 way out here in the snow, and to those of you online, thank you to North Branch Nature Center for very generously hosting us here tonight. We were excited to have such a lovely location to host an in-person meeting, bummer that there are only a handful of us here, but really grateful for their support in this. We will get into the meat of the meeting shortly. First I want to start with commissioner introductions. My name is Kasia Rangio and I am chair of the Parks Commission. My name is Stephanie Hunt. I'm a Parks Commissioner. Emily, could you go ahead and take yourself off mute and introduce yourself online? Thank you. I'm Alec. I'm Alec Ellsworth, the Parks Director. I'm some trees director. All right, so that's all of us. For those of you in the chat or online, I've tried to capture your names so far based on the chat or your names showing up on the screen. It would be great if everybody could drop your name also into the chat, especially if there are a couple people joining or the name on your screen isn't your actual person. We try to capture that for the notes. And those of you here in person, there's a sign-in sheet. Make sure to sign that so we can capture you for the minutes. Before we get started, let's jump into our usual order of business, which is our January 16th agenda and December 19th minutes. Can I get a motion? Second. Any discussion? All in favor? All right. Thank you, Emily. All right, passes unanimously. And then any public comment on topics that are not on tonight's agenda. So tonight, I think as everybody knows, we're going to be talking about the trail segment from seven fireplaces to North Park Drive. If you're here for any other topic or purpose, now's your chance. All right, let's move on to the presentation and discussion. I think I'm going to take a backseat here, Alec, and is going to present and share some background information on what we're talking about here tonight. And then Lincoln is going to facilitate the discussion portion and questions. And we'll go from there. Alec. I'll kick it off just a few opening remarks before Alec gets going on his presentation, but first just want to say thanks for everybody who showed up in person online and for all the comments we received leading up to this meeting. Also thanks to Alec and the Parks Department, Matt Wilson at the Senior Center for getting the word out for this meeting and making sure people knew what was going on so you could help us in this planning process. And just want to ground everybody into the theme and the main topic for tonight, which is this idea and question about a possible multi-use trail from seven fireplaces in Hubbard Park to North Park Drive onto the Elm Street Rec Facilities and North Branch Park. And multi-use is biking, walking, or skiing. So the idea for this trail came out of a survey that we put out when we were doing the Hubbard and North Branch Management Planning process. We put a survey out and what we heard in that survey was that there was a lot of support for bicycle connectivity through the parks and to the parks. And an idea that came from this was the option of exploring a trail that would connect seven fireplaces to North Park Drive. So we want to hear, you know, we're here tonight because of that feedback from that survey and we want to hear all sides of the issue. We want to hear what people are excited about and possible opportunities. And we also want to hear some reservations people might have or concerns or obstacles they might see in developing a trail like this. And I do want to emphasize we're not making any decisions tonight. This is a process meeting. We appreciate and we need all of your input so that the commission can go and make an informed decision. And if there is a lot of support and we decide to move to the planning process for this, there's still a lot of work to be done. There'd be more conversations and work with adjacent landowners. We would be going into a design phase. Alec will talk about that. There'd be other opportunity for public engagement. So tonight's just a discussion and before we get into that back and forth and opening it up to everybody online and in the room, Alec's gonna give us a presentation about what the trail might actually look like on the ground and some finer details. And then we'll we'll get the discussion going and try to wrap things up around seven thirty tonight so everybody can cozy up and shovel themselves after tomorrow morning. Great. Thanks Lincoln. Can people hear me? Yeah, great. Thanks, Andrew. Let's see here. Share our people seeing. Sky. People seeing what's up here. Okay, great. Yes, it's all working. So yeah, thanks to everybody for coming. Thanks to Lincoln for kicking us off. I'll just jump right into the presentation. It's going to be pretty short. Certainly no more than 10 minutes and I'll try to adjust sort of what's on the table and answer some FAQs at the end and launch us into a discussion. So here's a map if you look on the right, you'll see an arrow in between seven fireplaces, which is the lower arrow. It's that little sort of lollipop looking bit. And the North Park Drive trailhead, which is the upper arrow. And I'm going to walk up to the screen here if that's okay. So the maps a little bit small, but the red trails are walking only trails. And yellow and red trails are the currently allowed multi use trails in Hubbard Park. And they're basically the walking alarm, the very wide walking road. So this is the steep road up to the tower. This is the the less steep way down. This is the new shelter here, seven fireplaces and then the multi use access ends right at this little circle here. And so you'll notice basically between this point and this point, there's no it's it's walking only and skiing are the two permitted uses and winter, winter biking use. And so the project goals you'll see on the left is to basically in short close that gap. On the right, you'll see you know, that's where the pool is the the rec fields the north the North Branch Park. So we're currently lacking that connectivity between our two largest parks for, you know, for multi use trails, specifically for mountain bikes. And then there's also, you know, additional goals that you'll see on the bottom, as far as connecting into neighborhoods, there's a separate trail project, which we won't discuss tonight, but about connecting over to the north part or to the Park West neighborhood through through the new parcels that we acquired a couple years ago. So yeah, this is just a sort of a list of the of the all the important points taking into consideration as part of this project. This is the specific language from the management plan. It's on, I believe, page 40 of the management plan on the large action table. And it's couched within a larger strategy of, you know, access to the parks and connectivity. So looking, you know, specifically at action C is really the reason that we're here exploring the possibility of building a connecting trail for easy travel between the Elm Street recreation fields, more park drive and seven fireplaces that would be open to bikes, pedestrians and cross country skiers. And I that bottom bit about the design, I will go through here. So this is a page from the Vermont Trail design guidelines. It's a great document that clearly outlines different types of trails, cross country trails, walking trails, universally accessible trails, mountain bike, easy, medium, hard uphill only. And if you if you go to the bottom, you can see sort of the general characteristics of what you might expect on this type of trail. So for, you know, just to make sure we're all on the same page about what the language means, tread width is the actual area that you would walk on, or bike on or ski on. The corridor width is if you stretch your hands out like this, you could walk through that corridor without hitting any obstacles. So usually that's, you know, side branches off of trees and that type of thing, not necessarily, you know, you wouldn't necessarily remove a large tree to achieve an eight foot corridor, but you would, you know, prune the vegetation such that you can make it through. And the corridor height is the same thing, you know, just as like you could imagine, you would want a much higher corridor on the horse trail than you might need for a walking trail. The slope is usually we measure slope in percent. So zero to 10% is a multi use trail. If anyone is here with the parks connector trail that it exists currently, I'm just going to scroll back to so between those two points, it's a 0.41 miles and the average slope is 10%. So I think of that as as pretty steep as one of the steeper trails in our park system. 10% is, you know, fairly, fairly steep, I think, especially for skiing. And then the cross slope is the way the trail goes this way to the side so that water rolls off. You'll see a ski trail is a little bit different. Depending on what type of skiing you want, if it's a more back country type of thing, the tread could be three feet. If you want to have a skate track, you might want 12 feet. And, you know, generally you want, depends on the difficulty of the level, but generally you want lower grades for a ski trail. So if you see the, if I go back to the description that's in the plan here, we're kind of taking a hybrid of a few of these different types of trail and looking for something that can satisfy all of those constraints. So multi use specifications. So that's the first slide that I showed for walking easy mountain biking cross country skiing. And you give some examples like a 36 inch minimum trail tread, which is meant by with zero to 5% average grade and a firm surface generally free of obstacles. So this is a slide showing kind of where we are in this process. We are at the above the orange line currently. So we try to do things in a in a three step process, any big project like this. The first step would be to make a plan to establish public interest. And you know, identify what you want this trail to look like who would be the intended users, sort of put fences around the project and make sure there's support for it. Because, you know, in a municipal project, you really try not spend money on it or much money before you, you know, you share the community wants this. So that's where we're at right now public input. The community has expressed some input that made it into a management plan. And now we're engaging in this formal process of determining public interest. So this could be a stopping point, you know, let's say there was no interest in this. This could be the end this conversation. And we would not proceed below that orange line. If there is interest, the next step in the plan phase would be to actually design this trail, confirm, you know, all the sort of technical details about the trail, hire somebody to design, lay out and flag the trail. And then we'd be moving into the prepare phase. Yeah, the trail design, I made a mistake there in my edits four minutes before the meeting here. But the trail design would be a plan, prepare would be like reviewing the design, another round of public engagement, getting permitting in place, preparing a construction plan. And then step three is implement. Usually, you know, usually to can be can be the most challenging part, you know, as far as in two, you really want to be making sure you have enough money to do it and the permitting all comes through. And then by the time you move to step three, that's when things, you know, really, really start moving along. And the trail comes into existence. Wanted to just address some FAQs, especially based on the, you know, the comments that have come in the last week or so on front porch forum about the cost of the trail. So this is just a there's nothing official. This is just my own, you know, what I put together as a rough ballpark cost. So the question is, what is the estimated cost of the trail? If you look at the current trail, it's 0.41 miles, 10% grade, we're trying to achieve 0 to 5% grade. So let's just say we double the length of the trail. I don't know if everyone's followed me on that. But yeah, basically, if you make the 12 trail twice as long, it would be half as steep. So if we made the trail 0.82 miles, a good estimate for like a really professional trail builder is $6 per foot of trail. And that would be like a machine built trail. I'm not saying that's what we want. I'm just using it as a reference built reference number, it'd be $6 a foot. So that would be $26,000. And then a few thousand dollars to design it. How will we pay for it? We have a grant from the vote rec program that this project would be eligible for. So this this could be entirely grant funded. If we wanted to move forward with it, and there would be nothing standing in the way to really using that money. And then who would build it? It could be done by a professional contractor, we could bid out the job, much like happened with the North Branch Trail initiatives or initiative a few years ago, we could do a sort of a parks crew in the house, hand built trail or machine and hand built trail with our youth conservation core that you know that may or may not be a viable option given the way the budget process is rolling out this year. Or the way that we've usually done projects is some kind of hybrid of the trail that we did. The universally accessible trail is a great example where we we partnered with a contractor, but our crew did a lot of work and we drastically lower the cost of that trail through doing some of the parts that would be normally more expensive. And yeah, if there are those are just some of the questions that came up. And if there are others, I'm happy to answer them this evening. All right, thank you, Alec for that presentation, putting that together for us. So we've got about half dozen people here in person and maybe two dozen plus online. We're going to try to keep things flowing a natural discussion form. So we will be monitoring the chat for the folks online. We not everybody here will be able to see you, but we will be able to hear you. If you come off mute, you can also use the raise hand function. And the other commissioners can help me out with letting know if people are trying to speak up online. But for those who weathered the storm and got a cookie here in person, I would like to give you all first dibs if you would like to make a comment, ask a question or just kick off the discussion and feel free to give as much information on your yourself and your own interests or background or where you live as you feel comfortable doing so. But we are officially open for discussion on the topic of this multi use trail. My name is Tim Flynn. I live close to the capital in that neighborhood. Have a few grandchildren that are I've been an avid mountain biker for maybe 30 years or maybe even longer than that. And I mean, I really appreciate it. We have a jam of a mountain biking multi use system in Jordan Ranch Park. And so it's been wonderful to have that as a resource for my failure and for anybody who's visiting and sorry, just speak up a little bit. So I totally in support of trying to figure out how we make it as safe as possible for, you know, all the kids that are needing that connectivity to get over and really enjoy the North Branch trails. Generally, I'm riding down Elm Street right now to get over there and in the winter I have taken this connector trail and it's very nice way to get over there from where I live, but generally it's, you know, going down Elm Street. And so, you know, it's just, it would I feel be a huge advantage for Montpelier if we could have some kind of connector through the park and then have, you mentioned three neighborhoods, Alec. And I'm not going to be able to name those the West Park. Every three different kind of neighborhoods. And I guess I'm just, you know, I think, you know, in the long term, long term, we should think about making access to North Branch and making access to Hubbard Park as available as possible. So if at some point there's a possibility of opening something up, you know, kind of from the downtown area or from around the capital to get up there and then we have the East Park and we have the West Park and we just have this nice, you know, kind of spider web that people can go up in and then go across and then get over there and not having them to ride, you know, on the road. You know, I don't think it's a bad thing for the adults to ride on the road to get over there. I don't think it's a great thing for a five year old or a six year old to take their bike, you know, on Elm Street and particularly on Supervisory and get over there. So I'm really in support of having some safer ways to really get over to the North Branch Park and access that. So I appreciate you all looking at this and trying to figure out how we maybe are able to put something safer together to get everybody over to use the trails we have over there. Very much, as well, well said, as we're getting started. Brad Watson, five plus years, one of the original founders of Mamba. Not on the board, other than just helping with trails these days, but just want to say that we, I've noticed since in my 25 years here of trail advocacy and that there's a lot more users in general in the city. The parks does such a great job of offering all of these multi-use trails. We've tried to be mindful of, I've been in many, many meetings about getting more access to Hubbard Park for bicycles. And really the consideration was always, we don't want to have user confrontations, and that could include dogs. So it's been really nice to watch the North Branch Park take life over the last four or five years. There's been lots and lots of meetings. There's been lots and lots of work. I know our mountain bike working closely with the parks and Alex has really, I think done a really great job of maintaining, and we have a proven track record of maintaining the trails and trying to make them as safe for any user. It's a shame that the west part of town, the terrace streets, the Hubbard streets can't access North Branch Park without having to ride on a lot of pavement. And so the connectivity thing is huge in my mind. If you look at the existing trail, we keep saying new trail. Well, most of that trail is already built. It's poorly constructed, it's poorly drained, it's grayed, it's poor. As Alex said, it's 10%, we want it at 5%. And if you've ever ridden a fat bike in the winter time up from North Park Drive to seven prior places, that you have to be fit. So that's not gonna appeal to most bikers, most skiers for that matter going up the hill. So why not invest a little money into an already existing trail, reroute some of the sections, take care of some of the drainage issues, make it user-friendly, multi-use, time-spore seasons, not just winter. Seems like a no-brainer, particularly if we have the funds. So I hope the commission and I hope the community embraces that. I know it took on its whole other life in front porch forum. And I think that was just a little bit of lack of information and just the way the mood of the community is right now. It's tough right now, living in Montpeter, we all know that. But this would bring happiness to a lot of people. So I'm all for it, thank you. Thanks, Brad. How about our online friends? Anybody with a hand up or? My hand was up? Yeah, can you hear me? Okay, good. And thanks everybody for doing the work to get this thing this far and to hold a meeting so we can all talk about it. I just want to sort of second the comments made by Tim Flynn and Brad Watson. I am a heavy user of Hubbard Park, both on foot and on bike. And I'm one of many, I think, that used to ride there all over the park before things got sorted out. And I think we found a nice balance with reducing use, moving some of the use to North Branch and having a mix of trails that are multipurpose and some that are aimed at particular users. But I think this is a good idea to do this. And especially if you consider the connectivity from the whole Terrace Street neighborhood, that whole side of town, that could now ride their bike on quiet streets to into Hubbard and then ride them on trails to get all the way to North Branch. That's a big win for everybody. Reduces traffic downtown. And I'm all for being very happy to see you. Thank you. Thank you. And we'll just ping pong with the room here if anybody in person wants to chime in. Let's talk Dayton's handle up. Sure. My name is Dayton Kreitz. Monthly residence since 2019. And I felt like all my good work in the past were rewarded when I got here and power all the trails to explore. I'm currently serving as the president of Mamba and just want to speak support for this trail on a couple of points or for the project because I think a lot of the trail exists. Support of all the connectivity that's been mentioned by the room. I want to point out that the 2022 parks management plan expresses some desire to look into this process and explore it further. So I appreciate the commission going through that and having a nice conversation. Connectivity between the parks, I think really connectivity between neighborhoods and parks directly supports Montpelier's goals for attracting people here, for retaining people here, for living in this community and putting behind some sort of perspective like, oh, well, this is just a disaster community. It floods. We won't go here. We're outdoor adventure home, right? And this is a great way to encourage that. So everyone's spoken a lot to that. And the only other thing I'd like to say that I'm relatively, you know, just like I said, I'm new here compared to most, but in my experience with Mamba and working through the projects and working with Alec, I also want to recognize that we are very much in support of this being a multi-use trail, meaning that when my wife goes to run it, it's a great trail to run. When my friends go to ski it, to great trail to ski. When we go to bike it, it's a great trail to bike. And I want to fully admit that we're aware in Mamba that when North Bridge was built, the assessment was for multi-use. And what got built out there is highly developed for mountain biking. And I would be lying if I wasn't saying I enjoy it, but that wasn't the intention. And that I think is a mistake that will not be repeated from what we've learned. So just want to put that out there and say, I think a multi-use trail connecting our parks is a wonderful idea. And thank you Alec for bringing it this far. Thanks, Dayton for that comment. And it reminds me of another goal action in our plan, which is multi-use trails will not favor one use over the other. So that is exactly where we're thinking for this one. And yeah, I appreciate those remarks. There was a handout behind Dayton. Yeah, Drew McCondo. I am, I live in the west side of town off of Terrace Street. I'm a dad. We have two kids. So speaking a little bit more as a father, I'm not a real mountain biker. I just bought a mountain bike. I'd like to do it for. But my oldest son is getting in a mountain biking. He's getting into skiing. And we moved here really so that they could have that opportunity to get outside in nature. One of the folks, I don't know, the gentleman over here mentioned what a gem we have in the parks here. I mean, that's a big, that was a big selling point for my family coming here was having the parks. But I will say living on the west side of town and I think this probably applies to other folks too. Being able to access all the components can be a challenge. And certainly the idea, I'm gonna echo some things that folks have already said, but I think my kids having and their neighbors and their friends having the ability to safely access these different parts of the park is pretty critical to really taking advantage of a natural asset. And I understand folks wanting to be smart about how the town spends its money. I am too. I think we need to really take advantage of this asset. I think it'll pay off big time. And I really appreciate the work that's already gone into planning it and already thinking about how to get it done in a way that just makes sense and doesn't hurt the budget is sensible. So I would just weigh in in favor and really encourage ongoing planning. And this is my first commission meeting. So thanks for the chance to say something. Thanks for coming. All right, anything in the chat? Joseph. Okay, we'll take Joseph and we'll go to Emily in the chat. Joseph, go ahead. You can hear me all right? Yes. Great. Well, I just wanna echo my support of the trail. I'm very excited about it. And one thing that just makes me particularly excited about it is just I should say I'm over here on the terrace side of town and imagining my kids being able to bike themselves to the pool is just a really cool thing going through the woods to be able to do that instead of saying, okay, go ahead, go downtown and up Elm Street. It just seems like a crazy proposition to tell my kids to do that on their own. But they could feasibly bike themselves to the pool on their own to their eight and 11. So just wanna say that one thing. The other thing was a question. I noticed Alec in your proposal that it was just talking about connecting seven fireplaces to that other part of town, but it didn't talk about connecting my neighborhood over on Clarendon Ave and Derry Lane to seven fireplaces. So how is that not part of this conversation right now? Should I answer that or do I wanna answer that? Yeah, so in the interest of sort of keeping things simple and taking things in bite-sized chunks, this meeting is just about the seven fireplaces to the pool connection. And the management plan also lays out in more certain terms what the multi-use trail looks like from Wyndham Drive to seven fireplaces. So it has a route described, it has what the trail looks like. And so that bit is a lot more developed than this one. And so we're doing this first for two reasons. Well, I guess three reasons. One, I already said, just to keep it simple. It's not too complicated for people to digest. Two is that the change of use for Hubbard Park, this would be a change of long-standing use. And so it's much different than new parcels where they're just establishing new uses. And then three, when the design work is done for one or both of these bits of trail, it makes sense to do them together. You wouldn't necessarily wanna to design that bit from Clarendon Ave to seven fireplaces without thinking about, well, how's it gonna go from seven fireplaces to North Park Drive? Because there could be opportunities with the new park land to make that make sense. And not be, you know, not be disjointed. So those are the three reasons. Yeah. And there currently is bike access from the top of Hubbard Park Drive along the Stone Tower path to seven fireplaces. Correct, yes. So this would just be adding the connection down to North Park Drive. Okay, thank you. Next speaker, hand up, I see John Holler. And you're still muted, John. Sorry about that. I'm John Holler on the board of Mamba. Also as the former mayor and as mayor, I just mentioned one of our priorities was to make Montpelier a bike-friendly community. We can phrase that in sort of grander terms about being a world-class bike community, but we were really intentional about wanting our city to be friendly to bikes. I think we've had mixed success on that. I don't know if that's still a goal of the city, but I think we'd all agree that that's a goal that would be a positive thing for our city to be able to say that we're a bike-friendly community. We've got a long way to go there. And I think one of the challenges that often, that means making difficult trade-offs because it's a million choices that you have to make. This is one, I think, that would help advance that goal of making our community more bike-friendly, but which I don't think does involve a lot of choices. This is one that doesn't come with a lot of controversy in terms of trade-offs with cars or parking or other things, you know, expensive costs. They get in the way. This is what I think could advance making our city a more bike-friendly in a way that doesn't require a lot of other controversy and trade-offs within the community. The other thing I'd mentioned is just how incredibly successful the North Park Trail, North Branch Park has been. Commission may be familiar with that. I'm up there a lot, as I know others are. I spent time up there since the 1990s where I could go years without seeing anybody. Now we see dozens of people and people of all ages from ages four or five up until the 80s. So it's an incredible resource for the community. And I do wanna echo what Dayton Christ said on behalf of the Mamba Board, we would do things differently now. We made a lot of mistakes in the way that was sold to the commission, frankly, and how it was developed. But recognizing that, I think we also have to acknowledge what an incredible asset that is for the community. And I think this project provides us with the opportunity to build on that by providing easy access for people who live on the other side of town and the Terrace Street side, as well as other people in the community for whatever reason who are going through the park to be able to come down and access the North Branch Park. Making more of our community more bike-friendly, I think benefits all of us. And so I really would encourage you to support this plan and appreciate the work that Alec and his team have done to bring this to the commission. Thank you. Thank you, John. Folks in the room, please. Hi, I'm Sue LaVarfe, I live in Montpelier, on the other side of town, for most of you guys, up by the college. I'd like a little bit more clarification of what you mean by bike-friendly. Mamba to me means crashing through the woods on your mountain bike. And I'm 81 years old, I ride my e-bike around town, but I've walked up these trails, North Branch, and I wouldn't take my bike up there. I mean, berms and jumps, and I'm not gonna take that up at this time of my life. But I get a little tired of the routes that I can take, besides my little commutes downtown. Going out route 12 in either direction is harrowing. I wouldn't want my five-year-old doing it now. I don't want to see one-year-old doing it. Route two, similarly, out to Three Mile Bridge, okay, I can go out to the bike path, but that gets boring. That's not what I wanna do every day. And I'd love to be able to go all the way across town. Are you envisioning these trails as being something that I can do, or is it just for the mamba guys? Thanks for looking at me, but. Thank you for that question, Sue. We're all looking at Alec. Alec had a great presentation. No, I'm not kidding, no kidding. It's okay. I think we're here to listen tonight, but I was gonna point to Alec's presentation for some of those details. So if you wanna maybe respond to Sue's comment. Yeah, yeah. I'm happy to respond, that's a good question. I think, I wish I had on my fingertips some of the average percent grades of those trails in the North Branch Park, but my sense is that to get up into the park, those hillside trails that you're talking about that you wouldn't wanna take your bike on, they're probably 10% or more until you get up the hill when you can sort of go across the hill. So it is, I think that, yeah. So what percent, what? I don't know what reservoir. Oh, though, going out Route 12 up that. Yeah, that's probably, that's probably six. Yeah, it's a state highway, so I don't think they can't make it too steep. But I think you're gonna want, you're gonna be on a dirt trail, not on a pavement, so you're gonna want lower, you're gonna want lower grades to make it easy for someone like you that's looking for an easy route. And then also, as it states in the management plan, it's pretty clear easy for kids, zero to five percent. I mean, the commission wrote that, not me, so. Yeah, transportation and connectivity was sort of the outcome of this idea and not so much. Not terms and jumps. You said it as best as I could. Yeah. Yeah, we were thinking about getting from A to B and some of the other comments that were mentioned tonight about safety and access for children as well and being able to avoid Elm Street traffic so we'd want something to be, feel safer and more inviting than that. Okay, what else are people thinking about? Online digs and back up before it. So before we go back to the same person, I think, was there, did Emily have a? I heard you say earlier that you were going to go to Emily in the chat. Yeah, I did, yep. And then I saw Carolyn with her hand raised also. Okay, thank you. Yep, I will just read out Emily's comments. Thanks for reminding me. Or she's on if she wants to unmute. Okay, so Emily really approved. Emily, do you want to read your comment? Sure, I'm happy to. I just appreciated the model president's comment about building a truly multi-use trail rather than repeating what you characterized us on. The mistake of how highly bike centric the North Branch Park ended up being built out. Spent a lot of time in that part of town, obviously working at North Branch at the nature center. We have a lot of programs happening on all the trails in the area beyond our property as well. And it's, I would like to not see too much more high speed bike traffic and burming and all of that. I think it's great that we have it for those who want it. And I think it's important to not keep going in that direction on the other side of the road. And in general, I'm supportive of the project. So thanks for all your work. Yeah, sorry. I was driving around town this afternoon a ridiculous amount and I was like, I am not going back out on the roads. I'm dialing in tonight, but I'm glad you're there. Okay, Carol. Carol Ingridinsky and I was on the Parks Commission and I'm in support of biking throughout the community and transportation as a way to get around. My concern about the location and I might be a little confused, but I walk that trail all the time to connect Hubbard Park to go into the North Branch. And it seems to me it's a pretty good sized wetland and there's a bunch of boardwalk in there. And my concern would be it's kind of tight to accommodate walkers and it seems like going through that kind of wetland, that area right at the bottom before you get onto the North Branch Drive. Is it actually following the exact same trail that exists right now and just being made more bike friendly or is it going to develop an entirely different trail? I just don't see that section being very accessible multi-use. Yeah, so that would be kind of in the trail design phase. I think, I don't know if you saw my slide, Caroline, about sort of where we're at in the process, but the trail design would work out those kind of details. For example, the Parks Commission could say tonight we really want this project and we're just going to open the Parks Connector Trail effective immediately to bikes. That's obviously not going to happen, but that's an example of one route that could go. Another route could be we want connectivity between those two points. We want to completely scratch out the Parks Connector Trail and rebuild the entire thing from scratch. That would be sort of on the other end of the spectrum. Yeah, I imagine if the project goes forward, it would likely be some sort of hybrid utilizing good parts of the trail, relocating other parts of the trail that are not so good. And the part you're referencing between basically the bottom of the hill on the Parks Connector Trail and North Park Drive is definitely a wetland. There's a boardwalk going through there as far as what we would have to do to accommodate multi-use traffic along that route. That would be definitely something that we would want to look at in the design phase as far as like, do we want to widen the boardwalk? Do we want to lengthen it? Kind of figuring out those specific details, but we don't want to dive in at that level of detail until we're sure that we want to move forward with the project. Or even changing the grade for the bikes, but people can continue to go down the steeper trail. It's just a really nice, quiet kind of refuge. And to have people flying by in bikes changes the experience for the hiker. So it'd be nice to be able to accommodate both. And I just want to put in a pitch. Personally, I feel that, you know, the effort, and this is along the line of what John Holler was saying, should just be to make our whole city as bike-friendly as we can. I think it's great to mountain biking, you know, but I think the whole city can be looking. And this is not a parks thing. It's just, I'm giving my little blurb, I guess. Okay, so let's hear from Paul and then John, I see your two hands are up and then we'll go back into the room. So Paul, please. Hey, this is Paul Curtin. I live over on Greenfield. So I'm on the terrace side of park. And first thing I want to say is I just am so grateful for all the work that's been done up to this point to, to make the city more bike-friendly. Of course. There's always more that can be done, but kind of work has been done and I'm just very appreciative of that. I can also say in the last 12 months, I've biked, snowshoed, speed, biked and, you know, in general it's been spent a lot of time in Hubbard Park. So it's not, for me, it's not just about biking, but in general, having that trail be like a little bit more. User-friendly. Seems like a real, just like a, you know, it's just, you know, user-friendly seems like a real, just like a, just a huge opportunity. So overall, I would love to be able to ride my bike from where I am. I think you cut out there, Paul. Maybe we'll give you a second to get the mic on your end figured out and we'll pass it to John to keep it coming. And then we'll go back to you, Paul. John Kovans. Hi, folks. I'm just going to echo what others have said, which is I think the connectivity to allow biking through this section of the park in the summertime, particularly for those vulnerable cyclists where going through town is just a gauntlet. It's not, we don't really have a safe way for kids or less confident other cyclists to bike through downtown. And the idea that they could do that through the park is really appealing to me in a four seasons way. So I just want to say I really support the effort to create that pathway. I understand there's probably some concerns about a broadening of cycling further in Hubbard Park, but to me creating a pathway really has value for us to be able to access all the resources that are over at the rec fields and at North Branch Nature Center. So just want to weigh in with that. Thanks. Thank you. Paul, do you want to try again to finish your comment? I can see it. Yes, okay. Okay. Sorry, did I, I wasn't sure if did I, did it pick up at all or did it just cut out? You just cut out there. Okay. Yeah. So hopefully I'm not repeating anything, but I mean, the first I just wanted to say it. What's that? You heard the first part. Okay. So then, I mean, just in general, like I was saying, I've basically done, you know, I bike, hike, snowshoe ski in the park. And in general, just appreciative of the work that's being done. And I think it would be really great to have that, that trail, you know, oriented more towards multi-use and have it be oriented so that people can ride bikes across because it's just the, it's just the really, you know, it's just, it's just the really, it would be a really nice feature to have for this town so people can make that traverse back and forth across without having to go through town. Yeah. Can I just ask real quick, is one of you monitoring? I just realized there's two pages. So if somebody like raise their hand over here, we wouldn't see them up on the screen. Okay. Okay. Eric, do you want a chance to speak? Yes, I guess I'm, you know, I pretty much didn't, I feel in accord with a lot of the voices who are prioritizing a safe way for people and especially kids to get across from the Terrace Street neighborhood to over to the swimming pool and the north part, the north branch trails and the rec field. And yeah, I hope we can find a way to do that that and, you know, hopefully leaving other trails in place to where people, there certainly are a lot of people that walk out there. There are a lot of dogs and, you know, it seems like we should be able to find a solution that's mindful of those and respectful of everybody's uses, but letting people bike through basically. I think it is sort of ridiculous for people that have to drive all the way around from Terrace Street, you know, when they could cut through a, as the crow flies more or less and get down to the swimming pool. So that's my two cents. Thanks, Eric. How about anybody in the room here? If he hasn't spoken yet, what would like to? Well, I'll add. I'm Chuck Elder. I live on home street. I have children. I feel like this was discussed a decade, 15 years ago. You know, for a similar reason, I raised a family out here on home street and for them to be able to connect with their friends on the upper, you know, Terrace Street side and the whole kids coming to the pool. I felt like at some point we did open that to biking, but, you know, maybe it never happened or whatever, but regardless of whether it did or not, you know, we're coming full circle to, there should be connectivity, obviously. It's just, you know, it really comes down to that first fall line pitch after the wet area that I think that just needs to be, and, you know, from a skier's point, you know, I'm not just talking about biking, but I don't go ski in the park because of, I don't mind going up it so much, but coming down under those hemlocks, it's generally a sheet of ice and you're taking your life into your own hands there. You know, most of the time. So, yeah, I just think, you know, if we could figure out a way to reduce that grade, like Alex said, and, you know, I know his numbers were, you know, based off a full build on .82 to get that grade down, but, you know, I think everybody realize, he probably aren't looking at having to build the full .82 miles, you know what I mean? So, if he, or exactly, but for people that looked at that number of the per foot and how many feet, I really don't think it's, you know, we're talking about the full .82 miles for sure. I know. Yeah, if I could just weigh in for those who missed that and jumped on. We talked about just what the cost would be and, you know, the current trail is .41 miles, 10% grade average. If we wanted to make a 5% grade, we would have to double that to .82 miles and a full rebuild. I gave the number just for perspective. I'm not saying we would do this, but if you were to do a full rebuild at about a cost of $6 per foot, professional trail building company, two excavators, you know, that would be $26,000. So, that's one end of the spectrum. Yes, and also, yeah, whatever we do would be covered by grant funding. Thanks, Kasha. My daughter's been riding here at North Branch since she was four. And what I love the most about this plan is it opens up the opportunity for her to ride herself to soccer, to ride to the pool with her friends, to ride her mountain bike when she wants to go to North Branch. It makes this community even more accessible to her than it already is. And I think that creates a sense of vitality in our community that we desperately need at this time. It's not that we don't have a wonderful place to live, but it just makes it that much greater for kids to be here, for kids to want to come back, for parents to be able to trust that their kids can get where they're going safely without worrying about Elm Street or downtown or whatever intersection it is. So, I see this particular piece of trail in my instance as opening up things, but I think for the Terrace Creek neighborhoods as well, this is just a huge leap in terms of making things more open for folks who live here, and I really love to see it get built. Thanks, Arthur. Chloe Wexler has their hand up. Can you hear me? Hello? I can hear you. Okay, wonderful. I actually sent in an email expressing my support for this as well, but there's been such great comments tonight. I just wanted to reiterate them and, you know, verbally express my support as well. So just, you know, at this point I just, like, not even seconding or thirding, you know, however number of many people have spoke up, but just the connectivity and the safety for the people on that side of town, I commute through downtown Montpelier pretty much daily on my bicycle, and the number of times that I almost get inadvertently doored by somebody opening their car door is, like, a disgusting amount. I wish it wasn't so, but it happens all the time, and so I just really support their being away for folks to get around the downtown. I also just wanted to sort of, like, express how wonderful I think it is all of the kids that I see in the North Branch Nature Center Park and at the Rec Center, you know, I don't have kids of my own, but when I do ride my mountain bike, I am a mountain biker as well, and when I do use those trails, and I see, like, groups of, you know, like, eight to ten-year-old girls out there by themselves or even younger than that, I get such a kick out of it, and so I would really love to make that more accessible. And then my final sort of point that I wanted to bring up here is that I totally understand that that is a really, like, sort of to Carolyn's point, that that is a really lovely part of the park, and it is a little bit farther out, and so I do know a lot of folks, including myself, go there for, like, some more sort of, like, park solitude, if you will, but there's a lot of trails in that area, and you, like, that are not the Parks Connector Trail, you can take the Deer Yard Trail, you can take the Creek Side Trail, and get that same forest in that same environment, and you don't even have to use the multi-use trail if you don't want to. So I just wanted to throw that out there that, you know, this isn't the only trail in that part of the park. So if folks are not interested in being on a multi-use trail, they could make that same connection without going on the multi-use trail. And then those that are interested in using the multi-use trail, it opens up a whole world of possibility for and access to a bunch of new folks to Hubbard Park. So, thank you very much. Thank you, Chloe. Hey, Jen Roberts. Jen. Jen? Who's here? All right, thank you. It's Jen here as well. We live up on Terrace Street. And I would say, you know, I use that trail. I ride up Hubbard Park Drive probably a couple of times a week. That's not an easy connection. So that's a different topic than what we're discussing tonight. But, you know, talking about that Clarendon connectivity, I think that's really important for more people to actually be able to access Hubbard Park and then access over into North Park North Branch Park. But I ride that trail quite a bit in the winter down to North Park Drive. And yeah, it's not sustainable as it is right now. It wouldn't be great as it is for summertime use. And I think that's why this project is important to actually make it to Susan's point. You know, I think this would be great for something that offers connectivity to a wide range of users, not just cyclists but two skiers like Chuck was saying, like Drew was saying, our neighborhood up here in Park West on Terrace Street, we've had a lot of new families moving into this neighborhood. And honestly, on a daily basis, I break the law by taking a left on Baldwin after I come down Terrace and then I ride in front of North Branch Park. I'm not supposed to do that on that one way section there, but otherwise, what am I doing? Paint is not infrastructure. And we have very poor cycling infrastructure in this town currently. So right now, if I want to go to work or if I want to go over to North Branch Park, I cut in front of the state house. I go along Court Street, which people use as a commuter shortcut and we have a lot of traffic. We have a lot of traffic. And Arthur and others getting doored and having people aggressively pass you on a daily basis. I got splashed the other day when I was putting some of our loaner's snowshoes out there at North Branch Park by cars driving too fast past me on Route 12 there. We have some paints, we have a lot of traffic. And we have a lot of local folks that are parked in that lane every single day. And I work with Main Street Middle School kids and there's a bunch of new kids interested in cycling. And just having that option of on-street riding, like I've seen it with those middle school kids, it's scary what happens there and I think that's hugely important for our community. And, you know, it's let's be honest, mountain biking is a great economic driver. It's great for communities. It gets new families. It gets people moving to town. So the cycling that we have in North Park, North Branch Park, it's great. It's a good thing actually and it's actually engaging a lot of families moving to town. Thanks, Kip. Who would like a chance to speak? Anything in the chat we should read out? Any ideas? Not? I have a question, unrelated to comments. Which is for Alec and it's going back to the finances. And so this, maybe this is a little bit of a softball question. But can you talk about the success you've had in the past couple of years with trails? You know, get securing funds for trails and things like that. Because I know, as you said, there is a great deal of concern about how this is moving forward to stay in town. I also think, while you're speaking towards trail maintenance, because there were some concerns in Front Porch Forum as well about what it would cost to maintain this trail. Yeah, okay. So what are recent successes and what would it cost to maintain the trail? Well, yeah, recent successes, I mean, going back to the NBTI project, North Branch Trail Initiative, I don't think any of that, I don't think a single dime of taxpayer money was spent on that. Although, can anyone from Mamba verify that? There were no municipal funds spent on that project, so that was grant funding and individual fundraising. So all the trails that people ride in the North Branch Park was successful fundraising. You know, mostly for Mamba, I had nothing to do with that. But universally accessible trail, thinking about the other end, as far as building a trail for people that are not as active on bicycles. That was also grant funded through recreational trails program. Both of our recent park expansions have been funded through entirely through grants and fundraising. We have this Montpelier Youth Conservation Corps that has done a ton of maintenance in our parks, rebuilding bridges, redoing trails, fixing things that need desperate maintenance. Most of that, in the last four years, I don't know the exact number, but I'm just going to ballpark $400,000 for that program. About $350,000 of that has been funded not by city funds. So we've been very successful and I think this money that is already in hand through Vermont Outdoor Recreation Economic Collaborative there, that grant is focused on growing the outdoor recreation economy in Montpelier. And so multi-use trails are a key part of that in their eyes. And so this trail, whatever you do, construction design, permitting, all of those would be eligible costs for that money that we already have in hand. So it would be something that we could move on, which is great. It's great to be in that position. You never want to just build something because you have the money, but if you want something and you have the money, then you're in the best possible place. And then as far as maintenance goes, our crew is very focused on safety. Safety is our highest priority. We're the parks and trees department, so a lot of people don't realize. We also do all the tree work for the city along the roads and parks downtown. And there's just four of us. So we're a pretty small crew. We have a very huge portfolio of things that we take care of. And so the way that we do that is, for one thing, we prioritize safety. For another one, we are historically great at leveraging other funds, like I just discussed, but other volunteers on the volunteer point, I'll point to a couple things. One, Mamba has been a great partner with the North Branch Trails Initiative. I think that's a good example of a successful partnership where they put in a lot of volunteer hours. They have evening work days. They have weekend work days. They have experienced trail crew leaders. If you go out there in the winter, if you went out there today onto the trails in the North Branch Park, every single trail that's groomed on that hillside was groomed by a volunteer groomer, maybe somebody that's in this room. I don't know. But they put in a ton of volunteer hours. Another example of leveraging volunteer hours is we often have an NCCC AmeriCorps crew. That can be multiple weeks anywhere from two to six or seven weeks of a full crew of eight to ten people that is at our disposal to do high priority projects. Maintenance is really important for us and keeping things safe and well maintained. When we did our park survey a few years ago, we did a big park survey. We had 100 responses. We had multiple mailings to every household. It was a good survey. We got a good robust participation. One of the questions we asked people was if you were in charge of spending money and prioritizing how the parks spent money, what would be your priorities? We gave people a big list. Maintenance was number four. It was somewhere around 20-something percent of people. And investing in protecting land for future generations, investing in upgraded more trails for walking, biking, skiing, everything and then investing in upgraded trail amenities like signage and kiosks and stuff. This project A, hits those high priorities but B, the fact that maintenance was further down, I think shows that we're doing a pretty good job. I would like to do a better job. I would say we're perfect but we have a small career. We have a lot to do and I think based on how we triage things, I think we're an acceptable level of maintenance. I would love it to be, you know, you could give me 100 people. I could keep them all busy and our trails would be spotless. You wouldn't find a twig on them. But I feel like we're in a good place and I think because this trail already exists, especially we're not exactly drastically increasing the miles of trails. In fact it's a good place because we'd have a more sustainable trail and I'm getting a little long winded but I just have one more point which is that I think there's a great example from the flood this summer in July because our crew was out there on the Monday night when it was pouring rain. We were out there clearing culverts. We were out for many hours doing that and then we were out the next day and the trail system had been out many times since and the new trails that we built the new trails that were professionally built were almost untouched in that flood. I mean they weren't untouched but the amount of damage compared to what was done to the old trails which were just a rose over time for people walking or they were built without professional trail building concepts in mind they were destroyed. I mean completely destroyed from top to bottom we're talking culverts over well trails washed away rock walls falling down many of those trails are now impossible but if you go on the trails that were built with sustainability in mind they're completely usable today this summer weeks after the flood so I think it's a great testament that this project is proposing to upgrade our trail system in a way that's going to be more resilient because we're not going to be seeing less rain you know we're not going to be seeing less impact on our trails we're only going to be seeing more sorry for the long answer Thanks for all that Alice I think we all benefit from the work you all do and really appreciate the adaptability from the summer and helping out other departments it's been super impressive so kudos to the parts department we can tag on to what Alex said too his mom it does have designate funds to her maintenance on north branch so if we need some money to pair an excavator to reduce some culverts including on some of the trails that pre-existent in the north branch initiative that certainly can be entertained there's money there Alright folks are there any other ideas or speakers out there who feel like they haven't been heard yet and want to speak and we have Zach coming to the front of the room Thanks I appreciate the conversation this evening and the park drive I am I guess wanting to make sure I've joined the conversation a little bit late this evening so I don't know what was shared before I arrived about maybe 3645 ish but I want to just touch on a few things that I hope will be considered by the parks commission connecting you know the territory area to the north branch park side of Montpelier is a absolutely worthy goal this town is terribly bike unfriendly and something that I worry about a little bit is how much energy has gone into making Montpelier a great place to ride in the hills around town while our cityscape has suffered for lack of attention there are a lot of kids and adults as has been discussed here who deal with just the danger and the frustrations of riding on our city streets each and every day my daughter commuting to elementary school and middle school some day worries me along Helm Street and I would only have her ride on the sidewalk if I could really have a say in it and it is a very sad reflection on Montpelier that we have not paid more attention to our streetscape not to mention the fact that you can't even find a bike rack in town most of the time so as a bike rider myself I absolutely appreciate the problems with the deep prioritization of biking bike commuting and just bike safety around Montpelier you know this particular proposal to connect through Hubbard Park also makes sense in many ways I think what worries me as a neighbor to Hubbard Park is somebody who walks Hubbard Park almost daily to find a place where I can just completely check out from my busy life just as I'm sure many people all people in this room use our parks to do on a daily or regular basis I worry that the character of Hubbard Park will change if we are not really careful about how we go about making these connections happen I think the connection with this is fantastic that's an outstanding idea we should absolutely pursue that dream what I want to be really careful about is how we as a community and how the parks commission how the park staff ensure that it doesn't go beyond that in Hubbard Park we have an amazing mountain bike resource in North Branch Park that is not the future of Hubbard Park it's not the future that's outlined in the management plan for Hubbard Park right now when the North Branch Park trail system was installed when I was talked about by the Parks Commission my understanding is that there was a contrast made a foil made with Hubbard Park that we were doing this in North Branch Park because we weren't doing that in Hubbard Park and I think that's a really smart reasonable balanced approach to pursue in this town so as a connection piece great let's do this the right way let's keep it out of the deer winter yard area let's keep it south of that main connector trail from seven fireplaces south and east I guess you could say of that main connector trail from seven fireplaces up to North Branch Drive in a way that avoids that you know just sacred hemlock ravine that's at the foot of those steep slopes the land that was acquired back there that whole ravine should be absolutely off limits in my opinion to bicycle travel that is a really quiet contemplative slow part of Hubbard Park where solitude is amazingly easy to find and that's a beautiful thing and so I want to make sure that there's those kinds of places and many more of them for years to come in Hubbard Park while we also accomplish this very worthy goal like I've said several times now of getting you know adults and kids from one part of town to the other in a safe way and let's not let this great idea get in the way of getting our streets into a more bikeable shape because it is just a really sad state of affairs out there so I I hope that we can thread this needle I'm not 100% confident that we can do that in a good way in a way that makes everybody happy but I want to believe that we can and so I hope that this is a slow process of aligning all these different goals and finding that right path for this new trail through the park so I guess a couple suggestions for the parks commission one is to again I missed the presentation earlier so I hope that we're not approving an exact route tonight if there's anything on the table of that major I hope that that's something that we come back to several times before finalizing and I also I hope that as a part of approving whatever this trail ends up being that there is also a statement made perhaps in the same resolution that the parks commission passes to approve this new route I don't know if it'll take a resolution or not but I'm assuming it would that also indicates the commission's desire to see the goal remain connectivity and not a new web of trails through Hubbard Park so that there's a there's a kind of two parts to this that yes we're going to do this for the community because it's the right thing to do it's the really logical thing to do to connect our pieces of our town but that we aren't going to change the current character of Hubbard Park beyond this point of connecting our neighborhoods and I think that that should really be a piece of the same statement the same resolution it's two sides I won't even want to call them sides I think they're really complimentary and so I hope that that would be considered by the commission as you're thinking about how to how to move this forward and I hope that also makes it easier for the community as a whole for people who are concerned about this for one reason or another so anyways thank you for the chance to go in thanks Zach delicate balance multiple uses, thank you we're doing 723 we've got a few more moments we just have one person in the chat who just reiterated we were saying Zach saying Mark Laxer said what Zach is saying makes sense to me a balanced approach so people appreciate what you said and I also think you'll find that our management plan for Hubbard Park speaks to a lot of those points and this commission certainly agrees with your hopes for Hubbard Park I don't think we have a parks commission meeting in this size when's lots of people attending maybe never yep I'm not going to say but yeah so I just want to say thank you everybody for venturing across town we've heard you we have formal meeting minutes we will be reviewing the comments that were submitted ahead of time via email for folks who weren't able to make it and taking everything into consideration we'll be taking this subject back up at our February meeting all of our meetings are public you're welcome to join any of those Tuesday of the month typically and we'll always post those agendas a few days to a week ahead of time on the city's website so thanks so much if you don't know how to get in touch with us you can get a contact information before you leave but it's also posted to the parks website if you're here in person please leave your email and your name on our sign-in sheets we look forward to planning with you all in the future this was super informative and I really enjoy this part of being a parks commissioner where we can get out from behind the zoom screen and get the community excited about our great parks and how we're going to move through them and the future of our town so amen is there anything else commissioners for where we think that's it so we're adjourned to 7.25