 So I'm calling to order the March 8th meeting of the planning commission, modular planning commission. The first thing we have to do is approve the agenda. We don't need a quorum to approve the agenda, right, Mike? Or anyone? Should, we probably can't approve anything. So we should probably just note that it's a, unless somebody shows up that this is just a working session that we can't take any official action. So yeah, so let the record show that we have three of seven members. So we don't have a quorum. This is not an official meeting. Anything we do here is just preliminary and is as no authority. OK, well, given that, I'll start with some comments. So, you know, thanks everyone for holding down the fort. The last couple of meetings. I had some personal emergencies and my mother passed away. She passed away the day of our meeting two meetings ago. So I was going down to see her in the hospital. And she passed away a few hours after I got there. So, you know, that's been the whole month for me kind of dealing with that. But I'm feeling ready to jump back into things. So I'm glad to see that everybody held things down. Seems like we made some progress last month on the subcommittee for continuity and structure and some transportation stuff. So it'll be nice to learn about that. Do you guys have any notable updates from the last two meetings that you think I should know that I would have not maybe missed in the minutes or something? I think we both missed the last meeting. Yeah, but I don't. Right, other than the residential density caps, right? We talked about two meetings ago. All right. Yeah. Yeah. I think we wanted to have a full group for that conversation. I know how to do that currently. Yeah. How receptive do people seem to be in that discussion? I think receptive. Yeah, I mean, it was. I think we were all interested to learn more and see if it made sense. That was my impression. Yeah, I mean, I don't did ever call what Barb said. I think maybe she was less receptive. But it seemed certainly to me different than the parking discussion. More, more openness, I thought. Yeah, I think Barb was more interested in this than the parking, for sure. OK. Yeah. So in the parking, things interesting, because we just haven't had the right people at the right meeting, because we do have four members in favor of doing making the change to parking. But. Yeah. I feel regretful that things got, I don't know, to adversarial, probably about it. Yeah. But. I think, like, yeah, yeah, this is unfortunate. OK. Well, that sounds good. You know, I guess the next thing we can do is we can just jump in to Mike has a resolution for the Transportation Fund to fund Confluence Park. Do you want to wait since we don't have a core mic? We could. You know what kind of thing of it? Barb might show up. Erin might show up late. So since we're not on the agenda right now, we'll just if we get a quorum, we'll we'll have an official meeting and we'll do it then. Sound good? Yeah, that would be good. I mean, because we really, if we can do it, it really would be good to do it. Now, the grant application went in today, so they're going to attach this after Wednesday's City Council meeting, because it's going to be approved by City Council at that time. So really, it's just approval to go and apply for a grant for everyone who knows Confluence Park is part of the one Taylor Street, 61 Taylor Street site over by the railroad bridge. They're going to it's about an eight hundred thousand dollar project and they've already gotten three hundred thousand in grants and this would be another hundred and sixty seven thousand. And then they've got another plan for another chunk that they're applying for. So it's just a requirement that we get planning commission approval in order to submit the grant. So Mike, who's the grant to? It's downtown transportation funds. So it is Gary Holloway is the coordinator on that one. Is it ACCD? OK, OK, yeah. Is there going to be public art for this? Like we talked about that before for the city plan, having more public art. I don't know if they've got it in this particular one. It's going to make a fully accessible route down to the water. Boat ramp for people kind of get kayaks into the water, stuff like that. I don't know if there's going to be any sculptures or anything, but it's not to say that they that it wouldn't be possible as they're going along to include some public art in there. But it would probably have to be something like a sculpture and something that can survive because it's below flood stage. It's got to be something that's going to survive. You know, pretty substantial flooding. Oh, so it's like the bank that they're mostly developing then. Yeah, OK, not not the top part where the picnic tables are now. Yeah, it's going to pretty much connect that the picnic table area down to the water, all that scrub, they're going to remove a bunch of fill. It's going to remove material so that way they can create it because you can't add material, but you can remove material from the flood plain. So that was the that's the strategy they're going to be taking. OK. Cool. The River Conservancy Project. Oh, OK. So it's not the city taking the lead on it. We are we are the lead, but really, Ricardo and the the River Conservancy were really the have been the kind of the folks that have been spearheading this effort. They coordinated with. McBride, McBroom, with the engineering and all the site work and the plans and the designs. So they did a lot of the initial work. And now they're coming in because of city property. They're working with the parks department to. Coordinate the construction of it. OK. Yeah, I think that would be my feedback for it would be to, you know, make it a. More than just access, like some kind of feature for the downtown is like a part of an attraction of some sort, which would mean some art or something. OK, well, if we if we get a fourth person, we can briefly go back to that and work on that. OK, so, Mike, what did you what were you thinking about telling us about the transportation subcommittee and the ideas there? So really, what I kind of wanted to go over with with you guys was rather than start because we didn't get a chance for the transportation committee to meet, I thought maybe it would be helpful just to have the planning commission talk a little bit little broadly about how to work with. What the transportation committee. So let me take a step back. We got a recommendation, which we all received from the transportation committee of what they wanted to see as the transportation implementation plan. And we recognized at that time that it really didn't entirely fit our format. And it maybe had some things that maybe we could keep and maybe some things needed to get moved around. But there was a spirit of what they wanted to see. The transportation committee met and they kind of. You know, I in my conversations with mostly with Barb, you know, I thought they went a little bit more removed a little bit more than I thought I would have expected because, you know, when they wanted to reshape it, they really, really, you know, it was a nine page plan that went down to about a page and a half. And I was thinking that, you know, are we are we capturing everything that we had intended or that is the spirit of what the transportation committee had put together? And I really hadn't expected the subcommittees to want to take quite as big of a of an axe to some of these plans. I kind of thought the reviews would be a little bit more targeted. And that's up to you guys, how much you guys want to go and amend these implementation strategies. And I as a member of the transportation committee, I can provide some context for I think what we're trying to do. I mean, Barb did, of course, most of the reorganizing. But it just, I mean, to me, when I read that transportation plan, I just I just got lost in it. And I can't imagine that, you know, I think that we really want the goal of having a city plan that people can really look at and and think about and have goals. And I just to me, it really felt lost. I got I got lost in it. And we really shortened it because because of that, I think, and the feeling that, you know, some of the items would be covered in other chapters or some of them seemed redundant. There was my memory is there's only one item that we really took out, which was something about aesthetics, which I think are hard to measure. And I wasn't even clear on why the transportation, why aesthetics are what exactly they were trying to get out there. But I mean, we can certainly discuss that with the transportation committee. So anyway, that just to provide some context on that. Yeah, so they and I agree that that the plan was definitely organized differently than I had originally been trying to guide them. But at a certain point, I kind of needed to let them find their find their common ground because they were working and had a lot of internal conflict that they were trying to resolve among their members. And so I felt it was better to kind of let them work through their issues. And if we had to go through and kind of restructure things, and then we could do that. So big picture, there are kind of a couple of ways that that this chapter and all chapters can be organized. And the way the transportation committee organized theirs was really by mode. So they had their aspirations, which I think we all thought were very good. But then they went to their goals and their goals were by mode. And most other plans didn't kind of go in that direction. So they went through and then had, you know, goals for bikes, ped, public transit, car share, those those types of pieces. And it started to make it difficult because goals you kind of want to have goals that are something that would somewhat be measurable a little bit. You know, they directly might not be, but they kind of invite a benchmark. And when you're going for bike and ped, it kind of it started to make it much more difficult to to see how that was going to go. You know, another way of organizing it could be to also look at it by infrastructure. So rather than looking at bikes and peds and cars, we can talk about sidewalks and bike lanes and roadways and talk about the infrastructure itself. Rather than, you know, so rather than talking about making. Biking easier as a goal, we can talk about bike lanes and the infrastructure itself and start looking at the actual infrastructure as opposed to the mode, which would be another way to look at it. But most of our plans, and this was where I was going to see if, you know, if we wanted to kind of reshuffle things in this way, was usually we were organizing more by the keywords. So if I was thinking of transportation, I would be thinking about safety, attractive, efficient, integrated, cost effective, sustainable. These are all things that we can then set a goal and then say, you know, maintain, evolve, transform. What are we trying to do with safety? Are we trying to maintain our level of safety? Are we trying to improve our level of safety? Are we trying to maintain or improve our efficiency or how integrated our network is? And usually the other plans, that's what they were talking about. So, you know, when we were talking about housing, we were talking about increasing rental housing development or increasing the number of neighborhoods that have a park or recreation or improving the safety and health of our homes in the neighborhoods. So it was a little bit targeting more of those keywords. And so I was thinking that might be the better direction to go is at least for the start. If we went to a keyword, then we can take what they had for strategies and then kind of shuffle them out of, you know, if we talk about safety, then we could take it out of bike and ped safety and just put that under safety and go through and say, we want to have safety. And so the spirit of what they want is still there. So have we have I don't think I've seen the updated version from the committee. Did that go out from the subcommittee? I thought that was in the agenda last time. OK, but I can certainly resend it. It's definitely possible. I missed it. I thought I just saw the old one. Oh, there were buys. OK, I opened the wrong one. OK. Sorry, I was looking at the wrong thing. So, Ariane, did you is this still there? Like all the language in black is their strategy language that they had? Was it just the goals that you guys really significantly updated? Um, sorry, I haven't just trying to look for it myself. And I don't have another computer with me, so it's a little bit awkward. Um, yeah, I mean, Barton, all that, but I think she also just it looks a lot shorter because she took the maybe the strategies out of it. Um, let me let me see if I can find this. Hold on. And I think that the formatting of the original one, everything was like shoved over to the right. So it might just I mean, a decent amount of it might just be because the formatting has changed, but they also had like strategy language. And then like, well, they had like sub goals, which was confusing. I got lost in it too. So I definitely appreciate the idea that we're trying to streamline it and make it a little bit cleaner and neater as long as we're still maintaining the intent of what the sorry, if you can hear my ear on the background, as long as we're maintaining the intent of what the committee was trying to do. Yeah, unless of course there's something we disagree with. But right. And we're probably not perfect. I mean, I'm sure we're perfect interpreters of what the committee wanted to do. I mean, does it make sense as a next step for the Transportation Committee to meet with the Transportation I mean, the Planning Commission Transportation Committee to meet with the Transportation Committee and just go through some of the working group or something just to avoid confusion. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Good. Good point. The Transportation Working Group to meet with the Transportation Committee. And we could just sort of explain our reasoning and make sure that we're capturing or their things. I mean, I feel like Mike, you're saying there are things we are missing, but I'm not exactly clear on what those are. I mean, other than, yes, we did take out the aesthetics thing. And we would we would discuss that with the committee, but it just it seemed it seemed so you know, like hard to measure that we felt uncomfortable with it, I think. And I think my my thought would be that we should try to work out. A revised implementation strategy before going back to the Transportation Committee, because they they I mean, I worked with them for months on this and to try to go and coordinate, you know, kind of a three way coordination between us and the two groups of folks in the transportation, the two camps, I think is going to be very difficult. I think we would be better off to come up with a revised plan that we think reflects things and we think we're comfortable with knowing that we can still make amendments and then and then kind of let them know that this is how we've restructured it for, you know, continuity with the rest of the plan. So that way it's kind of of the same format because they did kind of take their own path. We've kind of revised it. We've moved it, but we tried to capture the spirit and then kind of let them comment. But I think if we give it to them, they could they could end up going back and forth for months again. Yes. Are you are you saying and if you are saying this, I like it. Are you saying that we could basically present it back to them once we feel like it's in a place where we like it? That would be my thought just just to go through and say, hey, you know, if there's something we missed, we're more than happy to go through and make amendments. But, you know, we, you know, we were responsible for making sure that all the plan chapters follow a similar format and, you know, the continuity subcommittee, you know, that, you know, we want to have a certain uniform format for things. And so we had to take your plan and revise it to match our format. But we did try to keep those key elements and those the spirit of what you guys were trying to do. But at the same time, you know, we had to shuffle some things along. And if we've lost something that you guys thought was important, let us know and we can, we can add that in or reflect it. But I think if we try to get with them, you know, the, if you ever saw some of the detailed sheets of the things that I had from them of the Excel tables, well, they weren't really Excel because they were in Mac, but they were these, you know, these, these buried basically Excel forms that just went, you know, pages and pages and pages of, of different ideas and ways of doing things that of strategies and then adding them in and taking them out. And it was a long process. And it was, you know, good for them for, for, you know, making the commitment and sticking to it and getting it done. But at the same time, I wouldn't want to try to. And again, they eventually reached a point. They just did the sub goals. They never really got to the strategies because they just reached a point. They were just like, look, I don't, we don't, you know, you know where we're going, you guys can fill in the details. Because I think even they recognize the fact that if, if we're going to argue about every single strategy, this is going to never end and they had other things to do. So I think we can meet their spirit. I think that would be good. So now that I'm looking at this and I apologize, I didn't look at it beforehand, but I, I mean, I think that's what the committee has tried to do here. So there are sub, are working groups. Sorry. So now it's back in, it's in aspirations, goals and strategies. So it's in the format of, of what the other chapters are. I actually, I really like this addition of the policy project or program or plan piece, which we didn't specifically do in the other one, but I think that's another way that we can organize the strategies so you can pull out what are the plans, what are the policies, what are the programs. So I think that's helpful. I think it just overall makes a lot more sense. I think they've taken what the committee provided in nine pages and made it a streamlined document that much more closely reflects what we're trying to get to, but also showing their work so we could show it to the committee and they can see what changed and make sure that we're not altering what it is that they were going for. So I feel like this is all a step in the right direction. But Mike, are you saying you think there's more work to be done on this document before the committee, the transportation committee sees it again? Yeah, I think there was more, you know, some of the things, unfortunately what they grabbed, like the maintained sidewalks, yeah, some of those ones that like the one I had highlighted was actually not a strategy. I mean, we could make it a policy. But I think there were different, there were a number of sub goals that ended up remaining in there. So they're still in there, but now they're at the strategy level, but maybe the wording isn't... Yeah, because it's got the aspiration. So talks about residents and commuters can live and work in Montpelier without a car becomes the aspiration. The goal here is walking in Montpelier would be safer, easier and more attractive. So again, this one was kind of organized in, with sticking with what they had for the organization. But then isn't that a, the maintained sidewalks and crosswalks in excellent condition, including snow clearing? Isn't that the strategy now? Yeah, so, yeah, with the converting it to a policy, which is how we spend our money. So I had that one eventually, if we wanted to maintain our sidewalks and crosswalks in excellent condition, then it's part of our snow removal program. Which, you know, we've got a program for that. It's the program that needs to be improved. So I think it's just how we usually get there. Okay, so maybe the strategy, at the strategy level, it just needs to be updated a little bit more to fit the format of the organization. Yeah, let me, I'll do this real quick. So this is what I've been kind of working on, on the side to try to go through and reshuffle things. So looking at the aspiration, and this was just going to be something I was going to suggest for consideration. So really the aspiration is in Montpelier, it is easy to live and work without a car. So usually in most of the other chapters, we then have things that help explain that we could, that we can break into goals. So, you know, our aspiration in housing Montpelier will have healthy housing market that provides adequate supply of housing in a mix of types, sizes, occupancies and levels of affordability. So we've got a number of keywords that then become the goals. You know, maintaining a mix of housing type sizes, occupancies, so those types of arrangements. So my thought was, we keep the spirit of what they wanted, which is to be able to live and work without owning a car. This is achieved through our dense mixed use land use policies, system of complete streets and pathways that prioritize active mobility with shared mobility opportunities and robust trans public transit that are well integrated with each other. So we, you know, the thought being if we can accomplish these five, six things, we would be able to live and work in Montpelier without owning a car. So we need good land use policies, complete streets, shared mobility. And we could combine shared mobility and public transit. You know, there were a couple of things I had put together and taken apart. So then we could, and these lower ones, the red ones were the ones I kind of started adding in, and the lower ones were the ones I kind of started pulling around to move. So we would have a goal of maintaining our mix of uses in certain districts and progressively higher densities and neighborhoods as we get closer to downtown. So that's our goal. How do we do that? We do that by supporting the land use plan strategies that achieve the goal of densities and mixed uses. And there are a number of them that are kind of in here, some of which may get, I put a note here that we may take a bunch of these and just kick them to the land use plans. That way they don't appear in the transportation plan. Cause I don't think we need to talk about how we make dense, mixed use neighborhoods because it's all really part of the land use plan. What's important is, which is we've having a number of plans that we support the land use plan strategies that achieve those densities and mixes of use. Then we would continue to improve our transportation system, such that all users are considered and accommodated on every street and pathway in the city. So that's really supporting our complete streets. We aren't current, we don't currently have it. So we need to continue to improve it. And then we have a number of strategies that, that were in that I started to move around that would plug into that. Supporting complete streets. And then we have a number of strategies that we're looking at. Greatly increased shared mobility opportunities in many modes, including ride, share, bike, share, e scooters, ride, hailing and taxi services. Public transit will continue to be affordable and more convenient. And available throughout the city. And some of these are just suggestions of, you know, trying to capture where they're at and where I think we would want to go improve multimodal. And then we have a number of strategies that we're looking at. For example, you know, there's been. A lot of focus. And I saw it in both their draft and one barb work done. For really trying to make it a goal to have those. Strategically located parking facilities with the transit to the downtown. And so. And then we have a number of strategies that we're looking at. And then we have a number of strategies that we're looking at. Not making that the goal, but making. The multimodal network, the goal. So those are the types of things I was looking at. And then rather than have the modes in the first one, because most in their version, they had all the modes in aspiration. I thought all of the transportation modes. Or infrastructure. And then we have a number of strategies that we're looking at. Our safety, efficient, attractive, and cost effective to maintain and meeting the needs of all users. So. This would be more targeted towards. So while this kind of looks at the system. And a B would kind of look at the very specifics of, you know, how do we make. Things safer. Well, by having a designated downtown pedestrian zone and reduce speed limits to 15 miles an hour. And then we have a number of strategies that we're looking at. And then we have the enforcement of speed limits. Safe street education programs. So these are all things that are already in their plan. And all I did was move them around to kind of drop them into, these are the things we do to be safer. These are the things we do to be more efficient. I haven't finished. I was just working on this. But again, the thought was, or at least if. You know, meeting. You know, I was just coming up with ideas that I was going to go over with the transportation committee, but we never got a chance to kind of meet. So I thought, at least if we have this discussion. Cause they can, we can organize by mode, or we can organize by infrastructure, or we can kind of organize by keywords. And I kind of. Most of them are by keywords. And I would kind of say, you know, I think that's a better direction to go. Very on. Do you think that what Mike's talking about is compatible with what the working group has been talking about? Sorry. I apologize that I'm not more. I didn't get a chance to look at everything before this meeting. And I'm having trouble kind of. Trying to look at it during the meeting. I'm not going to look at it during the meeting. I'm not going to look at it during the meeting. I'm trying to look at it during the meeting. I just, I'm just a little bit confused about. You, so Mike, you're basically saying you just want to organize it differently. Then bar. Put it together. Is that. Is that correct? I mean. Yeah. I mean, I think. Where. A number of the things that got dropped. You know, I mean, you know, you know, like the strategies, I mean, some of the key things of what we're trying to do is to make sure that what we come up with for strategies. Are. Are things that are going to affect change and make something different. So that was why we've always talked about, you know, we don't want to support things. We don't want to encourage things. We want to. You know, we want, we want to have. You know, aspirations, goals, and then strategies. And the strategies are really actionable. And so. Yeah. I think, I think in number of cases, it is important to have a policy for something. You know, we've got places where we say, Hey, we should have a policy that says this is, this is our goal and policies or how we use our money. And you know, how we, how we handle our, our selves. In. Doing our jobs. A lot of times like keeping sidewalks clear a policy simply adopting a policy that says, hey, we should make sure we keep our sidewalks clear is not going to keep our sidewalks clear. I think we, we need to go through and reflect that in what is the program. You know, do we need more money in in doing that because really what it is is this is the plowing program, which, you know, we already have. We have a street sweeping program. We have a line painting program. They may not always entirely be referred to that way by by the people doing the job. But when I talk to the department heads, they get that that's a program. It's an ongoing thing. And it costs money. And so we really shouldn't have a policy about line striping. It's really if we need to improve our line striping program, how are we going to do that. And I think what we lost in a lot of Barb stuff was we deleted all the things that talked about the programs that do these kind of then converted what was a sub goal into a policy and just said, you know, that's there and I thought that was kind of missing some of the important takeaways that we're trying to get to. And yeah, it's going to add a bunch and some of the redundancies and I talked about this with Barb at the last meeting and offline that a lot of the redundancies are okay so if something's a strategy for safety and is also a strategy for, you know, something else, that's fine to have that strategy appear multiple times because we've talked about, you know, in john system for his, which he showed at the last meeting. We're going to be able to link these so we can there. Once it gets into that Excel program that john had. It, you're going to have one, you're going to have the strategy let's say, you know, have the designated down and participate in designated downtown program. And that is a program that's going to help us accomplish historic resources goals, transportation goals, economic development goals. And what there is there's a link farther over and maybe it's one that's visible maybe it's not visible but it's already linked to all these other goals. Once we're done we just, we write down all the goals and we will. And then we write down all the strategies and we link the strategies to the goals. So it's only going to appear once in the table, but it's linked to six or seven different goals. I tried to explain to barb don't worry about the redundancies. That's fine, we can have redundancies and we should keep those in we should keep those places where we talk about like certain redundancies, as I mentioned earlier we want to avoid like restating all of the land use goals of how we're going to accomplish. So that makes use high density downtown. Well that's in our land use plan so all we really need the transportation plan is we in the transportation plan support all of the goals that are over there. And rather than restate them all. Well that's that's helpful. The next step is just for barb and Aaron and I to email. I mean, I think, or you, maybe you finish your, did you want to finish your thoughts and edits and send it to us and at the last meeting we were going to take too much time here because I at the last meeting we were going to, we had decided that, you know, barb and you guys and I were going to meet so the four of us. Okay, so that's already okay. And then we, and then we didn't get around to scheduling the meeting and I thought it was, you know, at the time I was like well I've been on my own chewing on this in my head on what would I do to, you know, I didn't want to just kind of drop in and just. So I figured I would take it. And come up with an idea, start to put some of the pieces together and then say right this this is another way we could look at the structure. And maybe we can accomplish what you guys were trying to accomplish in your revision. We'll meet what's the spirit of what the transportation committee was trying to do, but try to better match it to our other other ones, and I thought it would be easier if I kind of put something together to. And if we don't like it that's fine. You know, if I put some time into it and you guys think that's not the best direction and that's fine too. I think it's easier to respond to when you have something in front of you. I have some thoughts and this is something I need to probably bring up later with the full planning commission. And it really has to do with with stepping back I mean. I thought that the working groups were going to be about substance and trying to identify substance and ideas and to generate you know maybe new strategies for the aspirations are already in place and you know stuff like that. It seems like we've spent a lot of time on form, and we actually have a working group in place for form and we have john and you who both have a lot of ideas about form. And I feel like it's just not an area that we need to develop out I feel like we have ideas and don't need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to form I feel like, like, I mean is it correct to think that like like you and john kind of have a vision that seems to work together. We have the continuity structure subcommittee that has put some things forward that we all liked. So I mean, I'm inclined to just start asking the working groups to not spend so much time on structure anymore and let's let's use that time for substance which is more about it's much more productive. I also would add the like, I have a view that I have a look at qualitative data background, myself, mostly I mean I have some quantitative but qualitative things, you know there's there's issues where that can't be like there's problems in the world that can't be quantified but still need to be fixed. And, often in our culture we focus on this on quantitative so much that there are certain things that don't get addressed just because they're more amorphous than other things like I, it scares me that if we're we're focusing on form we're focusing on quantitative so much that we're going to start missing the point and not doing some, you know, we're going to, we're going to not be as valuable or not have appliances valuable because because of that focus. So, I don't know. I think I agree with you I think I'm okay with the qualitative. I responded to Barb about, you know, wanting to take out the attractive and those things are because I think we have design review rules in our zoning, we have architectural rules and zoning why because design is important and aesthetics is important, even if we can't put, you know, numbers and data to it, and maybe there's no benchmark for that and that's perfectly fine we don't need to make a benchmark, and this is something even at a different level. Cameron, our assistant city manager is working to try to build in benchmarks and be more strategic and so there's a little bit of a push and pull on different things because we talked about the fact that in a number of cases, you know, not everything needs to be measurable. It's very important if something lends itself to it that we should be benchmarking ourselves to get ourselves on in progress. But, you know, we shouldn't try to figure out hey we need to go and get a bike path connector from north to south we shouldn't try to figure out how how we're going to benchmark that. You know how many miles of bike path north south should we get constructed for every year if we're going to get that completed but it's like just, you know, the goal is to get that done, and we may go through and say we would like to get this done before 2030 and therefore okay well what do we have to do to get a bike path done before 2030, as opposed to trying to benchmark something. I think it's more useful for us when we're thinking about trying to put together a good plan. I think it's more useful to think about including things and structuring things in a way that is going to lead to them actually being done. I mean, isn't I don't have this I don't have the same planning background like the like like the a lot of you have, but I mean is that not the goal, the act the real ultimate goal of a plan is to make it be used. That's actually precisely what we've wanted to try to be able to which is a little bit why the form is important. I mean, some of that breakdown from aspirations goals to strategies is just to be able to go and take an aspiration and break it into its pieces and those are your goals. And then your strategies should directly accomplish that that that very, you know, if it gets to amorphous for goals to amorphous and it becomes too difficult, but you really want to have something. Even if it's not, you know, let's talk about safety in sure we could benchmark and whatever but you know we want things to be safer. What can we do to make our streets safer. You know crosswalks lighting you know we can come through a number of things then we go through and say okay well how would we make that happen well we need to get get these things into the design plans we need to have certain policies in place. And then we need to implement those plans through our CIP program, which is our capital improvement program and we're going to progressively get ourselves safer by, you know, every year building those things we've got street line painting programs. So it's actually very important to repaint those lines every year. That makes your crosswalks safer by having the good signage and the good line painting so those as just as an example there are a number of programs and implementation steps, but what do we need to do to make to reach safety. That's our objective in that and then you know the safe streets brings us to our our aspiration. You know, working, you know being able to live and work in Montpelier without a car, or whatever the aspiration happens to be. And I think that's. I agree we the point is to kind of have these, and you should be able to read them backwards and forwards between those three levels to kind of get a sense of, you know, are we are we would if we did all these would we accomplish our goals. And if we accomplished our all our goals would we accomplish our aspiration. And that's really the measure that we would want to be looking at. I think getting a little bit back to your initial point of the expectations of the subcommittees. My, my sense was that we were really kind of reviewing them for those things that maybe other people had missed and maybe I had missed. So reading through the transportation plan not necessarily to to restructure it. That was a tough one because transportation really was a tough was really not organized well and really needed to get rework but let's let's look at economic development or housing. If we've got a committee looking at those I don't know if necessarily the idea is to kind of go in there and start. At it in big chunks my thought would be that we'd be looking at it with a careful eye to, you know, are the important things covered did we get. Did we talk about things are there things that just we disagree with you know maybe there's there's a policy that ends up in the natural resource plan that we just we just don't agree with. And that's what I was kind of expecting the committees would be looking at not necessarily to go through and and say, you know, that's great. But I'm going to rewrite it. And this is how I'm going to rewrite the natural resource plan into something different and that wasn't what I was thinking, we would be getting into but again, this is, you know, it's the planning commissions your process as to how you want to do it because I thought it was going to be a little bit more narrowly focused of, you know, this doesn't have enough economic development is focusing too heavily on this, and we really should be focusing on that, or, you know, knowing our what we are in historic I can't see how we can accomplish our economic development goal of x, because it's, it's going to conflict with our historic resources goal of, of, of why over here, and really kind of understanding those kind of taking that level was what I was thinking we would be doing, but yeah I'm just I'm just worried that you know our time time isn't being used in the best way and then that means it's just time and effort lost on actually looking at the substantive stuff that would make a difference if we are focused on it. Yeah, I mean I have, I have, I've been comfortable with having things that can be quantified in there. But I know that others have voiced some discomfort with a lack of quantifiable stuff. You know, first both ways the energy plan they had a lot of tough things they were trying to put so many benchmarks in there and I said to a certain point. You know, we've got to just target what, you know, there are things that will invite, you know we've got a data source that would go through and say, you know how are we doing with x. And in certain cases is kind of like well vehicle miles traveled by residents of Montpelier. What we've got is going to be an estimate because there just isn't data for something like that. And so we really have to aspire to something that maybe we don't have a benchmark on. Or something something along those lines but to just try to figure out how to bend things to fit a benchmark. And we missed the point of what we're trying to do which is to reduce fossil fuels or to, you know, reduce carbon emissions. Thanks, Mike and Kirby I feel that helped me understand both of your, you know what the working groups are doing and the perspective. Yeah, meaning with the transportation working group with Mike. That sounds like a good next step but this was helpful. And I admit transportation was going to be challenging. It's, it was one that I think I pointed out when I gave it to you guys that you know it's got sub goals and nobody else has sub goals and it's kind of, you know, it's, it's, it didn't take our approach where we talked about things but I guess getting back to Stephanie's point, I had made the same comment you did Stephanie to Barb and others about the fact that that idea of having the strategies where it has like policy to, or to, and then a colon with something I thought that was interesting as something I think you guys should take up in the, the continuity group to talk about, you know, I thought that was a, I thought that was a strong recommendation I thought that was a really good idea that it could have some value. Going forward we could re shuffle how we've done some of the other ones to match that format because I thought it was, I thought it was a good, a very good idea. I thought it was a good, a very good recommendation. Yeah, and I think it's really ultimately so I'm. So I don't want to like derail us from what my perspective is necessarily but I think we part of the benefit of this group is that we all have very different perspectives but that also makes it kind of challenging to communicate around what we're looking for. So I think the planning commission as a whole has struggled with that a little bit. And I feel that anyway I don't know if that's something that other people feel as well. So I think from what we've been talking about a continuity and structures and how I've been thinking about it, the idea of the, of these working groups is really to get everything all into the same format make sure we're not missing any substance like it was both to me it was both of those things. And, and then once it's in that spreadsheet form. I'm a really visual person so the way that we're listing these out currently is really challenging for me, but in that spreadsheet form that we're trying to get these to. A lot easier to look across and see where the connections are, and then you can have just a column that has the category so policy plan project etc. So it doesn't have to be like written out in this way but that it's a larger form that you can filter for those different things. So the topic areas so if you're looking at housing, and there's something in there that's really heavily related to transportation that's in housing and transportation because it's tagged to both of those groups. Right, so but it's the, that process of figuring out how we take each of the sections and get them to make sense across the board. In order to do that we first have to have them all in the same format and structure the same way. So it's hard to, it's hard to separate those two pieces in my head. I mean, I mean to be clear, like I'm not criticizing anything like what you're talking about now. So, I mean, so I hope it didn't sound like I was criticizing that, like, I actually was criticizing like substantive work in groups, trying to do something different than what you guys have already said we're going to do. That's, I mean, that's that's what I'm criticizing. It's just, we've done a little bit of housing too. And like you were saying, there's every every person has their own different way of conceptualize things and like learning and like sometimes people have to tear it apart and put it back together and like sometimes, you know, I'm not like that I want to just get to the heart of what we're trying to get to and you know, so so there's different you know and we all do have different approaches and so. Yeah, I'm just wondering if it's worthwhile to mention like the chair's comments in the future to say that like hey let's, if you're in a substantive working group then try to stick to substance because we already have plans for how it's going to be structured. Does that make sense. Yeah that makes I think with transportation that was going to be hard because it wasn't in the same format. So I think that's part of the challenge with this particular one is that you wouldn't, I don't think the group would have been able to take it into that what we've created as a new structure, because it needed a little more background work so I think having a meeting with Mike and talking through that would be helpful. I'm also not on any of the substantive working groups yet I'm just on continuity. It would help to actually participate in that process a little more directly to. I think it'll be helpful when you do have your other working group because then you'll be really familiar with how to put it into the, you know, form that you guys have envisioned. Okay well thanks Mike. That's helpful. I guess we don't need to be dead horse though on this anymore. So we have a parks commission sub chapter. What does that mean exactly a sub chapter is a part of the natural resources chapter. It's actually part of community facilities and services. So there's a community facilities and services which is where parks is under. And then there's so there's parks. Parks recreation cemeteries educational facilities. There's a couple of that are all all the facilities and services are all kind of in one, one big chapter but parks was the only one I really had an opportunity to work with because I was already working with the conservation commission, and so they're kind of fit a little bit there between the two of them so now I'll try to start working with the oh and the senior center is another one that'll have the facilities and services. And then we've got another one for utilities, which will be coming along that separate chapter. Does it make sense for us to look at that now or to wait until more people see it. I was just meant wanting to get it out to you guys I really didn't I wasn't planning on having a big conversation about it tonight if you guys have read it and want to go over and have some questions that's fine but I was really just trying to make sure. A lot of times you guys don't get it in advance to get some time to look at it so I thought if I gave it to you at this meeting then you'd have it for the next meeting. Okay. Okay, yes, let's Sorry. We can we can take into it at a different meeting. That's what you're going to say my overall thought. I think this this first goal really relates heavily to spark the the parks and staff programming, etc. But I think a lot of this chapter is going to be very heavily overlapped with what we're doing for a natural resources chapter. So I didn't. I guess I'm wondering what your thoughts are mark Mike sorry on the overlap between the two. And if there's like pieces of this park section that maybe make more sense under that chapter that aren't very directly around park staff and park maintenance specifically like acquiring new land. So there's going to be more landing where natural resources focused. Yeah, so the natural resource chapter is basically done. They're meeting on the 17th they were supposed to meet last month. The only thing they had left was prioritizing their goals. So they didn't quite get to it at the last meeting so they're meeting on the 17. So I think that is before so if they met on the 17th you'll have the natural resources chapter as well for the 22nd. So your next meeting you'll probably have both the parks and the natural resources so you'll be able to kind of have them to to kind of see whether they they they match up and what should get moved over because natural resources is really focusing on the on the natural resources themselves. And in some cases, the strategy is, you know, to conserve the land, and if they're conserving the land the conservation commission doesn't own or manage any land. That's done by the parks so the parks plan kind of talks about owning land for recreation in one box and conservation in another box. So they see their role as having these two to two functions within the same parks commission, but they don't really do the the studying to find out where the wetlands that we should be conserving and where they other things and then the conservation commission may also be implementing their objectives, their natural resource objectives through a lot of regulations. So while the parks commission is really about owning and managing and maintaining and taking care of the land, including me protecting the natural resources the conservation commission may go through and say, well how are we going to protect water quality well we should have zoning rules that restrict development in these ways, which the parks commission isn't going to be talking about because it's on private property so that I think that's a little bit of the dynamic that's between the two but clearly, there's a piece where they the two of them overlap. Yeah, that helps though thank you and I think looking at them together makes a lot of sense then. Yeah, now it's trying to get both of them but I just couldn't quite get conservation commission across the finish line. Okay now we can do it next time. Thanks Mike. Yeah. Well, we're more than halfway through and we don't have a quorum still. I have a couple of questions for you Mike. If we don't like vote on a resolution. Can it wait, and if it can't wait, what our informal endorsement mean anything that the municipal planning commissions recommends applying for said grant so I guess if we can't get and I don't have Aaron's. I don't know if I've got the ability to text or ask Aaron if he's available just to jump on for five less than five minutes to approve that. The other option would be to have everybody try to get at least four people to sign on tomorrow or Wednesday to be able to just go and approve the resolution. I feel like we've approved some things by email before. They don't usually like it because it violates open meetings law, and they're trying to get a little pushback a little bit on people doing that. If we just well if we just met on zoom without orca wouldn't that be the same thing. Yeah, as long as we documented minutes we probably have to write our own minutes because Tam wouldn't be available to do them. But we can have an emergency meeting and just approve that separately. Unless. Yeah. So we don't know what happened to bar. We know Aaron had a work thing. That came up. Yeah, and if we're talking tomorrow I have a meeting from 537 30. It's much easier to like get one person out and go. Probably. Unless you can find a time during the day. But that is probably tricky too. I just sent Aaron an email. I don't I don't have his phone so I can't text him but just to see if he would be available to jump on for two minutes. I have barbs. I don't. But I do have Aaron's. If he jumps on then we can just open the meeting vote on the resolution and close the meeting and. Okay, I sent him a text. Are you guys okay with like taking like a five minute break and see if seeing if Aaron shows up and then after that we can just adjourn. Yeah, that's fine if you want to just wait five minutes that's fine. That sounds easier. I'll give him a little time to notice it. Planning Commission meeting for March 8. This is a short meeting just to vote on a resolution. And with that Mike take it away. So the city of Montpelier is applying for a grant through the state of Vermont on the Department of Housing and Community Affairs and this grant. Planning Commission apply recommend applying for the grant so we need Kirby to sign it and probably scan it sign it scan it send it over to me. So the project is Confluence Park. It's an $850,000 project on property is 61 Taylor Street, but it's the area where the transit center is. So the partial part of the parcel that's over by the railroad bridge. There's a section that has been proposed for a park. And it'll be $850,000. And we're this, this particular grant would cover about 160,000, 165,000 of that project cost. So it's a downtown transportation fund. And so we'll need planning commission support. And then on Wednesday we'll be getting city council support for it. So those in favor, well, let's have discussion. Well, do we have to make a motion first. Okay. I felt the spirit of Marcella. You'd like to make a motion. Go ahead. I make a motion that we approve the resolution to apply for the downtown transportation funds for Confluence Park. Okay. So do we have a second. Seconded by our own. Now do we have any discussion. Are we sure that this isn't overreach on our part to be applying for a grant now. I'm joking. Yeah. Build a nice park. Okay. I'm sorry, can I, can I ask a quick question that before we do vote on it, which is how far along I know that there was a presentation of the city council probably last month or two months ago. With respect to the park. Is that right? I'm just trying to, I just want to know where we are in the process of this. The probably 2018 or 19. There was a originally a project where the river conservancy came in and said they wanted to start working on developing plans and the city approved them to go and work on plans which they did. And then they came in and made another presentation to city council in 2020. I think it was in late 2020 because they wanted to apply for a set of funds which they were approved for. I believe that was land and water conservation funds. And so that was $300,000, which they applied for and received. So we already have 300,000 towards the 850. This will be another 160 165. And then they have two other grants that they are in, in developing the funding for. So, yes, if you were watching city council there probably was a presentation on it is actually come up a couple times over the past two years. Same project. Thanks. Okay, so we have a motion and we have a second. Okay. Before we were talking about it informally before Aaron, we, we did mention that, you know, it'd be nice if they included some like public art or something. It's not, not just river access, but that's it. I guess the city council asked for, if there was any discussion or comments, we can mention that. Okay. And with that, those in favor of Stephanie's motion say aye. Hi. Hi. Any opposed. No. Okay, so the motion passes four to zero. In favor of resolution to request the grant funding. Okay. And with that, we can adjourn our meeting. We have a motion to adjourn. I move to adjourn. Okay. Second by Stephanie. All in favor of adjourning the planning commission meeting. Hi. Hi. Okay, we returned. Thanks for hopping on, Aaron. Thank you. Yeah, what do you guys do all this time without me? We talked a lot about transportation. Okay. Okay.