 August 10th meeting of the popular planning commission to order and the first thing that we should do is approve the agenda for today so everyone takes a look and when you're ready give us a motion to approve the agenda or discuss something. Looks good. All right so is that a motion from John to approve the agenda? Correct. Okay we have a second. I'll second. Okay all in favor of approving the agenda say aye. Okay can you pose? Okay agenda approved great and that brings us to our next item which we have come from the chair and we actually have on the agenda a little item there. So what I'd like to just bring everyone's attention is basically I'd like to apologize because of something that happened the last meeting. When we were voting when we had a motion to to resolve the Pioneer Street issue we had we had a motion for a particular resolution and there were still three options out there available and usually what I try to do and what I think I've been successful in doing quite a bit is before taking any big action clarifying and making sure that everyone is on the same page about the repercussions for what we're doing. I kind of have a teacher background and like in that background I definitely err on the side of like giving too much information and I think that that's important because it really is really important to me that we all are on the same page about what we're doing all the time and I think that that is much more important than if we're following rules strictly or not. Now we could follow rules more we could follow rules less but the rules can help or it can hinder communication and I think communication is a really important thing. So my apology is that I sensed that people were getting sick of the topic and I let my fear of people being kind of upset with how things were going affects my decision making and I kind of let the the motion go quickly and we kind of acted quickly there. I should have followed my regular instinct and slowed things down and let everyone know what or make sure we were all in the same understanding about what that motion meant and how and how that was going to end the thing for for us. So from now on I mean that's what I'm going to do and hopefully I won't make that mistake again when something comes up you know sometimes we need to stop and and really take in what's happening and not let things go too fast. Like I said before that could mean adhering to rules more but at the same time I think we could have had that same exact problem if we were following Robert's rules very strictly and then someone had something that they were unsure about but they didn't know procedurally how to ask us about it I feel like more procedure could have also led to the same misunderstanding. So for me I think its communication is what's really paramount and with that if anyone else has any thoughts about what happened last week with the vote then please feel free to tell us whatever you think. I open the floor. I've got a quick add-on um thanks Kirby for that I don't know that uh I don't know that you needed to like pull on apologize and I appreciate it but I also don't think um well anyways I was unhappy with last week's scaring and how it went but I think a lot of it might have been as I've been thinking about it after word I think a lot of it might be just from my newness to this and to the procedure and to uh the fact that I didn't really like any of the options that were presented and I think that we lost very quickly the fact that doing nothing was an option and I I'd like to remember it I think maybe I'm just talking for myself just saying this for my own benefit but I I would like to remember that even in the face of some pretty um particular pressure from members of the public I think that we should be we should feel like we can do nothing if it's not a good off if it's not a good idea to begin with and I don't think it was I think we I certainly lost that very quickly um last time and I don't want to lose that again because I feel really crappy about the way it went last time and I don't want to do that again so um that's my main point I think you know rules I think the rules um I would just ask if we can be really transparent about how we're what we're how we're using the rules like how like if we want to use the rules to to narrow and use motions to narrow the scope of discussion to move things along that's great but can can we say that when we're doing it uh because up until now we've only ever brought motions in my experience as you know until when we're ready I think we're like on the same page okay motion and it's done we've never used them in the year I've been listening in to narrow the discussion so that's fine we want to do it that way I just need maybe this is just for my benefit but it would be great if we could be really clear with each other how we're um how we're using those and that no option is an option and it's okay to not agree on the motion and I think like I said I may be just saying this out loud for my own benefit but um it was a learning that was a learning experience last time and I it was not a gentle one so I just didn't want to repeat it thanks thanks and and I completely agree that we did we didn't really have good off that we didn't have good options for that I wasn't comfortable with it either I mean so I'm with you on that too um oh go ahead go ahead since I missed the last meeting do you mind just quickly telling me what happened because I didn't get a chance to read the minutes either if they were you said uh basically we we went with the resolution of splitting along the railroad tracks so that the the roadside of the railroad tracks would become part of the eastern gateway and the riverside would stay as it is uh um and we basically we had a motion for that resolution and it was something we were discussing and there was a motion and we approved it and that's kind of what we how we ended up resolving it but what we didn't do is very clearly hold it up and say well how I mean is that the resolution that has the most support or one of the other two options which was you know you know and one of those two other options was do nothing and then and then one of the options was to change just the neighborhood zoning to allow sword units so so we didn't hold those up and and make and find out whether or not that was you know that resolution was the one had the most support it was just it had enough support and we approved it so that ended up being what our recommendation was so if I can if I can just tack on to that to be a little more specific what happened was that we were debating the same options that we had been meeting before and I put forth the motion to prove the splitting of the parcel uh approach I voted against my own motion so we ended up going on a four to one approving it the reason why I made the motion was because I felt like given the discussion that we were having people's positions seem fairly clear to me and one of the benefits of putting forward a motion is that it distills the discussion and under Robert's rules of order once you make a motion it is then put on the floor to debate the motion at that point you have a pointed motion under which you have a discussion and you can hash out whatever you want with respect to that that discussion didn't happen and move to a vote on a four to one um and I think this is probably where some of us differ with this issue I I applaud the effort to try to get universal buy-in and get as many people on the same page as possible however I think you know this is a deliberative body it's you know I think there's going to be room for disagreement I think that's healthy and a commission to do that and what I think motions do and I think we should I think we should start moving towards a model where we are making more motions because I think it focuses our discussion and you know the second thing I would say is in my experiences if you have any concerns about the motion if you do not agree with it if you do not think it is the thing for the body to do when we are debating the motions you can offer an amendment to the motion you can you can say I don't think this is a good motion and explain why we have that discussion there I think the problem what we're doing now is is that we're having sort of an amorphous discussion out front but we're just sort of figuring out what we want to do and then at the end we think we have some sort of concept of what we all want to do we put forward the motion to just basically do that thing and because nobody's really a hundred percent clear about it we just sort of say okay yeah that's okay I think if we start putting motions on the floor earlier on in the discussion we then can sort of really figure out what the sticking points are among you know what the real core issues are that we're sort of debating and this is a we you know where we're doing this you know in the context of a planning commission it gets a little weird because a lot of it is just having a general discussion but when there are action items in front of us like somebody is asking us to do something very specific you know I think using a motion process and really sort of digging into it and hearing to the rules I think we'll get positive outcomes I understand that it took a lot of people by it didn't end up sort of conveying the kind of it didn't go the way people thought it was going through and I understand that there's a certain amount of frustration about that but like I mean I think at some point you just got to ask yourself like if there's a motion on the floor and you don't agree with it don't agree with it or if you want to make it better make it better and I think I would just encourage people to start exercising that judgment a little more and being forthcoming about it because I'm firing with there being four to three votes all over the place just so long as we've had a discussion and we feel good about our votes I'd rather do that than have seven new decisions across the board every time so all right thanks Aaron and I'll when there's a motion on the floor I will try to make sure that we all are aware that we can continue to debate when that motion's on the floor because that's part of Robert's part of Robert's rules and it's not a part that we use a lot of the time but it's it's part of it so I'll make sure to stop and and and try to flesh out more discussion at those times okay well anyone else have anything to say about that topic okay that brings us to the general business if we have members of the public with us who have anything to discuss that's not on the agenda now's the time for that I believe that Brandy and Polly are both here for the presentation from from the town of Berlin so are you ready for that to start looks like it looks like we don't have any general minutes but before we do that we do have to consider our minutes so it'll be just just a moment longer and then we'll be right to you okay could everyone take a look at the minutes that Mike sent around from July 27 we have a motion to approve motion to approve the minutes okay we have a motion from Erin to be the second people are still reading that's fine I wasn't there so I'll second okay we have a second from Marcella so everyone ready to to vote or you're still reading let us know okay so uh all in favor of approving the minutes say hi hi can you pose okay Stephanie of Spain if I take it I I've already I just didn't want to be one of the first two since I wasn't there but I'm good with that all ready all right so those are approved and that now brings us to town of Berlin we're going to share some information about their new town center application so with that uh Brandy for yours great let me know you want me to share a screen with you it looks like I can't share my screen so I'm little here in just a moment Mike if there's a problem all you'll hear about it so thanks for inviting us I'm Brandy Saxton and planning consultant work I've worked with Montpelier in past years I see that you've got a almost entirely new planning commission all except for John who's still holding it there um but uh so we're I'm happy to be here tonight to um talk to you guys about something going on in your neighboring municipality of Berlin and I have one of the Berlin planning commission members here with me as well that's me so um as you may be aware Berlin is in the process of putting together designation applications for a new town center and a neighborhood development area with hopes of getting those applications um before the downtown development board sort of in the early part of next year depending on a few variables in between now and then I'm going to share my screen and show you the area that the town is currently looking at and walk you through a couple of slides to give you a sense of what's being planned um DHCD asked Berlin um to reach out to all the interested parties um in the designation application before this gets to the downtown board in an effort to identify and hopefully resolve any issues um and the Berlin planning commission and select board are probably going to have a more formal ask of the city council in Montpelier and also in various city um around the end of the month or so to um help out the application process with letters of support um so we thought that reaching out to both planning commissions and the two city councils would be a good way to get you the baseline information that you would need to decide whether it's something that city can support so with that let's share this up so um let me assume I think that's probably works fairly well this is the area that Berlin is looking at for the new town center designation um where my let me get the hand here where my the cursor is right now that's the hospital um it includes the mall area here there's um the car dealerships down here it comes down to route 62 so this is the exact boundaries may change a little there's some wetlands that we're currently in the process of doing some more delineation work on and so that might adjust some of these boundaries a little bit particularly on this back side over here but generally this is the property so there's um two major land owner property owner interests in this the hospital and the mall the hospital also owns this piece of land directly across from the hospital on Fisher road and then there are um smaller property owners the car dealerships and the school owns a piece the school district owns a piece of this land here so um as we look forward through this you can see this is just generally the area that the town is looking at so um the existing condition of the new town center area is very auto oriented so this project is really about um it's sort of a sprawl repair project um looking at how to to retrofit this existing built form and bring it sort of as a transformation and evolution over time to something that is a more walkable urban form and there's some really basic pieces of this that we've been um looking at so if you you actually get down to the basics of what makes this different a different built form and down to have a failure for example um it really lacks um a street so the burley and mall access road comes through here in front of the mall and um but it's really more like a drive aisle and a parking lot you know all the roads of parking um exit to it there's a drive through that juts in and off out of it um it's it's not really a a street in in the way that state street is or main street is in Montpelier um and there are at this point disconnected pieces of sidewalk um which are the solid orange lines with plans to connect those in this is the new senior housing project that's being that's just started under construction this season that's going to put 98 I think units of senior housing here so the first housing infill project so even with that and with the connection of the rest of this sidewalk through it's still going to not be a very pedestrian friendly space it's quite clear that you're um you you have to navigate the the vehicle traffic system and pass through areas that are traveled by cars and cross and recross the street in order to get over here and then once you get to the hospital you you end up in the midst of a parking lot that has no pedestrian access either um so the well we don't have all the rest of that area mapped over here it's as inhospitable as the mall is to pedestrians so we've really worked with the planning commission um to sort of start down at the very basic bare bones of what it would take to begin to build urban form here at this site and the street network is that starting point so looking at how to find a alignment for a street the alignment that's directly in front of the mall it's it's heavily constrained there's first of all there's a lot of people traffic back and forth going in and out and really to convert this to a street frontage would require closing off the parking aisles and those are from the view of the retailers here the premium parking spaces so you would lose the best parking in order to turn this into more of a street and then you would still have to try to funnel people across this street so we have looked at the idea of pulling the street to the back of the parking lot essentially down here following this blue line and creating a frontage on which to start to organize a more grid patterned and urban forms of development and this lines up creating a nice central street through the to the front entrance of the mall there's already a slightly more developed parking aisle here that's got green buffer you know planter strips along it and such as well so it just builds off of that and then creates this first block here below the current parking lot with a a town green space and the possibility of putting in that that pattern starting there sort of the center of of what would be a downtown setting and then the second thing we've looked at is the pedestrian connection piece this is the other really critical element it seems to us that the rural and town center will still be a place that most people drive to but it needs to become a place where people can park and then safely walk to multiple destinations which really isn't that different from any downtown your downtown you come into downtown you park your car and then you walk around if you don't actually live there so that is the concept here and so we really focused in on where the major anchors are where people need to move and then the other idea is to put in a multi-use path that would come around the perimeter of the development site thus providing a path that could both be a transportation route and a recreation amenity for future residents that really minimizes the amount of interaction between people who are walking and biking and driving so there's only a couple of crossing points over the travel lanes with this path sorry and then so building out on that framework so that that basic street grid and then thinking about those major pedestrian corridors start to define blocks and potential building sites and you can see that incrementally this this could turn into a building lined street with the mall and the main mall entrance at one anchor anchoring one end and coming down here to the the green space and in this cluster of buildings down here so it's really not an effort to turn the back turn our backs on the wall it's rather a way of looking at them as the anchors and trying to build community and build this urban fabric around them while recognizing that it's going to take time that those uses are going to evolve over time perhaps and change their parking needs and patterns but it's not something that's that's an instant it's an instantaneous easy fix that this is going to be incremental over time and this is actually the the full concept plan that we've been working with the major stakeholders those property owners on there's this as I said this is that senior housing building that's under construction here there is interest in building another mixed use building with housing and potentially a child care facility across the street from it and then the possibility of building additional residential potentially a municipal office space um you know and some sort of a small retail dining type use as we head out towards route 62 in this direction so extending that and filling in one thing that we do have on this side is is quite a bit of wetland area to work around so that does constrain the pattern to some degree so there's a wetland area back in here and there's another one in here so we've basically got nodes that we can fill into and around and then coming to that main area where I pointed out the idea of creating that first block and starting with a green space thinking about that line with buildings the possibility this is another potential place where you could put in a mixed use building that might have the municipal offices that's one of the requirements of the new town center is to think about having some sort of a civic building and function here so that is something that Berlin is is considering the other option and maybe a short term or interim or even a long term option is to actually look at space inside the mall as well itself as a place for municipal office activity to occur so so you can see how this could fill infill in this direction and then potentially infill out towards the hospital the hospital has interest in working on its own strategic planning effort and considering the use of this property that it owns across the road from the main facility they're thinking about medical office building uses that could potentially go in here that could be combined with some other sort of small scale office or you know retail uses we think that the market for retail in this area is probably fairly low you may have heard the pennies will be closing so that's a large that's like 36 000 square feet of commercial space to be filled in there and there are of course other vacant buildings in the area as well so there's really a lot of retail space on the market so we're thinking that most of the retail that might appear in the new town center initially would be fairly small footprint you know there's a bit of a site here at the corner where a small building could be infilled you know something in the size of a you know a restaurant or something like that but it's really primarily a residential infill type of project so if we're looking at at this sort of blow up with the air filter behind it you can see here's that that block with the green and these three being residential buildings maybe this one with a commercial or municipal first floor our conversations already I think the next version this is a plan that continues to evolve this building block in here I think we would probably be looking at being another more residential or potentially a mixed use building with a little bit of commercial space in it but primarily residential and then we get to the spaces where depending on what the hospital decides to do this will shift they already have said they want a building larger than this one so the next version of this plan is probably not going to have four buildings here but it's probably going to have one larger one and then two smaller buildings but that's generally the plans for what's going on in Berlin and let me try to stop sharing my screen so we're here to take any comments or answer any questions that you guys may have well thanks Brandy and thanks Polly for making yourselves available does anyone have any questions about the application so I mean I guess it's a matter of general background to make sure everyone's clear so you're applying to the state to be to have a designated town center is that right yeah yeah Berlin will seek the new town center designation because it's that's it's it's the equivalent of the downtown designation that Montpelier has except for it's four communities that don't have a traditional historic downtown they never you know Berlin was a very rural community until the interstate showed up and dumped an exit and an airport you know August the airport was there before the interstate but you know I've been a hospital and you know all these things on its doorstep that's creating a note of development there but it never had an actual downtown historically so they would look for the new town center designation there are two other communities in Vermont that have new town center designations the program hasn't actually been utilized that much so there's one in South Burlington for their city center area and there's one in Colchester for the area called Severance Corners it's been more than 10 years since I think anyone has sought the new town center designation okay you have questions is there any interest or any proposals for building anything in the middle part I could see someone wanting to build a restaurant along the highway there but just curious if anything's been proposed there there is definitely a strong interest in the residential development potential on the property the mall is in a position right now due to having done the Coles project several years ago and then the senior housing project both of which are on the larger mall property they've actually subdivided off the piece that goes to the senior housing so that's that's a new now but those came off the mall that came off the mall site they're in a position where to do further development they need to go through an active 50 master planning process as well so this is lining up with that potentially the town is interested in doing the designations primarily to get access to funding options so they're interested in a TIF district the town has been doing quite a bit of infrastructure work in this area to bring water and sewer here and working actually with Montpelier on that so Berlin buys its sewer allocation from you guys and I think there's some sort of joint effort to swap and organize and make the water lines make more sense hearing Tom describe it my understanding is that there's various people's water lines going in various directions out of which are perhaps as logical they should be at this point so I think you guys serve the hospital right now but the hospital also has the most I think a well of its own too and then Berlin has been working on putting in enough putting in wells and getting enough capacity to meet that demand and then I think there's also some sort of swap with stuff that's happening down on 302 as well between you and Berlin so there's a lot of work being done on the infrastructure front between municipalities you mentioned the NDA as well is that not sure I completely understand the new town center is it also the NDA over the exact same area or is it is the NDA a separate area so I don't have a map of the NDA area because it's still under discussion it will probably be most of that new town center area it doesn't seem like we'll do the portion of the hospital main campus that's on the opposite side of Fisher Road because the NDA is for housing so the neighborhood development area and it does not seem that the hospitals interested in putting housing on their main campus logically enough so it probably the NDA would not go necessarily over that side of Fisher Road but it might take in some land that heads towards Paintern Pike which is also zoned it's zoned the same as the land that's in the mall I think the state is looking at the park and ride to some degree about doing some improvements there there's a park and ride rate at the Paintern Pike intersection with 62 and that might lead to better transit access from there too so from a point of view of trying to find a location that sort of hits all the checkboxes about what we think would be you know good from a state planning perspective to have housing where we want to have housing located this this site really does quite well on that assuming the pedestrian improvements can be made it's a very walkable place in terms of having access to grocery stores employment obviously the hospitals the is the second largest employer after the state in the region and they see housing as a major problem for them right now in terms of attracting and retaining staff so they'd like to see housing there and you know it's probably also a location that would just like it already has generate interest for senior housing as well both because of that access to services and transit and the you know ability to do higher density housing in that spot we have anything else yeah we have a question go ahead i i just have a quick comment i'll just say that i think the the idea is great i would love to see that vision come forward so i'm good luck to you guys nice yeah more housing is definitely great molecular knows about that micah i was going to ask you is there is there a role as like other than just generally needing to know and being part of the regional planning commission all that is there is there a specific role that mob ulier would play in this process or brandy can answer to whoever yeah i mean i think brandy mentioned at the start they'll be they will be looking for letters of support from the planning commission and the city council as they're moving forward because what they what they don't want to do is put a lot of effort in and then have the city for whatever reason come out in opposition to it when i talked to brandy i you know i mentioned i didn't think that there would be i think this is something that the city would support generally we you know some things that you know could have been issues you know would be you know whether it's transportation stephanie can draft the letter on behalf of the planning commission happy to so thank you guys for hosting us and hearing about the project and if you do have more questions or want some information definitely feel free to reach out mic knows how to find me if you don't necessarily have my contact information and we can definitely provide answers and more information so yes thank you for your time we really appreciate it thanks for reaching out yeah great all right thanks good evening yeah nice to see you folly yeah bye bye all right well uh brings us to the final uh item on the agenda for tonight which is kind of substantive follow up to what we had a preview discussion about last week and that's about you know trying to um trying to focus uh what we're going to do in the short and the long term uh vis-a-vis the city plan uh and also about incorporating public outreach and you know a lot of these this discussion came about because you know i kind of took uh informally to grab some feedback from uh most of you and um and it seemed like these were areas that people were the most interested in in um pursuing uh so with that you know we had two big topics of discussion tonight the first one is uh about developing a subcommittee approach i think for purposes of i don't know what what might be a more accurate thing to call this would be working group unless somebody has an issue with that i think we should just call these working groups um because that's something that planning commissions have i mean we've got subcommittees too but that just sounds too formal uh i think working group is more accurate to what we're talking about so uh you know if we can have this these these working groups and develop those as a way to deep to dig deeper on some of the major areas of concern that we have because a lot of people felt that we need to do that but what we have to do is we have to flesh out what that will look like and that's what we want to try to do right now i had uh some email discussion with erin earlier and he had a lot of ideas about a framework uh that could work um you know not not the whole thing flushed out but but it's something for us to start with something meaty for us to start with and i have the same exact thoughts for the most part from what erin was saying so i invited him to kind of take the lead and walk us through how some of the uh aspects of this are going to look like um and so with that i'll just go ahead and turn over to erin and he can walk us through uh like a starting point for the working group approach go ahead erin sure um just kind of share my screen what's that whoops i don't know if i shared the right thing here hold on looks right what are you what are you seeing uh piece of paper city plane working group okay well for some reason okay mine is showing something different all right perfect so uh i was just chatting with Kirby earlier erin can you zoom in sorry sorry i can't yeah i can't see yeah can you see the whole thing or just part of it oh i see just part of it yeah okay i'll try to start from there so i was chatting with Kirby about this and i think so like you were saying there's sort of two big stick items but this first is sort of how do we form the working groups and second how do we integrate um sort of public comment so i sort of broke down the first part into three pieces and then there's the public comment piece so the way i appreciate was was sort of i think there's three issues one is how do we want to make sure we can define the scope of what the working groups are doing second is what the composition of the working group's going to be and third is is what's the timeline deliverables for that so um i thought maybe it'd be best if we sort of broke it down into those three areas and tackled them one at a time sort of help us sort of move along if there's anything else that you think we should sort of bring into this discussion please say so and we'll do that but um so with that said i think the first issue is sort of the scope of the working group um you know and i think right off the bat um it's never been a hundred percent clear in my mind sort of what the the vision of labor between the commissioners and staff is going to be with respect to sort of getting this thing in final form so that might be good to sort of make sure we have a firm understanding of not only what the division of labor is going to be at this phase but how that feeds into the next one who does that and sort of who makes this into a final product and who drafts the so i can chime in on my initial thoughts for that but were and that's first off that the staff would not staff participate in the in the working group unless unless Mike really wanted to or had a different idea but i'm thinking that they're they're spread thinly and this is about the planning commission kind of wanting to take a deeper dive of research on its own so it wouldn't be an official meeting of the group as long as we keep the numbers to three or fewer so there's no need further to be staff and this is jumping ahead a little bit but the thought is that the working groups would bring all of their ideas back to the entire planning commission during a regular meeting so you know that would be when any action take place like so um it's basically just a study group right and so i i guess that's not clear from what i put in the outline is is i'm thinking even more broadly than that just started by the gate is what the division of labor would be is you know working groups get together they do their work it's approved by the planning commission as a whole then that goes to staff does it go back to the commission as a whole to start putting pen to paper you know i think it's just important that we sort of have a sense of how the working group fits in with the overall sort of process so i think that that's maybe a better way to perform it is how does this fit in with the overall process and so i'm thinking i'm thinking they'll report back to the entire planning commission during our meetings and then if the planning commission accepts the ideas and wants to do something with it then we might need staff to help you know in the implementation and whatever that looks like such as modifying the chapters or something like that what does that make sense to everyone Mike do you have any thoughts about that yeah i think depending on the nature of what the committee is looking at will depend on what my participation would be um in that in that meeting i think if we had a subcommittee working on the development of the land use chapter implementation strategy in the same way that i've worked with the the parks commission and the transportation commission and the energy commission i think i would work with the subcommittee on the development of that that chapter but if it's a deeper dive into housing or a deeper dive into energy i don't know if i would necessarily need to be participating but we can kind of take it on a case by case yeah okay so i think that that sort of dovetails pretty well into the sort of second question that sort of came to my mind is we've already looked at sort of preliminarily the outlines of other town committees you know housing and whatnot and we've looked at their priorities and their goals and the implementation strategies and whatnot and so to the extent that we are sort of doing a deep dive into those issues i guess the question is is should the working groups sort of work within the boundaries that have been sort of set in those sort of preliminary outlines and sort of focus on filling in the gaps or sort of you know just sort of refining and getting a little more detail with respect to specifics within the existing outlines or should do we want to give the working group sort of carte blanche to sort of go beyond what's already been presented and i don't i'm curious to know what the group thinks about that um i mean i don't i don't need to be the only one giving my my thoughts on things but um so anyone else can feel free to chime in i'm not trying to dominate here but uh so my thoughts though about that are that uh that part part of the idea for this came about when barb wasn't comfortable because the economic development chapter was leaving out some areas that some some entire areas that she felt needed to be included so to make sure we're responsive to any concerns like that i was thinking that the scope would be that if the working groups thought that there needed to be new subject matter areas included in the plan that are not there that that could definitely be within the scope of what they're looking at maybe it's not mandated that they find those things but they shouldn't feel restricted i don't see any point for them to feel restricted and again if they want to if there's if there's you know interest in creating some new areas and then the ideas are brought back to the group that the entire planning commission could still reject the inclusion i mean one one example from barb's discussion was about covid response and economic development and so that's kind of an open question that we haven't discussed at all barb seemed to have strong feelings that there should be parts of the economic development chapter that are directly responsive to to covid 19 but do we all feel that way so this that's probably that's going to be something that probably comes up does that make sense anybody else have any thoughts i'm just so we're talking about specifically topic area working groups right chapter by chapter okay i just i think it might also be helpful to have if we do if we are working with an existing framework it might be helpful to have one group one small group of people that's thinking about how we take that framework and make it more accessible in the final version i'm still struggling a bit with how we're going to take what we have into making it a more accessible document figuring out how to connect the chapters deleting the the discrepancies and what that format looks like so i think it might be helpful to have a group that's specifically looking at that piece of it which is separate from one specific topic it's just the overall how do we connect these things conversation editing staff sure but part of it is so part of it is doing the actual editing work but part of it is just trying to figure out how we're going to do that which i think is worth having a deeper conversation on and it's it might be helpful for that to start as a smaller group okay and we'll be we'll be talking about um trying to figure out what exactly the different working groups will be later on in this yeah i think it sounds good i'm um i agree with stuffy although maybe i'm thinking of it a little bit differently in that yeah it's it's hard to i feel like it's hard to grasp the the plan without putting some of the chapters together so yeah i think it is important to have a kind of a maybe a working group on just just kind of keeping track of timeline and goals and what are things that are um conflicting in the city plan which maybe is a little bit different than what Stephanie was saying but um yeah i agree that a big picture group should or something and maybe that's the wrong term continuity maybe was a good word yeah maybe continuity so i i have the same sort of struggle too and that's and i think that's why conceptually i'm trying to it's hard for me to articulate what i mean by scope with all this but i think everybody's sort of circling around the same issue which is what exactly is it that we want these chapter specific working groups to be focused on and get a good sense of exactly what the task is at hand so that we are able to translate that work into the broader sort of document that i think we're all striving to create and that's and the only good thing that i'm sort of i keep sort of getting stuck on is is are we just taking the are we taking the outlines that we have taking a closer look at them to sort of evaluate you know sort of the feasibility of the goals and the implementation strategies sort of reassessing what the priorities and the costs has they've been sort of you know laid out for us if we want to make changes to that i think john in the past has done a very good job of taking a look at some of their sort of priorities and cost assumptions and saying i think that's probably going to be a you know a much bigger issue in terms of cost to do than what you know the other time committee might have thought so are we just sort of reassessing that sort of thing or are we taking sort of a fresh look at what the chapter should be um and i just don't know the answer to that so um yeah maybe we can start developing some questions that like a like a like a skunk series of questions or something i don't know if that would help people for instance it could start with what you were just saying uh does does the chapter capture all of the most relevant issues that you know that the city plan should address or do you think there's something missing and if so what would that be um i don't know do we have an interest in in having like in having some instructions like that or you know the alternative is to keep it more open-ended um what's everybody think well i think it'd be good to have consistency across each of the working groups in terms of what their focus is so and i i get that there's going to be differences between each chapter but okay well what are some other what are some other questions we want to make sure that is included within the scope i can start taking some notes i think some assessment of the feasibility is important should we and we've heard we've heard about um inclusion and and you know social justice type things is that something that each working group should look at or whether the chapters adequately address that yeah i think so that could also be something to consider and that whether it's a separate working group or whether it's sort of a review process that that would be something to consider and the sort of as we're meshing it all together if that makes sense i think that makes sense i mean personally i feel like like you know building an inclusive community you should be like our number one number one goal like this should be an overarching theme of the of the plan building a walkable community that welcomes um you know all people agreed yeah agreed and i think it's at the beginning of this we talked a little bit about what sort of vision would make sense and we got a little bit bogged down in the really long vision from the previous plan but i think we're still with i think at this point we've looked at enough chapters that we have a good sense of what those most important things are and i think it would be helpful to have that outlined and it doesn't need to be something ridiculous but the way that john just framed it was perfect something something that's just here's what this plan is definitely going to do in a sentence so at the risk of opening pandora's box here do we want to have that discussion now and sort of nail down what those themes might be excited i think i think you're right i think once if we figure out what those themes are and get it distilled down to a couple of concepts i think that'd be really helpful in terms of figuring out the scope for the work but i don't know if it's worth having that conversation now or later well what if it's just the topics now we don't have to make it a nice sentence yet but one of the things that that nice sentence should include um for a spring off point i'm sorry i i'm not going to be as eloquent as john was so i'm trying to keep notes so i just said i just wrote does it adequately address making Montpelier as inclusive as inclusive as possible so tell me how to modify that to make it better walkably inclusive well the word walkable is not inclusive so well that's important car-free mobility inclusive inclusive and accessible there you go with adequate housing i think housing has come up in a lot of our chapters beyond the housing chapter so i think that's definitely something that in some way needs to be within our main sentence affordability mentioned you can just go with words too and we can build a sentence later i mean i think that's easier inclusive accessible sustainable and i was thinking affordable in the sense of housing not necessarily affordable but yeah i don't know how else that's a good start yeah i think that diverse we can be inclusive but i think it's important for us to recognize the need for diversity do we want to explicitly call for economic growth business growth or viability maybe um okay i'll probably put that as its own item here i think harkening back to um our one of our former chairs who disliked any word starting with v so we'll we'll get after kim or kim will get after us at some point but i mean you've got the vibrant and um those types of ones when you talk about rather than economic development what really wants a vibrant downtown i can agree to that and i think it's it's maybe like it's not sexy and it's not like maybe what you lead with your front foot but but like you know activities that have a high return on investment like it's more or less basic good governance but i think focusing on on good government and good governance is important um maybe we're getting away from that this idea that we were going to highlight like the three most important things so okay it's a brainstorming session yeah i think yeah well i mean i i don't think that that we that the working groups have to stick religiously to this too but it is so i think more might be fine if that makes sense um because they're looking for inspiration about what the scope is well what we could what we could do after and and we don't necessarily need to figure it out but we just list out identify those priorities and then we just lay everything out and then understand how those everything that's been proposed how those things impact those priorities i like that yeah that also made me think if we're talking about public input later that if we if we do come up with a list of priorities it might be good at this point to to send that out and say hey mom piliar is this right do we miss anything right now here are your priorities yeah right people don't like being told what their priorities are right here's here's what we're thinking should be the priorities for the town plan based on our previous plan and all the outreach we did there and taking the subject matter experts from our working groups and from our committees and really figuring out what it is that we should be doing as well piliar what do you think uh okay unless anybody unless somebody wants to give me something new i can i can give you a summary what we got so far here uh number one does the chapter capture all topics and issues that are relevant uh and then a secondary question is does it require additional sections uh question two uh what is the feasibility of the items currently included in the chapter uh three does the chapter adequately address the social issues of the city values number four does it adequately address making what piliar as inclusive accessible sustainable diverse and affordable as it can be number five does the chapter support economic viability number six does the chapter support a vibrant downtown number seven do the suggested actions lead to a desired return on investment it sounds like a good starting point i agree and then i think uh not to throw another item there but one thing that i noticed is missing almost universally in a lot of town plans is um we get people fail to consider what what would happen if there is no action like what if we didn't do that sometimes not a whole lot would happen sometimes like it it's critical like we like some there are some things that we are solely responsible for there are other things that there are already two levels of government doing and if we decide to do that or not do that it may or may not have an impact so just recognizing like those things that we that we must do because no one else will do them and then understanding what the implications are if there is no action that makes makes any sense i think it does make sense but uh what do we want the working groups to do um do you like should we have them go through and note for the chapters what is essential and what is it or you think it's something else i guess maybe it's just like a a box that says does anybody else do this i think it's not a bad idea because we we had asked or we'd wanted previously the sections to give us the like ease of implementation kind of tags cost ease of implementation sort of thing and like who would do it so if you just sort of like adding that i think same idea okay um i'm i'm having a problem coming to the word but for the um for the actions that that we want taken in the town plan what is the keyword for that decisive no like what's the one we've been using like what is the chat the chapters are they say those strategies strategies okay hello everyone i'm so late it's inadvertently detained i hope you're all right after your inadvertent detention yes yeah i was inadvertently detained by a three-year-old so i think i'm probably okay there it goes this setup on zoom is really strange is somebody sharing their screen yeah okay all right now i understand so barb currently we're going through the uh the scope and what our expectations are for the working groups and the the details about about how we're going to go forward with that yeah good um just briefly catch you up um the general the general scope is the working group is going to do its own research uh and discussion on a topic it's going to come up with its own ideas and proposals and bring those back to the planning commission and the planning commission will decide whether it wants to act on that or not in addition to what the committee comes up with for that chapter the committee the well the committee was well it's going to be a working group it's going to be brainstorming the committee won't do anything independent it will just bring it back to the planning commission with what it came up with right sorry i'm not being i mean the the the city committee not us into what we already have in the chapter yeah okay all right great okay uh and you know they may or may not add or remove stuff you know like that so that's going to be within the scope um what we're doing right now is we're kind of setting out of the scope and priorities like a kind of set of questions that the working groups will go through when assessing each chapter this is this is so that each working group will be at least somewhat consistent with the other groups and in the type of subject matter that they come back with sure yeah uh so what do you have so far is this what i'm looking at on the screen no this is the outline of our discussion right now and i'm not able to share the screen i'm using i'll i'll email you what i got okay so far just so um so but basically you're saying that these the subcommittees that are part of the planning commission would be doing their own research is that what you said yeah i mean one way we've been talking about is you know they've been taking a deeper dive on the topic because exactly yeah yeah widespread thought within planning commission that when we look at some of these really big chapters like economic development or housing that there's a desire that we wish we could you know digest it a lot more than just a little bit of time we have in our official meetings sure yeah i agree and the only thing that i might offer for consideration is that within all of these chapters that we reconsider or somehow form a committee for is to consider what the effects of coveted have been on each of those chapters have been or may be in the future of course we can't exactly tell with their crystal ball but um at least uh uh helping them to sort of predict what might happen um and doing doing some assessment of that so that's our first question is talking i'm going to send you about that we're working on now the first question is uh does the chapter capture all topics and issues that are relevant uh and does it require additional sections so that would i think would be where you discuss whether this chapter needs to address covet or anything else right i guess the only thing i would say is that in in general um all of the sex all of the chapters need to address covet to some extent or another or i mean admittedly maybe natural resources less than others but but that's why it also another reason why it becomes so important to revisit some of the previous chapters that we have gone through uh yeah i'm tempted to have that discussion right now whether to see if everyone agrees that we should try to like directly address covet or do we want to just get through this scope issue and talk about that kind of larger philosophical question separately what does everybody think it's interesting what i'm asking do we do we want do we want to talk about whether we want every chapter to directly address covet uh here's what i would suggest let's let's continue let's not have that discussion now and if we have time at the end of the discussion we can talk about it seems like if there are ideas that are helpful to to recovery from covet in any topic we should and they should just be included right but i'm not sure we need to start off with the you know assumption or put the lens of uh i feel like we will have the covet lens on regardless or i can't speak for other people but it just consumes my days so i'm sure it does john that makes sense to me okay it could be i don't know if it's helpful but i created this document for the planning commission when we started the plan a while back and i'm afraid to look at the date that i this was created but um i can share my share my screen and if it's easier uh let's see here i think erin has to unshare his first the windows open here so this one was done uh just with the um energy committee as an example um where we broke things out into like a single vision sentence and then you basically had your your goals which are measurable objectives like something that you can say yes we did this or no like you have to be able to determine whether or not something was done and then the the strategies so within those you know the goals were basically here's what we want to do and then you know target date data source priority and then the strategies and you know these are less important they were just this was just built to all feed into one system which you never really materialized but uh the idea was you have like a policy or an action you have the effectiveness or um and then the effort um and this box was just you know if a committee felt like they were ready with something they could select it and then it would just go into like the the master spreadsheet so but we can ignore some of those i'm not i'm not seeing your screen on my screen is anyone seeing anything nope out there it is thanks for uh thanks for letting me just talk there for a while while you guys was a good plumber yeah so you have a good idea when i'm about to show you um you know we broke it down into vision goals and measurable objectives um with the uh goals you know target date data source priority um and then the strategies and um this was just like a drop down of high medium or low this was the checkbox i was referring to which you know we could not we don't necessarily need to make any use of but um and then these were the uh other fields which i think we thought maybe mike would end up filling out whether there's an existing programmer project timeline responsible party anticipated cost and partners um so i don't know if it's helpful or not i mean really the only criteria that it's looking at which is what a few of the committees used was you know level of effectiveness and and uh her resources required and then a tab for supporting info so i'll uh stop sharing with the link in the chat box or send it i'll follow up with email i think you all have it it's in the folder um with the city plan documents but uh yeah do you specific do you have a specific like way that you think that the working groups could use it no uh no uh if you were if you were thinking like how uh how are the working groups gonna you know what are we expecting this was useful you can take it and remove anything and then we could all fill out the same work from the same template or table okay i think that's helpful i think that format is a lot easier for me personally john could you send the link to that to everyone yeah thanks and i like the idea of having that separate group to look at the format and structure because i think that's an area that's going to become increasingly more important as we start to reach that next step of starting to actually build out you know we've got these implementation strategies which are really more nuts and bolts but we've got to get to start building our online presence of what this plan is going to look like and you know that's not my strong suit um so people who have a good eye for how to present materials you know we're gonna have to put together a chapter and put together what the implementation we have the words of the implementation strategy now we've got to decide how to present that in a in an understandable logical way and i think having a couple of eyes on that project would be helpful Mike was part of that the idea of that too was to be able to see if there were it was crossover in the various um chapters was that supposed to help us see that um by putting those implementation steps into this into the web sheet website i'm just not clear i'm trying to remember from several years ago what Mike's talking about is uh we we were discussing before you came along that uh we could have a working group that was basically dedicated to continuity and and as Mike put it structure of the entire city plan so a few people looking at just that okay so that wasn't necessarily about crossover which was what john's part of what i think john's no i think you're calling crossovers what i called content continuity which is just see how the chapters work together okay it's the figuring out how it fits together what it looks what it looks like is a big piece of that because that's how we figure out where there is that overlap and create that consistency so i think that's all part of it and then and then determine once we just identify those crossovers then determine how to work them out um so erin do you want to keep going uh with the with the outline i mean there's there's still a number of things we have to work out sure okay um so i just think on your scope we just a couple of smaller issues but i think the answers have already been fleshed out already um the first is you know is do we anticipate that any changes or edits or any of the work that the working groups do that would be brought to larger commit the commission to be voted on approved whatever i think the answer has clearly been yes to that um is there any disagreement with that no okay um and then the last point i put on i think it's kind of silly i don't think it's really applicable to everyone i was thinking about that i had to question my mind as to whether or not you know a the work product from the working groups whether it be advisory or you know be advisory to whoever is ultimately going to kind of sew all this stuff together or is it a directive i feel like once it goes to the planning commission and they vote on it it kind of becomes we kind of put the imprimatur of the commission on the work product so it becomes kind of a directive but um those are two small issues is there anything else with respect to scope but i'm missing please speak i think i feel pretty comfortable with the scope yeah could we also give this consideration until the next meeting to sort of i don't mean that we'd have to stop the process but if there was anything else we felt compelled to add to the scope that we could add it in and i think it would be it would be helpful since Kirby took some notes on what that scope now includes if you could send that out afterwards and then we can all weigh in if we have additional thoughts yeah i think that would be yeah it looks like we're done discussing that unless unless anyone wants to add more priorities so and if not i'll go and send it now so moving on uh next is kind of just a nuts and bolts issue is about the composition of the work groups are going to be a what the size of those groups are going to be and you know how we're going to sort of assign members to the work groups and um Mike i think the one thing that i i always lose kind of how many chapters are we dealing with across the city plan roughly 12 12 okay that's what i thought maybe give or take one or two yeah okay so my thinking was was probably maybe three people to uh to a subcommittee or to a working group that would end up be above it'd be four chapters per person if you know everybody takes it on i think um i guess the question is is that going to be enough is that going to be too much work for people to go through four four sections possibly more if anybody works on the kind of the continuity commission i guess um i think we're we're limited to keep it under four because a meeting of four would be a core mission is my understanding okay so does three seem like a good number for everybody feels arbitrarily right to me but that sounds good erin were you also talking about having four different reports to write addressing four different chapters for each of us right i just think that given the number of given the number of chapters that are out there if there's three people to to a chapter it ends up being about four each person each member of the commission will end up handling reviewing four different chapters and so i don't think i don't think we're gonna end up having that many don't think it's not what i'm anticipating i'm not really good with me i was i was thinking there'd be four or five total but but we'll have to when we get to that one discussion oh you mean four you mean four or five chapters that we're going to use but we might have to review all of them we don't have to review all of them is what you're saying kirby is that right yeah i don't think i mean i anticipate we're not going to have interest in uh some of the some of these chapters i mean for instance i think energy is one that i think we're all quite comfortable with we know a lot of great work was done i don't think there's a lot of feeling that we need to go in and and do more on that uh yeah so i don't know but we'll see you guys when we get further down in this discussion so the other question i had about this is how how are members going to be assigned to various chapters i don't have a clue i'm not a manager i don't know how people about how about how about i'll propose something i was thinking about earlier today uh after this meeting tonight um i don't think there's a problem if we do an everybody email with this and just telling what interest you have on it as long as there's no talking back and forth just just send like at the end by the end of this discussion we'll know what chapters we want to do as a group and everyone just express their interest on uh through an everybody email i could start it off um do it in ranked order and we'll hope that the chips fall in a really great way with a ranked order and that we can just assign them that way and if not i guess i could be like a dictator and from there does that sound okay Kirby and his iron fist yeah it's like you're working on sewage Aaron sorry i'll take it you hear no complaint from me um okay so Kirby once we know how many we're going to do you'll know how many each of us should volunteer for yeah and if you want to do an above average amount of working groups you could note that in your email because some of us are retired we have more time that's why i was okay i sort of thought so okay fine i mean i think at this point we only have five implementation strategies that are done we have two more that are close to being done and and that's we may have 12 chapters but we don't have 12 to review right now right and Aaron was going to talk about that later about about the review so we can i guess segue into that a little bit i'll just say that my my thought is that for the chapters that aren't done yet we could still talk about assigning them and whatnot but uh obviously the work on that's going to be put off which would mean that the expectation for that work to be done will also be put off like for instance if we expect the work to be done in two months for the ones we haven't done yet would be two months from from after the planning commission because it's first look at it makes sense okay so back back to you Aaron sorry yeah no that's good i mean i think uh unless unless we want to have a discussion about what uh chapters we know we want to have committee members assigned to you as a forwarding group as we don't want we can move on but if we want to sort of start to narrow down the universe that we're dealing with here we can do that now or not we're gonna need to do it at some point did you have an idea that you want to do it later Kirby no i i thought that later on in in erin's outline we were going to do it but if it's not later on then sure we can go ahead and do that yeah this is probably this probably the appropriate time to do that i guess okay uh what what do we we got housing economic development right and we've got yes and we've got we'll call it continuity and structure i would say natural resources you mentioned that as a potential i think that's should definitely have some group looking at it in part because um it's it covers multiple different committees so i think it's going to be a little more complicated it covers parks it covers conservation commission and also i also i want to be on that one covers the river and flood issues and things like that too right yes that's that's my expertise i thought it's what i thought so i'm heading right for you stephanie um i think we should also do transportation especially because i think they're pretty close right mike natural resources and transportation both were almost done before covid hit so transportation just emailed me last last week and we were emailing back and forth about setting the final goals now they were just working on strategies for the for the goals that they've adopted so i'm hoping august they'll have a meeting and we can work through maybe maybe be done in august the way this usually goes it'll take one one more meeting and i think it will it'll be september um natural resources was also getting um getting close with with theirs i bet they won't be done until september though they probably have one meeting in august and one meeting in september to go um mike do you have readily available all of the chapters just to just to kind of throw those out there so that they're on top of everyone's mind yeah i've got a i've got a table which has a bunch of the timelines and stuff and where they're at so can can you i can send that out can you share can you share your screen uh i could if erin un shares all right let me see if i can find it real quick all right can you see that nope nothing there yes yeah okay sorry it was just had to expand it to see it all right so we have um the the chapters are on the left side here some chapters we've talked about arts and culture um um kevin had started something but i don't have anything from him when he left to go um on furlough and he's still on furlough community services um i've been working on parks and i'm starting to draft some of the other pieces which are uh senior center cemetery and recreation are all under community services economic development we have done that's why it's in red energy we have done that's here governance i haven't started it it's not a required chapter but we'll see where that one goes um historic resources we have done housing we have done implementation was just that um discussion of butterflies rainbows and unicorns and so that that piece is done um the ones that are left that are really required land use which you guys are responsible for writing natural resources which has been started public safety actually isn't technically a required chapter but i think that's going to be one we'll probably want to put together including community justice however however we want to call it could be emergency management um there are a number of ways we could frame that but i think the fire department police department and community justice would all be in a single um discussion chapter transportation as i said is actually fairly close to being done and utilities and facilities doesn't have a committee um i've got a lot of that done already i just have to meet with the folks in dpw dpw is our facilities and utilities folks and and i've got to contact the schools because education um the only requirement education is really to talk about facilities uh we don't really plan for the education of people we just make sure we've got the um the facilities uh sufficient and how those facilities overlap with um say land use and housing um it was a bigger topic in the 90s and early 2000s when our communities were growing faster than our schools could accommodate them so we it was a really a flashpoint to make sure that as we're talking about land use and as we're talking about housing that we recognize its impact on education nowadays we want to build as much as we can to keep our schools operating so but anyways uh educational facilities would also be in utilities and facilities so okay so i think we there's one threshold question here and that is do we want to have the a working group tackle land use first because remember land use has to be drafted by us and it will and it will be staffed by mike or presumably by mike by someone you know uh do we want to do that with the working group starting the work or do we want to just do that as the entire group or it seems like that one has to come at the end after all the other reports but that wasn't it wasn't that you were suggesting that we should start immediately right no it's just i mean do you know should should we expect that we're looking at a working group start that work or should we expect that you know maybe that won't be a worthwhile because we're all going to want to dig into it maybe or maybe we will actually be concerned about time and the working group could be a way to save the larger groups in time so i think i mean um i was just gonna say i think it makes sense to have a working group started i think a big part of that is essentially laying out existing conditions and i think they might be helpful in framing things in a way uh and zeroing in on the decisions that the the planning commission needs to make and and using their time as efficiently as possible okay anybody else on that i agree yeah that's fine okay i think if it's if there's a start on the land use chapter then the other pieces once we've got natural resources and transportation i think that subcommittee would have all the pieces that they would need to start to develop the land use chapter because the chapters that would be missing you know arts and culture community services public safety are probably going to have a less of an impact on the land use plan the land use plan is really generally looking at our built environment transportation natural resources the historic the housing uh economic development those are really your key drivers for your land use yeah i think i think that's that makes sense i would hesitate to start it there until we're all comfortable with those chapters yeah that once we've had it if we have a committee looking at natural resources i want to be able to have that committee look at it have the full group look at it before we're moving to land use i think from from now the only working groups that would start work right away are those that are tackling chapters we've already gone over and so land use what i don't think would be that yeah um we would have to decide later on when we want that working group to start its work preferably about two months before we take it on as as the larger group uh so okay i heard transportation mentioned earlier that's not one that leaves out to me as necessarily needing a huge dive that uh outside of the planning commission's own view itself but uh if any i mean i don't know is anyone going to advocate for that and keep in mind that we are trying to keep this to a smaller number so we don't have so many right i would advocate for that because i have a pretty good sense of what's going to be coming out of the transportation chapter and also um as we've looked at this comprehensively in the city transportation becomes a critical element and it certainly impacts land use so as we go along i think at least we'll better want to take a little bit deeper dive on transportation and maybe we'll decide that what the you know what the chapter says is just fine but i'd rather have a deeper dive on now anybody else advocate one way or the other okay um it puts us at one two three four five six uh which means that some people will be on three working groups can you repeat the list that you have now kirby yeah housing economic development continuity and structure natural resources transportation land use if we have if we have just five it puts everyone they're not all starting right now so it's not like we it's not like we all need to dive in heavily right now in all of them and even if we don't like for land use we don't necessarily have to decide right now who wants to be on that group we can punt that until we're actually ready to be doing it which might be helpful so we don't get tangled up in things that aren't coming for a while sounds good do we want to do okay so does that sound good everyone i'll leave land use offer now but our tune of understanding is that there will be a working group on it later okay okay what's what's next erin looks like we have that sorted out unless unless someone wants to advocate for utilities and facilities deep dive or something i also think we should leave space for once we see some of these chapters maybe deciding we should have a working group to dive in i think i don't think we're limiting ourselves now to just these groups there might be other things that come up good point okay what else do we need to work out erin timeline deliverables i think we've just chatted about that a little bit uh when i was speaking with kirby earlier about this he had sort of put out a two month timeline for review by the working group which i thought seemed like a like a nice sweet spot so that's just a thought is just you know it's two months sort of a good amount of time for folks to get the working group together take a look at whatever they need to do figure out what they need to do um it's kind of just a guideline but i think it'd be good to sort of have an understanding what the expectation is up front so you know people can kind of manage their work load appropriately but just a question for the ones we haven't reviewed yet is the idea that the committee will still look at them as a whole so when we get natural resources we'll look at it as a full group before the deep dive or will we get it and then do the deep dive and then bring it to the full group i mean my thought is and this is just me talking but i thought i think that the approach that we've been using where the whole commission takes sort of a preliminary look at the at the outline like fills us in on details we ask some questions so we can just kind of get a better sense of what's going on i think it's a good way to kick it off and then we can funnel it to a working group if we need to but i think that makes for a great help it would help target what the working group looks at too i think it helps us all have at least some you know some familiarity in the first place too yeah yeah okay so with that i mean does anybody have any objection to a sort of a i'll lose two month time frame for review with each of these working groups um next issue i the question came to mind is is this is more to mic than anybody else is you know what's helpful to you in in your staff as we're doing this like what what's going to be helpful to you is when we sort of do a review what would you like from us in terms of work product that you can think of and if there's nothing that jumps out at you that's fine but i figured i would ask the question um i guess the as you know just what i mentioned earlier um you know i think i would benefit a lot from having the the continuity and structure and having folks taking a look at that and helping to pull the start to show how these pieces are going to fit together and get presented um i can do that but i tend to have a little bit more clunky work style um so usually people are a little bit more right brain than i am can usually come in and take take my ideas or take our ideas and start to put them together into a really good presentation um so i think if i if there's somebody who's got the time to to work on how we're going to roll this out make it look good um and make it accessible to the public so they can get an opportunity to make comments on it and eventually our product we hope to be online um and starting to get public feedback so you know we're going to have to start putting this together in a format that's actually readable and understandable to the public and that that would be the the need that i would be looking for over the next couple of months before we you know as i said keep in mind that we're going to put together the the municipal planning grant application um and if we understand how this product here that we're putting together with the subcommittees um you know what are we going to then hand off to our consultant what do we want our consultant to do for us um when january comes around maybe that's what they do maybe our job is just to keep pulling these things together and worry a little bit less about how it's going to be presented and we hire somebody who specializes in um kind of these web rollout presentation kind of get somebody with those um those skills i totally forgotten about the consultant so that's a good reminder yeah and it might help to have somebody who you know is very familiar with that actually guiding us through this it doesn't mean that we might not have our own concept but we certainly got a lot of guidance from um our consultant for the zoning so um that we might not otherwise have touched on so it seems to make sense okay so the last thing i wanted to um sort of put in front of the group was just the actual sort of deliverable with all of this is and i think this will probably vary from working group to working group but it just seems to me it's sort of a almost a silly thing to dwell on but it's yeah red line changes to the outline short report something that's just digestible to the larger commissions so we understand that the working group dug into and what changes they're working to make relative to the uh the initial outline that they were looking at so does any other sort of specific thing that this group thinks should be included in the final work products that the working group presented the commission now's the time to throw that out if we can get it in the table i mean i know it makes Stephanie and myself happy but um otherwise it's not a big deal we can just take it and put it into a table so right now i was almost thinking that the it might make sense for the continuity group to meet first and give them a month or two to put something together before the other working groups start i don't want to slow us down but i think that might make it easier going forward for that group can work on just taking as some of those other groups are working they could be fed something like there could be some back and forth maybe yeah that's very my help for that group to have a specific topic to look at if they're looking at one of the groups to start yeah that works for me i was thinking the continuity group would start later because they're not going to have all the chapters to compare at first well i think the first part it might maybe it's a two-phase continuity approach but i think that's that's a that's part of it is the at the end making sure it all works but i think setting it up setting up the chapters in a way that we can do that is the first piece and that that i think needs to happen sooner and we do have some chapters to work with to in terms of setting up a template or whatever we're going to use so do you think it would be helpful Stephanie if the continuity groups sort of met first and sort of had a better sense and some guidance for the rest of the working groups in terms of what would be helpful and a work in a final product yeah i think i think that would be helpful and then that sort of sets up a format for a better format for the working groups okay so so my understanding is we should expect to hear from the continuity group suggestions for like specifically what feedback coming from the other working groups should look like like when erin uses deliverable i mean like yeah like the the form that this feedback will take it's yeah the format how do we how are we organizing this and it gets to what mic was talking about to what it looks like at the end which i know john and i are both really excited about making it clearer so i think that would be helpful to start okay okay so unless there's anything else you want to chat about that i figured we moved the public input piece we don't have a lot of time so i'm just trying to move this along yeah i i don't i don't think we're gonna be able to um to to really get into the uh outreach stuff so we're gonna probably have to put that off so we can plan on next time hopefully talking about how we would like some of our outreach efforts public input however you want to put it call it uh how that's going to look in the short term in the long term so you know should be a discussion we have uh you know it's it's tough because we want feedback now but then covid so uh yeah we'll we'll talk about that next time was that barge i'm just a little unclear in terms of the the continuity and structure work group and will they be also identifying ways that we can get public feedback what's the interface between public feedback and that group that's a really good question i don't know about i don't know if that group nest i don't i don't i don't from based on our discussion tonight i don't feel like outreach falls under what we were talking about with that we were talking about is the basically is the city plan internally consistent it's kind of the gist of what we were talking about not about uh outreach um so we'll talk about outreach separately but then there's another open kind of question and is do the other working groups should the other working groups pursue outreach based on the way we've been talking about it it seems like that might be a little too much it seems like we're already asking a little quite a bit of the working group so maybe don't unless unless they feel like they really need to go out and talk to an expert maybe we don't expect any kind of outreach to be part of the scope well yeah speaking to an expert would be different than getting public input necessarily but for those working groups if you're going to define a two-month time frame it really wouldn't work for public outreach so i think yeah i think we'll just need to figure that out for time separately um how we want our outreach plan to look like it might be a here's this when we come back after two months for whatever group is meeting it might be a here's something that we really think we're going to need public input on and we want to make sure they see that sooner rather than later so it might be that might be part of what comes out of the groups i asked the barb's question on the continuity group i don't i agree curbie i don't think they should be specifically tasked with also figuring out the outreach plan but i think creating the document and updating the information in a way that makes it more accessible is what will help us do that outreach yeah that's good point okay so uh i think with that we'll uh yeah with that with that we'll look to adjourn just as one final note just to cap things off we talked about having a continuity group about how we how it could get to work first so one thing that we'll probably do next time next time we meet is talk about uh like setting a date in which we expect that group to report back the first part of what we're talking about so we'll we'll plan to handle that next time sound good okay all right do we have a much new term maybe real quick just in the short term are you gonna set that a list of uh working groups for people to i already sent out an email to sign up for everyone to sign up and uh yeah as we talking and i and i sent out another email that was this kind of scope and priorities for the working groups for everyone to look at that kind of and i called that a draft because you know that's going to evolve you know i think we've already talked about how we expect that to evolve so those two things i've sent out um and then on the agenda next time we'll have a discussion of outreach plan and uh and we'll also set a deadline for the continuity group to get back to us we'll also i mean i guess announce the next meeting what people's assignments are for the working groups and i'll take any non responses to the sign up as someone volunteering for anything we need and and and i'll i'm also going to fill in i'm not going to actually sign up but i'm not going to do a ranked preference for myself i'll just i'll fill in sound good okay we have a motion to adjourn so moved okay moved by stephanie second by barb all in favor of a journey say hi hi okay see you guys in two weeks thanks thanks everyone yeah thanks everyone thanks erin