bit for the insights section specifically there is all kinds of data we can include here what I've put in there so far are just a few transportation data points essentially level road traffic just because you do get a lot of people in here in Winooski but that might not necessarily need to be something that we highlight mode that you use to commute to work so that will really start to get at some of the bike pad use in the city transit how much the bus is used I think is a useful and interesting thing to keep up front then wastewater sort of the two pieces that we're pointing out there so a wastewater system for the most part functions fine until you hit capacity so a good thing to know just generally is how much capacity is your wastewater system at the other thing that kicks in with the issue with too much phosphorus in Lake Champlain is that there are specific phosphorus targets that come out of the wastewater treatment plants so that's another kind of measure that is something to just be aware of and it's interesting because when you're sort of hitting that target you might get kicked into doing some improvements in the plant anyway I have a comment about the transfer the number of vehicles per day on different streets I feel that number one I think it's really important if we're going to we're going to do a break out of different streets just because it's one of our gateway districts so I think it needs to be emphasized and because we want to encourage development along Malibu showing what the traffic looks like there I think is important secondly I recently came across a document and I don't remember from which report it's on but it might be the document that you were using to get these numbers some report the city did that had a map of the city with color coded streets showing traffic numbers so it was a little bit more comprehensive because it had like a key and every major street was color coded and maybe we could just include that graphic in here and that would take care of that issue yeah that's definitely in the transportation maybe I was reading the transportation master plan but that's I think might be you know solve the problem using what do we consider a main road or connectors just say like here's the map yeah so that's my comment on that section although I do I did want to discuss the parking at the beginning at some point but that might be a longer conversation so we can come back to it under the introduction you mean yeah or in general how we're going to talk about parking in this plan I am fine going into that yeah because it's mentioned a few times so whichever place we want to take it works so having not been around for as long as some people here I don't know all of the the issues surrounding parking what I do know is that in terms of and I see the approach taken in this introduction is providing the facts about the usage of our garage which is useful but I do know that we have a bad reputation regionally as being that's the place that is very difficult to park and a lot of people say they avoid coming to downhousings ski because they don't want to be able to park think that if we're going to have a section on parking regardless of whether we think that their concerns are overblown or we think they're legitimate or not I do think we have to address that perception head on and provide a clear response to it in this plan especially if this is a public facing document rather than like the way I read it now it's kind of it is saying maybe this is is the response I think we need to do a little bit more to kind of explain why people have those concerns and come back with something a little bit more detailed I hear what you're saying I'm not maybe I need to rephrase it because I don't know as we need to answer those things but I think we need to put out there what's available and the way the system is set up and maybe aspirations there's not enough parking in this poor business downtown which is by the way a nice problem because if we had too much parking we'd have a downtown but anyway it's clear that we need more parking downtown or a different system and so I think to address those concerns through that kind of thing as opposed to I don't think we want to get into you know there's a perception that you can't park at Winooski I think it's more we want to just lay out the facts here's so maybe we don't need to explicitly say it but I think that like some of the concerns that are there may influence the way we approach a section like so like if we look at like why do people say that you know in my experience a couple things one is a surprisingly large percentage of people are not aware that there is a precaution when you ski that's like a sizable percentage so then we need to say like like why is that like is there something we can say so that we can address that issue in here and then like the second thing at least in my demographic of people with small children I find that another issue is finding spaces that are located close to the place that they're going so that they they have a car seat or a stroller it's easier to access and I don't know if we have any solution to that but I mean we might want to put something in in terms of not just thinking about parking in terms of as we continue to develop things in terms of number of spaces in the downtown but making sure that we factor in accessibility of parking spaces to specific businesses or something like that I just like to think and I'm sure everyone else has stories about the people they know and why they complain about parking when you ski but maybe this is an opportunity to brainstorm some of those issues yeah I agree there should be some language to reflect correctly and what you know we as the city we want to see parking or our goals there's also a lot of confusion among people in the community I have seen some people you know some restaurant owners they you know you come and eat in my restaurant and you can it's okay for you to park if you get a ticket just let me know they have that here really they do that and I don't know what to do but I'm going to face that problem but you know where did you see this in Wineski bistro down there I was doing that as well yeah so that seems pretty indicative of the fact that they're getting customer complaints or something that we I think we need to think about that but if you read this what it says here about parking it makes it look like there's plenty of parking so that's what I'm saying that if this is true but we're still in this situation the question is why is it that people don't know where the parking garage is or that the parking garage exists and if that's the case maybe we need to say something about increasing signage or that kind of thing for the parking garage or maybe it's that the parking garage is inadequate in its location to serve certain businesses I don't know but I mean it does seem to be a court issue in the city and also thinking outside of the downtown the other thing that you see on front porch form a lot that I might want to add something about maybe it's in the way finding section maybe this isn't the right place for it but there have been a lot of complaints about lack of clear signage about parking and people getting ticket and it is a problem in a lot of parts of the city where signs are falling down or there's trees that have grown right in front of the signs and people get ticketed and saying something about we've developed a bad reputation for ticketing people and I think in situations that are someone in big U.S. due to signage and other things so I think we should maybe use this as an opportunity to comment on that So have you seen any of the parking studies and stuff that have been done in the city, either Erica or Regina? Yeah I read them that's where this comes from I was going to say there have been for at least 10 years this has been an issue and it's been about how we're going to deal with it and there's been studies done and there's been this and that but the bottom line is I think you're right is we need more parking downtown we especially need more parking on the west side of Main Street the problem is where? Well I mean that is a problem that needs to be solved and we're not going to necessarily solve it in this plan but what we could do is by stating that we need parking on the west side for example if the city decided that that was something that they wanted to prioritize and they had an idea for it then perhaps they could endeavor to get grants or other things to support such an initiative like a public building a public garage or something like that down the road if we stated oh I think we need to state that it's a need for sure absolutely right and part of this too is that it really will be helpful to have staff read this because the studies say one thing but where what where the city council is today and what they're doing and where they're going with it I don't know yet so hopefully we get the proper reviews of this stuff that we need in order to help us understand where they're going right now and you know complete the whole picture about where we want to go to that I'll just say that I have passed this along the public works books so they are reviewing it to provide comments and feedback alright so any other probably hard to answer but any other kind of data points about the city's infrastructure that you'd want to see you know we can get a lot of the parking message sort of in this insights piece too like if we're really pretty clear about how much parking there is, how much it's actually utilized but the perception is still whatever like we can do it kind of quickly easily graphic based to try to get the point in here too maybe I'm not seeing it because I'm not reading carefully enough but is there something in here about sidewalks no I don't think so because I feel like that's something that really needs to be addressed there's a lot of streets that don't even have sidewalks on one side of the street and in a lot of areas some of the sidewalks are in pretty bad shape and so I know that that's come up at some of the transportation meetings that I was at yes I think all of us felt that that's a really important thing to put into this plan and it actually reminds me of another thing we've talked about that I don't think I read in here either which is a long term vision of moving electrical lines underground and I may add something about thinking when we thinking about adding green spaces when possible along pedestrian which could go into a different section but that is something that is obviously a major part of our main street redevelopment plan and I think would be worth mentioning is something that I'd like to think about in other areas as well what on that did we have a conversation about I'll use term parklets yeah so was that a front porch form because there's going to be a pop up coming soon I want to say in August I believe it's going to start in August yeah there's going to be if I remember correctly it's going to be up on Main Street just south of where the new building 348 I'm blanking on the restaurant Fodan yes thank you just south of that which side of the street I believe it's going to be on the same side of Fodan yeah the new Fodan yes the new one has anything moved into the place and moved out of there I don't think anything is going to probably get knocked down Regina on the energy thing can I assume you're going to have in the RPCs you've got here the analysis targets and maps but I think if I remember right we're pretty close to our target right I think you have met your low target yeah already yeah I think a lot of it is because of the dam a lot of it is because of the dam yeah a lot of it is in Lewinsky right you get it split in terms of your generation but the core or the turbines are in Lewinsky so I think we get a lot of credit for that anyway I was just thinking I should have when I reviewed this you compared this document side by side with our bullet point list that we had developed and I didn't but I think it would be useful in our meetings to like always just have a copy of that with us because I guess I'm realizing as we're talking about this I'm pretty sure that we may have had bullet points on some of these topics on that list that didn't get into this draft and I think it would be useful just to have that side by side so we could compare and make sure yeah so I tried to do that and it's mostly going to be in the goals and objectives where I brought that stuff in I might not have gotten all of it for sure so I'm not saying to not do that I mean a lot of those were based on conversations where you weren't more here so you may not have heard all the background of what but yeah so two things a lot of that mostly is I look at that stuff in the sort of goals and objectives section but the other thing too is at the last meeting we sort of landed on this place where the goals and objectives should be a little bit like high level and not specific and a lot of that stuff on your list is specific so we have to sort of ultimately at the end of the day figure out where we're going with the specificity well so then that might end up some of these items might end up on that other list that we created today but I think we should just keep talking about that and sort of figure out how it ultimately where it all ultimately lands okay so what might make the most sense for this section is to just go let's drop right down into the goals then where I do see sidewalks mentioned so there it is I guess I just didn't read far enough well except for it just says improved and maintained not added right and we had talked about the possibility of putting the specific goal we want every street in the city to have these sidewalks right on at least one side on at least one side yeah well it does say improved and maintained so I mean that could it's a general statement but anyway okay but that's a good point I mean I like it I like it as a goal statement for sure that's what a goal statement is supposed to say isn't it okay any other thoughts about these so again so this list essentially is coming from the public works commission plus added in some things that kind of came off of your list and just try to hit some things that seemed kind of like they sort of were missing a little bit what's included at the very bottom of this are the specific statements from the transportation plan and actions from the parking study just so you have them for reference but I think if we're going to kind of go with this strategy that we talked about at the last meeting this list of ten kind of hits hits the level that we're trying to get at at least for these statements anyway the transportation master plan goals 27 actions is something that's not going to be in this plan but referenced that's what the recommendation is that we don't include those unless there's a couple items we really do want to include correct those 27 actions are not from the transportation master plan are not included in here but there are they did a good job in that plan there's 27 actions on this but there's high level actions medium low so they really did a good job prioritizing what's in there so it's possible to fill in the high level ones if we wanted to get to that level of specificity but figure that out and then eight, nine and ten are not from the public works commission necessarily but just trying to hit on some other things that either came off your list or want to make sure it's worked in there and that number eight is about parking and so I don't necessarily know if what the parking plan says is where the city has been headed or if what the transportation master plan says is where the city is heading but we can figure that out get some input from city staff about where they're headed and then make that larger point that we talked about earlier I think also number nine could probably be sort of two separate things that first point about support utility improvements in conjunction with municipal infrastructure improvements so that's where you're going to see things like if it can happen there's money to underground utilities that's how that's going to happen if there's a way to put in sort of added green spaces that's how that kind of thing is going to happen we might want to separate the second part of that which is really more about telecommunications and really trying to support something like a tech hub by having the right amount of infrastructure in place for that to happen Eric had a great comment about at the forefront of what and I was like I don't know so I left it but we'll rework that for sure for undergrounding utilities it's definitely one of those things that's awesome of course that's where you want to go but it's also one of those things that might be like a tough tying your hands kind of thing depending on how we're saying it in the plan I mean the way we talked about it before is like if we said that something along the lines of when portions like when sidewalks are being redeveloped to when possible move electrical lines and utilities underground so that we can work towards having more underground like not like we're going to undertake a giant project to move them underground but like when there are opportunities or if someone's a developer's putting in a big building and they have to take a whole sidewalk anyway to then say let's move them underground so like that was kind of the context of that conversation I'm not saying I have the exact phrasing but yeah when the opportunity I think funding is important because yeah and I would just say it's when the city is just going to improve sidewalks or having to pull up sidewalks sidewalk is like it's like the outer heart of the skin the easiest like no problem we can handle that that does not necessarily mean there will be the ability to underground utility lines just for a sidewalk project it's like the sidewalk replacement is maybe 5% of the cost of that ever it's monumental putting utility lines on your ground even though you think it wouldn't be because you think the company would want to do that not so much handling poles is a lot easier wasn't I am I right I think underground utilities on main street was 4 million bucks I don't know the exact number but wouldn't be surprised I think that was the number just underground a lot of parts of the country where everything is underground to begin with yeah it's easy super easy once you start it's like that side of the city is all taken care of but like if you don't do it right from this right from the beginning it's rough right okay let me just check my list to make sure if I have any other specific questions okay so I don't have any other specific questions but so let's just take a few minutes is there anything on the where you want to go action parking lot list that we should include we got the sidewalks green spaces green spaces underground utilities underground utilities parking on the west side of main street or was that a separate issue just with parking related I mean but it's related to the lack of parking anything else I guess transportation is right at the beginning but just sort of emphasis on the bike routes because that was a big there was a lot of voices at the transportation meetings about that so I see it here but I'd just like to put in a plug for you know it could be a little bigger and I'm hearing you say emphasize more in the text because it's kind of not really even in here even more than just bikes like you know complete streets because that was definitely there was a lot of talk about that at the transportation meetings that I attended okay and then from a perspective of like is there a thing that you really want to see happen north, south, east, west connections I mean that's me personally street I'd love to see the path go through the castle van and connect bike commuters are not going to use it if it's I think I'm going to disagree with you if it's well done and it's maintained it has nothing to do with being well and well maintained it has to do with the ease of use and it has to do with not having to navigate around people with strollers, people on roller blades, people who are looking at their cell phones while they're out in nature that's the issue. So if you can come over the bridge, bring a left down Wheniski Fallsway, get onto a path that takes you up to Route 15 and connects with another path that takes you out to Essex you don't think they'd use that I honestly I don't think that a serious bike commuter is going to and I also think that if we're going to be forward thinking about the future of transportation in Chittenden County that bikes need to have a safe place on the roads to travel. I just do. I know it's going to slow you guys down in your cars but the reality of the situation is that it has to be safe for cyclists to be on the road because the safer it is for cyclists to be on the road the more people are going to get out of their cars and start biking around and be and use it just like we're talking about with Main Street a safe way for kids to get to school protected bike lanes so kids can get to school so and I'm just telling you from my experience biking into Burlington I do use Riverside Avenue I use the bike path but I can't tell you how many people how many clueless people are walking around looking at their cell phones pushing a stroller and I'm ringing my bell or people are running in the middle of the bike path and I'm ringing my bell and nobody hears me and I nearly hit them before they even noticed that I'm there and that's the kind of but that's the issue with having having sort of a wreck path and honestly if I'm not pulling a trailer when I'm coming down Riverside Avenue I would be in traffic and I would be doing almost 20 miles an hour where on the wreck path I have to do like 10 because people are not paying attention because it's a wreck path so no I think and hopefully Regina will agree with me on this that it needs to be on the road well regardless I think personally I think I'm going to call it a wreck path bike path path whether you want to call it along you know through Cassavent up to Route 15 as well as one along the river this way into Colchester yeah I think that regardless of whether I think I agree with that goal just in terms of pedestrian access to those places I do too but not for well I'm going to call it a wreck path and you know whatever it is that's fine but I do believe that it would be very nice if we had one that went along the river and the easements are actually in place for a lot of that kind of thing from Winooski to Colchester the difficulty is this little strip right here along West Canal Street because it's so narrow and excuse me it's so steep so but to me that's always been a goal to get around just I mean I think they can be two different things I mean there is without a doubt regionally identified a major challenge I wrote Route 15 for my computer my computer's no computer's a computer that's no problem the bankers who are on the computer are on the right no doubt so that I mean I think that that concept is on everybody's radar putting it in the plan I wouldn't think and then this seems like almost another concept like that would be awesome if that could happen for sure I'm so sorry I was just going to say not on that particular topic but just things for this list I mentioned it before just want to make sure and I don't know if it's the right section for it but again clear signage or parking throughout the city and something that we have not really discussed but I just wanted to briefly bring up again regarding parking is I know when we were in the public comments when we were talking about the economic development plan people talked about some people came in to discuss I remember a group of people talking about having difficulty as residents say going to the post office which is why we put in those 15 minute spots but a lot of people have trouble getting the spots when they're going in to go to the post office or whatever and one thing that I just like to think about maybe putting into this plan is saying something about making sure that residents have easy access to our downtown commercial center I don't know if I have a solution for that but like thoughts on like whether there are you know residents could get a pass apart for 15 minutes in any spot so they could run an errand or something like that would be something for the city council to figure out downtown over time but just making sure that we think about the residents use of different downtown spaces specifically I know for me that I just I don't go to the Lemusky post office because it's too much of a hassle we use it every day we want to keep a post office do you drive to it or do you walk to it sometimes we walk to it and sometimes we drive to it but even when you're driving to it there's limited parking spots there's spaces I'm not going to go to the machine to drop off a letter at the post office that would just take 20 seconds if there was a resident pass that said I'm going to use a spot for 10-15 minutes rather than have to park in only the one 15 minute spot then I'd be more inclined to use a post office instead I just drive to South Burlington where there's a parking lot it's a bunch easier but like I use a comment that a lot of people said like we don't go downtown to like run errands because like we can just drive somewhere else and like I think especially for Lemusky residents that we might want to think about and I'm not saying I'm not implementing but I'm just saying making sure that residents have access to downtown as part of this like infrastructure I don't know I have one thing I don't know if this has gone to the notice of the city it probably has the you know intersection between union street are you going to bring up my favorite topic the horrible flashing light not the flashing light that's another thing but you know the the works up there the car mechanics oh yeah yeah yeah they park their trucks you know their vehicles I know all about that tow trucks all around in people's parking in the street parking not to say the people's parking in the street parking the residents can't park and they're there for months and months and months they don't move them that's a big problem there that's part of making sure that there's adequate parking for residents I live in that neighborhood in our parking tonight so that's great it's on both sides it's on union street and on both sides I thought you were going to talk about spring street and hall street especially when you come to the end of spring street and you try to you try to see the cars coming from downtown and you've got that concrete wall it's like so that does remind me not to go on to my list of specific grievances but it does related to infrastructure like that making decisions that are appropriate for the kind of making like signage decisions or what's the word for street lights blinking on the turn flashing red light for example is not typical in a residential area those almost exclusively exist in industrial areas that light is like flashing 24-7 like this right in this intersection someone that lives in that neighborhood and I've talked to Jesse about this that lights up my entire bedroom like this every night and I did a lot of research on this and that's not a typical kind of feature in a residential area because it does have all sorts of environmental impacts on the way people live which has all sorts of trickle down effects for residents like not being able to get good sleep or you know and that can affect an entire community so in making decisions on what kind of kind of street lighting to use and other traffic control devices thinking about appropriate use for the type of neighborhood that one is in that's a tough one I'm not disagreeing with because there is a commercial aspect of that area and it's going to be more so when that area starts to get more sharp but it's a four-way stop so you would think maybe they could put stop signs stop signs eventually if we're going to have the traffic we hope on Alice Bay a real actual stoplight it used to be way before your time there was a light there and all that light did was flash yellow and it was there and that was as far as I understand it was changed to the flashing red because it was a traffic calming to get people to slow down because before that was like that people were zipping along you could come in from Colchester and be doing 45 until you get up here to the police station that was that's why that's like that and just in terms of I mean this is totally off topic but I understand I hear your pain about that because some new house went up across the street from us and there's a light that's on shining into my bedroom 24-7 that light is on and there's nothing I can do about it because it's on private property so I understand what you're saying but on the other hand that's the reason for that I talked to Jesse about it and I think everyone agrees the best solution if it were for the cost is you would put a light there an actual traffic light that they have like a motion sensitive one so if there was a vehicle coming down Union Street or in West Lane then it would change but otherwise it would keep Malice Bay pretty free but that's just a more expensive device and that's why it wasn't put in you know I've said to her considering our vision for Malice Bay well then as a corridor like maybe those kind of infrastructural improvements are worth considering investing in I think Terry was right on the reason it was put in it was a light that wasn't doing its job and the stop signs the problem is coming this way and you kind of go over the hill in the cars part there you can't see them so the light was there so that it would stop the traffic and it could be seen I'm not going to say there aren't good reasons for it but I am saying that I think all of those concerns should be taken into account. Take the lights out of the light that's facing Union Street put a stop sign there so it's blinking for about an hour but you come we digress now we're almost on five so yeah so I don't have any other specific questions so so we'll review at the next meeting just as a question you all are okay with Regina's note about not including the transportation master plan goals in this document the last couple of pages yeah I think we mentioned a few things from there I would like to see but okay okay review a schedule for upcoming meetings regarding plan chapters so our next meeting will be review of this correct yeah August 9th will be our next meeting we will do our second review on infrastructure based on comments from tonight and we will incorporate the comments from Public Works from staff as well for that meeting and then we will start the discussion on the safe, healthy and connected people okay so looking for a motion to adjourn so may I second all in favor all in favor okay we're adjourned thanks everyone