 Folks, whoa. Could I ask folks to move to this side if you can? There's still plenty of seats on this side of the room. Welcome to stand, but there's also seats. Nice to see folks coming in. What a crowd. I'm Paul Costello. I'm here to facilitate tonight. And I wanna introduce Mayor Jack McCullough to just do a word of welcome. Thank you. Thank you all for coming here tonight. It's really encouraging to see such a big crowd. It's my honor to serve you as the mayor of the city of Montpelier. Little did I know when I was elected in March that this is what we'd be dealing with, but we're all here tonight because we care about the city and we are invested in our city's future. And I'm here and the rest of us are here to listen to all the ideas from the community and hopefully not only today, but in the weeks and months to come, find a way to go forward to make Montpelier an even stronger and more vibrant place than it has been for years. So again, thank you for coming. So this meeting is being put together by Vermont Strong, which is the Montpelier Foundation, not Vermont Strong, Montpelier Strong, excuse me, which is the combination of Montpelier Alive working with the Montpelier Foundation that's been looking at response, the terrific work by Montpelier Alive to coordinate volunteerism and really pull this together is astounding. And then the Montpelier Foundation working together with Montpelier Alive has built a platform to raise dollars to support businesses in the recovery period, tremendous resources have followed that effort. So we really appreciate that, but fundamental to the future is us working together and thinking together as a community. So thank you all for being here tonight. I wanna introduce our sponsors from Montpelier Foundation is Sarah Jarvis. Here she is. Thanks Paul. Montpelier Foundation is an organization, non-governmental separate nonprofit that works to, we invest in improvements in Montpelier, generally brick and mortar improvements. We've done things like improvements to the tennis courts in town, we work with the tree board, we work on the trail systems and things like that. But at the moment like this, when our community has been through this tragedy, our board pivoted really quickly to try to figure out what we could do to help with recovery. And we have this great partnership, as Paul said with Montpelier Alive, Katie Trouts is here and she'll speak in a minute, but the two organizations really quickly formed a great partnership to try to help and react to this terrible tragedy that we're having right now. And then realizing the need for the community to come together and have this conversation about what has happened and how do we move forward, made sense, we thought for the two of our organizations to get together to really sponsor this, wanting it to be a non-partisan event and really believing in democracy and the importance of coming together, talking about our issues, thinking about what we want for our future, for our children and so forth. So thank you so much for being here. Thanks to Paul and thanks to Montpelier Alive for the partnership. Thank you, Sarah, for your leadership. And then Katie Trouts from Montpelier Alive, Katie. Thank you. Montpelier Alive has been around since the 90s and we are a downtown revitalization, nonprofit organization that has been supporting the businesses in our community, working on beautification projects and telling the world how wonderful Montpelier is. Our goal is to celebrate Montpelier. And I always say that though this type of work doesn't quite seem like what we set out to do, it is actually really getting to the meaning of revitalization work. At the beginning of the flood, we jumped in to help coordinate volunteers along with the city of Montpelier in partnership with Alec Ellsworth and he's the city parks director and community member Peter Walk and the three of us developed the hub and set out to try to address the community needs, the business needs and we've been here for you from the beginning. And I'm so happy to see so many people in this space talking about the future of Montpelier. I know from the businesses that this is a very important moment to be discussing our future and how to build back better and explore ideas together. So thank you to Paul for bringing this together and we look forward to hearing your ideas. Thank you. Thank you, Katie, for your heroic leadership in this crisis, I'm pretty sure. So let me walk through some logistics. We wanna thank VCFA for donating this wonderful space. Christopher and his team from ORCA who have done the logistics from a technology point of view for tonight. The city for all of its help in organizing this. It's important to understand what this meeting is. It's not a city meeting. It's not a legally binding meeting. We're not making decisions over city budgets or over what people do with their properties downtown or anything like that tonight. Tonight is a meeting to get ideas on the table. It's a meeting where everyone's an equal where we have things we need to share about what we've experienced, things we may need to share about the challenges that we see ahead, both short-term for businesses and for homeowners and for us as a community, but also longer-term as we think about resilience. And then it's a time for us to start to throw out points of vision. What do we wanna see? What do we wanna see 10 years from now? How do we make ourselves stronger? How do we make ourselves more resilient? So it's not a political meeting. It's really about a meeting less about divide and who's doing what and who's on what side. It's really a meeting about unity. It's about this community and what we stand for. So things that are said tonight are going to be recorded and digested into a set of ideas that will become the basis for forum topics that we're going to run through at the state house on the 22nd. We'll invite all of you back. We'll have the run of the building. So we'll use the house chamber, but we'll also break into working committees to really dig in and get ideas on the table, get some expert advice about the ideas that come up that follow from tonight's discussion and begin to frame things that we can prioritize for action. Some of those we may be reporting to the city as ideas for the city to lead on. Others, there may be nonprofits or others to step up with. And others we may need to form new groups, new task forces. We need to think about how we organize ourselves more effectively. So as Sarah said, this is all about democracy and action. It's all about power. And I've done this kind of work a lot and I've been in the rooms like this, but not probably quite as big. We probably have 300 people in the room. There's almost 200 on the Zoom. So this is a very intense, weighty night. And it's weighty not just because of the numbers. It's also weighty because of what we're carrying in our hearts right now and the sadness, the loss, the challenge to our businesses, the economic issues around investment for the future. All those fundamentals, how do we work together to make this the most brilliant, wonderful community it can possibly be in the future? And that's something that we stand together on. So I'm looking forward to how all this works forward as we go. And my job is going to be to gather as many impressions from you as possible around our cornerstone agenda questions. The first is about what are the challenges that people are facing? We're not gonna answer all those challenges, but we're gonna get them on the table. We're gonna gather them. Everything's being recorded so that we can look at all those things afterwards after this meeting. We're gonna look at what are the longer term challenges? What is resilience confronting? Are we looking at a cycle of floods? Are there other issues we need to be thinking about in the future? And then finally come out, not just with a long list of problems or a long list of the things that wouldn't it be great for someone else to do for us? But we'll come out with some points of vision. What are some of the things that we stand for? Some of the things that we might aspire to. We'll build that as a list too. So we'll have a product from this meeting that turns into the next meeting and gets deeper and gets practical and turns into choices and may turn into investments, maybe putting our hands to the wheel together to drive change. So looking forward to the process, I have to say it's an incredible honor to be part of this conversation with you all. And I'm all about service to you, but I'm also gonna be tough with the mics. We're gonna pull the mics from your own, people only get a minute. Nobody gets to give a 15 minute philosophical address about their vision for the future. We're all gonna be equal and we're gonna share the time, okay? So that's gonna be my job and maybe you won't all like it, but I appreciate it. But now I wanna introduce Joan Javier DeVall, who's going to help us set some of where we are right now before we get into those questions. How are we feeling? What have we gone through? So Joan, thank you so much for being with us. Appreciate it. It's really an honor to be here with all of you. On Tuesday, July 11th, as I received over a dozen text and social media messages, emails and phone calls from concerned friends and family across the country and just span of a couple of hours, the magnitude of the disaster hit me. The fact that we had just been drenched in a record rainfall and our downtown was inundated with floodwater was the top story of the New York Times. The flood disaster was making it onto the news in places many miles from the water-soaked streets, businesses and homes of Montpelier. We were all of a sudden in the spotlight. Some in our community have lived through other Montpelier floods in 2011, in 1992. And I even have one member of my congregation who was a young girl living in Putnamville during the great flood of 1927. For some, the anticipation of what was to come with the flood, the reckoning with the damage and destruction and the cleanup afterwards landed with a degree of familiarity. For others of us, this was an experience entirely new and also entirely unexpected. Perhaps you are among those who came here to this city seeking refuge from such disasters only to live through this one. Whether you have experienced something like the July floods before or not, I think we all have felt just how extraordinary this disaster has been, a disaster which is not yet over. We have each lost something in this flood. And for some, the loss is very tangible. It is the very place you have laid your head to rest and gathered around the table with loved ones. It is the business born of a dream that you have built from scratch and with a lot of help along the way. It is the place where you have earned your livelihood and found purpose along with a paycheck. Some of the loss that we have experienced is intangible, a feeling of safety and security, the pleasure of strolling our downtown streets and bumping into a friend or neighbor, the anticipation of starting life afresh in a new place, the comfort and stability of calling this place home for decades. My grief caught up with me late last week when I went to my office in the church building where I serve as minister. I was there to start packing things up because we need to empty out all the rooms on the first floor to do the repair work that's needed on the walls and the floors before we can safely reopen. Some dedicated volunteers had removed the baseboards and about 16 inches of sheet rock all along the exterior wall of my office. I took the scene in and tears came to my eyes as I felt the grief of seeing those exposed walls and everything in disarray. This is the room where I've spent hours listening to congregants share their own stories of grief and sorrow, where I've strategized and laughed with coworkers, where I've on occasion finished a sermon on a Sunday morning, don't tell any of my church members. Where I have gazed out at the North Branch River right outside my window and even spotted a blue heron dipping its beak into the river in search of its next meal. In that moment, the immensity of the loss that I and really all of us have endured was quite palpable. We have all experienced an intense period of upheaval that isn't over yet. And there have also been bright spots and glimmers of hope over the last few weeks. The outpouring of support, love and care from within and beyond our community got us through those first intense days and has continued to keep us going. We are beginning to face honestly and vulnerably critical questions of climate and community resilience. Some of these questions, such as questions of equity and inclusion aren't new ones, but are yet again put in the spotlight as we grapple with what it really means to be a community. There is a greater reckoning taking place with our fragility and mutuality in kinship with the land and waters that define our ecological landscape and the contours of our human aspirations. All of this gives me hope in the midst of this incredibly challenging time. And I'll close with this story from our church's time of cleanup. On the second intensive day of mucking out, our congregational administrator and I happened to wander into the first floor vestry where I'm sure many of you have spent some time as we were discussing potential mold remediation needs. And I noticed the small door beneath the stage which is right where some water had pooled during the flooding. We opened the door and discovered that water had seeped in and we would need to pull out all the items that were stored down there, card tables and lots of random pieces of wood. Right at that moment, a couple of volunteers showed up and we gave them the job. The very agile youth volunteer got right on her belly and slipped under the stage and started pulling things out. And a few minutes later, one of them called me over to show me an unexpected find, a set of very old blueprints. On further examination, we discovered that these blueprints were dated February 1928. They were the plans for the building renovations after the flood of 1927. I have no idea how these blueprints, such special pieces of our history, ended up hidden under the stage, but how serendipitous that it took another flood almost 100 years later to uncover them. For me, these blueprints serve as a hopeful sign that building a new way forward is possible. In fact, it has happened before. We will be the ones who together determine what the path looks like, what values will guide us along the way and how we will arrive there as a whole community. Our collective discernment will require our engagement with all the parts of ourselves from which we draw wisdom, our intellects, our bodies, our emotions and our spirits. My hope is that we can bring our open minds and open hearts into this dialogue and into whatever comes next. Thank you all for showing up for one another and for being here. So with that, we'll turn to the first part of our agenda, which is looking at what we're facing. The challenges that we face today, we've got a couple of people with the microphones, Ben Doyle and Lauren, to walk through. So if you want to speak, raise your hand. I'll just say, I was just on WCAX News and it was really bad because when you are living in it, you're helping out everyone's doing things. But when you talk about it to an outsider, suddenly your voice cracks and tears come to your eyes and you recognize that there's like it's kind of overwhelming what Montpelier and what that downtown, what people who've taken the hit are feeling right now. And so let's recognize that and look for someone who wants to share a minute of their experience or a minute of some of the challenge that faces us right now. Thanks, Ben. And if you just stand up and say your name to start, that would be good. Thank you. Oh, you're gonna hold it? Okay. Can't let go. I'm Paul Bofa and I am a business co-owner in Montpelier. My hand is over my heart for the residents and the businesses who got, I can't think of another word, but just plain and simply annihilated in this flood. I just can't think of another word. We love Montpelier the way it is, the way it's been and that is no more. And that's the piece I just want to put out there loud and clear. And my challenge, my encouragement is that we are able to move to a paradigm shift. I'm not gonna try to describe what those ideas could be, but, and I fully understand that there are businesses who are making the move to rebuild in town. You know, God bless you. And I know you have to. And in the words of Clara Bennett, she even went as far as to say, this might not be sane, but it's what's necessary, that's good. And then there's a lot of folks who just can't move forward in the same way. I just want to encourage the community to loosen up your thinking, loosen up your hearts and understand that a paradigm shift, how we move forward and recreate Montpelier is a wide open blank canvas. And we have to try to accept that and be open to some very creative ideas. Thank you. We'll come back to some of those at the end. Other thoughts. And let's try to keep it moving fast. So who's next? Yes, ma'am. One minute. Whoa. Our rivers went a wandering and I want to say miracles happen and encourage us to think outside the box. I want to look at how we take care of not having, not in my backyard issues as people need to go higher up and out of the downtown. And the little letter to the editor that was in the bridge, please read about ecologically what we could be doing to work with the rivers rather than against them. Thank you so much. What's your name? Opeyemi, people call me O and my friends call me. Thank you. Thanks, O. Okay. Next, yes. Is that my phone? Of course, Casey. Hello, okay. Casey, I live on St. Paul Street. Most of my street was flooded with a backup of the stormwater system in Montpelier. It wasn't the river, it was the stormwater system that flooded our basements. And I feel like a lot of you who are here tonight, I can't walk downtown without crying either. And I think we have to find some ways to make it possible for us to not only live here as homeowners, but to have some assurances to businesses that this isn't gonna happen again. So I think we really need to look at some serious infrastructure needs. Thanks so much. Could I say that there's seats over here, if anyone wants to wander through, you can come right through anytime, okay? Yes, next. The mic's not on guys. Hi, my name is Ian Quinlan. I live on Lower Elm Street. And by lower, I mean, we were under about 10 feet of water. Unfortunately, similar to her, our storm drains backed up and our street began to flood before the river's ever broke their banks. I think the two things that I think are really important moving forward is that a lot of people I talk to, there's a lot of insecurity in the city right now with worry about climate change, things moving forward, possible floods coming in the future. And I think that that needs to be a real big priority moving forward. I also believe that in speaking with a lot of the young people in the city recently, a lot of them, unfortunately, from what I hear is they're looking to leave. They want to leave the city because they don't feel like there's much for them here with the insecurity in their minds as they have an opportunity to go. They don't have as deeper roots. And what are we planning on doing in the future to try to make sure that we're providing something for them to look forward to as well? Hi, is the mic over there? Okay, I'm Diane Soffrin and I live on St. Paul Street also, right, downtown. And I'll keep it short. I just wanted to thank, first of all, thank Mom Kill Your Alive for setting our lives basically. I couldn't believe the kind of help that we got weeks and weeks into the flood. So I won't go into all the details I was going to. Everybody knows what they did and we couldn't have survived without. Insurance program also came to our aid very quickly. I know people have mixed experiences, but FEMA was there for us and the NFIP as well. Sadly, I really don't feel that I can say the same thing about the city. The city was invisible for two weeks. The city did nothing for two weeks. And what we have been facing since the city appeared is a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of rigidity, callousness and outright untruths. The city is actually standing in the way of me getting my FEMA money applied the way that FEMA says I can spend it. They're coming up with all kinds of rules that FEMA and the NFIP knew nothing about and makes me feel really bad. I've lived in Montpelier for 27 years and I'm feeling like maybe as far as the city's concerned people like myself retirees on a fixed income just don't belong here. When the city says things like, well, just add on and just raise up and just do this and put it in your second bedroom like we have so much space in the small houses downtown. So I'll just end by saying I think that the fabric of the city has been dissolved by this flood and by the lack of response on the part of the city and the people who are at the top of the city government. And unless something changes I think the city will never recover. It'll be something else and maybe we can hope for something better. That's all I'll say. Thanks very much. Yes, go ahead. Hi, my name is Reverend Amy Pitten. I'm the minister at Bethany United Church of Christ on Main Street in Montpelier. I want to start by saying how grateful I am for all of the volunteers who came and schlepped out our the water and the mud and all of the interior of the church. We were overwhelmed by the generosity of Montpelier and the surrounding communities to do that. I also want to speak on behalf of the churches. We've been talking and I don't have permission to do that. I'm just doing it, do it. Joan's saying do it. Bethany has suffered half a million dollars in damages. Christchurch has suffered half a million dollars in damages. I don't know what Joan's numbers are. I don't know what the Methodist church numbers are. But as if you've been reading the news about churches lately churches are dying and probably what is happened or has happened along with COVID is that the churches are hastening to their ends. And we're going to be looking at hopefully ways to combine but we still have these enormous buildings in downtown that need something. So I'm hoping that people can think creatively. The churches have served the community in amazing ways in the 21 years I've lived here in Montpelier with soup kitchens and homeless shelters and concerts and other art events. And I'm not sure what their future holds. So I would ask you to just keep that in mind. Can we get the mic? Can we get the mic? Okay. My name is Bill Day. I live on Main Street. In fact, I live in pioneer apartments and we came inches from getting flooded. I have stepped very little since that time. One of the things that bothers me is I have a lot of ideas about what needs to be done to prevent it from happening again. It will happen again. We can reduce it. There's a lot of ways we can reduce it. But every time I come up with some idea it's shot down. I don't want to be, I'd rather live anywhere but here. I'm stuck here because I was living in Barrie and my wife died and I had to move somewhere and I came here. I liked it here. It's a good city. I moved to Vermont 50 years ago and I moved to Montpelier and I worked for the state. But we've got to look into all the different ways that we can reduce water coming in and making it so it'll be safer. And all the ideas I've ever come up with has been shot down. And that's the reason I am up here. I'll share them tonight. I'll share them tonight. Hi, my name is Shinwoo, pronounce he him and I'm pastor at Trinity Methodist Church Main Street. I'm thankful to everyone who helped the church two weeks ago and I came here, 2020, July. And this is my second year to live in Montpelier and Vermont in my life. And I saw the flood happen and I feel like I lost the community. And the flood damage is very severe in my church. And I like to, I heard that city office administration requires downtown building business and residents to move furnace or main electrical panel up. But they don't say, okay, you can do it. We don't know. That's like, I felt like that. So, and I'm sure other religious organization like us struggle to recover back to normal. But there's a lot of shortfall from insurance. So I'm like to know, like it'll be good to know like how the cities try to help rather than just, yeah, you can do, please do. It's a recommendation. So I would like to know the further assistant for the grants, something like that. Hi, my name is Sam Markowitz and I live on Berlin Street. I've lived in Montpelier for eight years. I absolutely love it here. And I deeply appreciate the care for this city from so many people. I'm a psychotherapist and a business coach. And I do want to speak about the word resilience. It's overused. We need to be very careful as we're hearing from people tonight. People do have a lot of resilience, but it's not an infinite well, not for businesses, not for finances, certainly not for mental health. So I just want to advise that we be very humble in the presence of all of the damage that has occurred and celebrate the resilience where it's there, but also allow space for people to express, I just don't have resilience in me anymore because those people need help. And we need to structure what we do from here on out to help those people as much as, if not more than helping the people who still have the resilience in them. Hello, I'm Lauren Parker. I own the North Branch Cafe on State Street. I was hesitant to get up now because I really want to talk about ideas too, but I think it's important that everybody understand that we're one of three places on state and main that exists today, and it's very, very lonely. We have a lot of people coming from out of town. They're confused. They don't know what's wrong with our town. And the importance of us getting back to life is really huge. We spent the last 10 years watching the North Branch River or the North Branch Cafe, the coming and going of storms. We watch it at the Capitol grounds. We judge when we have to start worrying about our basement. We understand we're in a flood zone, but this is like nothing I've ever seen. And I think that for people to avoid downtown right now is dangerous because we need to pay attention to the fact that our town is empty, literally empty and lonely. So thank you. Hi. Hi, I'm Eve Jacobs-Carnahan. I live on Saban Street and I was on the school board for a while and my comment has to do with the challenge of this being not just a Montpelier flood, but a regional flood, and that we are going to be competing for resources with all the other communities that were affected and I am very worried about the challenge that this can't be solved just by Montpelier itself and that I don't know if we have a strong enough history of working with the communities around us. Vermont doesn't have a strong county government. So I think the next step really to look for help is with the state. And so I really think we've got to really, really think about how to make it a regional solution because the water is not just here and it's coming down into our pot here. Hi, I'm Chris Pratt. I run a business in town repairing and weatherizing windows and the challenge that I have is lack of human resources, our human capacity to rebuild. So we can look at financial resources that come from outside or we can rely on our human resources but that means people working and I am desperate to find people to work. So that's my challenge. Thank you. Hi, is that working? Is that working? Okay. I'm Mona Estrin. I've lived here for 50 years. I live in Eastmont Piliar. I'd like to address the last two very real serious speakers to resources both human and otherwise. We're in an impossible situation and competing for people to do the work that needs to be done for those who want to repair on site and pick up and try to make money and regain their business model now. We now paragraph, we have in this town a history of housing lost nation actors, Montpelier baseball players from the field out here and we have an organization in the state called Homeshare that finds people who volunteer in homes and they know how to vet applicants for service. Why can't we as citizens put together some sort of a system which vets, carpenters, why can't we as citizens volunteer to house from other parts of the country perhaps carpenters, plumbers, electricians, we're going to have to pull some rabbits out of hats in order to get the people here to do the work we need done. There must be some way to learn how to vet people, to advertise for people, and people might just come. We might just be able to recover our capacity in those few places that really want to get up and running now, thanks. Hi, I'm Chris Hammer. I've been involved with the Clean Health Unitarian Church for last month and I'm gonna thank all the Montpelier live people that really helped us get the building cleaned out. I think the challenge now is that the cleaning is basically done, but we're trying to rebuild and I look downtown, there's all these stores that have been gutted and they're still gutted and I think one thing that I would hope that would come out of these talks over the next is really helping businesses and private residences figure out how do we rebuild in a way that we can handle this the next time it happens? And I'm just struggling to try to find information about how to do it so that when the next flood comes, when we have to swab out our basement, we have to take out Joan's office and rebuild stuff, we can make it much easier this time around. And I feel like every business owner and every individual family shouldn't have to figure out that themselves. We need like some workshops on how to really do that. Hi, I'm Rick DeAngelis and I live right down the street. I also work with Good Samaritan Haven and I wanna mention that co-director Julie Bond is here somewhere, there she is right there. You know, obviously we want all of our residents and our children and others to be able to have safe, decent and affordable housing here. But, you know, we already had a bad problem before July 10th. We have a historically low rental housing vacancy rate here in Montpelier and throughout the state. We know how hard it is to purchase a home, an affordable home here. And we also have, and I know from our experience, we have an incredibly difficult problem of homelessness here in Washington County. So the flood has only made this worse. We're not sure how many units are lost exactly, but there have been units lost. And, you know, we can't, we are a community here in Montpelier, but it's a housing market that goes beyond Montpelier. A lot of the housing units that were lost in the city of Barrie were some of the most affordable and accessible units in that city. So that is just gonna squeeze the market even more and more and more. So we would just like to suggest that the problem in terms of housing that's right in front of us is shelter for people over the next, over the coming months. And we're right now working with the city on trying to expand our shelter options. So as we go forward, I hope you'll work with us to ensure that everybody can have a safe place to live. Thanks. Thanks so much, Rick. So you can see we could spend a day listening to people's stories because there's so much here. I wanna make sure that we move as well, but we'll take the next few minutes to see if there are other vignettes that you think need to be on the table and then think about the longer term, we're sort of leaning into it anyway. But what do we need to do to become more resilient? And what's that challenge look like? So whoever's next? Dave Graham, I live on Cross Street. I think we're in a long-term abusive relationship with our rivers and that we need to get out. All the abuse counselors tell you if you're in an abusive relationship, you need to get out. And that we ought to come up with a plan which basically says let's over time move downtown Montpelier maybe up here. I mean, we've seen the farmer's market migrate. We've seen this meeting migrate. We've seen any number of things that are already sort of organically moving up the hill to this neighborhood right here. Imagine this is the central business district. Imagine new housing along terraces like up above Memorial Drive, up above Court Street and some mass transit maybe even overhead aerial trams or shuttle buses between. There are all sorts of ways to do this, but we need to come up with a master plan that actually says this is the long-term vision. Thank you. Hi, hello, I'm Susan Marie and I live up on Hackamore Road and I was actually born in Montpelier. I've raised my kids here and lived here my whole life. I just wanna mention something for us to consider. I'm a federal employee and I'm housed in the federal building and that building is in really, really bad shape. We've been told as tenants that we should look to relocate temporarily for the next two years. And I don't know what that means for the post office I haven't received. I expect that it's really bad, so I am, yeah. So anyways, my point is to put on the table the consideration of the longevity of the federal building and what's gonna happen to that. Good evening, my name is Peter Wach. I just wanted to say a quick note of positive response, something that filled my heart through this process was seeing our young people show up. I know there was a feeling amongst the youth about what the future is for them here but I saw the teenagers of this community show up and do things that they didn't think they were capable of doing and then coming back with a smile on their face and saying, let's do it again. Where can I go? Where do I go next? So a huge shout out to Alec Ellsworth and the Montpelier Youth Conservation Corps and all the teenagers who showed up to work on this. That is what gives me hope. My name is Kirk Gardner. Two things. First of all, I want to put out a shout of gratitude for all that Montpelier Alive did, creation of that hub. I had a wonderful time getting up every morning, arriving down to the hub and say, okay, what do you need me today? And having a place to go, it made a difference. The other point I want to make is along David Graham's idea. You can't build high enough to support yourself from the next flood. Protect yourself from it. I worked before I retired in Vermont, off and on for over 50 years, but I retired from Scripps Institution of Oceanography where we originally found the idea of climate change and have been studying it ever since. The amount of humidity, the atmosphere could not tolerate means that the next time we have a flood, it's going to probably be higher by a considerable margin than what we already had. When we do our planning, bear that in mind. Thank you. Hi there, my name is Hope Sharp and I've lived in Montpelier for 25 years. And I don't really want to talk about taxes, but I just have a thought, which is that I think everyone in this room here is willing to volunteer because we're all here. And I kind of have this thought that like, maybe if one of us, I mean, each and every one of us once a month decided to volunteer to do some sort of rebuilding, maybe we could get like a tiny little tax thing, even like credit or something, like maybe that would become like an incentive, like I'm going to go volunteer and I'm going to go do this work and it's going to help my taxes just a tiny little bit. It's just a thought. It's not like, I'm happy to pay my taxes and all that, but I also just feel like it might be a little incentive, you know, and it's an idea. It's a thought. Thank you. Hi, my name's Joan and I've lived in Montpelier also for about 25 years. And I wanted to mention two things. One, a few people have already talked about, which is like the storm sewers being overwhelmed during the storm and that happened on my street. It actually has happened to us numerous times, not just this was probably the worst that I've ever seen it but it happens pretty regularly where I live, that the storm sewers back up in my basement floods. And I've spent some time in my career studying storm water runoff and I feel like the city, like we could do a lot more in our community to try and help the storm water slow down on the way to the storm sewer system. So I would really love to see that talked about more. And then the second thing is that I think there are a lot of people who might have really interesting ideas to share but they're unlikely to come to a meeting even on Zoom. And, you know, we talked about young people volunteering but I don't actually see very many of them here tonight. Certainly my young adult kids are not here. And so I would just encourage whoever's gathering input to figure out ways to get input from people who won't come to meetings. And I'm sure you've thought of that but just wanted to mention that. Thank you. Thank you for saying so. We have a tool called Padlet that you'll see in front porch forum and on Facebook that lets you go in and put your ideas in. We're gathering ideas towards action. It might be a good point in the meeting to start reflecting that we're actually beginning to gather those now. So that on the 22nd, when we meet in the state house where we're not having a general brainstorming conversation we're bearing down to what should we do with the riverine corridor? What are the practical things? And we'll bring in some people with expertise to inform that conversation as we look to set priorities for potential action. So we're gonna follow these ideas. So think about the rest of this meeting potentially as what does the resilience issue look like? And then what are some of the things that we ought to do? Knowing that there's a lot of other experience still on the table. And I'm gonna give it to Evelyn to share some of what's been coming up in the Zoom. There are 250 people on Zoom and probably 300 here. So it's a great statement of interest by Montpelier. Yeah, thank you. So I just wanted to share that Teresa Lieber on the chat says that trusting someone in charge is reading the chat comments, representing the five churches that have been providing free community lunches for 20 plus years. I'm reporting that none of the churches are open for this purpose right now and we are working together and distributing free lunches Monday through Friday in the Christchurch courtyard. The exciting development is that we are all in favor of establishing one community kitchen rather than each church rebuilding, refurnishing and restocking their own kitchens. It would be great to have the Montpelier food pantry located in the same place. And if anyone wants to work with her on this, she invites you to contact her. So, which church? Christchurch, okay. So let's continue to recognize that we're gathering everything that's said here today to inform the next stage of the process. You're Ben. Hello, my name is Joe Castellano. My wife and I have been residents of Montpelier for about 10 years. One of the reasons that originally attracted us to Montpelier was the vibrancy of the downtown. We had Necky, we had a lot of beautiful businesses here and to see them devastated and absolutely wiped out by this flood is just heartbreaking. And I also realized that for homeowners, FEMA is certainly a resource that they've been able to take advantage of but for a lot of these property owners or the business owners, it's a go fund me. Some of them have met their goals, some have not. And I think that we need to figure out how we can, rather than have a hodge podge approach, help the business owners who want to rebuild, who want to reestablish here. Because I think that's where it really will bring Montpelier back on the map. Thank you. Hi, I'm James Ray. I live just down the street on College Street. In terms of the looking forward and the slowing the water down and other resilience projects, I just wanted to put a bug in people's ears because I don't pretend to know who's here from the city or the state government. But there are mechanisms known as social impact investing, outcomes-based financing may not be anything new at all to some of you, maybe brand new to some of others who might need to know about this. But in short, they are very powerful, very creative financing tools to tap private investment markets to fund in advance. These exact kind of projects, resiliency projects, urban renewal projects based on environmental and climate change resilience that typical funding measures won't often allow for. I just wanted to plant that bug in people's ears for the next meeting. And I'll put my, I don't pretend to be an expert but I am friends with experts in the field. One of my good friends is a very much an expert in the field and I would be very pleased to put him in touch with anyone who cares to have a conversation with an expert in that field. Hi, my name is Kimberly Krijava. I moved to Montpelier a few years ago and live off Berlin Street. I also work at North Branch Cafe. I just wanted to make sure a part of the conversation going forward with disaster response involves protection. We had such a huge volunteer turnout in town and people were just getting covered head to toe in this chemical stew and sewage from the floodwaters. And I heard about people like throwing up and people getting rashes. And I just feel like a part of the response. We didn't really have it in hand to get protective equipment out to the volunteers that were participating. And if we think about how every time, someone's hurting themselves, that's less they can do to help someone else in the future. So I just want that to be part of the conversation going forward. Hello, my name is Diane Tetrow and I'm heartened by the turnout from this entire community far and wide. I know there are people here from well outside of Montpelier and I know that's because we are one in this watershed. I want to just raise the question that I've had this whole time, which is, do we have a disaster preparedness plan in place? And if not, let's get going. It felt to me like we did not have the kind of information that we needed to be really prepared. I hope we can do something about that. Thank you. Hi, I'm Rebecca Copans. I just want to remind everyone that we have a really short-term memory in Montpelier. I lived through the 92 flood when I was like 12. The May floods before Irene and now this. And every time, we seem to forget very quickly what the waters can do. And there was a moment when the Netherlands said, this is enough and we need to build a more resilient infrastructure. And I think this is the time when we need to stop and say, not what we should do, which is keep doing what we're doing, but what can we do and what could we do? Hi, I'm Dan Jones. I'd like to remind people the idea of what resilience might mean. It's basically the ability to foresee and adapt to changing circumstances. This is to maintain the well-being of most of the population. We have a changing circumstance that now climate change is no longer out there to be dealt with in 2030 or 2050. It's here. It's going to get worse. And if we don't start making the work that is going to be required for moving our businesses, for preparing for the kind of shifts that are coming, because this will happen again, as will heat domes, as will fires, et cetera. We are living in a coming chaotic situation that is going to get worse. And we have to start acting as if that's the truth. So I hope that we can find a way of coming together in some kind of mechanism that is going to build that local resilience in spades. Thank you. Hello? Hello? Yeah, there we go. My name is Lachlan Smith. I am one of the directors of Artisan's Hand. We went through the 92 flood and it motivated us to move to higher ground. Our business is one of the only ones that survived this flood. Got about two cups of water in the front door. Just devastating to what we got to see from our perch there. I'm so sorry. I have heard that Chicago in the 1850s was too close to the water level in that city. And they raised the entire downtown up to 15 feet with jack screws. And just saying. Hi, I'm Brian Campbell. I've lived in Montpere for about seven years. I live in Main Street above the flood water, luckily. And one of the things I don't want to say is just my personal experience. My partner and I, we only have one car between the two of us and my partner has been away. So I've been trying to get around without a car. And like Montpere, one of the nice things about Montpere is that it is such a small walkable city, but with downtown gone, it is no longer. And when we rebuild, we need to make sure we build back in a climate resilient way that is walkable with public transportation, with not continuing to pump fossil fuels into the atmosphere that cause this flooding. And it's been tough, so we want to build back in a resilient way, taking that into consideration. Thanks. Hi, everybody. My name is Kate McCarthy. I'm back here. Thanks for having this forum. We're talking a lot about the things we want to do differently, the things that we want to see change. And I think that's excellent. We can agree on things like needing more housing, reducing homelessness, supporting our businesses. And it occurs to me that if we're going to change things, we need to be willing to change. We need to be willing to see our landscape differently. We need to maybe see houses next door when they weren't before. We might need the D word, density. We might need change. So the action I would look ahead to and ask for, I don't know how, but I think we need to do something to prepare ourselves to say yes instead of no. I think we need to prepare ourselves to show up and be advocates, to share, to compromise, and to do that together. Maybe we're gonna grit our teeth sometimes, do it. But I think that that is a skill set. That's a muscle that we can build. And so what might some sort of activity or skill building look like that's gonna allow us to get down to business and do that? Hi, my name is Kasha Ranjo. I'm a resident here and a mom and also happened to be a co-director of Vermont River Conservancy. I want to bring up something that we need to do, which is to protect and restore our wetlands and floodplains, both upstream and downstream of our town. And when we do that, it's a natural tool to slow down our rivers and to absorb the water and to make the next flood less bad. I want to see us convert our riverfront from hardtop, which holds water to a green space and park. This is a vision shared by several high school students who presented it last winter. And I wanna talk about our high school. This hasn't really come up yet. And when I heard us talk about youth, they got the loudest applause of the evening. Our high school is on a floodplain. It flooded and it's gonna flood again. I suggest that we sell the high school, the state and federal government has buyout programs to restore floodplains. Sell the high school, convert it to a floodplain, open space, parkland and use the proceeds to move the high school up here where we are today because it is dry and high and to a beautiful college buildings up here that are perfect for the high school to relocate and do something for our kids and our community. Hi, my name is Chris, I live on St. Paul Street and I could pretty much just say what she said, but I had already raised my hand. As an avid angler, I spend as much of my free time as I possibly can standing in rivers. And if there's one thing I can tell you about rivers, it's that they are constantly reinventing themselves. And there are three residents of our city that we have not been talking very much about in regards to the flood and they're the Winooski, the North Branch and the dog. We need to give these rivers, these residents, the room that they need to reinvent themselves. Only by doing that can we reinvent ourselves. Hi, my name is Stephen MacArthur and I was on city council in 92 and we had the flood back then. That was because of an ice jam. Those of you who were here remember that it flooded the entire downtown. Because of my background with the city council, I'm really interested in having our current city council, our current city manager and our current mayor do something like this where they give us what they're thinking. I'm really curious to know. I'm hearing incredible ideas here tonight. I'm hearing incredible emotions. I'm hearing about trauma. I wanna hear what our entire leadership of the city is thinking and what they're feeling. Thank you. Hi, my name is Beth Pambar. I live on North Street. I really loved hearing all of these future ideas from you all. And I just wanna remind us that we have to do this in stages where we're really caretaking our current business owners. And as we think about all these long-term things, how do we also think about how they survive? And that we just are gonna have to have this multi-tiered plan that these big ideas are great, but let's not lose this moment to really think about how do we sustain these current businesses? I also just wanna put a word out for all the tenants in town who were really impacted and a lot of housing lost. And I'm worried about landlords coming in and improving these apartments and then renting them out for more for the same apartments that people were in before. So I hope that we don't have that kind of profiteering from landlords in town. And as we move forward, I hope we also think about ADU compliance and really think about how to make this town accessible. Thanks. Hi, my name is Jessica Buckley. I have a background in civil engineering and I agree that simultaneously we have two processes happening a short-term support for the people that are immediately impacted and this longer-term conversation. And I wanna speak to that. I would like to encourage the city and the state to pull together a working group to look at programs such as Room for Rivers that the Netherlands employed just with the same idea of let's move ourselves, make room for the rivers to be who they are and what they need to do, right? And so I just wanna ask that this working group takes into consideration the stakeholders, the residents, the property owners, the business owners, the youth, the homeless and future generations to come. Thank you. Hi, my name's Dee Dee Brush. I live, lost you. Oh, there it is. First of all, thank you for all of these amazing and caring ideas. I would like to just remind the city council in particular that we have been through processes like this before where a huge outpouring of volunteers have come forward to do a master plan, for instance. As far as I know, nothing came of that work and it was hours and hours of volunteer work. I don't want that to happen again. I wanna see something like a very vibrant group that is leading this and it's taking very concrete steps to enact some of these ideas or coordinate them. And I think the idea of a regional effort is very powerful one. And I'd also like to say, we need to talk to the state. We need to influence all of our representatives. This is not a Montpelier problem. It is a Vermont problem. And we haven't seen the courage yet or the funding to really tackle what's ahead of us. Thank you. Hi, my name is Lou Friedland. I live on St. Paul Street. I've been in Montpelier too many years. There's been some talk about infrastructure. And actually, Montpelier has an infrastructure history of problems. Living on St. Paul Street, our basement was flooded to about five feet and that water did not, that was not river water coming into the basement. It was sewage backup and stormwater mixed together. The infrastructure has not been dealt with in a responsible way for years and it needs some attention finally. The city has to, the city fathers and mothers have to place some importance and finances and stop dealing with, stop promoting the sexy issues like the Elks Club, like a new Elks Club. We can't afford that. We have too few resources in a town with a population of 8,000 to support things like that. We can't ignore infrastructure like we can't afford to ignore what people are talking about of allowing the rivers to just follow their course. Thank you. I'm Greg Gurdel and I actually, I wanted to just make a quick point of information. I expect that most, all of you are accustomed to getting the bridge in your mailbox because the post office is flooded and most of our advertisers or many of the downtown advertisers have not been able to do so. We are not mailing the current issue. We have a lot of copies available right near the front door and if you wanna catch up with some very good coverage about what has happened, grab a copy of the bridge. Hello, my name is Kathleen Casterly. I live on Mechanic Street. I've lived in Montpelier just for five years and I always call up my sweet little city and I just wanna say two little things. One is it is about change and in the meantime, everybody could just examine what they're willing to change and one thing I noticed with COVID is everybody started using Amazon and if you just see all you see all day long is delivery trucks, delivery trucks and if we all channeled that, any shopping that we had to do can be done through those businesses whether they're in the same location or somewhere else, just think about supporting your businesses that way. I think they're all going online now and we can help wherever they're gonna be and the other thing is it's not the river's going after us. That's a consequence, that's backwards. I'm Bob Messing and I live on Charles Street so I was lucky but I wanna remind people that we're actually suing the fossil fuel companies in connection with Irene and in that suit, there's evidence that the fossil fuel companies knew 40 years ago that these things were gonna happen around the same time that they actually did happen. They are to blame and there is an effort to make them pay for it. Puerto Rico has a suit going on, very similar because it's the climate change that caused these storms to be so much better, I mean worse, so much greater. There's a way to determine the difference that the climate change made to the damage that these storms caused and all of this should be put into action. We can do a specific suit concerning this particular event. There's one about the heat dome in, where is it? Mexico, Oregon and we should get on it and do something like that. Thank you. Thanks so much. So we've got about a half hour of general conversation left and I think what we've done is sort of blended one thing to another, right? Which is great and natural. We're hearing a lot of resonance on the Zoom about the idea of looking at the riverine corridor. When you think about where things go from here, so that this isn't just a brainstormed conversation that begins and ends tonight, I'd ask you to think either, is there a point of vision for what you'd like to see for the future of Montpelier? And when I say that something you'd want to see that you might stand for, that you might be willing to be part of moving forward or something that you think ought to be a topic at the state house, that we should break out into a room, bring some expertise together and frame some of the ideas that could move forward around that so that we don't leave it here tonight. So I'd ask you to think about those two things as you are commenting at this last half hour. Hello, I'm Maria. I've been here for about 21 years, well not here, but in Montpelier. And I'm not directly affected, but I'm very aware of an awful lot of the loss and challenge we're facing. And I'm very concerned about the homeowners who are kind of invisible. Our downtown businesses are the charismatic megafauna in our ecosystem. And I want them to do well and I'm eager to support them. But how do we deal with people who have homes in the flood plain? They're good solid homes. Many of them would stood the flood of 27. Demolishing them seems like a shame. As one of the other speakers pointed out, we for some strange reason felt the need to buy 140 acres of golf course. Some of it's developable and that's a resource. Could we possibly offer space on that property to get people who own homes out of the flood plain so they could rebuild without bracing themselves for the next one or being bankrupted by flood insurance? That space is going to waste. There's a long consulting process that's costing us money and doesn't seem to be going anywhere fast. What can we do? You asked about for the next meeting, oh, I'm not talking loud enough. Oh, my name is Carolyn. I've lived here over 30 years and I love this city. I haven't lived anywhere else in Vermont but you asked about topics for the August 22nd meeting and I think the entire watershed which Cassia had said, but also getting the green building council involved and looking at green building I envision, I love the downtown. I love, is there any way that we don't potentially need to raise the businesses but open up the basements that the water can flow through, the water can go into the watershed and not having to lose the downtown. Charles Street, I'm Deborah Messing. I live on Charles Street right down the street, a hill dweller, but my heart is broken for the valley dwellers. This is a longer term idea. I'd like our community to consider the idea of network, thermal, geothermal heat and cooling. This is a system that's been around long enough to have some real examples of successful communities and downtowns especially. So rather than go into an explanation of it, I would encourage you to go to vcga.net which would give you a broader idea of the potential of this. Is this, is it on? Yeah, it's, yeah. Okay, my name is Sarah DeFelice. I'm the owner of Bailey Road here in Montpelier, a business downtown on Main Street. I think a lot of us businesses are very grateful for the volunteers that showed up. And I know I'm really grateful for everyone who has the energy to think big and think innovative for our town. I think I am very much still in the day to day trying to get my business up and running. And one thing I would love to talk more about is how we can have a reopening for our town, how we can have our downtown start looking pretty now. And one thing that came out of a Montpelier Business Association meeting was like a flower bomb where maybe one weekend everybody brings down a pot of flowers downtown and we just line our streets with flowers. I think it would be nice to bring some beauty now. It would be nice for tourist bus when they come through not to see a desolated town. I would like a topic of conversation to be about tourism and downtown beautification. My name is Kate Stevenson. I'm a member of the Montpelier Energy Committee. And I guess my vision for the future is I know we have to replace a whole lot of heating systems, a whole lot of basements, a whole lot of hot water heaters. And my hope is that as we do that rebuilding work that we can think about how to use that as an opportunity to transition to non-fossil fuel systems. And I recognize that that's really overwhelming for everyone who's like, I just need hot water and I just need to figure out how to get heat in my building before it starts getting cold in a couple of months. But I would love to think about that as a vision for the future. Thank you, I just wanted to acknowledge everything. Okay, okay, great. I just wanted to acknowledge a couple of the suggestions in the chat. As Paul had said sort of at the beginning to premise this next stage of comments and questions. A lot of people are responding and saying that they have experience in this or I've experienced that and I'd love to share. I'd love to know how I can get in touch. So I've been encouraging folks to please share those ideas in the padlet and then we will also be saving the chat. So there's a lot of really great discussion going on and a lot of people are seeming to be really excited about stepping up and sharing and contributing what they know. Hi, my name is Daphne Kinney-Landis. I live on State Street and I speak from the perspective of a renter in the downtown. Whether we call it a Montpelier Tenants Coalition Network or Union, I think we need to form a city-wide resource that advocates for and communicates for renters and serves as a vehicle for our collective voice. How do we communicate critical information to renters before and after emergencies? How do we ensure that tenants are receiving consistent information when there are considerable insistencies between how landlords respond in situations like these? How quickly landlords respond to damage and what they communicate about the safety and health of our homes? This is a larger question about what we can do to ensure that renters have a voice when it comes to our wellbeing and the ability to live in the city. Thank you. Okay, good. My name is Lawrence Webster. I live on North Street with my partner, Albert. And this is partly topic and partly I haven't heard anyone mention our agricultural community, the farmers who feed us and the precariousness of our food supply. I've just heard from a horse owner that she can't get hay, can't anywhere. There are food shortages. We have trouble with access. And I think as a topic, if we're going watershed and regional, that our food systems, particularly our own local agriculture are going to be very important. Thanks. Hi, I'm Carol Vassar. I've lived in Montpelier for 35 years. And I think it's great that we get to have a chance to give our own ideas. But what do we hear from the Agency of Natural Resources? What do you hear from the Federal Army Corps of Engineers? What do we hear from NOAA predicting what we can expect in the future as we see the warming and the increased water in the atmosphere? Somebody has already said the next flood is going to be worse. Certainly that's what they've been telling us. Can they give us any more information? We can't really plan anything ourselves. We need to have some ideas of what to expect and then get the experts who should already be thinking about this, some ideas. Hi, my name is Alana. Montpelier is my hometown. I've lived here most of my life and I currently live on Taylor Street. And I'm noticing that we have so many people here with so much specialized knowledge. We have so much enthusiasm. We have so much motivation and creativity. And we have an appropriate sense of urgency. And this is not the first time that we've had a catalyst for such things. And I've noticed people mentioning that nothing has happened, nothing has come of it in the past. So I'd like to encourage us to get curious about where does this process break down and how can we foster some systems that promote momentum and longevity here? And how can we coordinate some of these piecemeal, really valuable pieces into a sustainable network and some momentum that we can sustain? My name is Mary. I live on Berry Street. I wanted to offer just a little bit of historical perspective, along with my vision. I first moved to Montpelier in 1969 when my ex-husband and I bought on house on East State Street, just a couple doors up from what used to be the ANP and is now the Center for Independent Living. And two months after we bought that house, the whole cellar flooded. And there went our furnace and everything from the first 25 years of our life. And it was like one thing I discovered from that, not only was it my introduction to home ownership, but Montpelier, I loved that what I loved about Montpelier is everybody in town had a way of banding together and coming up smiling. And that's my vision. That's what we're gonna do. My name is Monica. I've been living in town about 12 years and I love it here. I'm hugely inspired by this community and I'm very happy to call it home. I have two comments. One of them is more pragmatic. The other, I guess, is for long-term thinking and planning. And in my investigation into the world and humanity and what pulls the fabric of a society together, one mark of that is how a society takes care of the people who need the most care. And as we're planning about how to move forward, really paying attention to how everybody can be served. And of course, there's the immediate needs at hand, food, water, shelter, the businesses, but also within the larger vision of what we're doing is to really be inclusive. And the homelessness population or unhomed population that has increased over time is really something to pay attention to. And I know it's a real struggle. It's not a judgment. The other thing I'd like to talk about as an artist is the importance of supporting the arts and culture within a growing society. This is a pivot point. It's an amazing opportunity to grow and evolve. And when I look around the room, someone just said it's a very educated group of people. It's a group of people who love this place. And there has to be opportunities to celebrate and to rejoice and to reflect our inner world back to itself. And someone mentioned to bring flowers. I know a ton of musicians that are ringing their thumbs right now, ready to play music. And some of them are in this room. And not everyone here goes out all the time. I like to socialize and be in town. The cultural community in this town was bursting at the scenes with music. Every single homelessness in town has arts. And so just that there's opportunity there to celebrate and hold the grief at the same time and not exclude the arts. So building galleries into spaces. And thank you. My name's Ann Armbrecht and I lived in Montpelier for 20 years and now I live in East Montpelier. And I wanted to invite you next Thursday at two to an online conversation that I've organized with two Vermonters who have been thinking about responding to climate change in the short and long term. Beth Sawan who is head of the Multiselving Institute and a student of Dana Meadows and Systems Thinking. And Amy Seidel who's an ecologist and professor at UVM. And I'll share information, but the idea is to give tools to then feed into the conversation on the 20 in the state house. Hi, thank you again. I just wanted to say something really quickly. If we are looking at letting the river go where it needs to go, which I think is a great idea, can we direct it to go under Elm Street and under Main Street in culverts instead of on top of Main Street and Elm Street? That's a thought that I had, thanks. Hi, I'm Miriam, I'm 15. I'm a student at Montpelier High and I volunteered with the recovery efforts in the early weeks after the flood. I wanna add my voice to those advocating for climate change to be included in the conversations about rebuilding. As I think we all know, this flood was very much caused by climate change. I wanna advocate for building back our downtown in a more sustainable way, but also as a climate activist with the Vermont Youth Lobby, I wanna advocate for climate legislation at the state level. I've been advocating for this for the past two years at the legislature. And I can only hope this flood adds a much needed sense of urgency. Please let your elected representatives know that now more than ever, climate action can't wait. My name is Renee and I've been at Montpelier for four years and for our next meeting, I would like to see that we can bring everyone to a table. Maybe you have in tables of every walk of life between homelessness, someone representing mother nature, businesses and everyone, and take this opportunity to rebuild our city in a different economy. An economy that mother nature is part of it. It has a voice, it has rights, and we are also creating change in our lives. So the next time that a flood comes, it doesn't wash a ton of junk into our waterways that we don't end up with a lot of trash. So maybe our next meeting should be something like, think about a donut economy and if you can look it up online. And in this circle, it's not about how much money we make, it's about how we can live in a community where there's a balance of life and there is a connection with nature. Thank you. Thank you. So we've probably got 15 minutes left of general comment okay, for the mic, but what I would hope is that we could get as many ideas on the table. So any idea you have for even just the topic of a point or a point of vision that could be one sentence of something you'd love to see for the future, okay? Thanks. The paraphrase, I'm David Hartnett, I've been in town since 79. The paraphrase of Director General World Health Organization, we are not any of us safe unless we're all safe. If we can keep that in mind, whatever plan we evolve will be a good one. So just as one, oh, I'm Tanya, hi. As one topic for one of those working groups for next meeting, I would strongly advocate to center our young people and their needs and their voices and their perspectives. Hopefully they're gonna live in this community a lot longer than the rest of us. Hello, I'm Richard. One idea I haven't heard yet is management of the upper watersheds and improving infestation in the landscape. So it sows down and meters the water before it gets the rivers in the first place. I'm Paul Burns, I live in Montpelier. I work with VPurg and I really appreciate the energy and ideas brought here tonight. And I don't know what the solutions are exactly, but I do know that they're gonna cost many millions of dollars. And I think it would be wrong to simply hand the bill to the residents and businesses and farmers and taxpayers who have just been harmed so terribly by this flood. Instead, I believe in the old adage that if you make a mess, you should clean it up. And I think in this case, it's the fossil fuel companies that have made the worst mess we've ever seen. And it is about time that they be held accountable. And so we'll be pressing our state delegation from Washington County and all across the state to create a climate super fund for Vermont. And the bill should be paid by the shareholders of the largest fossil fuel companies in the world that have a connection to Vermont. And that's something that we can get done in the next legislative session. Thank you. My name is Kendrick Kite, I live on Colonial Drive. And one of the, we've heard about how the water flows in rivers, we've heard about how the water flows in the sewers, all of which is underground. We haven't really discussed much about how the water flows overground around our city, how it gets from, I think somebody just mentioned that briefly, how it gets from the hills to the rivers and the channels that it takes to do that. And some of it comes right through our yards to do that. And I would like to see if there's a way to study the hydrology of the city and the region because the city is part of the region and how we can best work with that towards the future. And to that end, one of my best friends from college had a 20 year career as the chief hydrologist for the National Weather Service out of Rhode Island. And so I'm gonna try to reach out to him and see if he can consult. My name is Mark, I've been here for about a year and a half. I love everything that I'm hearing. And some of the things that we're hearing are that there are other resources, whether it's the city or it's the state or it's the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal government, are we gonna get help from above? Are we going to go after oil companies or are we going to coordinate efforts to ask large foundations to give money? Whatever this is, it's gonna take a lot of work from us. It's gonna take a ton of money and there's not gonna be one solution. One of the things I'd like to see come out of this and maybe this is already the plan is to have some kind of coordinated effort that involves the people of Montpelier together because right now I know a lot of us are interested in helping doing things or finding resources. Is it the city? Is it Montpelier alive? Is it the state? Where do I go? Is FEMA helping me? Who did they do? One of the things that I feel like we've been lacking is a kind of central coordinated plan for recovery, which is something you've heard several times and coordinated efforts for how we're gonna shout up the chain and make sure that we don't have 10 uncoordinated efforts all going after the same things. Are we looking for lawsuits? Are we grant writing? Are we shouting up the government chain? I'd like for that to see that be a coordinated effort. And sorry, as a plug, somebody else mentioned the arts and about the community coming together. On August 26th, we are putting together with Montpelier alive in the Rotary Club we're putting together a day of music, community, healing in Hubbard Park. We'd like for all of you to come. There is an ad in the bridge. Please pick that up. And I have some of these things I'll pass around as well. Thank you. Hi, James Ray again. I'm sorry to go again, but I wanted to add this for August 22nd. I would encourage folks at organizing it to reach out to the Vermont EPSCORE program. These are researchers and experts at University of Vermont, St. Michael's, Dartmouth, Middlebury. I've had the pleasure of working with them. And I know for a fact that there are, I'm not gonna say scores, but many, many experts, economists, scientists of all sorts who have been studying the exact same things we're talking about. Why this happened? What to expect in the years to come? What the riverbank floodplains have looked like? What they will look? All of this. There are experts in our state who know a lot about this. And I think they would be incredibly valuable voices at the August 22nd event. Again, that's Vermont EPSCORE program. And again, I'd be happy to put you in touch. Although I suspect they're here. Peter, I know among them who have worked directly with these folks. Good evening. I'm Stan Brinkerhoff. I've lived here for about 10 years. After we walked around in the morning after the floods and helped clean up, I think a lot of us dug up basements and it helped folks clean out. One of the hardest challenges has been helping folks who are displaced from their home, find new homes. This community is an aging community. It's a naturally occurring retirement community, apparently. People can't, we can't find workers for shops in town. We need dense, low-cost housing that allows people to live in our community, to come to our community and be part of it. I want my kids to stay here. I want their kids to be here. And we need a vibrant community of youthful folks. Please donate to the bridge. The Montpelier Youth kids are amazing. Thank you. Hi again, I'm Katie Trouts with Montpelier Alive. I just wanted to reiterate something that I've heard a couple of times mentioned. We really have an opportunity to lean on the pillars of strength in our community right now. And I can tell you that I could not do the work I'm doing without the people who have surrounded me, the experts, the professionals and those pillars. And I just think that for the future meetings, there are some plans to invite some of these experts to the table, but we don't know who you all are. And I've been amazed listening to some of the voices in this room and their experience. And I'm really eager to hear from those people. And I want those voices at the table. And I am extending my gratitude for those who have stepped up and helped me on this journey thus far and the community thus far. Hi, my name is Jared Duvall. I live on Elm Street. And I just want to take a moment to say just how grateful I am to live in a community with so many good people, so many brilliant people, so many people who are willing to lend a hand to each other. It's about here tonight. I think this is a time for a lot of things. It's a time for new thinking. It's a time for thinking. It's a time for creative ideas. And it's a time for ideas that have been staring us in the face. As we have conversations, I'm so grateful to Montpelier Strong and everybody who helped organize this event to do this in an open-minded way, but also with careful, critical thinking. Let's get all of these ideas on the table. And then when we do, test the assumptions, do the careful analysis. I want to share is not a what, but it is a how. And it's that as we do this, I just want to kind of reflect back to this amazing community. As we do this work, all under an incredible amount of stress, I hope and trust that we will do this together as we have in the past month in a way where we continue to turn to each other and not turn on each other. Thank you. I'm Christine Zaki. I live on Foster Street, a block away, otherwise known as the new downtown. And I just wanted to emphasize a point that was made earlier that our beautiful, wonderful city is not an island and that we are part of this larger community in central Vermont. And we have friends and neighbors who live in Barrie and Middlesex and East Montpelier and Berlin and Calis. We're part of the fabric of this larger central Vermont community as well as that watershed. And that as we move forward doing this planning, how important it is to engage with our neighbors in the surrounding towns because we can't do this by ourselves and it might even be better if we do it with our neighbors. Hi, Laughlin Smith again. When I was helping friends clean up a downtown, I was impressed by the toxicity of the mud that was on everything. And it was horrendous. I'd have to take a day off between times when I would go down there. And I'm wondering if there is some regulations that could go into effect that would keep the heating fuel out of the water. And I'm just wondering, I might be naive but I'm wondering why the mud that was all over everything was as toxic as it was. I think there are probably ways to tie down oil tanks and to have vent pipes higher and that sort of thing. And I think we need to consider that discussion as well. Hi, I'm Connor Casey. I'm one of your two state representatives along with Kate McCann. Just want to thank everybody so much for coming tonight. And as we're wrapping up this discussion, I just want to say, we all need to be advocates for the city when we leave the room. There are people in other areas of Vermont who have already forgotten that this flood happened. We need to be loud. We need to be writing letters to the editor. We need to be getting in statewide press. And when people, 180 of my colleagues come back to this town, we need to get really loud and say, hey, a natural disaster as other folks have said is a regional issue. It can't just be on the city here. And as some of the businesses came out a couple of weeks ago, we need assurances that there's gonna be some serious flood mitigation efforts. We need health folks on the ground giving us guidance and protocols. And most of all, we need some state aid. We have an $8.5 billion budget here. You know, $20 million is great from the administration, but that barely covers Montpelier. So we need to make people a whole with flexible money that can be given right away. And we need to flood the halls of the state house when we get back in January. All of us, if we have this kind of presence, we can get it over the finish line. So thanks everybody. This city is more than the piles of rubbish in the streets. It's more than the empty storefronts. It's everybody in this room. So thank everybody. We can do this. Nate, we'll do honestly. I'm Nat Winthrop, a 42 year resident. I've really been struck by the civility and the thoughtfulness and articulateness of everybody here. Glad to see the mayor and the city manager here. And Connor, thank you for that. I would just hope that at the August 22nd meeting that maybe some of our state senators and our congressional delegations will also attend. Thanks so much. We're really at the end of our time. I wanna say a couple of things about the structure from how we get from here. The first is go to the, what's it called, the padlet. You'll find it on Front Porch Forum. You'll find it on the municipal site. It's a place that you can put in your ideas. We're gonna digest all this information. We're gonna digest everything in chat from the 250 people online. It's an enormous amount of ideas. We're gonna cluster, analyze these ideas that hit the table, and we're gonna turn them into the topics for the next forum. Some of them may be philosophical, but others may be very practical and short term things that could be done by this community. There are things that we're gonna need the state house to do, where there's things we need Washington DC and there's things we need the world to do to change. But the center of world democracy isn't in Paris. And the center of world democracy isn't in Montpelier. In the Capitol building, it's where people gather and make it real. It's where people stand up for their community. They don't just vote one day. They don't just complain and ask someone to solve it. We got to do some of that, but we also have to line up. And the fundamental thing that's most amazing to me watching this conversation is the amazing number of engineers, architects, compassionate leaders, people with expertise in everything from the arts to the future of our downtown. The fact that we have employees in this room with lots of deep expertise. The fact that people are calling for us to invite in the core of Army engineers and state government, the agency of commerce, that's stuff we can do. So we're gonna look at everything that came from this conversation. Every input that goes on, you put together for us to see through the padlet and we'll be adding that up into the platform for the next meeting. At the state house on the 22nd. At the state house on the 22nd, we will break into teams to look at these things with experts, but it won't be just the experts defining things or giving us the backstory. We have to kind of go towards the action story. What are we gonna do next? Some of those things may be longterm things that we wanna look towards, but some may be things that we incorporate right now into our recovery. And we'll design in each one of these groups not just a discussion group, but we'll deliberately get to where we have a couple of action ideas that we wanna move forward. From those action ideas, we'll come out and we'll do some prioritization with everybody. And then we'll line up some work to do. Some of it may be work that the city's gonna do anyway or has already started. Some of it may be work that Montpelier Live or other nonprofits will look at. Some of it may require another level of organization as a couple of people have suggested to coordinate this kind of work today and for the future. I'm not foreseeing where we go because you'll make the decisions at the next stage of the process and then you'll have the power to move those things forward in partnership with all the forces for good within the community. So I just wanna thank a couple of folks that we haven't mentioned, the Times Argus, the Front Porch Forum, the bridge, the communication vehicles that give us the ability to pull together. I wanna thank the city. It's hard to listen to people who are struggling and they're working hard, they're working hard. It's also a difficult time for a lot of people and we have all the answers we might want. But we know that we have the ability to work together and line up for action. I wanna say that we'll also bring a facilitation team. There's a steering committee made up of about 23, 24 residents and people in community from all walks of life that are gonna digest this and that are gonna help us set the next phase of the agenda. But ultimately, leadership comes from the people and your legislatures, your city government, the work that gets done on the street of this town isn't gonna be done for us. It's gonna be done by us and led by us and then resources follow. So we can come up with big ideas and when we line up and we set them as priorities and we stand behind them, dollars will follow, the power for implementation will follow. So onward and upward, democracy in action and thank you all for being part of it tonight and at the next phase. Thank you.