 Okay, we'll call the Planning Commission meeting of May 10th to order, welcome everyone, and so the first item on our agenda is public comment, and I think we have some folks here to speak to us, huh? Kate, do you want to introduce everyone? I'm the Director of the Whiskey Partnership for Prevention, and part of what we do is we're an after-school group, and these are some students who wanted to talk to you about some concerns and hopes they have, and Whitney, she's here, is our after-school coordinator, so she's going to talk a little bit about the work they've been doing, and they've been meeting all year, not on this particular thing, but various topics, so thanks for allowing us to publicly comment. Sure. Do you want to just ask Whitney, what's your last name, please? Kiefner. Can you spell that for me? K-E-E-F-N-E-R. Thank you. Sure. So, what we've been talking about more recently and above the influence in our after-school group is what our observations are of the presence of substances in our Winooski community, and also talking a lot about the impact that advertisements have on all of us and what we're seeing as we walk through a Winooski or we go into a gas station, stuff like that, and in knowing that the well-established research shows that the presence of these advertisements can lead to substance use, so some of our students, as you can see, are here, and they just wanted to share with you some of the things that they've written down that they've observed. I'll just say everybody's name, but then they'll go through individually. We have Lucas, Steffi, Blessing, and Lambert, and we also made copies of what they roll for their observations, so do you guys want to go up there first and hand those out, and then you can come back and share your comments? Yes. How about you go up together and you want to give them each a copy of what you guys wrote? I can come up with one. Come on up. We don't bite. I'll come up with you. Let's go give them the copy. I see. Your name was Lambert? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We can share. We can share. Okay. And your name is? Super. And your name is? Blessing. Blessing. Slate. Blessing. We'll just get started and we'll have each student just share a few lines because you want to start. I see a lot of smoking near my home, outside of it, like my neighbors in the same building, and that's mainly where I see a lot of smoking and drug. I've also seen a lot of workers smoking on their break. I've noticed that it's a lot of mostly smoking and alcohol use. It seems to me that people are turning to substance use instead of anything else they could be doing to relax or take breaks. Something else I've noticed is there's a lot of advertisements for these things making them seem like they're normal and they're starting to turn into a normal daily thing for a lot of Winnowsky members. Thank you. Do you want to go Lambert? I don't need it. That's okay. Do you want someone else to go first? Yeah. Okay. Do you want to read your supposed thing? I think we're having a little shyness. Do you want to bring it or have someone else read it for you? Do you want me to read it for you? So Lambert said, I often see things related to substances in our community like cigarette bots. I usually see them on the ground when I'm leaving school to walk home. I notice people using tobacco at gas stations and behind the buildings. I also see advertisements for cigarettes and ads for beer. And Blessing said, just yesterday I saw people smoking close to our house. I don't see smoking in school, but I do around Winnowsky. One of my neighbors has a few small kids and I see her smoke a lot. That worries me. I see smoking around Winnowsky near the bus stop. And they're mostly seniors who are smoking. It makes me feel uncomfortable because I'm being exposed to secondhand smoke. And that is as bad as smoking. So I don't feel comfortable with that and that worries me. And to conclude with, would like you guys to do something about advertisement and ministry. I have no idea if I missed that point that you said before, but is this the after school group? Yeah. Yeah, above the influence and the Winnowsky Middle School. Okay. Thank you. So I was going to ask what grade everyone was in. Different grades or all the same grade? I'm fifth grade. I am fifth grade. Fifth grade? I'm a freshman. You're a freshman? I'm in fifth grade. Okay. I am fifth grade. Fifth grade as well. So, you talked about seeing these things. What, Stephie, you talked about the secondhand smoke. You talked about litter. What are the issues that you want to raise to us that you're concerned with that you think we need to take more control of? This game probably started by instead of having people have advertisements about smoking, you guys can't have advertisements about why smoking is bad and how it can affect your children. And like Blessing said, that affects the three kids that a woman has and she sees her smoking with the kids. So that can affect the kids too. And it can really ruin how they become as an adult. And yeah, you guys speaking out about having a video out there going viral, that will help. Have you got any other groups beside the planning commission at this point? We have not. Are you planning to or is this where you're hoping that it will stop? No, I think we would speak with other groups. But this is the first time that we've come and made a public comment. I know, Kate, I don't know if it was with you, but I know several years ago a bunch of school kids came before the council and talked about the same thing. So I would maybe encourage that. But thank you very much. Any questions from anyone else on the commission? Well, we thank you very much. It's very good that you came in. Thank you for letting us share. Oh, absolutely. And our students were really excited to have the opportunity to come. Thank you for sharing. Thank you. Any last words that you want to impart with us? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Are you going to stick around for the whole meeting? We have bedtimes. Bedtimes. Not better things to do. Now once you all come up and shake our hands, thank you for coming. Is Land creo right? augmentar. A blessing or blessing? bless them Bless them. Thank you. You had an apprentice with you who didn't say anything? Is he an apprentice with you? Okay, any other public comment, Joe? Okay, move on to approved minutes from April 26th. Looking for a motion and a second? Do you have a chance to read them? I'll move. Okay, any discussion? The one thing I would say is I didn't see it on the approvals of minutes. We should make note that it passed the minutes. So those under the minutes, approval of minutes from last time, it says motion by, I think it was Lauren and a second, but it doesn't say what the vote was. That's all. Note that it doesn't mean it's passed. Any further discussion? If none, all those in favor, please say aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Next item is review and update of master plan chapter list. Okay. So I sent you out in advance the last hard copy we have of the master the chapter list. And I understand that there are some edits that were never incorporated. So I think that they're, and it's in the end of your packet. I think there was an interest in walking back through those and making sure that we've captured past conversations as well as give others an opportunity to weigh in as well. And then just jumping ahead a little bit. The next agenda item from last meeting is to allow this group to have some time to think about those aspirations, the way the other commissions are doing. So I don't know, Mike, if you want to do those at the same time or do them differently. I did, I was able to pull them up so I can be the scribe here if you want. Did you want to also talk about what the other commissions are doing? Does this provide an update on where they are with the plan to as part of this or to hold that up? That's great. So, Alice, go ahead. We've had several conversations on this topic. I think this will be the third time that we've looked at this iteration and added things. For anyone who's been watching, first of all, there's some repeat of information probably that we're going to be bringing up again. I don't remember, to be honest, every detail. You remember more than I do. When I read through this, I know that we had discussed a number of additional items and I could remember three of them. Do you want me to jump in or shall we go through? Let's go through in order. I will say as a side note, I recall that most of the additions were in section 5 rather than the other sections. So we'll get to that when we get to it, I guess. So the first column of chapters for now, Introduction Overview. So we've got Welcoming Community, Diversity, Historic and History, Progressive, Innovative and Resilient, Sustainability, Resilience, Neighborhood and Sense of Community. Those are some of the things that we throw out. Anyone have any other thoughts? We had discussed at a couple of different points the idea of having stories of individuals in the plan. I think our concept was to do that and disperse them throughout all sections. But if we were going to have them concentrated in an area, I would say it would be in the Introduction Overview section. I think when Heather comes, I don't know if it will be sometime next month with the economic portion that we're talking about, she's started to do some of that. I have a couple of pictures and a story to go with it. But I think that can go all the way through. And just to clarify, these chapters are just what we're calling them because they're not really, they're just more, I mean when I look through this, there's a lot of repetition like Innovative and Resilient and then Tubeless Resiliency. Are we trying to clean this up at all? Are we just making sure that all of our thoughts are represented in some form? I think the start was to get our thoughts there. We know that there's going to be overlap in all these chapters and that's what we're going to have to work on once we get the input from the commissions. My understanding was that the chapters are, you know, one, two, three, four, five, and these are things that we want to be included within that chapter. They could turn into subsections. They may not turn into subsections. We just want to put them down as like a placeholder so we make sure that that content is considered and included in some capacity. Thank you. Yeah. So it's really trying to organize this because then we have to organize our thoughts because like I said, you know, stuff that Public Works brings in is going to overlap with community services and etc. So this is really the kind of the intro, here we are, here's who we are, that kind of stuff, okay? There's time so we don't have to answer all these tonight so just, you know... Maybe even bringing up Public Works or Parks or just thinking about this. I think all of these points are really great. I think there's something really rich about our public spaces here in Monuski. Both are natural and our public spaces. Monuski unique that a lot of communities don't have and I wonder if there's a way to capture that in the beginning. We can. I think under the community services, they're going to be talking about that and under maybe municipal infrastructure as well, might go there. But we can certainly and safe and healthy connected people. But let's make a note of it up in the intro because this could be kind of touch, the intro could be touching on things that are in the plan. Yeah, it seems like we're sort of like setting the stage of what Monuski is, right? And sort of highlighting all of these really positive highlights for our community. And I've said this many times, but I was really surprised when I learned that Monuski has, I think, 740 acres of land, something like that, 720 acres of land. It was about, I think it's 200, 250 acres of green space. Yeah, and what's that percentage of our city? It's like 20%, 25%. Yeah, but people don't realize it, and a lot of us, it is a cast of a natural area, but anything else on this part? We can always come back if someone has an idea. Economic vitality. What's EDSP? Economic Development Strategic Plan. It's one of those planning documents that will be integrated into this master plan. ACCD is agency of community. Commercial Community Development. So the things we threw in was the Economic Development Plan, Tech Hub, Arts District, Designated Downtown, other community Economic Development programs. I know Heather's working away on this, integrating some of the stuff that's been done already. I mean, my understanding is she's kind of going to take charge of a lot of this section. We may have additional thoughts, but she's got a big report to work with. So a question that came up, Public Safety Commission is, and I wasn't quite sure how to answer this because it isn't specific to them, but they raised the desire they have for something like a public use tax. So for example, if like a nightclub would be built, if this hotel ever gets built, having some kind of public use tax, that would help fund things like extra policing or whatnot. And I wasn't sure if... I sort of... I didn't really give them, I think, a great answer, but that is something they raised, and so I'm not sure if that's something that we're going to kind of streamline in this against just sort of have like a... because that touches, like I said, on all possible commissions and isn't the particular work of any one of them. And so is that something that the commission would integrate or maybe even say the opposite of that like Wynuski would not consider that sort of taxing mechanism? It's not our job to tell, to say how things are funded. That's not... If there's a concern that they have about safety, then we can talk about the concern, but we can't say like, it's not our job to say like, this is how we would fund. Right. I mean, it could be expressed as something like, you know, balanced development with like equal investment or like equal... It would be framed in sort of broader terms than like create local options tax. It would be framed as an ideal. Which is what they wanted. But it's coming from a concern that there isn't proper safety in the city right now, or what is the... Development would not be commensurate with provision of... Like that rapid development will not necessarily be in lockstep with the provision of services, absent some kind of policy mechanism. And so their question was whether this document could express that in a broad term. So something like, you know, ensure that development is in lockstep with provision of services, or like ensure that those who develop in our community all support... Right, exactly. Public services are required to... Yeah, exactly. I think it can do something like that very broad. Right. But it's up to the council. The mayor just walked in, so he can answer your question directly. It's up to the council to take that. But if we talk about, you know, I don't think we want to necessarily, you know, slow down growth, maybe put some cautionary, some kind of yellow flags in there. You know, we understand we're, you know, a developing community up and coming. There's been a lot of development. We need to be sure that we weigh the pros and cons of development, you know, and can support. Right. And I think... Because I know we've talked about that in the context of housing, and I'm sure housing would do the... You know, ensuring that development doesn't mean price people out of their homes. Right. And so I think that's the sort of thing that they were looking for. It is sort of broad expression of support for services rather than like a break on development. Any other ideas on economic vitality? Are you raising your hand? No, I'm not. We're just stretching. I don't know if this is covered at the last bullet point, but, you know, the location of Winooski, like the proximity to other... You know, it's located in such a place that it's... Every other small... Bigger, small hospitals, colleges, and all other places are easily accessible. So that... I don't know if it's going to be covered at the last bullet point, but that would be, I think, helpful here. Like our strategic location in the greater community or proximity to major employment? Yes. Yes, the proximity to, you know, major employment and, you know... Yes. We can say employment. Yeah. I think that that should be included in the recommendations that Heather... So we went through a process working with an outside consultant on economic development and they looked at kind of our strategic advantages compared to the neighboring towns. And I think Heather is... As well as all of these other sub points here. So I think she's going to consolidate that information. And I think at that point, that's with maybe this section in particular when we want to go back and see if there's anything we feel like is missing. Because I mean, that report was, you know, a pretty sizable report with a lot of things in it. And hopefully she'll draw on it. And I think all of the new members should get a copy of that too to look at. That was emailed around with the other pass reports. Okay. That should be in the box. Okay, great. That would be helpful. It's interesting when you said that, Harpa, because we had one of the kind of brainstorming sessions we had early on. Yeah. Our location accessibility to Burlington and other places was one of the big things that came up. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, there was some other... There's a pro and a con. Right. Yeah. Okay. And then I would expect some of the other big topics we know that were in there like, you know, the grocery store, hardware store, things that people want in the community. I expect that that will be in whatever comes up. Yeah. Okay. So we'll move on to municipal infrastructure. This covers a lot of stuff and we got streets, streetscape, main street revitalization program that we know is... Got the yellow light the other day, right, Seth? Wayfinding, signage, transportation, green infrastructure, tech infrastructure, energy plan. Any questions or comments, things to add to that? I think this is where we were putting the historic like we came up last time about the buildings and how the building should be represented somewhere. We thought maybe this was the chapter. Yeah. Just the historical preservation of buildings and the aesthetics being important to our community. Yeah. I don't know if under tech... When we talk about tech infrastructure, whether we're talking about, say, the availability of high-speed internet or whatever, or if we're also including under that umbrella our online presence and like the infrastructure online for residents to get information about the city. I know that there's been work on the website separate from this, but I do think we have the opportunity, as I've mentioned before, to like sort of play out sort of a visionary statement about our online infrastructure and I just want to make sure that that's included under the umbrella of tech infrastructure if not stated in a separate point. Did you get that? Yep. Okay. So online infrastructure as well as... Physical. Hardware. Physical. Yeah. I would say just reading through the Wynuski goal, I would like it somewhere to be more expressive in the city being very thoughtful about the infrastructure and making sure it's efficient, that it's cutting edge, that it's sustainable because the way that it's listed right now is just like energy resources, facility, technology, roads, sidewalks, you know, it's pretty vanilla and I think we'd want to be more thoughtful about like where we're spending our dollars on infrastructure and making sure we're doing it in a really efficient and sustainable way. So having that expressed maybe somewhere in the goal, you know, below it says like green infrastructure, but that can be like bioswales, you know, versus like having like this is how we approach our infrastructure thoughtfully. Yeah. Again, we have to be careful about being specific, I think. Well, these are all really broad. Yeah. No, I know. Efficient cutting edge sustainable is really broad, but it gives people within the city the ability to move things forward based on those ideas. So you're talking about using terms like that as opposed to I was interpreting what you're saying, identifying specific things. No, it's just inserting these terms so that when folks are looking at these and moving forward to projects, they're considering that are they efficient? Are they sustainable? Are we using cutting edge technology, you know, to keep Winooski on the forefront? So the other point is somewhere here, you know, since Winooski is so diverse and there are people from all over, people are from diverse cultural language and all of the different backgrounds. So if you could mention somewhere that we have, you know, language, you know, the pamphlets or our booklets translated into many different languages that people live here inside. And also, you know, if we have community liaisons that speak the language, I don't see it anywhere here, so that would be great, I think. So really, it's highlighting the diversity and how we can inform all the people in different cultures and languages. And that can be built into the wayfinding, right? Using graphics for wayfinding instead of language and finding ways to have that universal language for folks. And that can be built into tech infrastructure, too, making sure that the website has multiple languages represented. The current one? You can use Google Translate on it, but it's rough. It's one of the things that in the... We just are reviewing RFP responses for a new website that we highlighted. But it's good to capture here. Anything else? You want to jump in with anything, Seth, or you're just here to listen? Joe, if you have anything you want to jump in with, too. All right, housing. So one thing I've been thinking here for housing was there's a lot of focus on affordable housing, but I want us to also make sure we include workforce housing. So the differentiation being affordable housing is typically geared at those whose income is 60% or less of the average, or an annual median income, but workforce housing is more geared at those who are either making minimum wage or sort of in-middle income jobs, making sure they have a housing that's close to their place of work, which is everyone from bank tellers and nurses, like people in the service industry. That's a big focus of what the housing commission is working on. I can assure you. I've been talking to them and seeing their reports, and that's going to be this great point, and they are aware of it, and so I think that that's going to be a major section. Good. Yeah, absolutely. My hope is that going along with that, that it talks about well-rounded, not just affordable workforce, but also maybe a little higher end, too, so that we have a good mix of all kinds of folks. Housing diversity. Yeah, absolutely. So this section, I think, because we have a housing commission, it's been a little bit more sparse, but they've been going into a lot of depth with numbers and kind of figuring out where we have shortages in our current housing supply, and a lot of it is for that. I don't remember if it's like 60 to 80 to 120. Yeah, 80 to 120 range, and that's like one of the core development areas I think we'll see in the recommendations we get from them. Yeah, but we can make note of it here, too, if that's helpful, yeah. I'm capturing all comments at this point. We're in expansion. Yes, absolutely. Something else I'd like to see in this, which I'm sure they're covering, too, but for sake of adding them to our notes is not just mixed use buildings, but mixture of uses within neighborhoods so that folks could have access to community stores. We're really segmented now on under old zoning, so having that be a piece of our housing discussion. So our zoning, we purposely wrote in the ability to put neighborhood shops in residential areas so that we could encourage that. So the zoning today allows corner shops? Yes. Okay. Small, I forget what we call it, small neighborhood service, I forget what we call it, but our discussion was about the old days when I grew up, when I was a kid here, and there were little mom and pop stores, basically in every corner, and then having the ability to have either a little mom and pops, like chicks, or maybe a beauty salon, or some kind of little office or service use in the neighborhood allowing that to happen. Because you don't really see that today. I mean, there are some examples, but not really when you get deep into the neighborhoods. I do think in the current zoning, if it's a value that comes out, we should include it in here. So as the zoning's adopted over the next three to, or amended over the next three to eight years, it's still captured on you. This may be more relevant to the section, to municipal infrastructure, although it relates to housing too. And I know this is a contentious issue no one wants to bring up, but I do feel like it needs to be written down. No, it needs to be addressed somewhere, I think in this plan, is our vision for parking. So that probably goes into infrastructure, but it relates to many of these topics. And then I have one more housing comment, and I'm just gonna, I don't know how it would be addressed or if it can be addressed in here, but there's a lot of concern. We have these bigger homes that could serve, like families that get chopped up into a bunch of small apartments, that's happening every day. And if there's anything, some language or anything around, like, I guess it goes back to keeping that diversity, but I don't know if there's any way to prevent folks from chopping up houses, or if that, I haven't looked closely at what the zoning code is today, but I'm seeing it happen and I'm hearing a lot of people sort of be angsty about it. So it's obviously allowed to happen today and I'm not sure if we as a planning commission can have a conversation about that. When we did zoning, that was a big topic of conversation. And it's how do you, it was stopping some of these older homes from being chopped up, but also how do you get some of the homeowners to bring them back, the duplexes that used to be single-family homes? It's difficult, and one of the things that affects that is, if I understand correctly, by law, you're allowed to put in an in-law apartment and so there's nothing you can do, there's nothing we can do to stop someone if they have a big single-family house of making an in-law apartment and then it goes to, okay, well, if the in-law apartment is truly for an in-law when that person leaves, how do you regulate, you know, it's not being rented to someone else. So there's a way that you can get a second unit. Yeah, but is there any proof even, like, while you're still living in it, if you say, oh, it's an in-law apartment, it's not like they have to prove it, right? So it could be just a rental apartment. Yeah, but no, it's allowed to be a rental apartment. But I mean, I think the underlying, I guess from my perspective, I think that part of this conversation is whether it's a goal for us as a city to encourage increased density or not. I personally, and we'll see what the Housing Commission comes back with, but I think that that is a positive thing for our city. It allows us to diversify our housing. To an extent, right? But if everything becomes chopped up, it's actually taking away from housing diversity. And it's also, if you look at the landscape of our rental versus ownership, it can take away. A lot of people come in as investors and chop up a house and make them in frontals. So it's just keeping in mind the breath when we talk about housing diversity, of what that means. Sure, sure. I think we can talk about the mix. I'm just not sure if the like, it's implicit to me that chopping up housing is gonna have a negative net effect on our housing stock. I think that is something that we'll have to look at the report from the Housing Commission to make that determination. Because it really comes into, we'll like, let's like look at the numbers here. What kind of housing is being created? Who is it serving? Is that housing, when let's say it's being chopped up, it becomes a public building that then has to be inspected through our program and made sure that it meets a certain standard is actually creating better quality housing in the city. I mean, that's something we have to look at the numbers to know. I don't want to make assumptions about, you know, what's the net effect of that process. So I think we'll have to see what the Housing Commission comes back to, but I just want to say like, it's certainly larger conversation. And it's definitely not, I'm not trying to say pro con as far as like, I'm an urbanist. Like I think intensity is really appropriate, but I also think a mixture of housing is really appropriate. It seems like a planning commission could be a good place to have a conversation about what that means. And in the Housing Commission, obviously is to come back with recommendations, but I wasn't sure like how this conversation as it progresses gets inserted into this plan. I think one of the things that we can do as a planning commission is after we get through this process, go back and look at our zoning regs as we written, because we did, there are large areas in the city that are residential and different densities of residential. And we had long conversations about just that point and trying to preserve single family homes, but you could allow a secondary unit. We talked about cottage homes, allowing those to go in. So there was a lot of discussion about that, but since there's so many new folks, it might be a good time after this to go back and start looking at those sections again. Because when we adopted zoning, one of the things that we talked about was we want this to be a living document that's going to evolve and get tweaked as we go along. Because the last one was written in 1981 and it was 30-something years before it was rewritten. So we wanted to go. And there's a couple areas that we still have to get back to. We never did address... What's that? Yeah, we do, we have a bunch of issues. But one of them was Gilbrook, looking at that. Castlement, those things. So I think that's good. And I don't think it would hurt that we have a statement there in there, something in effect of preserving our single family neighborhoods. I'm not sure how to write it, but having something like that in there, I don't think would hurt. On this topic, probably on the goal section on the top, I would be glad to see accessibility, the term accessibility somewhere, because that way we would also represent people with disability here. I don't even see that in the statewide goal for housing down there. It's not mentioned anywhere down there as well. Yeah, and I think... Excessible housing. Right. I think maybe because of the ADA laws. I mean, if you put in new units, it's going to be ADA accessible. When you're converting old homes, it gets a little more difficult. I'm not saying it shouldn't be in there, but anything else on housing? You beat it pretty well. We're such a small section of our paper. All right, safe, healthy, connected people. Here's a big one. I'm wondering if it makes sense to break this up, given how much it seems to encompass. If it makes sense perhaps to separate out neighborhoods, for example, from this, or to separate nature from this. I don't know. I think we talked a bit about how, when we initially were like, maybe we'll have each of the commissions take a chapter, and then we realized so many of them, their work falls under this. If maybe for the plan that doesn't matter, we just have a really fat chapter. But I'm also wondering if we could break that into... I don't know. That could be broken down into safe, healthy, and connected, or it could be broken down into community and nature or something along those lines. I wasn't here for the meeting that the chapters were determined, but just for background, I think the idea that my understanding from that meeting was people came to consensus that we were going to go around the city-wide strategic vision statement and for just like clarity of framing it, the chapter was just going to be this vision statement, except for the intro chapter. And then I think the maps, I guess were prior sections were the other ones for a municipal plan, which just for the clarity I imagine, since we're kind of incorporating this, I would think that having just more self-sections would be a clearer approach than breaking them into separate chapters. But to me it's an issue that once we figure out what content's going in, maybe we can decide if we want to reframe it or not. But just because the goals are, we didn't come up with these. That's what I'm basically trying to say. These came from that, which was a document that was created long before we started working on this. Well, not long before. I don't know, from my perspective, I guess that can probably give you the history of that better than a year and a half. Got it. And it sounds like these other ones will fatten up once the commissions, like if there's different commissions reporting on that, because this one is just the planning commission putting the list together. So I imagine that we get back the other ones will fatten up. Exactly, exactly. I really have no idea, I think none of us have any idea how long each section will be until we get there. And then we can rely on whoever's writing to help us with clarity. But yeah. And I think this was the area that you said that you had a lot of additions to. I do. Are we now on it? We're now on it. So my additions that I wrote down from previous conversations, early education, the O'Brien Community Center, parks, we have river walking in natural areas, but I was thinking of some of the smaller parks that may not be covered under, natural area. Tourism, and how, I don't know, I mean this could be, I suppose, part of a number of sections, but in the past we've talked about how do we present as a city to people who are unfamiliar with the city who are visiting, both people from out of state and from other parts of Vermont. And what kind of resources do we have available? We've talked about Colchester has a good visitor's map that shows kind of destinations that may fall under infrastructure, I don't know. But also about sort of how we we brand ourselves to people from the outside and how we, you know, what our image is. I guess there's, we've had the, the results from the, when do we get the results from the branding? The branding? So the preliminary findings were presented to the council a month ago, six weeks ago. And we are now finalizing the implementation plan and the style guide for the logo. And those will go back to council for adoption, likely in June. Wouldn't it make sense for some of the the products included in this? Okay. So maybe we can just make a note here too, like brand results of branding. Consulting report. And then I think I had some like sub topics, but those are the big ones that I want noted down. Can I read back what I think you just said? Yes. So tourism, how do we present as a city to those outside the city? Visitor's maps becoming more of a destination. Focus on how we brand ourselves to the outside, branding and marketing recommendations. More or less. Sorry, did you say early childhood? Oh, early childhood. And Brian Community Center. And you said parks. And then, well, I guess I said this for infrastructure. I'm just going to say it again here. This is the same thing, but there might be something to say about it in this section, which is the online presence again. Safe, healthy, connected. Connected being the key word seems like a relevant thing to explore in this section too. And you guys will throw the library in there as well. Good call. Library. There is a historical center, museum. Maybe you should go under here too. Museums. Yeah, and that raised the other point about to me anyway, I'm not sure if it goes here or not, but just the river and, you know, its assets. Yeah. Yeah. One of the intriguing things to me was getting a chance to see is the dam and the, you know, the fish bladder and all that stuff. The first point at number three and the first point at number five are one and the same. I don't know if you want to keep this keep both of them or... I think that was because we know there's going to be overlap, so we just throw them they can be in a couple places. Okay. And what about something, you know we lost the why, which was like a great community resource. We're talking about healthy people if there's not a commitment towards creating some place, you know even if it's like a better track at the high school that people can walk on or including something about having places where people can safely recreate or work out or swim with a pool. Pool's on there. The mayor would like to, or is he stressing? Abby, can I capture that as commitment to create options for exercise and recreation? Recreation is the word used in other plans. I was also just going to make just kind of a general comment to flag something sort of generically is the concept of neighborhood identity and enhancement. Enhancement implies that there's something wrong with it. Number one and identity is something that we're really wondering about in terms of what that means. There's historical context for definition of neighborhood, but then there's something very different beyond it. Pleasure just a quick example not to take much your time, but was on a panel with some folks from Burlington talking about planning earlier this week and went into their neighborhood planning pods and how really ineffectual and unsubstantial the actual feedback that goes to those are when it comes to what actually happens. And a lot of that's because from a planning perspective it's really hard to do that, but we have the luxury here, or a big point that I made, we have the luxury here to have the community really be at a size and scope that the planning doesn't need to be done in that manner. So just something to flag when I saw those on this list. I agree because we tend to, we don't want to split the community up between east and west or back in the old days the, dare I say, flats and the heights. I mean they're really, it can happen. So we had talked at one point about having a meeting devoted, where a section of a meeting devoted to talking about community identity and I still think that that is the independent topic of conversation because it seems like there are so many different layers to it and it also seems so important. So I'd still like to make that suggestion that we sort of table that topic right now but put it on an agenda as an agenda item in some meeting in the near future. If that's possible. Is that going to chance why the word neighborhoods on this piece of paper are so old? Probably. Yeah, we had discussed doing that. I remember it was supposed to be the first meeting of December specifically. We're getting there guys, we're getting there. December's coming around again. That's true. I do have a couple of other editions. Some of these are things that I thought would go under some of the topics we already have but I'm just going to note them and throw them onto the laundry list. One is community spaces, like as a general topic. The second one is youth programs and especially summer youth programs and then I just don't want to have more comment about this because you're doing public safety but it occurred to me too like this is a topic on safe police fire that anything related to police safety or public safety would be probably go into this category. I'm sure you'll come back with more bullet points but I was just kind of like flagging that we might actually want to think about the most literal form of safety as a topic. Yeah and then at our meeting with the Public Safety Commission or when I went to their meeting they had a kind of very specific list of things they wanted but hadn't really had the opportunity yet to talk about something broader i.e. their vision for public safety in Wynuski so they have sort of really specific things like have X number of police officers by this year without sort of a nice sense of like because the vision we have for public safety in Wynuski is one of like community policing and that sort of thing so that will definitely be I imagine that their section will be again fairly lengthy in that respect because they already have a fairly developed specific schema and they're working on creating that broader vision of what they see is the future of public safety and what they see is it being specifically for Wynuski. I'm glad to hear that last part because I was a little bit afraid there that they're going to come back with this list of specific things and that's not what we need. And I made that clear that this isn't a wish list story sort of like the budget plan this is supposed to be long lasting and visionary so there are a lot about it. Good. Good. Okay. What else on safe healthy connected people? So we have healthy and I'm wondering too if we want to have something about like access to health care like access to I almost said but yeah so generally access to health care access to like medicine or home health care kind of whatever this broader category of having those kind of services. I think included in there is ambulance I mean we're called by safe mites but yeah. And that's actually one of the goals of the public safety commission is maybe to be in a place where Nuski can do its own emergency EMT services. Okay. How about Matt's stuff? I think that's pretty So just if I can jump in for just a reminder that in for previous meeting I also included a guidance document from CCRPC they review our plan as it's being rewritten and there are some required elements by state statute and most of these maps fall from that but as we go forward in the process we should kind of cross check back to that requirement as well. I meant to bring and I forgot of course we got a letter from CCRPC their initial review of our plan. They review I think it's 18 months ahead of time when a plan needs to come up and I just got letters from when they sent Burlington, Colchester and us and if you're interested I can inform to you so you can kind of see what you know what they say I mean there. So the one about us not the one about the other communities but the one about our plan, their review of our plan is in that kind of master email I sent you in all of the past with all the planning documents it's attached to that as well. Oh okay. There's a lot of pieces of paper attached to it. Yeah. Yeah I've got the Burlington and Colchester ones too if anyone's interested just let me know. Oh sorry I just I just realized that in the statewide goals for utilities and services there's the specific mention of childcare and I'm wondering if we should integrate that both into say feel the connect to people but then also into infrastructure as it seems like this is where or I guess utilities and services doesn't have to be infrastructure it could be it could just be that one. That is what I meant by early childhood education. Oh I just I thought that was the but that yeah that is I assume that that would include all forms of childcare under that umbrella. Right okay. I believe one of the required elements is floodplain and flood resiliency so we don't have a whole lot of it. Sorry can I go back to No. just to put in your minds as well we often hear about that from an economic development standpoint that the lack of childcare in the community is a real challenge for employers so there's another place where all these concepts are going to be kind of self-referential between between strategic Now I see flood resiliency is in here in the and I always like the catch all etc so anything else on the chapters I mean we expect them to grow and there will be more additions from the commissions that we're not thinking of absolutely. I think we have a good start here and so how does this process play out between now and like when the consultant or when CCRPC comes on board do we continue to add what we hear back from the other commissions or do we just kind of hold off until CCRPC is ready and what is that July 1 she's actually starting July 1 that's when the kind of their funding contract kicks in Regina will be at our meeting I'll talk more about that in a little bit and then not the first meeting in June but the second meeting in June she'll be here from then on so to follow up on that question I think how we as staff have envisioned this and certainly you can change this process is the commissions in that broadening discussing aspirations part of this effort we're back to you in June about that kind of laundry list of items and then in that work plan we sent out the idea was for the next several months that the meetings are kind of broken down by chapter and you go through those concepts together and by chapter and prioritize things and really start setting values to what you're hearing back prioritizing those values and having CCRPC start drafting language for you to look at for that document how we've set it up is again by these strategic vision areas over the next I think it's from July through October that happens you all can recommend a different process or provide guidance on how to amend that if you would like there will also be I think community process as part of that just at some point feeding back the priorities and values that you all are narrowing down to to the commission and the community to say are we on the right track we had talked about doing a public meeting early on that time has long since passed and I'm not sure exactly what what to ask the public at this point but I think we certainly have to have we're going to have to have two public hearings on our own probably once it's complete there's that requirement but at some point when we have a rough draft we might think about doing that as well just to get input so that we don't hit with here's the draft and all of a sudden someone comes in with a great idea that no one thought about blow a thing up or have to do a major headed to it I think it may be we'll get all the information back from each of the commissions and then I think it could be useful for each of us to get a copy of every commission's recommendations and then go to our section that were as associated with our or maybe split it up some I don't know we might have to split it up so that we can kind of each of us consolidate ideas into it like a clear distilled thought on each of the topics that we've been talking about or adding them but like I think that it's going to be hard to entirely collectively distill in a meeting distill all the information so we may need to split it up and then bring back the summary and report to each other in a meeting and discuss I'm just trying to think of workflow I think that's what you I think I heard you say that was the idea the staff had is July to September going you know a meeting focus on one area it might be two meetings I don't know I'm trying to figure out though because we've encouraged each of the commissions to look at all of the areas so I'm trying to make sure that the information if they give us feedback on an area that's unexpected that it gets tracked to that area you know what I'm saying I think that this is what CCRPC is going to be really good at is taking all of that universe of feedback putting that into a format that's accessible to you all by categorizing it and then allowing you to weigh in on that what are the priorities how are we articulating our values around all those pieces of information so I guess if that's the case though then wouldn't the planning commission itself need to have our own recommendations or ideas so that if it's going off to someone at CCRPC to look at they know what are you know because there are sections here that are really you know we have stuff to say about and if they're taking all of the aggregated information we aren't a part of that so one I think that's what the five part of today's agenda was supposed to be was what is that aspiration but also I don't mean to suggest that CCRPC is going to go into a room and pull stuff together and feedback a product I think that process will be I think they'll just be able to put the organizational structure around how you look at the data but then ultimately those values and priorities that you all identify out of that broad process will be what goes is fed back to the commissions the active community and then it goes into the final draft it's not I don't at least that's how I've always been in the past in other municipal plans is that it's it is a kind of iterative process for a couple it gets so let me say this it gets a lot messier before it gets cleaner and I guess I envision we're going to have the commissions coming to us in June that'll give us a chance to go over with them what they're recommending and then between July and September we'll have meetings after we've absorbed that a little bit get back into it with RPC here and kind of talk about those things so I think to me it's kind of doing an organized step by step where we have the input and then RPC will kind of meld it together for our review I will just note because I'm the housing commission person that the housing commission is out of cycle with all the other commissions so we're not expecting to get their feedback until August I think it is not acceptable I'm obviously not thrilled about it because they think they have valuable input that could affect every section of the plan so I think that's our only option well so I think we're talking about a couple of different things here and I look to UNSF I have not been to any one housing commission meeting I think what they're really focused on right now is understanding the universe of what we currently have and trying to set up some trying to recommend targets and tools around the values that we've identified for our housing stock I don't think that quite frankly I don't think that that precludes you all from having some of those conversations I do think the density conversation, those kind of value conversations those are going to be the conversations our community has for the next decade so I think having that take place in a couple of different areas is not bad I think more voices in that conversation is better but yes they are off-cycle and they are working really hard and doing a lot of work so I think that you might think about that and how you in the meeting, the content, the strategic vision areas you focus on first that might be the last one you focus on for example go for it let me just add to that too I think the goals will be present far before the policy level decision which is really what the plans say what we want we don't want to prescribe in the plan specific policy execution these are the goals, the policy things that they're working on towards for the recommendations to in August are really secondary to that and not appropriate for the plan in terms of detailed content anyway it's those goals we want to extract from the first and they make great strides on those sort of principles or their goals their high level goals without numbers attached to them already so there's some good progress so that I think will feed into the document the entire level that doesn't have the specificity of what will come out in August Jesse is that something you could maybe communicate to Heather about I mean I can but when I went to the last housing commission meeting I asked if there was anything they could give us in June to guide us and she said we're not going to be ready to do anything until August in terms of the housing section and I think even if you just got some broad vision stuff that would be helpful for us earlier if possible I'm hoping that we're not going to get from the different commissions a lot of specific things I thought we were clear that we want aspirations about high level so I think you were clear on that I think quite frankly that's part for people I think it's much easier for volunteer policy makers to get down in the weeds and to think about specific service delivery systems so I think it's your ideally I would love it to be your all roles like Lawrence with Public Safety to help pull those value statements out of the weeds that they're talking about I think you're going to get a mix and I don't think we while we want to give them guidance and help shape some of those conversations I don't think we want to at this point say don't give us something I think we're in broadening we want to say give us the give us what you're talking about and thinking about and then how that translates into the values for our community for this document is the work of this commission as well I mean I don't know I guess my understanding of where things were with the housing commission was that the municipal plan could not be on the agenda until later in the summer because they had other things that they had to get done was kind of what I understood that doesn't mean that there's not going to be output there that's valuable right in the plan and that they can be passed along in terms of work updates I think the point is they're trying to get the very they're very targeted on getting to these policy level conversations and while appreciating good to get there they had to get through the goal piece first so in doing the goal piece I think they're going to innately provide a lot of what's what's being looked for at this levels has been my perception of those conversations so I feel like they've gotten that yeah I mean they've come up with those principles the 7 plus principles to start with and I think once you look at those and maybe are they inviting we get those well I think one thing is that they should come in in June regardless and tell us what they've got where they are and if if they're not ready right they're not going to say I want a 109 foot ladder fire truck like some difference we can there's a ton of work product that has come as you know has come out of my housing commission so I think it is valuable to have you all see and have access to absolutely okay great and you're right I think it is going to be it's going to be some work that we have to do to melt this all the stuff we get into a plan so how as I say that how are the different commissions coming along I know we've heard about housing we've heard about public safety public works I know it was in the you know how public works come along yes I believe tonight at their meeting they have they are approving a written document that they've been working on for the last couple months good we can check in with them I think public safety was sort of I think confused they had had it seems like contradictory conversations with Paul about what like the timeline was and what was expected so I'm really glad that we established the legumes because I think that has been helpful for them in terms of understanding kind of more clearly what we want from them but their so their progress is sort of odd in terms of like they're kind of updating a document that they've already done for something else and then so it's but I think they're on track to be ready by June I'm with the schools you know between these two meetings I travel a lot so I'm going to be you know connecting with the school this coming week and then go from there that's my plan I didn't say this to put anyone on the spot believe me I'm the last one to put anyone on the spot I still have to connect with Joe when it starts yes sir just one recommendation on that it might not be a bad idea for us to formal place on their board agenda at some juncture which is something that we could help with from a staff perspective just to make really clear what's being asked for in a public setting Harka if you think that would be helpful that's something we can help with from a formal request standpoint too just he has sent an email does he have made a formal email right yeah I didn't mention specifically going to a trustees meeting I think that's a good idea what I did talk about was when we talked with them about it at the joint city council trustees meeting last year or the fall one of the things we talked about is the school has done a lot of their own visioning process recently and has a lot of information to give that they don't need to repeat some of these planning processes they have done a lot of it I haven't provided that the way I've provided the other documents because those are city documents that I provided I did mention in that email the request for those planning efforts so we're not repeating but I think it is a good idea to get some official time on an agenda so I can help you and I can work on that okay and community services I after I got that email I reached out to Ray and I have not heard back from him so I will I will do that again I know he and Paul and I sat down Paul took a ton of notes but they're gone yeah so I'm hoping that Ray can either provide some kind of outline or he will meet with me again and I will take those notes but I haven't heard from him so I can poke him and I think there is some documents I'm pretty sure it sounded like he really had a clear vision about what he wanted to include and I know they did talk about the last committee services committee as well and their next one is on May 30th okay well I'll send Ray an email tomorrow or Monday and just we have to find some role for Abby over there uh did we cover we talked about a lot of stuff I'm just doing that item 5 discussion of aspirations for the community anything that people want to throw out? what's that? I think we're ready for item 6 well I think I just wanted to flag again I do feel that the neighborhoods conversation is worth having and it may not be now when we don't have very much time but I do think that we should have of all the topics that one I think as a planning commission like we are an appropriate body to be really talking about that and delving deep into it in a way that I don't necessarily think the other commissions will necessarily do and I think we should devote real time to it so and I think it's going to be a topic that's going to be addressed in this plan somehow okay alright how about city updates okay I have a bunch of updates um so thanks to Pallas and Abby who have been participating in our planning and zoning manager interview process we are recommending or the interview team is recommending final candidates coming for the planning commission just as a reminder it is ultimately my decision who we hire so what I'll be looking for you I'll be looking for feedback from you all on the two candidates presented but we'll not be looking for a boat or a even a survey recommendation just your comments so at the next meeting on the 24th those two candidates will come in those interviews will be on an executive session so it will be a little bit of a different kind of meeting um what I was hoping we could have a quick conversation about is questions we follow a pretty prescribed interview process so questions that you would like us to be sure to address with the candidates at the 24th meeting we're thinking about three or four questions per candidate I'm sorry when you said that it's going to be a different format because the interviews are going to be during executive session executive session of this of this so we're calling when they're coming to talk to us in an interview okay and you're asking for three to four questions in advance to ask them so I just want to have a quick conversation with you all about what are the big things you want to hear from potential candidates or any managers to me what drew you to come to the plot what about the city you probably asked that well it's important for you to hear the answers to and the way that the questions framed in the previous interviews it said what are some opportunities and challenges you see and everybody talks about the opportunity but very few talk about the challenges and I think it'd be really helpful to know their perception of the challenges before they take the position and also something about your background the virus with residents maybe they can talk about on that same thing some of their experiences in dealing with opportunities or challenges and then specifically I'd be interested in hearing about their experience with creating municipal plans or they've been a part of the master planning process in their other communities or jobs so that will be the agenda for next week's meetings or next two weeks so we're going to kind of master planning the process for a moment so that was my planning zoning manager hiring update just a quick update Heather's sick tonight so it's not that she is not interested I don't want to be here but hey germs to yourself please germs to yourself yeah I can hear about her hands I call it foot from mouth disease foot from mouth so just on CCRPC we are Regina and I have been going back and forth on the contract we've come to agreed terms so we'll be executing that this week and as I mentioned she will actually be here for the 24th I thought it would be interesting to hear her views too on the candidates she will not be here then for the second meeting in June but then here at the last meeting in June so that will officially prop that process I want to make sure you knew that the council and the staff are having the annual retreat on June 2nd where we take the current strategic vision areas and figure out and essentially make our work plan for the year so what are the what are the administrative implementation work we are doing this year to implement the council's goals so that's an open council meeting will be from 9 to 1 at the OCC on June 2nd so people are interested in attending and of course in hopefully next year when we do this process and have the master plan develop that will also help guide that conversation and then Main Street Revitalization so we are hard at work on next steps we have four areas of focus where we've outlined a bunch of activities we need to do in the next couple of weeks and months the grant and subsidy applications of course identifying other revenue streams with some of our key partners like the utilities telecoms the state funding departments and then there are a bunch of other efforts that are tacked on like completing our water and wastewater rate study and looking at the housing recommendations and things like that so we are often running and I'm sure you will hear much more about that in the next couple of months our June schedule do you know what our meeting dates are 14th yeah and the 28th so as I said you don't hear call us we have to do our election of officers so let me know if you're interested in being are you the vice chair now if you want to stay there if you want to move up and boot me out I think you do a good job no I know but I'm leaving up to you we can talk offline yeah we should do that probably the first meeting in June so it's I guess it doesn't matter because it will take effect as of July 1 right and in theory we could also have new appointments after July so you may want to hold off your call but we want to do it in July yeah some of our terms are up some of the terms are up so if people decide they don't want to be well I don't know it's I guess up to the council but there are some terms that need to I think in my opinion we really need some continuity right now I mean really badly in terms of steam rolling into this thing that's going to run for a while and that's been something that was voiced when all of you were appointed is that we hope that this is a group that is able to take us across the finish line so there's my heartfelt pitch so we're not working in a boot any of us is what you're saying yeah but I think they're stagnant I think yes so you and I I think are up is there another one someone else must be well I don't think that's possible because I've only been on the commission for a year yeah but you might have been appointed to fill a spot yeah that's on your last agenda that I can't it's connected I know it's said in here that there were three terms that were up but at least when I went before the council last March they said that I was being appointed for a junior term starting in July so I'm confused can you try to set the whole thing through a blanket appointment document that we should just go back and review because we did we did sort of the reset I don't know what that means but okay we did like a bunch of a slate of appointments at one time to reset a bunch of terms do you know when did that happen you led the conversation beautifully that's great we had a lot of night meetings this week I'm not at my swearness it was I think fall got it yeah it may have been winter so we'll have you said that June it's 14th through the 28th is that right so we'll have two weeks we'll have like three weeks between meetings cause May is five weeks cause May is a little bit funky and maybe in one of the June meetings we talk about schedules through the summer I don't know if people are going to be around or not yeah I won't be here on the 14th I don't know and I won't be here on the 28th or July 19th so yes we should talk about if there's a meeting where there's going to be five of us not here reschedule but at this point everyone will be here at the next meeting on the 24th of is that right 24th of May and 24th of June no no no you said the meetings oh 28th of June yeah 14th of the 28th it's past eight o'clock it is so everyone will be here on the 24th of this one yeah this one okay anything else we have to talk about anything anyone bring up okay we're looking for a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn second all in favor okay morning