 You may all remember me from the Archaic guy that got introduced earlier at the start of the sessions And Turnabout a spare play So I'm at the microphone now because I want to do that turnabout but before I do as the relic from the downtown board I want to Say and emphasize The the important role and the dedicated role that all the people on that board serve But more importantly The the role that the staff the designation coordinators And the people that support them It's amazing what they do And even though I've had the privilege of being around for a long time It still astonishes me what they accomplish And the directions that they lead us in and so I'd like to ask us all to give them another show of appreciation But then there's the guy that embarrassed me I guess I've had the privilege of working with a lot of board chairs And I think we all find ourselves in this situation once in a while When there is a change A new board chair comes on board and I remember saying to myself Who's this guy? and That's that's sort of an honest appraisal of whenever there's a new guy It didn't take long for josh hamford to stop being the new guy and become the guy And and I think we all owe him an incredible Thank you and wish of good luck On what he's moving on to Because he's left us in a good place He's left us with a mission And we are all here today I would dare say embarking on His mission and that mission that is being laid out before us So please join me in saying good luck and thank you to josh Oh, come on. Good afternoon I think it's too soon for the you know the post lunch coma thing that happens Um, let me ask it. Did you enjoy your lunch? I did too I've been asked on behalf of the consultant team to especially say thanks to Amy and to alice and to everybody on the dhc team that made possible for us to have this space and set everything up And particularly for feeding us all please join me. Thanks So my name is chris and ermine If you remember way back in the morning When you just only just had your coffee you may have seen my picture in a little circle up there I'm the emeritus member of the smart growth of america team and uh, I want to talk to you a little bit about Some approaches that other states have tried In the areas that we're talking about today. Now I have to start off Right from the beginning by saying that Now we we do this kind of work around the country and whatever word the topic is we're frequently talking to folks about and we're asked to bring examples and what are best practices and you know, we'll talk about what are the sort of top five, you know Exemplary programs the places that you know have the best Practices that if you do this that they're really getting it right Um, in this case, this is a little more challenging Because the truth of the matter is there's not a lot of competition in this space That uh, the states around the country Lots of them just aren't doing any of this at all So there aren't very many exemplary programs. I'm not sure there is an exemplary program There are some examples of a few places besides pot that have tried to do something with this and some of them tried some interesting things but You know the the first point is that To a large extent for months already a leader and been a leader in this area. That's where you're you're starting from Um Nonetheless, there may be features from some other states that are worth thinking about Now, it's always the case that you know every place is different. You need you can't just take what somebody else did and they won't work here That kind of thing, but there may be Features of particular states approaches that are worth thinking about even for some that don't where it's obvious You can't do this kind of thing and Vermont it wouldn't work It still may be worth thinking about what it tells you about The approach that another place has taken now I will say you know, this is uh The case that is we've done are going to be part of a report which will be in more detail Which will be able to see later and you know, we'll inform the whole thing Here i'm just going to be sort of cursorily running through a few examples, but you know, hopefully this will Help to simulate the conversation you're going to have after I stop talking and you go back to tables And that's kind of really what this is all about. It's just to give you kind of some some food for thought There are some qualities of You know different states approaches To think about that may you know be part of what you want to think about yours like, you know, how clear goals are How what you're doing fits into an overall state approach how the leadership is structured and What kind of support you get how different agencies across are not aligned and various things like this and These are again, just you know, some things to think about how hard is it to do Because other states have you know found kind of different Responses to these things We're going to look at very briefly at five Different states that that have tried to do something along these lines and may have something to contribute So the first one is Maryland and Maryland in many ways does stand out because It's one of the only examples of there really being A statewide effort You know, which to some degree Vermont had starting over that 250 for instance There aren't very many examples of that kind of thing. Maryland is an example of a statewide initiative In that case very much led by a governor to create an overarching statewide priority And a system for implementing it and in many ways, that's where the terms of our growth got popularized so Just to kind of briefly about what they do They're kind of free designation programs as you can see this this game about the 90s So it's been around, you know for a while Particularly with the the first two parts is the priority funding areas which is the way in which resources get through to Communities there's a also a rural aspect of the program And in 2010 a new component of sustainable communities focused on redevelopment of older communities The you know key one here with the priority funding areas is that it directs resources to legacy communities basically It includes infrastructure requirements And it basically tries to say We're going to put infrastructure in the places but not in the places that aren't the designated places And that's you know goes beyond what a lot of places will do They'll put money into folks but they won't take the step of saying and we're not going to fund the places We don't want development to go So it's really intended to just to not only encourage growth in the priority funding area, but to discourage growth outside those areas The newer program is As I said kind of focused on redevelopment issues It's it they're all pda's, but they're a subset of pda's basically Um It provides funds for demolition and supports anchor institution development within the within the pda so the some of the key things to to think about in What this involved was that it really was a gubernatorial level initiative and it left with a structure From the top of state government down that remained in place So there's a sub cabinet The governor sub cabinet on smart growth and With authority for the person who's in charge of that to make sure other departments are acting and aligning with it And that is again goes beyond what most anybody else has done Part of the significance of this though, I would say is that After you know three decades This is still gone And there have been different governors and there have been party changes But even governors of the party not of the one who started this Have not brushed the side that had you know sort of at least nominally owned it And the degree to which it's successful and everybody's doing the things but there's plenty to argue about But the point is it's had staying power I think part of that is because at the highest level it was established as a statewide priority in a way that was uh It was likely to stick harder to to brush aside Uh, so, you know, it does have real dollars behind it You know, it's again, I'm gonna get a place-based designation system And there's a comprehensive set of resources that can support communities within those uh designated areas Includes you know money As well as tax credits It's coordinated targeted And it has a local business component as well under the new uh under the new part of the program Maine is uh, perhaps some of you may know since it's nearby That my understanding is that they're right now looking at a significant reform proposal of their own so This may be changing but There are two major programs and this is a downtime revitalization program and a growth management program that has priority development areas Particularly targeting housing, which I think is you know, one of the things we've heard about and talking to people That people understood here Part of what's interesting is the way they did it and kind of a little bit like what I think this this process indicates I'm gonna try and map The existing policies to what what are outcomes intended to be The biggest thing I'd say about Maine that's kind of interesting to contrast with the Vermont approach up to this point is that instead of having designated You know designated programs like designated areas designation programs with their own channel of funding They essentially have You're a priority development area, you know, you're designated and now we figure out what Kind of funds are appropriate and they can all apply So it's a little more pool than the channel in that sense Um, and they have some requirements like a resilience plan again So they are somewhat targeting housing and resilience issues and again that may be relevant to your consideration Utah had a history that it was not unlike what happened with Maryland where there was a statewide initiative and It it was very broad and in fact, that's one of the things that was most distinctive I think about Utah for a long time that Although it had been to show the support it wasn't strictly speaking just a governor's initiative. It was An effort that brought together community leaders business leaders major institutional folks In something that's called envision Utah again back in the late 90s and They got a very strong again statewide commitment that resulted in a number of different programs and in different ways they went about this Uh, you know, they use a main street program lots of ways that main street programs are they used in different ways Utah's was very much a function of this A fund was created for the Callister fund that specifically, you know provides resources they had A set of standards for quality growth communities I guess I should say that It's not clear that The Utah program today is what it was when for it started in for quite some time And that is an illustration of the fact that if you don't have continuing political commitment None of this may matter very much and that's part of the trick It's how do you ensure that you've got something that is going to have deep enough roots that You know, you just have lack of interest and lack of follow-through later on But I do think that the Utah model has a lot of good elements again, one of the things that had is that very much integrated throughout state policy and The the ability to get alignment of goals and resources Devote now, you know, they're they're among the issues Are funding and that comes up with a lot of these if you don't have money behind it It's harder to make things things happen And so, you know, I mentioned the the the McAllister fund which is basically going about it by trying to preserve agricultural land Kind of the reverse way of getting compact development by not having the agricultural land disappear Which I think you know is a viable strategy But it's success depends a lot on being able to fund that and they've been up and down on this. So I think for Next year the conference of the year they have three million dollars in it in 2018 They only had eight hundred thousand dollars in it and that's kind of in the commitment can go up and down But real money is One way you can get things done Delaware, I think is of interest in part because there's some parallels With vermont and some real differences, you know, sort of a similar size state It's also, you know, heavily rural Has a big tourism component to its economy It's also very different in just kind of the institutional Culture the political history and all So if you had a spectrum of kind of state integration to real local control Delaware is pretty high on the the state end of the spectrum probably more so than people in New England would be comfortable with Having spent much my youth in New England But I think it does illustrate some of the benefits of this because The Delaware system overall involves a fair amount of integration from the local level which is basically county And there are three so it's fairly simple in a small place But there is a state agency You know cabinet level committee that has a role and there is an office of state planning coordination And that is, you know, a significant difference from what most states would ever do But it does mean you can get more consistency across the state and across state agencies and so I think that's something to think about as you As you think about what you want to try to aim for here and what things you can or can't do here They do get just, you know, I think a more coordinated effort than in most places are able to do they have again designated districts and You know funding that is based a lot on those Michigan is a very different situation. Obviously, it's a large state It has a history in its programs That is not a compared to particularly compared with Maryland or Utah or Vermont They have never had a big statewide commitment overall to bring this in that the michigan programs are Fundamentally about economic development So their place-based designation type for all these programs are really about, you know, Revitalization workforce development and a range of things like that without talking a lot about the kind of the bigger goals that You have here On the other hand, it does serve a lot of those goals And I think, you know, you can understand how politics made results and the sort of thing in different places But the key thing is having done that they do a lot to coordinate those efforts And to support them with funding. It's basically run by one agency And it's uh the michigan economic development Commission is it's a It's a it's a significant player and it has a lot of tools So that if a community is getting help through this, there's a you know, good coordination and a number of different kinds of resources That's going to be brought to bear And you know dirt funding tax incentives things like that um Which which makes this An interesting thing to look at because of again, even though it's in a sense more narrowly focused it's uh more intense and It involves a pretty significant level of commitment on the on the part of the state They do things to help people understand. There's a developer tool kit for instance Um, so they communicate about what this does and who can apply for things and so on They do slide and square scale for matching requirements based on population to make it easier for smaller communities to participate They can look at regional effects And they offer a lot of technical assistance And that's another thing that we see in a number of programs of Sort of variation in the amount of assistance that they give particularly to smaller communities in being able to To deal with these programs Um, as I said, it's it's more of a Development tool it does distinguish between traditional downtowns and geographically disadvantaged areas It prioritizes geographically disadvantaged areas for funding Um, and again, as I said to start it's it's kind of a jobs and workforce development focus Even though in the end it does a lot of similar things now Overall, I just note a few things about what we see in different places A number of these is that have a strong state leadership component That may be because it's actually, you know, the chief executive has some direct role people in the chief executive But some of it's simply because they were conceived as statewide policy, but One of the advantages in some of those is simply being able to get that kind of Coordination because somebody's in charge somebody has to own it And the commitment that means funding is more likely to unfold Many of them have simpler processes to apply Than I think you or have here partly with the programs in place Most of them involve some kind of main street program, but they use them in different ways Most don't involve a lot of regulatory relief Main is probably the closest to Vermont in that regard And I would say that not all of these are performing as originally intended as I said with Utah being one notable example Long term The commitment has to be there or You know, this this stuff doesn't it doesn't just go on automatic pilot But to the extent that you can incorporate things that You know game you take root and Help them become kind of exclusionized and part of that culture Then you have a better chance of actually having this sustain over time And ultimately that's what's necessary because by the nature we're talking about something that takes time to come to fruition so we're now going to ask you to To think a little bit about some of these issues and plays in which some of these may be important to you and We're going to do a little bit more of the polling exercise And to do that Rebecca and I are going to switch a route Yes You want to take a question or two? Yes, so watching does that I could take a question Or half See nobody was ready. They weren't ready. They were all listening attentively. They didn't know they were supposed to be thinking of questions Sorry What about Oregon? What about Oregon? Oregon is a definitely an example of a state that has had a statewide commitment for a long time again started on the agricultural side Which is I think and when the governor's initiative basically governor Tom McCall For five decades ago now Which was initially really focused on how do we save our farmland? And has had various iterations As with some of the other states there's a now great literature debating whether it has or hasn't been effective It's my own impression is a lot of it has worked quite well You do see Farmland, you know closer to developed areas, you know, not Alternate subdivision compared to many other places But again, you know, they have They have their issues too. We didn't talk about Oregon for a few reasons One being that I think people are kind of tired of hearing about Oregon So we want to look at the places people would be less familiar with Other question Another question. All right. Well, you're ready to be asked a question So I'm going to get a little reminder in case you forgot what happened two hours ago and for anybody who's new here We're doing some live polling There is a website up at the top here and actually you know what I'm going to zoom back Out for a second to that first slide without how to qr code that would make it easy for everybody again So if you want to participate in live polling on your phone Call up this qr code or type in that website or if you like you can do it by text We're going to ask you a few questions so you can respond to some ideas that you heard in versus talk Once you get that opened, I'm going to go back to the whole slides And you will get a question popping up on your phone And you'll have a chance to weigh in by multiple choice or by a couple different options Does anybody need more time with this? Yes, a little more time. Okay. Remember your village is here to help you Ask person help weigh the hand if you need some help I'm giving another one. How about another question question for chris while some folks are just getting this loaded up Anyone have a question for chris? If you already have it loaded in your phone alison, then you're fine if you're just joining or that Browsing cloud disappeared from you for you then you might need to get it We've had a couple people who needed a little more time You can restate it to Questions whether they're international looking at or they too different so There definitely are international models and there are some that I think work quite well I will say we're all hesitant to talk about them because that tends to have a strong There's always resistance to something not invented here, but if it comes from another country You know that people have the legitimate objection that we have different constitution. We have the laws, you know You know, frankly, there's not a bad model just north of here You know, I worked some years ago in montreal where they created a regional plan That was aimed at focusing development around particularly transportation That's you know hugs of where there's public transportation other transportation facilities around you wanted to focus more of the development over a period of time And but there their plan isn't necessarily a lot different than you find in you know Des Moines or you know some other place here The difference is that their regional body Can tell the local all the locals your plan must be consistent with this And you have to align them and you have so much time to do that And that just doesn't happen, you know in our states, right? Um, and you know, we've we've had that that issue of having so much Power divided between localities where I served in government Land use is our thing And the state on the other hand having particularly mostly the funding authority and getting something in between is really difficult And we don't do a lot of that in fact, you know, that's one of the one There is an organ is kind of odd because they actually have a regional government in the important area in a way we really Now whether you can find mechanisms like you have our you know rpcs here I can think you can fill some of that role is one of the things that I think is a real question The difficulty is that the places that are most successful if I look outside the United States Fundamentally involve a different level of power in regional bodies in particular Or just from the national government. I mean there are a lot of good examples in France, but it's very top down For months, not really a top-down kind of place in a country that's not that much crazy about top down So, you know, those things are interesting to look in But they're a little bit harder to say You know, can we can we do that here? Okay, are we ready for some polls? Reminder if you don't have a phone or it's not working for you your neighbor can enter some votes for you So just don't take advantage of it and put in 10 votes for yourself So let me zoom back out to the right slide We already had some of you voting. That's awesome So the first question you're going to hear is around the idea of Corsair of having gubernatorial participation to increase leadership engagement and likely of agency involvement So in this case, you're doing a rating scale if you are not interested in this idea You're going to click one or eight If you're really interested in this idea, you're going to click five or eight You can click somewhere in the middle if you call someone Just take about 10 seconds and answer that question on your poll if you'd like to See 107 Looks like we've got got most of our votes in And let's take a look at what we see I'm shifting so fast So it looks like pretty significant interest in this idea last call for votes second idea how interested are you in streamlined application and administration to reduce barriers and burden of the designation programs If you're not interested in streamlining the application and reducing burdens give it a one If you're pretty interested in that give it a five See if there are any results that surprise us here 78 votes in If anyone's having trouble with voting do not be afraid to ask for help by somebody down All right, let's take a look at what we're seeing All right, I'm actually surprised that there's some people not as interested in that 64 very interested in reducing burdens All right any last votes get them in Next up ready to get this reform idea regional coordination and or municipalities working together to receive benefits Oops, I'm giving you a preview How interested are you in that one not interested one or a very interested five somewhere between Let's see what the votes say Very interested even more popular than streamlining administration. I think just by the eye of all that Okay, here's a new one before you do anything. Let me explain this one to you because it's a little bit trickier This one we're going to ask you. Oh, actually. I'm sorry. We had a duplicate and take it back trick See if you're paying attention What would you like to see the designation programs do this one? We're going to ask you to rank in order from of reference from top to bottom Tap on the answer and click the up or down arrow to move it This one's a little bit trickier on your phone So if you do tap one you'll see an upper down arrow that will let you move it up or move it down If you would like it to be in a different order if you like the order how it is Just click it and let it be So let me read it for you at the top It's locked now. It's a lot. Thank you Now it's a lot for you Right now at the top is impact a smaller number of communities more deeply In the middle of maintain the current number of communities served And at the bottom impact a larger number of communities less intensely So if you would rather see that larger number of communities impacted less intensely be the top priority for you More important than drag it up to the top Locked again. Why is it doing that? We'll keep unlocking it if any two There we go. Yep, this is his own. Okay, so about 10 more seconds here Let's check out the responses on this Smaller number of communities more deeply it's first lock again. Yep. I know that one shut up. That was great Let's try and do it that some way and see if we get the same results How many of you would like to see top reference impact a smaller number of communities more deeply number one reference How many of you would like to maintain the current number of communities served? And how many of you would like to impact a larger number of communities less intensely? Okay, so just my eyeballing average the scientific approach It looks like our full results are found in the line of events. All right Do you want to talk about these first? Yeah, just a couple things. I'll mention um, so, you know again in thinking about what you want to do Going forward and most immediately and exercise work about to have just sort of food for thought One of the things I don't think I mentioned I just I've thinking about when we talk about The needs of smaller communities in particular One of the issues often is the smaller communities have a hard time even applying for a I'm not just under these programs, but on many programs One of the things you kind of did was to allow communities To work together basically to combine so they can apply for something And that's you know, that's one kind of idea that You might want to think about More technical assistance of course to do it would would also help that and that's The kind of thing you might you might want to be thinking about There is the question of The what the nature of state support should be and I mentioned the up technical assistance can more be done that way There's obviously the question of funding and I think we'll agree more funding would be better But are there specific things we can talk about that you know would make sense as targets or as ways of funding Or as just an emphasis even in advocacy for all of this We've talked about how you can can we make these things easier to apply for you know Can you and there's a tradeoff involved when you make it easier to apply there's certain things We're not going to be controlling as much Are there ways we can do that that makes sense And what can we do to make Communities, you know better better alignment across communities again. We asked the question about RPCs But some more to think about that. Anyway, these are all different categories of areas in which there could conceivably be some kind of reform and I encourage you to be thinking about that as you move into this next exercise It's what we're going to think about after today as we collect all this information We're back to try to sit through it and create Right and and please put them down. This is just don't worry about the questions the way I've thrown them up that Is just food for thought so you undoubtedly have a better idea Please share it Okay, and with that I'm going to turn you back over to Rebecca for the next bit of work All right. Thank you, Chris So deep down around to Everybody's quiet after lunch. I hope you've got coffee and cookies and if you didn't then I went to ready to go You should go get coffee and cookies Um, I promise this round is going to be easier. You all worked really hard. That was complex stuff You did this morning. You did an amazing job It all came together beautifully and there's some fabulous stuff up on the walls Um, how about those headlights those were pretty amazing So you're on notice those of you who are reporting headlines in the second round. You've got some big shoes to fill Round two We're going to take all of what you discussed and heard from chris And came up with this morning And now basically you saw it all come up with some answers this afternoon for how the designation programs should be totally resolved We're back in 2023 You're here in the middle center ready to get to work and come up with some fabulous ideas for the afternoon So you are going to break out a couple of different ways here when we asked you about your preferences in the poll We asked you are you more interested in reforming the existing programs? Or are you more interested in totally throwing them out the window and reimagining What they could be what they could do And very interestingly almost exactly a third of you wanted to reform them A third of you wanted to reimagine them and a third of you had no preference at all So those of you who wanted to reform will get to do that Your task this afternoon is going to be to take the existing programs Take what you've heard about what's not working What is working some of the ideas per share and think about what you really want to improve And specifically around the topic ideas that are on your table this afternoon that's a deep dive to We also asked you what specific topic or aspect of these programs do you want to dig into? So you'll be in a table with one of these topics on the reform side If you think to reimagine You can do whatever you want this afternoon. You just have to come up with something really really amazing So we're going to basically put you to work Developing a totally new model and the sky is the limit. You can go crazy and come up with something incredible We did make an effort to seat you at a table with people who are interested in the same scenes as you are We did not want somebody who has a brilliant idea for designation types To end up with somebody who has a brilliant idea for benefits And you both end up not getting to dive into the idea that you really want to dive into So we're going to get that said and then especially a lot of flexibility on what they do Let me give you an overview of the plan here It is definitely going to be a little more flexible and open-ended and simpler for you today So you're both roughly going to be following the same path this afternoon Just with a couple of twists in what you're doing If you are on the reform side Your table sign will say reform and you're going to get a poster that looks like the one on the left And you're going to have a couple of boxes at the top Your first task is just going to be making some lists as a group of What you think is working well in your topic area and what you think might need to change You've talked about that a lot today already We've heard a lot about it and we're giving you some packets Where we've captured a lot of the ideas that we have heard from people So we're not asking you to reinvent the wheel We're just asking you to capture a couple of the things that you feel like are most Important for your group to focus in on today You could do that by just going around and each writing one idea on a sticky note of something that you think is most important That is working something you think is most important. That's not If you are then moving on you're going to start just generating some ideas And we're going to ask you to think about both big ideas and quick ideas And then develop some actual recommendations for us If you remember the reimagined side We're going to ask you to come up with A bha dpi Does anybody have any idea what that might be? I like that one but now see this a little closer over here You might have heard of b hags before big hairy audacious goals So you're coming up with big hairy audacious designation program ideas Is not quite as cool of an acronym, but I think you're going to come up with cool stuff So your task instead of what's working and what's not is going to be some challenges and opportunities you see And then spend some time just tossing out some cool ideas And pretty quickly pick one and you will do what's called rapid prototyping So in the time you have left your job is to just come up with the best model for that thing that you can come up with And fill in those blank boxes with whatever details you can fill in about that model You might focus on some of the aspects that the other side of the room is focusing on You might say this is what the benefits will be and here's how it's managed and here's what eligibility is Or you might not do that you might say actually we've got three ideas for boundary types And that's how we're going to flesh out our boxes Or you might say actually our table has three really big ideas We're going to split up and do three different things You kind of have free reign to do whatever you want to do if you're on the reimagined side You just have to come up with something great So we're going to put up pretty much parallel instructions suggested ways to work through this I would suggest in groups that you do those top, you know, what's working? What's not opportunities challenges all together just get them on the table Don't take a lot of time with that. You don't have to come to agreement and consensus It's just putting some stuff down to drown your conversation On this side, that's what you're looking at That's that top section of the box I would suggest maybe you think about breaking out into a small group for about 20 minutes and doing that exercise In a small group of what are some of the ideas that we want to generate here? Just so you can have a smaller group conversation and come up with a few good ones to bring back And then maybe spend 25 minutes or so as a whole group really working those and saying What are the biggest recommendations we really want to put forth or what is that big model? You can throw that out the window and stay together the whole time if you want that's totally up to you But I will give you these benchmark reminders again where you are in time Last you will not be surprised again final recommendations get them on your poster Finish up and be ready to report out that big bold headline We suggest you assign some rules again. You still have your village So please do make sure you have a note taker Make sure that you have somebody who's keeping an eye on the clock Somebody who's keeping an eye on your overall goals This is an especially great round to have that busy body wandering around the room and finding out what everybody else is doing And coming up to visit with us and getting some more resource documents and things like that You will have a copy of what we've heard for your topic area And what else you will have a copy of Some seed ideas some big ideas we've heard already and some small change ideas you can steal leaves You can work them a little further or you can do your own thing You will have a copy of overarching priorities that we've really heard across the board And we have extra copies for other topics So if you're at the benefits table and you want to hear about designation types come get one in the back And we'll give you what you like there, okay You will also have a copy of chris's slides of approaches from other states Those are fair game If you heard an idea that you loved there and you want to develop that as a big recommendation You can dig into that. We're not here to reinvent the wheel. We're just here to come up with the best solutions for the month All right So you're going to get a poster dropped on your table. You're going to have some big sticky notes and little sticky notes You can go to town If you feel like you're all by your momentum at a table because things have shifted around where you want to join a different group Go ahead and do that. We're not going to lock you into where you are and you have About an hour and 10 minutes. Okay an hour and 15 to do this We'll see you soon