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


Next question is from Rudy's one more fitness I'm having a son soon and my biggest concern is when he is school aged and needs to have a packed lunch I really don't want him eating this garbage school food but I feel like it's hard to meal prep for a child what have you done or plan to do yeah so this is a kind of a tough one mainly because you're not the only influence over your child especially when they start to go to school they will be comparing their food to other kids and what my friends are eating and then you don't want to create a situation where you know like I have friends like this where their parents were so ridiculous and strict as soon as the kids moved out of the house they went ape shit in the opposite direction they're all obese now so a couple things I'll say number one you can there are fun snacks and meals that your kid won't feel totally weird pulling out and eating you know jerky so a lot of kids like that cheese fruit nuts those things are all pretty good and then here's the other part of it children are pretty damn resilient especially if they're active and if they have a good breakfast and a good dinner sometimes it's okay that lunch is a little bit more of the fun kind of stuff that they're gonna eat with their friends like they might have some chicken nuggets or some pizza rolls or whatever you know once a day or one you know every other day breakfast and lunch if those are good and here's in my family majority of our calories usually come in dinner that's our meal together and that's the one I have the most control over so I know if they have a little bit here a little bit there but then we have a good dinner I'm feeling yeah that that's where we get like our our piece of mind is is really that the dinner like that we all share together we can control pretty much what what's gonna you know be consumed there it to be honest it's not that hard I mean if you want to prep ahead of time and you want to make sure like your kids have the certain foods like you can pack them this obviously they're gonna they're gonna go to school and they'll probably get stuff from their friends or whatever they might not eat the whole thing but I mean that's out of your control so you just got to keep you know basically focusing on what you can control and what you can kind of prep ahead of time and allow them to to eat it I would worry less about like you know basically like how how their their their friends are influencing them we had to kind of relieve that because there there's even some negotiations that had to happen on some days where there was like a pizza you know day where they would they got really excited for that and so okay that meal is accounted for you know at school they're gonna eat this and we just got to deal with that we're gonna make up a nice healthy meal when they get home for dinner and you know and then this is also gonna happen at mom you know grandma and grandpa's house and and their friend's house and when they go to stay overnight and so it's just it better prepare yourself now for the fact that you just you can only influence based off how you eat and how you're all the normal ways that you have programmed to eat whether or not that's gonna last is up to the kid I'm glad you said that just because I really wanted to hear what you both had to say about this obviously I don't have a child that's in school yet but I do think about this right and I the family right and that's a great example like I don't think it's that much different than going over to grandma and grandpa's house or whatever because it presents the same type of challenges right there at somebody else's place where there's other food that's being eaten everybody else so the the way that Katrina and I do it right now is we when we are prepping our food she's also prepping Max's food at the same time so like last night we did like a Katrina does this bison and rice dish that we were like and the only real difference is this right now we do like seasoning and all kinds of stuff spices and things in our dishes where he eats more bland food right now so she'll always separate like you know a few ounces of the bison and we have these little things that she you know Tupperware's them in and he's got his bison his rice and then like this smashed up avocado and that's going to be like his meal for the next two or three days it's in the refrigerator and if we all take him over to his grandmother's house we bring that for her like here's his lunch here's what here's what he's going to eat at this time and like and we just tell them can i control everything that goes in his mouth probably not nor am i going to i'm not going to worry about it but i feel like if and then the same thing goes for when he goes up goes out to school like i'm not going to fight him if his friend lets him bite into his you know you know what it with a lunchable cracker snack i'm not going to freak out of him and it is what it is but i'm going to prepare the same way that i prepare right now like he'll go to lunch i mean every as far as i know every school has a microwave for him to reheat his his meal if i give him what we had last night at dinner leftover which is how i eat all the time and he sees that i eat like that all the time i don't think it'll be that weird especially if it tastes good the taste good he likes it he had it at dinner the night before with us and now he's got it in a glass bowl that he can reheat the next day at school that's how i i plan to try and control it and when the the days of pizza days come or a friend he wants i don't think i'm going to be a nazi over it i think i'm going to allow him to do that intermittently as long as i am feeding him as best i can at home he's a majority that means his food is controlled by me and then i'm going to send him to school with those same types of foods and then when those things happen when he eats it here and there i don't think i'm really going to worry you don't want to do is you don't want to demonize right because you're going to create uh you potentially could create this rebellious attitude around food you know we talked earlier about you eating ice cream part of that you say is because when you're a kid if the ice cream came it was gone yeah so then when you grow up you're like i'm eating ice cream every single night right this is a pattern you could build in your kid if you make it super too strict and you demonize foods so the you know way you teach imbalances it's kind of not a big deal and they have a little bit of this a little bit of that not a big deal and when we prepare meals it's just how we prepare it's just it's it's a healthy you're also shaping his palate right now right especially when they're really little yes so that's the way i look at it crucial that's so here's like so there's um you know i talk about my two friends who have kids that are a year and a year and a half ahead of us and something that katrin and i have been adamant about with max is we have not introduced any sweets no cookies no take like and i know this is a thing for parents and grandparents they think it's so cute and funny to let a toddler lick an ice cream cone and then look at the face afterwards no because there's not a single kid that doesn't go holy shit you know like literally there that you could see they get they light up like a christmas tree and then what i see happening is i see my friends using that as reward to get their kids to do things they want them to do say they're being fussy at night they don't want to do this or they don't want to put their pajamas on or what that if you want that cookie after dinner then you need to do this and they start using these pleasure foods as a reward system and they start training their kid before he even knows to ask for a cookie or ice cream and then you wonder why it's such a struggle for you when they're two three four and five where right now like i'm while i'm controlling everything that goes in his mouth literally it just that is an absolute no like i i can resist the oh i want to see what my kid looks like when he bites into a cookie i'm not going to do that and i'm going to wait till he can ask me which just probably means he's going to be three or four at the bare minimum where it's different and then it's different and then by that time he's had three years of consistently eating these healthy foods what'll probably happen and i've seen parents that are really good about this is the kid thinks it's too sweet dude i give my tries half of it and then he puts it away i give my kids a soda and yeah ice cream yeah i've done that where i'll give my kids a soda actually not even a soda one of those easy drinks which is not even a soda it's like less sugar and smaller and i'll i'll say you can have one and then my daughter will bring it to me halfway i don't want any more yeah just on her own right because we didn't give them a ton of sugar now it's and you know the palette they start to develop the palette in utero yes and then uh when the mom breast feeds so based off this is why it's so important for women that are pregnant right now to do your best and i know the health of the baby matters most and getting calories and i don't want to make any moms feel guilty that have weird cravings i get all that stuff but i mean the conversation that katrina and i had during that time is uh you know and she asked me like you know how would you handle it if you were pregnant right so we play that game and i say you know the way i look at it is like when i was prepping for competing like none of that was fun like i didn't enjoy eating these these foods all the time but i had a goal i had this goal that i'm gonna be the best my version of myself i don't think there's a time in my life that i could think that would be more important than getting ready to set the the the tone for my child like that's that supersedes any stupid trophy or saying that i could work to it so the way i would i would be competitive with myself if i if i what were to carry a baby of like i got nine months i'm going to discipline myself to be just like such a dude i know i know right and i know there's women i know there i know there's women like so hard for a guy to have but this i'm what i'm telling you is the conversation i had with katrina right she asked me like how would you mentally prepare yourself for going and i said i would look at it the same way only it's even more important because it's my child it continues for sure continues the breastfeeding too that i watched a documentary on it and they said that they start to develop their palette a lot through the through breast milk through what the mom you know will eat now jessica has been pretty good about this she'll eat like a spoonful of fish eggs sometimes in the morning for the omega it's fish eggs you know but you know hopefully my kid is born and eventually will like to eat fish i know i hated it when i was well what i can tell you sacrifice what i can tell you right now and maybe i'm an anomaly or whatever max eats everything every single thing we put in front of him he eats and he loves vegetables and he eats all the meats like he eats everything that we give him and he's not been introduced to any any sugar except for what comes from fruit like to his his diet has been that way and it hasn't been a fight or a struggle with us at all and i think a lot of that has to do with katrina was dialed all the way through pregnancy all the way through breast feeding and then when we introduced foods we introduced all these whole foods to him and that's how it's been since day one have you had him try a lemon yet i don't think she's that's fun if you want to see a reaction yeah i don't think she's done a little kid a lemon slice and just watch their face yeah i was i was i was actually eating uh i gave him his first like dab of like salsa right and you saw his face get like that right where he's like whoa that was way too spicy he was sitting in my lap and i was katrina made me a quesadilla and i was dipping it in salsa and he could tell he really wanted him like like she was like don't let him have that and i'm like i just want to see his face when he takes a little bit of salsa right that's a that's a good time there's this video on youtube of this little kid who he gets an onion because he thinks it's an apple oh no did you see this video and he bites into it and he's like and his eyes are like but he keeps eating different but it's a great video maybe it'll get better


And now I have the pleasure of introducing Saline LeMay from Quebec, Canada. And Saline has been a midwife for over 30 years in Quebec. She was actively engaged for legalization of midwifery practice. She's the past president of the Quebec Midwives Association and is a member of the board of the Orre des Sages-Fammes du Québec. She is a baccalaureate in nursing and MA in anthropology and a doctorate in applied human sciences from the Université de Montréal. She's teaching as a senior lecturer in the BAC en pratique des Sages-Fammes for 10 years at the Université de Québec à Trois-Rivières in Quebec. She has three children, three grandchildren. Please excuse my French accent and I'm going to turn it over to Saline as she talks with us about sharing storage, constructing knowledge, language and meanings. So hello everybody, I hope you hear me well and that talking too loud. Thank you for inviting me to be there and share with you some of thoughts I have. Happy Midwives Day for everybody. So this presentation began with my doctoral research findings. It was about midwifery practice before its legalization in Quebec, Canada in 1999. So it was about midwives who were practicing outside the legal and institution mostly home birds. So one of the themes of my thesis was learning and understanding together. And it was about sharing stories. The midwives were meeting each week together and sharing stories about the bird they were immersed in. And they were discussing a lot of things. And the fact is that after the legalization there was institutionalization and bureaucratization of practice and now it's more management values oriented. So we are talking about efficiency, the management of time. And when the midwives are meeting now they have more standards, narrative rules like they have, you know, not they have to but they use to use the biomedical language. Birds is about description of the bird. You know, it's like a report what happened, when, and it's more a ritualization of bird stories. And often it's focusing on transfers and complications. So because they don't have time to share the normal stories. You know, what do we say about it? It was normal. Everything went fine. So there's nothing much to say about that. So and the authorities now are questioning even the need for team meetings each week because it's for them.  It's like losing time. So what is the context now from the 80s to now it's the authoritative knowledge is very biomedical. We are in an era of science, you know, which the values of neutrality, objectivity, what counts is facts, numbers. It's the instrumental reason. It's still very much the, you know, body-mind duality. And from the research, you know, it's like knowledge from nowhere. You know, it's so objective that it's not situated. We are still using the biomedical paradigm. So it's the dominance of biology and technology and pathology oriented and resolve oriented. So and we are also in the area of scientism, which means that the scientific knowledge is bringing like the truth. And it's really the only real knowledge. And with the evidence-based paradigm is more and more like that. So what is the problem? The biomedical language is continuously carrying the medical metaphors about the woman's bodies.  It's still very strong. And it's the continuous background music of fear because we're talking about the good case, you know, which has complications and many horror stories. And it's a silencing, a traditional and honored way of woman ways of knowing, which is telling stories. We don't have time to tell stories like anecdote. So where's the specificity of midway free? You know, what is different? Are we a kind of nurse or a kind of doctor? I want to remind you that in Quebec, the midwives were legalized as a profession, this thing, from medicine and from nursing. So it's a quest to find what is special for us. And with stories, it can do something about that. What is sharing stories?  And it's different from the description of facts and measures and results. It's really an embodied and experiential knowledge because a story is about a unique event and situation. And there's two meanings of the situation. It can be a material meaning, which is objectivity. You know, it's a case. It's a biomedical knowledge. You have numbers and the facts. Everything is measured. But it can have another meaning, which is existential meaning. So a situation is a moment in the unfolding of an existence. You know, we're talking about subjectivity and singularity. We're talking about the multiplicity of knowledge and the evidence of persons, not of numbers. So a story is considered as a whole. Usually we have the normal and pathological in the way we're working, but we forget about the existential. And sharing stories can help us to go through that. So why sharing stories?  It's for a lot of different society and cultures. It's oral traditions. You know, it's not written. So what people know is from stories and legend and all that myths. And traditionally for midwives, the knowledge were transmitted orally. So it's a historical, traditional way for us to know things but to transmit. And it's a valued way of knowing. And sharing stories, it brings an integrative knowledge because in a story you have emotion, you can have clinical reasoning, you can know about mechanism and spirituality. So it's many things together. Sharing stories having access to multi-levels of reality and in a way it's learning about complexity. We have a tendency to see the childbirth in mechanism, which we want to facilitate, but it's still in a mechanic way of thinking. So in sharing stories, having access to profound knowing and so in going beyond the mind. And it can be accessed to new knowledge. And sharing stories have an epistemological value and it's considered like that with philosophers and in sociology and in anthropology. And we're using language when we tell a story that value connectedness in one event. So in the medical terminology, when you use that, we reinforce the technical rationality. So why sharing stories? The stories can tell us about the process versus the results, which are all statistic. And the numbers we use in obstetric, it's about the results. And we know that with midwives, the process is as important as the results. So and it's also exploring the values implicit in the story. And it's about, you know, it's a hermeneutic process. When we share a story, tell a story, we also create meanings. We are able to name the values. And sometimes and often it can have a therapeutic aspect of narratives. It can be beneficial for the storyteller, sometimes cathartic. And it's about mind and art opening. And for the one who are listening, you know, we can develop an ethics of listening. How we listen just with the ears or with the mind, the heart, the soul. So why sharing stories? It has the potential to develop a reflective practice, you know, having discussion, having reflection of a lot of things. And it's really not easy when we work in a very institutional context to have time and take time to develop a reflective practice. Stories can be informative. They can be formative. And sometimes they can be transformative. We all know some stories and we live things that, you know, transform ourselves, mindblower. And then in each story it can have the potential to find big things in small details. It's the treasure of understanding and consciousness raising. So in sharing stories we can find what are the gifts in the story. I will tell you about the story are not just the good stories. It's all about Albert, everywhere with everybody, you know. So we can learn how to find what is the story within the story. And in a way it's, you know, a way of acknowledging the invisible of the reality, which is not the paradigm of the biomedical culture. So why sharing stories? You know, it's learning and having bringing new knowledge about different things like life, death, love, mothering ourselves, birth, the body, the newborn, father, the art of presence, midway free as an art, compassion, confidence, intuition, transformation, sacredness, vigilance, et cetera. We all can add something on that list. So why sharing stories? It's all also to honor the dignity of power and powers of women. You know, birth is something that women can do. And physiologically speaking, we forget that the woman is not giving birth because we're there. We are there because she's giving birth. You know, we forget that. So, and it gives the value of a shared live experience. So it's not about me that lived that, but sharing that, you know, create a kind of shared live experience. So it can have an affirmation that childbirth without numbers is possible. Yay! What are the issues about that? You know, we can having a sense, different concept of time, you know, the clock time versus the process time. We knew about the care of time. So when we tell stories, we can develop a sense, different sense about time. And it's, we can use different language. And Lavel, it's an author who says the creation of language is like the creation of the world. So we have not just the words, but the way we tell things is telling things about birth and about midway free too. And it values the different ways of knowing. And it values thing, that learning from each other and learning from women. They are the one we, you know, we can learn from. And the issue is knowing and understanding the normality, the variety, and the concept of unique normality too. So, and it's putting childbirth in a complexity vision versus, you know, mechanistic vision. So we have time to add details and telling about the context. So we can, one of the issue is the distinction between technical care, which needs this distanciation versus relational care. You know, we're used to learn that being a good professional is being kind of distance. Creating from the patient. But this objectification of the patient is a risk of alienation for the patient and for the carer. You know, one of the author and the philosophy said that objectification, taking the woman as an object of care is a way, is a kind of violence. You know, and this was strong, but it's, I think it's true. So the woman is not an object of care. She is situation. She has a name. And she can do, you know, with the, so we are talking about, you know, the powers of stories. But we can have stories of power. And I want to distinguish here that it's not the power over. It's the power from within, which is not the same at all. So one of the issue is also creating a sense of wisdom, you know, because sash farm. I am a sash farm, which is a wise woman. And it's, I'm privileged to have the wisdom in my professional identity. So because talking about birth is also talking about life. You know, and when we consider the dance of childbirth is our relation with uncertainty. And it's a result and it's weaving the things. There's a place for the unknown there and a place for the possibilities and miracles and a lot of different things. And we can as a teacher, consider the narrative competencies, information for midwives, because it can be really an educational strategy for students learning to tell stories. In a way, when we tell stories, it creates also resistance to the reductionism in healthcare. So it's the richness of childbirth. We have to speak for that. So sharing stories is not just about physiological birth or home birth or water birth. It's about sharing all about birth, the miracle, the tragic, the joy, suffering, sorrows. It can be anywhere. And a difficult birth has a lot of things to teach us as well as a miracle birth. And sharing stories is a commitment to learn and understanding and making meaning and going beyond facts. There's a Buddhist nun, Pema Children. I don't know if I pronounce this well. She said, when you are ready to listen and to learn, even the stones speak. So it's a commitment just to stay open in our mind and heart and really ready to learn. So when sharing stories can honor the importance of questioning and reflection, there's a lot of potential in sharing stories. It is a potential for a cellatogenic perspective on birth versus seeing birth as a problem. Some women are courageous, resilient, and sometimes we thought that it will never end. It will go with the section or whatever the results. And finally, she made it. And you know, so there's something as a potential there for the woman. And sharing stories is also a potential of putting weight on normality and resisting to the weight of our stories. They can last for many years, some very difficult or tragic things. But then we have to, I think it's an occasion to share different levels as, you know, the difficulties but also the miracle. There's an emancipatory potential for midwives because it values the clinical reasoning versus just applying protocols. So and it's an occasion to create a midwifery language, you know, to talk about the things that are invisible, the spirit, spirituality, and the energy and all that, which is not really recognized in obstetric. And it can have the fundamental contribution to the midwifery paradigm. Is there a midwife's gaze? What is our unique or special way to, can we see the glass as full and not always as empty, you know? And the sharing stories as a potential of creating and strengthening our professional identity and culture. And generated by shared stories in which beliefs, identities, values, and relationships are linked to the narrative. So I want to share with you one of the past president of the SOGC in Canada that said one day, you know, restore the wonder. Birth is so precious. So it's not just about facts. We are privileged to be part of a childbirth and birth of babies on mothers and families. So we should honor that and acknowledge that. And this author said that the universe is made of stories and not atoms. And this is what I had to share. I wanted to share with you. So thank you. Thank you very much. So it's up to you to share a story or asking some questions. Yes, I think it would be wonderful if someone would like to share a story, short story. And I'll keep an eye on the window in case you need the microphone. Perhaps rather than stories, does anyone have any questions? Perhaps maybe questions about how to incorporate more narrative. Oh, there we go. Good one, Anna. I'll turn it over to you. Celine, yes. I think that, you know, we have in French in Quebec a book about all different births. But you know what? I was thinking about that. And I read recently a book. It's in English. And the title is Transform by Postpartum Depression. And there are stories of those women who, you know, they didn't expect that at all. It was not at risk, but they had a bad postpartum depression. And they are talking about their story and finding finally how, because of that, they were transformed. So it's not about just the good and the miracle and the powerful. And it's important. But everything can be part of learning about life and love. Even a story which is difficult, it's not about the facts. It's about what we learn about that and what makes us different in our relation to the world. Celine, can you hear me? Absolutely. Celia Jevitt from the United States. I teach in a midwifery program where I'm reviewing the evaluations of our midwifery faculty members. And many times over the last few years, the students have said in their evaluations to us, we don't want to hear your old stories. We don't want to hear your old cases. We want the evidence. Just tell us the evidence. Have you ever heard that from midwives who are learning? Yes, absolutely. Especially with our era of evidence. And this is scientism. It's so strong that it's the real knowledge we have to know. It's about scientific facts. I don't know how to... It's not old stories. But what about, let's say in our university when the students are coming for the first time in birthing centers and in Quebec, 90% of the midwifery practice is outside hospital. It's in birthing centers and at home. The hospital is not something that women want with midwives for now. But one of the first things that they have to do when they go in a clinical practice, when they have their first birth, they have to do an homework on that and tell the story and tell how they felt and express what they learned from that. So it's the first things to do, but I don't know if there's still all four years during that time a place to tell not what happened to them, but what they learn from what happened to them. I don't know. It's up to the program to value the storytelling. You have given me an idea. We do have weekly clinical conferences with the students. And I'm going to change my vocabulary a little bit to ask them to tell their stories. Thanks so much, Celine. That's really helpful. So I was interested, Celine, in what you were saying about how people do not want to have clinical conferences. Any more, did I understand you correctly that people felt they weren't valuable anymore? I was still thinking that the opportunity to have a clinical conference that involves the story of the woman herself, her prenatal course, her plans for the birth, the family members who's going to have with her the setting that she's in, it could be construed as a wonderful opportunity for midwives and for doctors also to think of the narrative of the woman and the birth even though you're in a technical sense doing a chart review or a clinical conference. So I can see that as being valuable in addition to an education, but also in practice. Thank you, Catherine, to talk about the doctors. Because I was a consultant as a midwife two years ago in a small hospital in Quebec and there was this doctor was telling me that at one point a woman that was not progressing at all and he was thinking about having a c-section and then he asked the woman to be in different position and try this and finally it went well and it was for him like a miracle. And I was telling him you should tell this story to your colleagues and to the nurses because then everybody can know that when you're changing position it can make a difference and the woman can have results. So he was happy about that and take time and make an appointment with all the team to tell. Absolutely. I think Cherie has a question. Well, Susanna in the chat room says that she as a student appreciates the professor's stories. That's good to know. Thank you, Susanna. All right. Would anyone else like to share their perspective or their experiences?  Oh, Tova. Let's see. Where are we? Tova. Tova. If she raises her hand she'll be right at the top. Okay. I just enabled your mic. Are you able to talk now? Okay. So you have a microphone, Tova. Is it green up at the top? We can see that you have the mic. Is it white or green? Click on the arrow and connect your microphone. Is it? No? Yeah. Maybe no. Can you hear me now? Yes. Uh-huh. Okay. I'm a midwife, too. Like all my friends here. I think it's very, for me, it's very important to let the stories emerge in the birth situation. I have just my last birth. I work just now. I work in very little town in Greenland. But it doesn't make any difference because I have always been very aware of letting the stories emerge. I can tell you an example from the recent birth I've had. The baby was posterior and we have used a lot of time to try to turn it around and such things. And it was a young girl, her first child. And she was about 8 centimeters and then she suddenly began to push. And I told her, this is not possible. You cannot give birth like this. Nobody can do that. Then she just went on pushing. And then suddenly I saw the baby was about to come. I could see some of a little bit here. And then I just told her, now you're doing, now you're about to do what is impossible to do. And she was really, really proud. She gave birth and it was wonderful. But I think it's so important for, in any birth situation that you show, you give the birthing woman and her family the chance to see the stories in the situation. And now she's so proud and she knows she's a really special person because she did what's not possible to do. And all the family, they are proud of her. I think it's really an example of the art of midwifery, which we never talk so much about. Never talk about. That was just what I would say. Now that's a very valuable reminder. I think it's really a possibility for us to empower the women we work with. Not to tell them what to be proud of, but to let them understand it in the situation. Let them see it themselves. Yes, but that was my story. I'm going to turn off your mic now. Anyone else? We've got a couple more minutes before we have to wrap up the session and give the room over to the next speaker. So, Atove, do you see in the chat room, you were fading in and out a little bit. And Olga Alishin would like you just to summarize the end. And Gemma from Australia also points out how important storytelling is to midwifery students and even in the desire to become a midwife. Mike is enabled if you want to share something with the group. Rita, you have to unmute the mic. You ready? Go ahead. Your microphone looks like it's ready. Oh, it just got muted. Now it's open. Can you go ahead and now it's muted again. Can you unmute it and then go ahead and see if we can hear you? Okay. Rita is typing. Just type your comment then, okay, Rita? While you are typing, I know it's hard to tell it on the keyboard, but we just want to thank Celine very much for sharing her thoughts with us. I mean, it's been a very engaging session and I'm sure it's brought to mind a lot of stories for practicing midwives and midwives-to-be applause, yes. And I'm going to turn off the recording at this point.