 Alright folks, I feel like we better get started. We don't have a lot of time. I'm John. I live up on Cliff Street. I'm just volunteering tonight to help out. And our task this evening, just to try to clarify that a little bit with these breakout sessions, is we are going to develop sort of two lists. One is a list of actions that we think should be taken in this area of work, and then resources that are needed to move to move those actions forward. And just to remind folks, so everybody is hopefully in the right room. My understanding is that we are talking about investing in an adaptive downtown. Do we all agree that that's what we're here for? Okay, that's good. First step, check. So I actually think before we start, it would be great if somebody would go ahead and read again that description, just so that we all have it fresh in our minds. Is there a volunteer who wants to read that for us? Yeah, go for it. Invest in an adaptive downtown. With more floods likely in the downtown floodplain, one few years should do everything possible to protect public and private property, homes, stores, and downtown buildings. Currently steps for building parking, elevating buildings, appliances and inventories mitigating impact and adapting in the downtown options for moving some businesses and in control of the space are need led by individual homeowners, merchants and building owners who often lack access to public funding resources and or the capacity to navigate the existing financing options. The task force to gather and share best practices, raise money to help businesses afford transitions and work to leverage resources like those efficiency amount to replace appliances and home and business utilities. All right. So we're gonna spend we've got 30 minutes total. We're gonna spend about 15 to 20 minutes thinking through some potential actions. And I think this may be too hard, but maybe trying to decide on a couple that really rise to the top as key things to focus on. And then for the last 10 minutes, we'll think about resources. You know, what this is not as a group, just to be clear is that as was talked about before, there is now this commission that's going to convene to really work and support a lot of this. I think what we heard is the goal is to hire somebody to sort of lead those efforts. And so this group, I think you all may well be involved in that effort, you may well want to be involved in the effort to sort of do this task of investing in an adaptive downtown. But like this probably isn't the task force, right tonight, that's going to set another meeting date, right? But the but what this will be is input that that the commission then uses. And there may well be further convenings of of of people to do to do this work. So are there any sort of questions before we just sort of launch into what are some potential action steps in this area? And it's Matt, right? Yes, Matt, your role, you work for the city in what role? Awesome. Matt is our scribe tonight. So that's great. These notes will get transmitted. I may do some scribbling on the board. I may not. We'll see how it goes. So I guess with that, what are some potential areas of action when we think about this overall theme? Go for it. So those experts just to see if I understand what you mean, those experts would help to define sort of what the adaptions are addressing. Is that is that what you're getting at? Okay, great. Other areas of action? Yeah, the obvious is that one of the major threats is water. I'm sure there's other threats that we can come up with. But at the moment, that's what I'm focused on. And I have some vague image of of an elevated downtown. And so I'm not sure exactly what that means or how that would be facilitated or whether it's even vaguely possible. But it seems like that part of that vision is that it would be almost like a park like adaptation of the downtown in a way that would allow the river to be the river, but that the downtown could still stay where it is. And it could be a demonstration for other similar locations. I don't know how that is now elevating out of harm's way work businesses and and housing. Just a clarification because I think it's helpful like do like one scenario is fill basements like essentially eliminate basements in downtown buildings and maybe sort of like move inventory to the second floor, let's say, does that meet your definition of elevating downtown? Are you thinking more ambitiously in the actually physically sort of I just think it's talking about a film about stilts or whatever you envision whatever engineering wise works to actually but you know have there's elevated highways, there's elevated walkways everywhere. So move businesses to the second floor. I don't know about selling basements. I'm not even sure. I don't either, but I'm trying to get a sense of hydrological. Yeah. Yeah. So my point is where we've got parking lots, some of them are necessary. We need a place to put vehicles, but there's a lot of opportunity, I think, to reconsider those spaces as we water infrastructure and provide areas for the river to flow into when it overrides its banks and capture and you can consider some of our you know the significant path as part of that. So more green stormwater infrastructure and park spaces downtown after that where it makes sense. And if that means parking downtown is harder or you now, God forbid, you have to walk three blocks to get downtown. You gotta walk three blocks to get downtown because that's one. So repurposed parking essentially to perform that underutilized impervious areas, which is often parking lots. Okay. I'm just trying to write some cuz maybe we'll prioritize you had your hand. So I was thinking about if we talk about elevation, I would personally have been on this for business years ago, and it's not what you can get on. It just doesn't work for me. It does with a lot. So with elevation, I would say, like getting help for the businesses that we have now downtown to have shelves around the perimeter of business so that in that moment that we get that calling, we can like lift things up quickly. And also I think that when you stand in the basement, we actually absorb some of the water to stop it coming out. But I would say that we have now and through teamwork possibilities. So I'm just gonna say sort of actions in existing space, which seems to be a little different from elevate. Okay. Another here, then here, then there. Yeah. But now, there are businesses that are starting just to get up and climbing. They really don't have time to think of the long term necessary. So we have to come up with a short term and have long term solutions to go flood-proofing and everything. Okay. Go ahead. Yeah, and one way to think about that is something called flood-proofing where basically we're providing hardening for the existing buildings rather than elevating what we're saying. And there are all kinds of methodologies to be able to do that. But one of those includes filling basins. Further? Can you further define hardening? Yeah, basically providing a barrier on the outside of the buildings that would exist water up to at least the base flood elevation but not higher. And create and using flood dates. So like the M&T Bank example, right? There was a flood gate bank. Yeah, flood gate. Yeah, okay. Yeah. And we did that at the boiler plant also. Oh, at the boiler plant. Okay. Great. Okay, well, so it doesn't always. Go ahead. So are you suggesting specifically a parking garage is an alternative to so much impervious space because you're going up as opposed to, okay? Okay. I'm going to get some new voices in before we go back. So, yeah. I would love to see us do everything we can to address this indication within this. And so for example, if businesses and downtown structures lost their immediate systems, can we do everything possible to make sure they transition off of fossil fuel when they rebuilds, you know? So just thinking about that, embedding that in the resilience and recovery process. So when you say mitigation, what you mean is sort of addressing the root cause. Climate mitigation. Climate mitigation is what you really mean. Okay. I'm just going to sort of write that as the, okay, thank you. You and then you. I'm not a business owner. So I'm talking about what I see. But it seems to me that the, among the needs of office was inventory. Because inventory was being stored in basements. Can a city and real estate agents and real estate owners can come to some kind of alternative to a storage system for inventory and it's accessible. It's accessible. You have to have an elevator. So not using the lower grade. And some kind of, you have to be separate building. And that's a problem for merchants. I know. Well, I have that in my inventory. Are you willing to come back tomorrow? How much could be stored? How much has to be put up for? Accessible. Right. And how would you manage that kind of storage? Basically a warehouse. As a shared, are you thinking of it as a shared or shared resource? Okay. Great. Yeah. And I, too. It's one is building off of what you said about the kind of the shelf concept. Something that was mentioned in the weeks after the flood was creating something like shelves that, you know, you have, you have think about the the hurricanes, the buildings in the south where you cover windows with boards and you lock them down. Something like that for shelving, but that moves. So you can literally just close up shelves and drag them, put them on, you know, so they're on wheels and you can drag them out again into higher ground. That was one, a 13-year-old idea. And I just want to bring back something that I mentioned on the floor was reimagining our schools. We really need to think differently about, we have very very, very small schools in Montpelier and we have a lot more population that we can join together with to think differently about our buildings. Nathan, yeah. And then, yeah. Nathan, yeah. Thinking for me about, you know, the larger the stack, the more density the better. And I think if we can find a way to come to street housing outside of the flood level and then recognize that the retail spaces in the walkable downtown is a premium, if we can accomplish sort of flood-heartening offsite storage, we can keep people safe, right? If this happened in March and people were without heat and then it makes a thousand, we would be really in trouble. So keep people safe. Businesses, I think we can sort of react and help move stuff, put it back. So I would like to see us really, really focus on density. Allow, you know, allow taller buildings. Allow housing without parking in more zones, et cetera. I just want to see us, you know, we can draw a line. We know, we know what the projected flood is. That number might not be real anymore. We can add three feet to it. We can say, let's, any new housing where we can try to buy out, in Northfield, bought out, low-level housing, that just wasn't a threat anymore. And that could become retail space or it could become business space. That's where people would lose housing for floods. So just to meet, be sure I understood, like, do not develop new housing within the flood plain, but have that housing that's outside of the flood plain be higher density. Is that, am I getting that right? It's still close to the core, but I think close to the core. I mean, a lot of what defines the street is how flood is and how compressed the retail and, you know, eating and let me experience part of it. And so let's let that core be that. And Adox on what Greg and Barbara are saying about, acknowledge that we're going to flood again over and over again. Let's build for it. And let's, you know, make it a quick cover. You, and then you're, sorry. Yeah. So I quickly agree it's going to flood again and we should build for that. But I just want to urge us that we're talking about building an adaptive downtown and we may not just flood. We may have an abundance of snow. We're not that far from the pre-forest fires that were surrounding my forest. We could have a forest fire. So I'd encourage us to broaden our thought as to what we need by adaptive. Yeah. Yeah. So I appreciate it. I don't know exactly how we can get the building. And during that sort of. I will say a slash the white right through the basement. Before even I started to go through. Right. I'll talk about it was already coming through. So I need to hand like those things really just need to be off limits and bills after the stand. And if you get some funding to do that. So that all of the business is built. It's the end of it. So a lot of the water on the beach. Right. And I will say we really fortunate because we just heard from people from daddy was getting into a splash four hours before it really did. We just got friends and the riders and girls and put shelves around the top of the slash. And we just got it. We have like burning people and the boxes and the boxes. And how they had those shelves and plates. And they would look beautiful because we would do like aren't there something that would be a really great way to businesses to actively to get things up. In those moments. That's what you're saying too. And just to like reiterate like to come back to it what you're talking about is actions that you can take in the existing space to sort of really to do what Barbara described as sort of like wet flood proof and hardening. I mean some of that's exterior stuff. Some of its interior stuff. Go ahead. So a couple piggyback thoughts. One is that the ideas that Kelly's mentioning and that other people are mentioning require some kind of collaboration to make it possible for all businesses. So it's not just the actions to see the best right. How do you create the kind of collaborative funding structure or external investment that enables businesses to adapt. And can I ask a question back which is is that collaboration both about funding so that there's some common sense of where how we're going to finance it. But is it also about strategies themselves both. So it's a both sort of information and funding so that there's a common set of practices that are deployed. Am I. Yeah. And I just I know we have that. But you know I think you can lay everything up with the commissioner. You can say OK there needs to be you know a tank and a money bank for individual businesses to make decisions about. The actions. Yeah. Not just. Not just have it be you know each one to their own devices because that's not. But the other idea of investment that I just want to because I think we're called investing in an adaptive investment adaptive. I want to think about not just the concrete needs of the downtown businesses but also our youth investing in our youth as the future of our talent and our future of our economy. So that means both creating resources aimed at that are flood resilient and disaster resilient. Currently we have no youth center at all and also thinking about our schools in an efficient and emergent and generous way. So I also support a collaboration approach to our youth and education. Got it. Behind you Dayton first because it's a new voice. Yeah. And then you go for it. I'm not sure how to frame this. I haven't thought this through. But I would like to hear from business owners potential business owners what they would need to make them feel confident in doing business. And I don't like I say it. I'm not quite sure how to frame it. My theory is that people won't really have businesses. Okay. Go ahead and Dayton. Yeah. I think two things that I'm going to sprinkle off that. I think when we talk about adaptive downtown the economic side of it and providing businesses and creating this water dense place that we all want to be is huge. And one thing I think we really look around for is we're not the only city that's flooded. There are cities across America that are power size and they're smaller. We can afford low line areas. But numerous times in the last 20 to 30 years. And we've learned a lot from those reasons. And we should look at best practices. Whether that's how to adapt the store. Or. Yeah. We'll look at that. We'll look at that. We'll look at it. All right. I feel like we should start to actually bring this to a close because we got to think about resources. I guess what I wonder about here is I like I'm given a task which is in 30 seconds I need to report out to the big group what we've talked about. And what I feel like I hear as a recurring theme kind of fits under this sort of defining a set of actions to do this wet flood proofing and hardening of those existing spaces in in that downtown core as an emphasis of this. And I would say to dovetail on what you said really trying to define not just individual business by business or building by building but collectively what do those strategies look like and how do they get financed. Is that I'm seeing a few nodding heads as like that. Yeah. A couple of hands to respond. Yeah. So the time span piece is an important element to that. Yeah. All right. We're getting some reactions and I see Emily and then Jack go. Yeah. I'm going to say John and I heard a lot of the difference between land for a cover and taking more in that short term you know the floodgate second thing and maybe some of these more longer term ideas and you know really responding to the climate crisis in power. I just wanted to throw you know all those impermeable parking services that we're talking about along the water. I think that's really important. A lot of those are owned by the state and so we're really going to have to figure out a way to work collaboratively with BGS on that. I mean one thing I think about is we all know this is a big flood so lots of places are affected but I think someone's the very first thing because he said you know ask the experts and I would love in the short term to like identify those areas that are most at risk and the things that we can do in the immediate future to help those most at risk. Okay. Jack. I think this kind of goes without saying it's a theme that's going through a lot of comments but I think I want to say it anyway which is that I think we need to be clear that we are committed to preserving and defending and rebuilding our walkable downtown where it is. It's our downtown and that's the center of our community and that's where it should be. Is that a point of common rallying? Yes. Okay. That's I think actually a worthwhile thing to know. Yeah. I just wanted to make a point that I communicated to Evelyn and Prim after the last meeting which was I heard two different speakers use the same phrase short term. One says short term. The other says short term. Years. Yeah. And I asked her I said for meeting number three could Paul at the beginning please clarify what's been my short term and that didn't happen. Yeah. I'm making that request again. Okay. Yeah maybe we could ask you like when you think you define that for us a little bit when you think short term are you thinking a few years or are you thinking sort of in the space of a year? In the space of a year. In the space of a year. So it's sort of the immediate. Two weeks. So you could just sort of write your name and ask for it and go and play away. Yeah. We know a lot of short term solutions aren't contrary to a long term solution. Yeah. So you have to understand where there's some big conflict. Yeah. Yeah. That's what we need to think about being bigger than just hardening our buildings. We also have to think about how we can build a long term framework that will make it easier to harden our buildings. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I do it. We quickly Gretchen and then quickly Barbara. Yeah. That's the long term point. Right. Build back. Yeah. Yeah. Noted. Barbara. Yeah. I mean we're dedicated being in that zero community. Right. We're putting all the existing between that and what we put in right now. So we've had short time with that one. Great. And finally, and then we're going to resources. I'll be quick. I just wanted to say that because we've proposed to the downtown this is because we're very close to our own grid together. We are committed to being we love our country so much that we're not going to put our confidence in you there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Resources. Quickly with four minutes to go. Yeah. I've been thinking a lot about it's not like we can just make decisions about everybody in that town. You have individual business owners who don't own their spaces. You have proper property owners who have to make infrastructure decisions about how to build back and you have a city. I would love to see a public fund this is for housing as well but a public fund that says OK, Tim Heaney you're about to redo a bunch of heating plants we'll give you we'll underwrite a lot of a really green giving choice with some you know some fair deal about getting some of that money back in the future and we can a few to cooperate with your business tenant. I just feel like if I'm a property owner and I'm not it's lush making those decisions in a way that's long term helping it can be more expensive and I would love to have these resources something that we provide so some sort of community bank with some defined goals and resources hoping on those goals and it's cooperative and these people have to do with property owners and these people have to do with the business owners and knowing that not all property owners will remain the same not all business owners. OK, that's helpful. Yeah, go. I'm going to echo what you just said between resources between money often it takes more resources to retrofit the historic buildings that we are up into than to build new and we need to recognize that. OK, great. Can I just say another one that I've heard you all also talk about a sort of expertise and best practices that feels like a resource that is also on the list. I just got the frantic look from out in the hall. Are there any last resources to add to this mix? The state. The state. OK, yeah. That's thank you. State of the T. I think watershed management. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the good news is that's one of the other ones tonight for sure. So, yeah. OK, let's wrap with that. Thanks everybody.