 So bear with me as I figure out what we're doing. All right, so does everyone see the agenda? We've got a few kind of varied things to look through tonight. And we can call the meeting to order and approve the agenda. We usually do a motion for this, right? Mike. Yeah, you can do that or you can without objection, assume the agenda is approved. Okay. Any objections so that we can. To the agenda or adjustments to the agenda. No. Thanks, Aaron. Okay, we'll consider the agenda approved. Comments from the vice chair. I do have some comments. I, Aaron isn't and Mike are aware and so is Kirby. But I accepted a new job. And it's back home in Anchorage, Alaska. So I am leaving town. Way too soon here. The beginning of the month. So I will be stepping off. Of the planning commission, obviously. Yeah, I don't have a whole lot else to say about it, but that is that. And I'll follow up with everybody. To say thanks and went on in writing later. I can't do that right now. Can I just say, Marcel, we're really miss you. I feel like you put in a lot of work in the planning commission and I really appreciate it. I just wanted to make sure I could say that before you left. Thank you. I appreciate that. It's been a really pleasure with being here with all of you. Thank you for it for your planning commission work, but also representing the city on the RPC. I'm so pleased Gabe will be. Well, at least gave you our alternate alternate member. So I suppose that's a discussion, you know, whether we want to have somebody else. Add on as the. Represent the commissioner. But I'll like this. We could, we could talk about that tonight. If we wanted to add it to the agenda, but let's see how far we get. Okay. Do we want to move to the economic development chapter? Yep. Do we want to pull that up? Or do we want to just. Because it's on the, it's on the Google drive. Yeah. It's on the Google drive. I've got it pulled up here. I'm happy to share if that would be helpful. But. Do others have it pulled up. Or what to share. Let me know if a share screen would be helpful. Might be helpful for our television viewers. Yeah, good point. Okay. All right. So. And Marcel, I'll just know it. It looks like Peter has his hand up here. Oh, sorry. I didn't see that Peter. Go ahead. I'm obviously a member of the public. Not on the commission. I did ask Mike earlier today if he could give me access to this. And so I have had a chance to read it. And I do have some comments. And suggestions. And questions. So I hope it's okay. If I. Talk when those things come up. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Yeah. And please, I didn't have a particular way. I wanted to walk through this. I was, you know, Kirby has gone through as you can, as everyone can see in here and made several comments and adjustments. I went through it a little bit earlier today and just tweaked. One or two things that read sort of funny to me. But I figured we'd kind of go by. Comments. To direct our review of this rather than walk through it kind of line by line. So maybe we can start in the introductory piece. I think it'll, it'll be clear that. He's kind of rewritten the, you know, in his, he's done edits in the body of it. But the reason you see big chunks. You know, crossed out is because he just rewrote. The paragraphs to be cleaner so that. His edits were taken into account. Are you asking for comments on the. Yeah, go for it. Yeah. Okay. I have a few. The, the, the description of the, on population of Montpelier. Seems good. But there's one thing that seems to me to be missing. Unless I'm. Unless I'm wrong. Seniors aren't mentioned. Mike, don't seniors constitute a fairly large percentage of the population. Meaning what from. Economic. That they're not that many in the workforce or that. Well, a number of things. Many seniors are not in the workforce. A good number of things. I mean, many seniors are not in the workforce. A good number of seniors live on fixed incomes. Seniors have particular challenges. Related to transportation and shopping. And walking the streets and so forth. I mean. The document is very good about referencing the way in which economic development overlaps with housing and transportation. But some of the statements that are made just. I found myself saying, yeah, but what about us? I'm a, I'm 79 something. What about us? I mean. Am I wrong? I mean, what, what percentage of Montpelier's population. Are over the age of, let's just say 60. I don't have the number off the top of my head is something I'd have to, I'd have to look up. All right. Well, I would just suggest that, that, that some thought be given. I mean. Disabled people are mentioned. BIPOC people are not mentioned per se, although that might be a good point, even though there are minority and a small minority in Montpelier. But I think if we're talking about, we mentioned, for example, low income people, people who can't afford to live in Montpelier because they're. I can't workers who can't afford it. I just think that. To keep in mind that there's a fairly large group there. Anyway, that's one point. Second thing is, I think, I guess I'll just clarify that real quick. What, what the strategies and the implementation. I mean, I think that was looking at what was two basic groups. We broke economic development into. Into the workforce and into the business community. So that's, we kind of broke things into two places. So, I mean, as much as there are going to be people who are not in the workforce, you know, kids under 16. People who are retired there. They don't really fall into either business owners or members of the workforce. That's not to say they're not consumers. But most of our strategies, most of what we've been talking about in, in this chapter on economic development is, you know, we're not doing. Economic development to help seniors. Come out of retirement unless that's our strategy. If that is a strategy, then we, that that's something that probably warrants conversation. That would be, I guess a little bit of my thoughts for, for that. But that's, that's why the focus is on those. The groups that are being discussed is because of the way we've structured the implementation into those two categories. I understand that, but let me just ask this. When you give percentages. Those are percentages of the workforce or percentages of the population. I'd have to see specifically where it's where it's referenced. If it's. Well, I, we don't have to go through it right now, but you would just, when you go back and take a look and you're talking about percentages, if you're talking about percentages of the workforce, then I, then I think that's fine. But if you're talking about percentages of the population, then I think. You should. You know, the census, 2010 census there it is my failure has so many jobs. Blank of them were filled by residents. See, that's talking about residents. Yeah. And then what, and Mike, what, what does net, what does net commuters mean? This influx of commuters is an impact on our community service. Our population during the day swells to more than 14,600 net commuters. Well, it was, you notice when it was struck out, it says when the net commuters are counted. So unfortunately it's striking that kind of confuses the statement a little bit. There's a net commuters. So there's 6,800 people that come into the city every day. Those are the, the in the ends. And there's 1,000. Or where is it? There's, I don't know what the exact number is, but there's also a percentage of people who live in Montpelier, who do not work in Montpelier. So they leave. So during the day, we have added in a bunch of people and we've lost a bunch of people in Montpelier. When you net the commuters, the ins and the outs, then you end up with the city of Montpelier basically during the day as a population of about 14,600. Okay. Well, but yeah. So if that sentence probably needs to be fixed. It doesn't have to be fixed right now. But, but point is here's what you say. The population almost doubles during the day. Well, that's that again, is that the total population, including kids and seniors, or is that the population of. People who are in the work or, you know, workforce age people. Well, yeah, I think that's. That's, that's, that is the population, the population of Montpelier is about 8,000. So it just about doubles the population. Okay. So that would be an example of where. I think it's a little misleading because many seniors. Are homebound aren't, you know, aren't. In, in down to aren't downtown kids are in school. I just want to make sure that we're not mixing. Population statistics in a way that isn't really doesn't really capture the source of the problem. And I'll tell you what, I think does capture the source of the problem. I didn't see anywhere, which is traffic. Downtown traffic because of the way. Montpelier is, there's only two ways to get across town. If you want to go up route 12, for example, all those trucks that go right through downtown. To me, that's much more of an impact than doubling the population. When a lot of that population isn't down, isn't downtown. So, so I just think. I think it's somewhere in here should be mentioned. The traffic patterns. That impact downtown. Yeah. Well, we have a transportation plan that also addresses a number of those, but this, this chapter there was kind of meant to help address the, the services. The services question that comes up with the. The commuters, the commuters add a specific. Factor to our, our services. So, okay. But yes, we can. All right. And one, one other thing when you do the calculate, when you, when you mentioned that the, how many people work for the state and so forth. I didn't see NGOs anywhere. There are a ton of non-government organizations in Montpelier. That's a fairly large. I would think would be fairly large number of people working there. You meant you mentioned. The financial insurance and insurance, but I think the NGOs should be right in there with that. The finance and insurance sector, I would say finance insurance and NGOs. It's not a sector unto itself under the state. The state piece of the state statistics. So if your NGOs have attorneys and they're going to come under. One section. And if they're really depends what the NGO is doing, depends on where it's going to fall. It might fall under education. It might fall under professional and business services. But it's, it's not as significant. It's certainly not as significant a sector as the ones that are listed there. Those are the big ones. Finance and insurance. And that's the big ones. And that's the big ones. And that's the big ones. Retail education healthcare. According to the statistics. All right. I guess you were captive to the statistics that are available to us. Okay. They occupy an awful lot of buildings. All right. Thanks. Thanks. We made a couple of tweaks there just. On some of the sentences to make some clarifications, but. Yeah. And as far as. As far as I'm concerned, I don't know if you have any questions or comments on the introductory. Portion, which is the first. Two and a half pages here with all the edits. Oh, actually. After other people talk, there are some other ones that I, I didn't realize that you were going all the way through that. Oh, sorry. I was just sort of broadly, broadly speaking, you should feel free to. Jump in. Is the dog park and recreational tourism and the hotel. Is there any other questions or comments or comments? That was later. Okay. Good. I'll wait till then. I think. Oh no. Sorry. It is in this introductory paragraph. It's right in the middle. So yeah, growth in. Hospitality and tourism sectors could help. Count of the problems caused by online retail. I was in remote work. I'm talking about. Recreation. I don't know if that was mentioned. The hotel is also mentioned here. Which I guess I wanted to ask the group about because there's a section towards the end. That Kirby has highlighted to say that. I don't know if we want to talk about that hotel. So if so, we might just strike it from here as well. Well, what I was going to say is that. This kind of recreational. The style of the hotel is really a, our parks are attracted places to high cross country ski and mountain bike. Yeah, but that's really mostly for residents. People. Man, I'm sure there's not going to be a destination for those things. We're not stove. We're not the, you know, we're not mad. You know, a weight's field. I think this is. I think this is misplaced. are great trails and so forth for people who live here. I don't think they're going to attract people. So I wonder about this whole idea of recreational tourism as being attraction. Maybe the bike path, maybe. Once it's really cross Vermont, then I think maybe that would be the case. Yeah, I definitely think the bike path is one with the increased length and the extensions that are going off on this side. The only one I wasn't sure about was mountain biking. I do think cross-country skiing. There really isn't cross-country skiing in the immediate east Montpelier, aside from millstone trails. No, there's the new trails out in North Branch. Right, that's what I'm thinking. It's like North Ranch and Hubbard Park and the connectors there. I know the ones up on North Street are not quite as well. They're on private land, so they can be fluctuated a little bit. But in terms of like, you really would have to go pretty far if you're in the air. I mean, I think somebody from Stone might not be coming to Montpelier to cross-country ski, but I think the towns right around us may very well come to Montpelier to cross-country ski and then hike. And I think this reflects what's the identified goal of certainly the parks director. We've taken a lot of comment from him on, from Alec Ellsworth, on the goals of growing our recreational economy. That is one of the pieces that he wanted to see. It's in the strategic plan, the council's strategic plan, and it's why it's reflected here is that there is an interest that if we're going to have tourism as one of our focuses, that there was an interest in building out our complete streets and being able to use that, the complete streets, the bike paths, the parkland as an opportunity for to grow that sector of our economy. So it was there as a focus. That's why I think it's in there, it's because of Alec's push. Is the dog park disc golf course, are those and the boating and tubing, do those come directly from Alec as well? They seem oddly like very specific and I just wanted to make sure that we weren't just spitballing. Well, dog park seems a little weird. People aren't going to come to Montpelier in order to go to a dog park. I think the idea is if folks come to Montpelier, which I think we have to say that people do come to Montpelier. It is the state capital. I think folks come from, you know, that we can market it as a place where folks can come for the day and they can do, you know, the stay house. They can also go for a walk or bring their bike or if it's the winter, they can go for a cross country ski and then come and eat at a restaurant before they go home. So you can kind of make a day of it the same way you might in Stowe or another town with a big ski area like that, but just in a different way. But I think we have to recognize that Montpelier is indeed a destination just given the fact that it is the capital. And it's nice when there's sort of a variety of things that we can market to folks to be able to do here rather than only be in the downtown. I don't know what the percentages are, but I've done some different community engagement at the farmers market. And apparently our farmers market is like one of on some list of like the best things to go. And so people do come up here and stay in a hotel or an Airbnb. And I'm sure they do some of these other things as well as shop at the farmers market. Yeah, yeah, I think it's it's fair, you know, the point is well taken that we are not, you know, the scale of the recreation is not Stowe. It is not Killington. But nice to have the options and nice to kind of talk about it as something we would want to grow. Just one last thing, a pretty significant typo in what Mike paragraph eight, I can't see it here. It says does not believe, I think it should be the believes paragraph seven, maybe. Oh, here, as the city does not believe we cannot achieve one of these goals without success to the other city believes we cannot achieve, right? It's a double negative. Yeah, every left note here saying to clarify this paragraph. I read through it. I think it's, I think his edits do well enough for them for the time being. Oh, did if anyone had any thoughts on that, I'd welcome them. Kirby also had another comment down here regarding the hotel. And whether you know, he basically just said not sure this is worth mentioning. So I would welcome any thoughts on that as well. I wonder if that's why the hotel is left up above mentioned above. I mean, I think in our conversation on our last meeting, we talked about the fact that the separate from the hotel proposal, the city had done studies and that there was a need for an additional hotel in the city. I don't know that this part, I think you could just get rid of that whole paragraph. Thanks. Yeah, I would mention so it tells up above. So yeah, leave the mention up above. And if we wanted to talk about the TIF situation in that sentence up above, I think we could. But I think this sentence could probably go. It's a third rail for sure. Yeah. All right, I'm going to delete it. Yeah, I think the hotel just ties into the growing the tourism economy. And I think that was just the, you know, if we want, if we truly want to be growing that sector of our economy, we are missing out on a lot because we don't have the downtown hotel space. It is it is a significant, you know, just by way of example, the Vermont tour is a green mountain brewing beer festival. Whatever that is, it's generally in Burlington, it's been around. They've wanted to be in Montpelier, but they simply can't. There's not enough hotel space. When Northfield has graduations, a lot of the people go to Waterbury because they're simply not places in Montpelier hotel hotel rooms in Montpelier. We've missed out on a number of other festivals and stuff in the downtown simply because we just don't have enough hotel space to be able to support even even just basic small weekend type events. And that's been one of the things we want to grow our tourism. Sure, we're never going to be stow and we're never going to be these these big resorts. But we could certainly very much grow and increase the vibrancy of our downtown by getting and increasing the number of hotels and tourist space. It'll help our restaurants. It'll help our small boutiques and it'll help. And then we've got to have something that makes us unique. And the vision they were having was an opportunity to get a space to stay that has opportunities where you're really quick to have family recreation was a lot of the focus. How can we get bike paths that are safe to bring your young kids on, as well as intermediate, as well as advanced, as well as on-road biking, off-road mountain biking in the winter, skiing, snowshoeing. You know, again, we're not trying to really compete with the ski resorts. But at the same time, a lot of people like to vacation and stay in these in these downtowns. Montpelier would be a great destination to bring a family, hang out, go to restaurants and have those types of things. And I think that was a little bit of the vision. Okay, what else on this introductory paragraph? And maybe in this section, a relation to other chapters. We mentioned housing, transportation, community services, anything in the summary of past efforts section. This is the designated growth center. Montpelier alive. Has made it downtown. I have a comment here, which I've shared with the commission before. I realized that the 2016 economic development strategic plan is the plan we have. But I think it's a very flawed plan. And the less reference that is made to it, the better as far as I'm concerned. And I'd be glad to at some point revisit that that plan was created under a different mayor with a different, very different city council, very different circumstances than we have now. And it basically basically says we should become like Stowe. We should be an exclusive community. And we are talking about Montpelier being an inclusive community. So I look, I noticed that that that plan is due to be replaced. You guys are going to start working on it. Mike is going to start working on it 2022. But the less said about that plan, the better. Okay, noted. Oh, Mike, here. It sounds like maybe your microphone is picking up from from far away. Yeah, it sounds like it just sounds like you're very far away from the microphone. Or maybe is your computer, is there a different microphone in the room that it might have tried to pick up to? A little bit. 2016 economic development strategic plan talked about. And it's referencing it's looking at this from a business standpoint. And what it was targeting is that we need to basically making a comparison that communities need to identify what they want to be kind of kind of the way businesses are. You can you can target yourself as a discount retailer. Or you can target yourself as a high end retailer. And the businesses that try to sit in the middle and try to be the best of both, whether you're talking on retail or cars or anything else, end up being not competed and don't end up doing as well. We usually have to pick something. And so what the 2016 EDSP said was that we are a very expensive place to be, especially in comparison to a place like Berry City. So if you wanted retail space in Berry City, you could rent at, you know, $4 to square foot. You could get something for $3 to $5 square foot. Maybe it's a nice one. Here you're looking $16, $18, $20 to square foot. So you're not going to be an entrepreneur. You're not going to do a lot of low. You've got to be generating revenue. So that usually means you're looking for a target of something it's going to be. You've got to have them looking for a premium destination. And if you want to be a premium destination, then we have to present ourselves like a premium destination. In other words, make the downtown look nice. You're not going to be a premium destination for businesses if you're not, if you don't have a good downtown. So he compared us to the efforts that Waterbury, who also is a premium destination, explained that this is the place that has higher rents. And they are investing in making their downtown look nice to draw in those, you know, things and those other places. So that's what he was targeting was really just looking at the reality of our business climate. You know, Caledonia Spirits can be here because they're a successful business. So that doesn't mean it's it's can't have the jobs for people else, but it's just looking from a business standpoint. It's very difficult for certain businesses to succeed in Montpelier. They may be better suited if you want it. If you're looking for a discounted space, Berry City had always quartered itself on that because it could provide space relatively cheaply. So we could grow businesses when I was in Berry City very well. And you know, since 2008 last time I checked since 2008, Berry City had a thousand jobs. That's great. You can do that. If you understand where you are, what your limitations are, and then market yourself. Correct. So what they're saying is it's tough for us to be marketing as a discount downtown when our taxes are higher, when our rents are higher. That's where that's what they're getting. They're not trying to push out the poor people that, you know, they're just looking at the reality of what our businesses look like, what our environment business environment looks like, and making sure that we're making things, building a complete environment that would be successful. I suggest that anybody who is going to think about including this read the report and see whether Mike's account of it is more accurate than mine. I think it's a totally bogus argument that was made in that report. It's an elitist. It was an elitist document, and it was intended to push out poor people. And the gentrification of downtown is not a matter of making downtown look nice. It was to make it be more like, though, an elite gentrified town. Read it and decide whether you want to include it. I think it's a big mistake. Okay, thanks. Thanks for that, Mike and Peter. I think it's mentioned here in the section about summary of past efforts, which is fairly limited, you know, in terms of it's just something that we had done in the past, and, you know, its fallout was to create this separate Montpelier Development Corp. So I think, you know, if depending as we go forward, depending on the timing, you know, if that document, the economic development strategic plan is indeed due to be updated, Mike, then it may be when we get further into the fall and it may make sense to reference that newly updated plan if the timing works out, which we could then go back and add to this later. All right. Rest of the documents, aspirations and goals, which we've talked about in a separate kind of the separate space. Rest of that is just comments. Anything else for this document? Nobody, if nobody else has anything else, I've got a couple of other things, but let me just back off until members. No problem. It may be fine for you to go. Yeah, go ahead, Peter. Okay. Tax stabilization is mentioned a couple of times, and I don't know whether the commission is going to be taking any kind of position about tax stabilization, but I think it's important in discussing tax stabilization to be clear about the pros and cons. I'm not saying I'm against tax stabilization. I'm not, but I think that tax stabilization has to be handled very carefully. There are too many bad stories about tax stabilization in Vermont, about companies getting tax breaks, tax stabilization, and then when the period is over, just leaving Green Mountain Coffee being the most egregious example. If you're going to mention tax stabilization, be fair about it. There are several references to the built environment, and I'm going to get back to the downtown traffic issues. I haven't read the traffic section, so this may be covered in it, but it would seem to me that in a master plan, we really need to be thinking about other ways to handle trucks and other traffic that is passing through Montpelier to get up, to get north of us. I mean, Barry Street and Main Street are the only ways through, and that's a tough problem when you have these diesel trucks blasting their way through Main Street. Again, I don't have a definite solution, but I think it's something that needs to be looked at. And the third thing I would say is that the history, particularly that paragraph that talks about the businesses that have come in, shows the increasingly passive approach that has been taken in the planning community development department. Basically, the things that have come in here in the last five or six years have come in as projects that private people wanted to relocate here. They were facilitated by the department, but there's not been an active development of business or housing in the city for the last eight years or so. And I think that that's something which people have questions about. I mean, the Grossman's Lot becoming Wind River, that lot stood empty for, I can't remember, I don't know, six or seven years. Why wasn't that, why wasn't Montpelier going out and finding somebody to come in there? And was Wind River ultimately really the best solution? Is that the best kind of thing to have there? Maybe it is, I don't know. But I think if I were writing this report, I would be saying, for the future, we're going to have a much more active approach to business development in Montpelier than we've had. We're not going to rely on people coming to us and saying, hey, we want to build this here. How about helping us out? Give us some advice or whatever it is. Just for my own, just to help me understand, do you have an example of what it looks like to be more active, particularly in the case when I'm thinking of like Saban's Pasteur, it's privately owned, and they can sit on it as long as they want. Do you have an example of something that would be, maybe that's happened here or in a different town that was more of an action? Yeah, I just did. I think the Grossman's Lot was a perfect example. That lot was empty for, I can't remember how many years, seven, eight years. We could have made an effort to go out and try to attract a business to locate in that plot. There's also, I mean, also another thing you can do is you can go to the owners, like for example, the Conner Brothers own a lot of business properties, like the set the former Ethan Allen buildings over there, right near Agway. Those could attract businesses. I think some of the offices are occupied by state offices and so forth. We've been willing to say, oh yeah, we're such an attractive place, the state will come in and use, you know, but the state isn't the same as having, I mean, I'm nothing wrong with having the state, but there are places where you can build. I'm not talking about Saban's Pasteur, where the city has tried to develop Saban's Pasteur. They've tried to work with the owners on that. I don't fault, although, I don't fault them on that, but business properties, like a good example is the Granite Sheds. Those are owned by the Conner Brothers and they are themselves doing it, but they stood empty for 20 years, I think. I can't even remember how it went. So there are places where we could have had, look, if you look up at sorry, Morrisville, very, very active development group. And Mike was in Barry, very, very active in developing. But Montpelier, we're just so laid back. We think people are going to come to us and then people who come to us are people like the Boves and everybody goes crazy. Well, okay, but they came to us. What's Mike supposed to do? Say, oh, no, you guys are bad guys. I'm not. Okay. Yeah, thanks. I appreciate it. I appreciate the background. I have more detail there. On the transportation piece, I think that your concerns were more more directly addressed definitely in the transportation plan. So I feel like, you know, we just nod to it here, but I think the details that you're talking about with, you know, passing through and also traffic in the area is addressed in that chapter. In that chapter, do we talk about Barry Street? Because I think Barry Street has great opportunity to be a really inclusive street with a combination of different incomes and some businesses and some offices and some services and some residences. And it runs right along, you know, the bike path and it runs right along the river. And if, you know, I mean, I can just imagine, you know, a kind of a one-way street arrangement to have that become a very vibrant sort of community. I've seen this in other towns a little bit like Montpelier where they've taken what was once an industrial, and I think that was the idea of Stonecutter's Way. You know, and I think Stonecutter's Way, you know, does it, but it's a little, a little more removed. So I think some real thought and the, you know, the bridges can be made one way. You know, we could have some alternating bridges. So you come across Pioneer Street, you go out Granite Street, you come across Main Street, you go out, you know, some real nice, some real nice city planning that is related to handling traffic and developing a kind of mixed use, you know, corridor, if you will, going from the transit center all the way out to, you know, Caledonia Spirits. Yeah. Yeah, I know Berry Street is addressed, I don't recall that it's addressed quite in that much detail, but it is definitely a focus, especially at its intersection with Main Street. I think related. I'll just add that I think it's maybe not either as prominently evident in any specific chapter, but in terms of an action item, looking at the future of the rail line, and certainly not a short-term, you know, project, but but really looking at the missed opportunity or the potential for what that space could be utilized for in that same area that could certainly be a part of any kind of long-term vision for either redevelopment or development of that Berry Street corridor. Of course, you want to talk about something that's owned by people who might not be interested in doing that. It's owned by the state of Vermont, you know, and it's probably the least used rail line. Definitely in the state, I don't know about the Northeaster possibly, you know, the country. Are you sure it's owned by, it's owned by, I think it's regulated, is it owned by the state? Owned by the state of Vermont. And the the the Granite companies lease it or or use it and Mike, how's that work? The state owns it and it leases it to the rail operator, which is, instead of running, so they have some contracts for shipping Granite. That's what the bunch of stuff is going to move but there are also a couple of deliveries that go to like fuel oil delivers to Toronto's a few other small ones, but it's a very underutilized resource. We've been put in a petition, we've worked hard the first couple of years I was here to try to get the state to let us investigate setting up is using the rail for for community rail between Berry City and Montilier and we went through a lot of arguments and they didn't want to have any part of it and they fought us every every way and told us how it wouldn't work and like all right so that's that's why that project isn't there anymore but we invested a lot of effort with a lot of grants and the state pretty much killed every opportunity to to invest even to investigate it and then when they did they did some work on their own and they basically rent part of the fund but they railroaded it by basically making taking all of the assumptions of the most expensive things $100 billion to fix up the rail between right Montilier center in Berry City and cost $100 million and basically they're updating it to like I think it's going to be replaced they're going to for about six feet of fill and completely replace all six feet of base plus new everything and it was going to be a hundred billion dollars and then they came to a year later and $20. So they're not worth the real decision really I mean it's a disappointment but they're really the most worthless department for eight years and or five years and I had to deal with them for eight years here and they're about worthless to try to work with it's a disappointment. All right how are we feeling about the chapter anything else Peter did you have any other items you wanted to address with us or anyone else? I don't that's that's it okay will we appreciate your attention to this and bringing up those items. This is an initial chapter and once you know once we start doing some public outreach with this chapter along with the other chapters later in the fall we will have lots more opportunity to see it all together and make adjustments to make sure everything works. Well so let me just talk to that point about public engagement. Public engagement in Montpelier as you all know is very is tricky and I think the really what you guys need to think about is the timing. You do want to go out with something that reads well that paints a picture that you know gives people a good sense of what's what you're thinking about but you also need to do it in a way that people don't feel that there's a fed up company and anything they say isn't going to count and I see Gabe is on this call and I think he knows what I'm talking about because he ran into that with his public engagement on his his Isabel Circle project. You know they're not very far along he was trying to present a picture but they saw that picture and they went oh this is you're going ahead you haven't talked to us and you know that kind of stuff so I don't know I don't know the answer but it'd be really great to figure out a process something more like what seems to be happening with the Elks Club where you do bring people in at an early stage really at an early stage where you don't just say here's what we have you know oh yeah that you know take it or leave it or at least that's the way they feel and and I think you guys saw this a little bit with the zoning regulation changes. I mean I'm not saying that the people who objected to it wouldn't have objected no matter what but it might have been better to try to bring them in a little earlier get that get them let them express their opinion and then about those things and work out some of I mean Mike's point was just now was a very good one about the state making the worst-case scenario and that's what what's her name Sandy Vitzium does with the density requirement shakes the worst-case scenario and it'd be really great to have her have her do that in a smaller group and be able to say to her Sandy wait a second you know and that because Mike's got a very good response that it still has to go through review and so forth and most of those things wouldn't be able to be built etc but more dialogue so I don't know how you guys are planning to handle this whole master plan I know you're thinking about having an online version of it but which which is I think a great idea but timing is everything I think so I'm the only person who I think well I'm certainly the only person the citizen who's here today and every time I've come I've been the only one I don't know how often you get ordinary people in your meetings I'm guessing not very often no not very often and this is you bring up a good point something that you know we have been thinking about more pointedly well we've been thinking about it for a while but more more pointedly since the the zoning discussion and yeah we're brainstorming ideas for how to do outreach well around that issue and then and I think we're going to talk about that next on the agenda actually and then you know with and I for how we would do that in the future in the fall and when we've got more you know because it's a balance between having enough for people to comment on and also not being super confusing and and also yeah of course we don't want to make people think you know that it is an ideal when it certainly is not so point well taken and definitely something we've started to talk about more okay great all right thank you guys for giving me a chance to offer my opinion on various things okay thanks for being here I'm gonna go eat dinner okay thanks thanks Peter appreciate it all right so does anyone want me to see anything else on the chapter I think we want to approve it tonight are we ready to do that I'll I'll move approval of the economic development chapter thank you uh motion by Ariane I second second by Gabe all those in oh any discussion any additional discussions all those in favor hi hi any opposed any abstaining okay awesome do you need anything else from us on that mic are we good to go for now okay okay next on the agenda is to discuss doing policy outreach first sorry today here's no just background discuss doing policy outreach first for the solar access and shading amendment rather than drafting language um mic can I turn it over to you about so Kirby actually wanted us to wait until we had John here to kind of pick up we pick up this conversation so I was working on some pieces and I thought based on some of the conversations that we've had um at the last few planning commission meetings that maybe what we're not to do is rather than have me come up with some of the draft language and explain what we want to do is maybe we put together some of what John and Jeff and some other folks have put together on the shading trying to do a little public education and outreach and get input asking asking people what should the city's policy be it's a lot easier for me to write regulations that implement policy if I know what the policy is so I thought maybe we could focus more on trying to put together some some information documents rather than putting together some draft language and again I'm not sure when we're going to have time to kind of roll out get this public input but my thought was you know policy we seem to have a pretty good grasp of what we want to say and then kind of make a council because really that's what did us in last time I don't know my sense is that it's it's fairly technical and in the weeds and if we are going to be looking for conducting some public outreach around the plan that maybe we'd want to concentrate our efforts around that rather than this very specific policy that I think we can fairly clearly outline and and I didn't go to the city council meeting but I think the the issue was more that we just didn't have anything to replace it or or that we didn't present them with a clear option to just say we'll go with this we gave them we either gave them too much or too little and I think we just need to be clear but yeah that's that's my two cents also say that I haven't I haven't followed through on the homework that was assigned to me so you can all just disregard what I said the other concern I have is that if we we go down that road the people who come out do not necessarily represent the actual public opinion they represent the people who are particularly interested in achieving certain policy goals and that if we did education you know to the city council that it would be a lot more clear exactly what was going on and then they they'd be in a better position to get public input I just feel like it's it never should have been adopted I mean again as I said last time I went searching for anything that looks like what we have and nobody has anything like what we have so I think I think it's maybe go back to the city council with some education whenever that makes sense yeah and I um noting that it won't be around to help with this I I don't I mean it's it could be that we just didn't have a good alternative good alternative language for the city council kind of on the spot but it also could be you know an issue of they just were hearing like it said the people who were there and didn't have us we didn't you know we weren't able to say oh but we heard you know support for this in an earlier effort um and so if we did do our own outreach and we were able to hear some support in that space or perhaps we do outreach with the council and then invite folks to come to that as well you know whether we do it in this space or their space it could give us um um a more well-rounded view or at least an opportunity for that you know I would rather be spending my public outreach time right now working on as we're rolling through the city plan cutting the city plan public outreach this and not get lost too much trying to spend time on public outreach on this until until and after they're ready to do another zoning update which means you know maybe we go to city council right at the start before we know or no we're public hearing go to city council and say you know let's have a public hearing let's have a public outreach on what you guys want as a policy so we can do something that city council's ability to work at that with this I I I concur with that Mike that we should just wait until we're doing the next round of zoning amendments and and roll it into some education and maybe it takes a couple meetings but I don't think I mean when you look at this it's you know it's um the solar access and showing it there may be people who do not the solar protections there are a few people out there who are like no no no I'm all in full shape um you know there just you know there is no other side there's just people who understand the consequences of that um so I think you're right I think it comes up really educating the decision makers on you know a lot of john's informing structures you know we've talked about conformity but like I said yeah here we have a rule you know for all the other rules we put in place to go and say we want to have rules that we could rebuild our wonderful neighborhoods if something happens we could rebuild this this neighborhood because our zoning allows this great neighborhood to be created and we have one rule that would prevent you actually from doing it and it's solar shading and I think just explaining that to city council I think would go a long way to helping them understand that you know everyone who's complaining about their neighbor shading their house probably has a house that's neighbor that is shading their neighbor's house or their neighbor's property and just explaining that yeah um Mike I can't I can't hear you at all yeah we didn't catch that last part Mike you're um I think it might can I recommend that Mike maybe you try to jump off and get back on because your microphone is bad either that or call in with your phone and just meet the computer it's it's working better if the computer is farther away and that changed oh there you go okay yeah I've been trying to figure out where the microphone is they tend to hide them on the computers and so so that was that was it so we'll wait to pick up number six until we've got another zoning revision that probably won't be till this fall October November cool it sounds reasonable um I mean are we ready to move on to the next item which is approved position regarding whether the city should allow the drb to consider a reputation or kind of previous compliance history to approve or deny a permit consider having a public hearing for public input I had a question on the public hearing Mike if we uh don't believe it is legal why would we have a public hearing I just wanted to put that in there just in case there was a vote that people wanted to do it there it it is going to be a topic on a council agenda at some point coming up so so one option for you guys you know I I summarized and I sent out to John you weren't at the last meeting we went into executive session we went over the details of uh a decision of a of an opinion by David Rue from Stitzel page and Fletcher and so we had a little bit more of a detail but I also sent out an email that I had sent and that kind of summarized things and I kind of think that's the position we were going to we can't really cut and paste it because it's not really written in a in an opinion format but it kind of goes through and summarizes things that says it's not legal for us to to be doing it um and that really would I think what our position should be is we should be reviewing each of our sets of regulations within their own jurisdiction so when we're reviewing zoning we're looking at the zoning rules when we're reviewing building we're looking at the building codes and where there are violations of those rules we will enforce those violations and it sounds simple but that's pretty much what we've been doing and what we should do um so this is being directed um very directly at BOVS so the BOVS project was being proposed or hasn't been proposed yet but people got wind that they're trying to um purchase part of the Econolodge to put in 40 units of housing and people don't want it so they want us to they want the DRB to have the right to deny that permit because they have bad properties in Chittenden County that's basically what they've asked and the mayor has asked Kirby and therefore asked the Planning Commission if we would support that effort and the after the discussion basically was no we probably won't we should just simply enforce our zoning as it's written and enforce violations so if BOVS builds a project that meets zoning we should approve it and if if they violate future health and parental code violations then we'll enforce on those so Mike I I read your email and I think it actually encapsulated all of our conversation from last week so how would we just turn that into something that we we could say we concur or would you like me to basically if the sentiment of that email is what you guys would like to support um I could go through and convert that into a letter from the Planning Commission to the mayor and city council and then have you guys at the next Planning Commission meeting approve that letter I mean I think it covers a lot of the it covers all all it's a very good summary and it covers all the things that we talked about so I don't know other people's feelings but if if that were in a memo form I would support it I'm trying to find your email Mike when did you send it I'm sorry May 9th at 7.09 I was just the roaches yes roaches roaches and broken locks it was right after our last meeting I'm I agree with Gabe for what it's worth so is it a motion to memorialize your sentiments yeah do you want an action on that that's a nice way of putting it memorialized in the sentiments yeah because I can pretty much try to put that together and the reason why I left open the possibilities I didn't know if people wanted to get public input on it or not so I that's why I put that in there as an option but it's I'd read the I'd read this to everyone who doesn't have it but it's actually quite long so I'll probably try to summarize it in a little bit less I would hate to have to try to enforce this if I was on the DRB oh if it was if we did what Diane had recommended yeah it would be it would be terrible I mean every the unintended consequences I think would be huge because every every housing project that comes in even down street or ever north they have zoning violations in places and you know they fix them but that doesn't mean a violation doesn't get identified and every one of these is going to end up popping up in a you know the next project that comes up you should deny that project because they have a violation in this town how much homework do I do to find out who's got violations if somebody comes in and you know everybody does these developments and they put them in LLCs so how do I know that you know 14 Park Street LLC who owns that in Berry City I don't know but I would have to know that in order to put together a staff report that discusses all the violations of this property owner yeah for what it's worth I think your email is very good Mike thanks I think John had a motion if anyone wants to second it oh sorry was that a real was that a real motion to memorialize I second the motion to memorialize Mike's thoughts and sentiments okay motion by John second by Gabe I'm sorry I just have a question sure additional discussion time who's memorializing it and for memorializing it to forward to city council is that good question yes to forward to city council I believe and do you want me to bring it back to you guys first for final approval at the next meeting how time sensitive is this I don't think give me a second I'll open up you didn't get the sense it was super time sensitive I'm just looking at the the weekly report has future agenda items I'm seeing where this might if it's on there already I'm just it'd be nice to see it but if it creates a bottleneck in the process by having us do that then not necessary I'll amend the motion to say that that it'd be nice to see it but if it creates a bottleneck then I don't see it on the list of things so I'd have to check with Bill but I know there had been a request to have it come back to council but I don't see it on the on the future agenda items yeah we've got time yeah I think it'd be nice to just to take one quick look at and make sure we're all on the same page with it but I'm assuming we will be given the apparent consensus on this one all right for review at next meeting okay great so with that amended motion then any other discussion and if not all in favor hi hi any opposed any staining okay motions passed thanks Mike yes all right and then just to put a fine point on it I believe that means we don't want to do a specific public hearing for this on our end okay must substantive item on the agenda is update on RFP for city plan consultant all right there was a little activity there yep so real quick back to my stuff here I sent out notices on Friday so I sent out a notice to stone environmental notifying them that we were going to repost to a limited pool and I explained to them that it had nothing to do with the quality of their application or anything that we had concerns with but that if we were going to increase the budget from 20 to 30 000 and use your municipal planning grant that we were forced to go out and contact others so we also gave notice to stone that they could amend their application to reflect the fact there's an extra 10 000 maybe there are more activities they wanted to propose doing so they were notified and I also sent it to three other firms who were either in Vermont or did business in Vermont who had contacted us before about the RFP so I sent it to three other companies and said if you're interested it's on a shorter time frame so it's due uh proposed to be due June 17th so we could have them for the shortlisted by June 22nd and interviews at the June 27th your June 27th meeting if we want to have an interview with one or more so the 27th would be set up for interviewing those candidates so uh I've heard back from one company that said they will be proposing so we'll have at least two I haven't heard back from the others yet so and that meets the requirement for anyone who didn't catch that the municipal planning grant I contacted Jenny Levoie and she said that was fine as long as we reached out to at least a couple of additional candidates so that's what we've done great thanks for the legwork on that mic so everybody put that June 27th one on your calendar so that we can have for folks with that one I know it's mid-summer so don't play in a camping trip cool do you need any action for us on that or does anyone have any other any questions on that sorry I've been asking compound questions tonight and I just wanted to recognize that probably best if I was asking simple questions but she's not in the cards tonight short time or could be okay then in that case um we can consider the minutes from uh may night did every I'll give folks a second to look at them thanks I I did review them so I'll move the provost a minute awesome thank you I second yeah thanks Gabe any further discussion all in favor hi hi hi any opposed any abstaining okay wait who was stained you Aaron because he was I wasn't there got it thank you okay so that brings us to the end of our agenda um I just think the only other thing I'll add is just to think about um you know Mike we should think about how at a future meeting how we want to um staff the CVRPC I don't you know the nominations and like the voting for all of the subcommittees just went through um is or is going through right as we speak so it's not I don't think a major rush especially if Gabe uh was already going to be attending the main board meeting um but looking forward it might be good to think about getting one other person um especially because I think sharing the duties is would be great or maybe that was just me but Marcella when are you heading out really doing okay so I know Jeff had expressed some interest but if there's others I mean I you know I think we had originally talked like I would what was planning on going into the primary role in June but I don't have to do that uh oh did we talk about that there are other people who would like to take that that's great too happy to stay alternate or or something yeah yeah thanks for the reminder I can't I couldn't remember if that's what we were going to do I guess the issue is we only have one really seat to fill Gabe is on a subcommittee and would also fill the the commissioners like the commissioner meeting so he can do that as an alternate but um might be nice to have a second just in case and then yeah however you want to do that at the board uh it just depends on who's you know if both of you show up to the board meeting only the full commissioner would have a vote okay cool yeah and we'd have to put put in an appointment request to city council to appoint the the second so yeah yeah we'll put the RPC rep on the next agenda and then if we unless unless well I guess we really can't vote on it tonight because it wasn't on the agenda but then we can pass that on to city council and have them appoint the either the primary or the secondary depending on where Gabe wants to sit great so we'll just get some thought to that okay all right well I think we're set with tonight unless there's anything else or a motion to adjourn I move to adjourn thanks there are you second second bye Erin and we don't have to discuss this one right and all those in favor hi hi any opposed okay have a good night everybody