The first item of the agenda is public comment. Nothing, Mr. Public. Okay, and then approved minutes from July 26th. We have a motion and a second when folks are ready. I'll make a motion for approved minutes. Second. Any discussion? Doing that, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Next item, city updates, including debriefing on joint meeting between City Council, Housing Commission, Planning Commission. Thank you very much. Yeah, I'll kick this off. So that's one of the updates that I wanted to provide you on this past Monday. The City Council, there was a joint meeting with the Housing Commission and Planning Commission. Palace and Lauren attended on behalf of the Planning Commission. Mike was also there, but he had to leave early. So he didn't have to. Before that part started. So I want to give him credit for being at the meeting, just not for that part of the meeting. Really, it was a chance for the Housing Commission to provide an update to Council on where they are with some of the directives of, or some of their initiatives with either Inclusionary Housing, Housing Trust Fund and a Housing Replacement Ordinance. The Housing Commission voted to prioritize a replacement ordinance as their first item. And I believe I've forwarded around the memo from the Housing Commission that outlined all that to all of you, I think, yes. Okay, so that kind of outlines where the different parts and pieces that the Housing Commission felt should be included in the Replacement Ordinance. So Council, to sum it up, and all the panelists, I'll let you jump in here as well. Council basically took the Housing Commission's recommendation and has asked Planning Commission to start crafting that Replacement Ordinance sooner rather than later. So given the fact that we have a very, very aggressive schedule on the master plan update, finding time to have the Planning Commission specifically involved is going to be a challenge. But I think what we're going to do, and we briefly just talked about this at a staff level, Jesse's been out of the office all week on vacation, so we're gonna have more discussion with her when she comes back about how to kind of strategize with this, but I think what we're gonna try to do is have myself work with the Housing Commission on developing the draft regulations and getting their concerns incorporated before we bring it forward to the Planning Commission. That way we can continue to focus on the master plan update and we're not just letting that sit for the next several months until we get a draft done to the point where we can actually pick up some of the housing initiatives. So, Cal, I'll tell that you had any of your thoughts. So I don't know if everyone had the chance to look at that ordinance. I definitely would encourage all of you to read it. There were a number of different perspectives shared by the city councilors on the ordinance and I left feeling confused about what my personal perspective on the issue was. So I wanted to read about other communities that have adopted other types of ordinances with similar goals and learn more about the issue. And I still have a number of questions but I did find some interesting materials and I actually printed out an article that I thought was particularly useful that I'm gonna give you guys all a copy of. But I definitely think this is something that we're gonna want to have some conversations on and really think about because I do think that this ordinance is gonna have a major impact on the way our city evolves. And I know we're really busy so my concern was whether we could really devote, we have a housing commission to think about it which is good but they do want our input and I would just hate for it to get kind of pushed aside because of everything else we have going on because I think that this is absolutely critical work. So. Can you summarize just a little really quickly what you thought was important about it or? Yeah, so basically the ordinance deals with the concerns of maintaining affordable housing in the city with some of the development we've been seeing the proposal as it currently stands creates a requirement for any new housing. So any time any unit is, I can't remember exactly what the word is in the ordinance but demolished I think, though it may be a slightly broader word than demolished. If there are more than two units being demoed then that number of units in the new construction must be affordable units meaning affordable by people earning 80% area median income or less and the replacement units must have according to this draft ordinance the same number of bedrooms as the units being demolished. If in the ordinance there is a proposed out for a developer in the sense that they could instead contribute some amount which is yet to be determined it was suggested $25,000 to $50,000 into a housing trust fund managed by the city to support other affordable housing initiatives in lieu of building those replacement units. And I was really wondering whether this kind of policy one if these kind of policies have been effective in other communities or not. And also was wondering whether the site like whether it would put an undue burden on smaller projects rather than bigger projects and really thinking about this and that's why I went in to do reading and I found this article here it's called inclusionary zoning the most promising or county counterproductive of all housing policies. And I think when the city council was using the term inclusionary zoning they were referring to what we had in our zoning that we redid a couple of years ago which was an incentivized program where developers could build additional density optionally if they created affordable units whereas apparently and I didn't know this before but apparently inclusionary zoning can mean that kind of incentivizing development but it can also mean any kind of requirement of creating affordable units on developers and this article explores how different structures have produced different results in different kinds of communities. And I think if our goal is to create or maintain affordability in our community we really need to look at because it's a really complicated thing you try to create an incentive but sometimes that can cause all sorts of effects that are unforeseen. And so one of the things I didn't feel was super present in that conversation I wanted to ask more about was with the housing commission what other, they talked a little bit about Burlington having a similar policy but the kind of conclusion was that it was an ineffective policy overall in Burlington and yet it seemed a little bit modeled after Burlington so I kind of was hoping for more of a broader understanding of the impetus for that particular proposal and wondering if they were looking more broadly into what types of policies have been most effective for affordable housing or if we were just looking at Burlington's approach and then adapting it. So there's several pieces to this and there's the replacement housing, there's inclusionary housing and then there are, I'll just call them other affordable housing options and what the housing commission did was prioritize the replacement housing as the ordinance that they felt was most important moving forward as opposed to an inclusionary ordinance. So the document that I sent around from the housing commission was more a, it was more a, I'll call it a structured outline for what they felt should or should not be included in this. So they didn't get into any specific language or policy direction but there was I think 13 questions that were things like should we have a limit on the number of units that would need to be impacted before this ordinance would take place and it was yes, they thought maybe three would be a good number. So they gave some general direction but they weren't really hard and fast and where they were settled. Can you explain what is the difference between what you see as a replacement ordinance versus inclusionary zoning? So inclusionary zoning would be any project, well it can come in many forms but in general inclusionary zoning is whenever you're developing you'd be required to incorporate a certain percentage of the project as available units. A replacement ordinance would be if you're impacting a certain number of already affordable units you would have to replace those. So when I was reading the replacement ordinance it didn't seem to have the stipulation that it had to be replacing only affordable units. It seemed to say any units. Is that any, like when I was, I just went back to look at that and it basically from my reading of it it said any units being demolished. So it would either be ones that are already classified as affordable and identified as affordable or ones that are naturally occurring as affordable. And most of the ones that are gonna be demolished now are gonna be those. Like I know somebody that's getting squeezed out of an apartment because Redstone bought the building and they wanna re-op the building and so his rent, he can't find a place that cheap anymore. So I think. In most cases that is probably gonna be the case. So it would be a situation that may not already be designated. The unit may not already have a designation as an affordable unit. But if it is affordable to a certain income level then that would be a part of the replacement as well. So it sounds like the main difference that you're talking about is instead of taking like a percentage in general for any development. In this case you're looking at the specific property being demolished and replacing with a certain number versus a general blanket percentage. But I mean I guess like when I read this article on inclusionary zoning it really did make me think about the conversation that we had because I felt like that some of the impacts that I was talking about the communities have seen have adopted certain policies would still be applicable to a replacement policy. And I don't think it's necessarily pertinent to have a detailed discussion of that at this time before people have actually read the policy and the ordinance. Right and I think that's a really good point. Really again what the housing commission provided was a framework for what their ideas were going forward. The details and all those specifics will come out as we develop the actual language and review that language. I was curious because I did look at the terminology replacement ordinance after that conversation and I didn't find a whole lot of academic articles on replacement ordinances. Is this something that is commonly used in other communities or is it something that's pretty specific to a small handful? Most of the academic literature I could find was on inclusionary zoning. I would say replacement ordinances and all that Regina or our audience member chime in on this as well for their expertise. I think the replacement ordinances are becoming more common. Inclusionary was always kind of that was the big push initially was we need to find a way to get affordable housing units incorporated into every development or any development that's over a certain size or meets a certain threshold. So it was the inclusionary zoning was always kind of the initial push. That's why there's a lot more discussion of it. I think the replacement ordinances are something that's becoming more common but it's not something that's done a lot currently. I'd be surprised that there wouldn't be more academic research on it. It might be more retention policy. It may just be slightly different. I'm trying to figure out what the language is because my biggest takeaway from that conversation was what do we know about these kinds of policies so I really wanted to, should we be reinventing the wheel in a new ski? Because presumably there are a lot of communities around the country dealing with very similar issues. What's worked? What hasn't worked? So I tried to zero in on that and I just couldn't find anything and I was really surprised. So that's kind of where I got that was left. Yeah, there are a few that I've come across and I'll just say generally in planning worlds very seldom does a wheel get reinvented. Ordinances are regularly borrowed and reviewed from other communities. So if somebody else is doing it well or doing it in a fashion that is gonna be consistent with our goals then that's what we've got. Well so that's where I was wondering where the housing commission, what their process was because they meant they referenced the replacement ordinance in Burlington but then they also said the Burlington's report wasn't very, they weren't particularly, they didn't see it as being particularly effective. So then I was like, I guess who made these. So that might be a little bit, and I was not the main, so I don't wanna assume, but Burlington just had a report done on their inclusionary zoning ordinance not the housing retention policy. So they could have been referring to that report as opposed to the housing ordinance part of it or the housing replacement slash retention, whatever you wanna call it, ordinance. And even that report, there's a lot in it and there's a lot of great information. I wouldn't categorize it as saying it's unsuccessful in any way, shape or form. There certainly are many things that could be done to tweak it and there's an inclusionary zoning working group that's made recommendations to, I don't know if it's technically gone to the city council yet, but there's a working group making recommendations to improve components of the inclusionary zoning ordinance. So I'm just assuming that if they were talking about a report that the policy's not working great, that's probably what they were talking about, probably not their retention policy. I couldn't begin to tell you how many people have retention housing replacement policies by any stretch, but it certainly is not a new concept. It can be effective and it's certainly one tool in a variety of tools out there for housing. And when we were talking about what number is the minimum number of units, I'm wondering is our housing commission looking at other communities and making that determination or is that just like a brainstorming kind of conversation? Like what, how are the effective ones structured? I'm wondering do we have models that we can look at rather than, that's basically where I was left to be. I think Seth wants to try this. So I said the housing commissions have been, but the primary three examples they looked at in Burlington, South Burlington was just past one and Burlington's replacement ordinance is baked into the inclusionary zoning. It's the same policy. So replacement being harshed out very specifically from the Muruski standpoint. When I come across this, it's usually baked into the inclusionary inclusionary and replacement tends to be the differentiation between new development and replacement development. When they say the redevelopment of our property, the inclusionary zoning policy will then define at what level we were substantially redeveloping our property and then the inclusionary kicks in. So here we're approaching, in my opinion, a little bit differently, South Burlington approached it this way and the city of Portland, Maine, I think was their other main policy that was like that. So Burlington, South Burlington, Portland, Maine, those are the three that I've heard from. Did you see like were they, were there, I mean it sounds like in South Burlington it's brand new so we don't really know. I just forwarded you all the stuff that they got. So just forwarded all of us or to the palace? I just sent it to the palace. So it sounds like she's playing a point so if you want to do spoken power on that. So stepping back, first palace, I want to say that I left, but I've only heard good things about the way you handled the meeting the other day. Oh no, from the planning commission standpoint. So thank you very much, kudos to you for that. And this housing thing, I think is going to be a real interesting conversation, pretty intense conversation because I think there's a lot of different opinions. I just hope that the housing commission doesn't get too far down the road before we see it and give our input because I think the worst thing that could happen is have the housing commission come with recommendation. It get blown up by the planning commission who then brings it to the city council who blows up that thing. So all three groups need to be on the same page, I think, as we go through this so we don't have a couple of bombs blowing up. And yeah, so I think it's worth, I know we've got a lot of work on our play. I think it's worth either understanding that that housing commission, housing policy, whatever it's called, needs to be pushed back a little bit. Or if that's not possible, there needs to be some joint meeting to make sure that all of concerns are addressed upfront so that it's not a surprise when it comes to either us or the city council. I'm sorry, but just to provide a little context in history here, in 2016 or 15, the city commission, the city's first housing, housing needs assessment. The housing needs assessment gave us several recommendations and I'm just gonna be really blunt. Those recommendations just kind of sat here and did not move for multiple years. So there is some frustration on council that is very clear and very pronounced that some of those issues have not moved forward. Meanwhile, we've moved forward with things like infrastructure investments on Main Street. So the concern has been the problem because we're so focused on solutions. The problem has been this concern that by investing in infrastructure, we're gonna cause a desire for more investment to take place and more development potentially and we haven't addressed some of the concerns around housing policy if there needs to be some changes and tweaks there. When we pass form-based code, we put in this affordable housing story bonus. It's to be blunt, it hasn't worked. It has not been a successful policy. And no one's used it. So we'll give a bonus story to somebody if they go green, basically, if they do buildings that are efficient, which is great, but it saves them money and that's an easy one. Or if they go affordable, affordable is expensive. Building affordable housing is not easy. So they haven't used either of those? They've used the green one. They have, but not the affordable. Correct. How often are they using the green one? I have to staff it up to answer that question. But it's pretty popular. Well, a developer will tell you it's an easy thing to do. And we kind of screwed up when we wrote those standards, too, because we wrote something in that was out of here. Well, just wasn't technically correct. We need to tweak that as well. But regardless, so you do have a frustrated council who's saying we've asked us to move along and for the fault of nobody that's involved here or in those seats. But frankly, on behalf of, I'll say, leadership, us and me specifically and staff, we weren't able to get those issues in front of you in a way that was in a speed and manner that was quick enough. So as a result, you've got some real frustration there. That's where this pressure and this push is coming from. Certainly understand that through all of those things before, I think we probably all have. But it's a matter of here we are. You know this, so I won't get into it. Anyway, I think, to me, the important thing is we don't want to move forward for the sake of moving forward. We want to move forward in an intelligent way. Come to the council meeting and say that, allow that, but be helpful. I might be able to do that, Seth. I think what we, as staff, have talked about and like I mentioned earlier, we're going to strategize on this next week is a way that we can move forward without moving too fast so that we're addressing council's concerns and that we are moving something forward. It may just be a lot of behind-the-scenes work right now at the staff level, but we want to be cognizant of the fact that council has concerns and we need to address those concerns, but also that we, as a planning commissioner, are very tight timeline and we don't have much room in our schedule as we've mapped it out to get the master plan updated. And that's basically when I spoke up at that meeting, I wanted to say, this is something we want to have a voice in. Absolutely. And it's not going to be a voice that we're going to be able to be all cohesive and agree in five minutes. We need to have a conversation and we need to be able to, it needs to be a substantial conversation if we're going to have any hope of getting it right. And if we can fit that in, great, but we do have a lot of stuff going on right now. So we have to work that out. Like, you know, there's only so much time. I feel strongly that we have to find time to fit this in though because like Seth said, I remember when that study was done. Like, I was on the planning commission, you were on the planning commission and this stuff did, I mean, with all the administrative changes that we've had with your position in particular, that and a bunch of other things kind of got pushed away and now we're doing this. And there are things that we, I think if we're going to continue to give the stamp to developers to keep building, we need to address these things before it's too late. We just do, you know. I feel really strongly about that. And may any of that impact our master plan too? I don't know. Talking about housing. Yeah, it may. Our next meeting, we're going to start talking about housing, I think, right? Yeah, our next meeting, we're going to start talking about the housing section of the plan. So we may bring some of this conversation in tangentially, or not tangentially, but directly, but not at a level of detail from the master plan perspective. I think it's also important to keep in mind that, excuse me, while it's important that we do move forward with some of these housing initiatives, if the master plan expires, we cannot adopt any new zoning or change our regulations. We would have to first adopt the master plan before we can change anything else. So we're, you know, we need to run as closely parallel as we can with being mindful of the fact that we can't let the plan expire. I guess I'm just suggesting that we make some time, I understand we have to get this done. I'm suggesting we make some time in a meeting somehow, if that means that we have an extra 15 minutes, which I'm not advocating for, but if that's what we have to do, or whatever it takes, I think we need to do it. I personally think that we are gonna need more than 15 minutes with the complexity of the situation. So if we want to schedule an entirely additional meeting, then that might be what we have to do, but I think that, I think the more I read about this, the more I thought about it, the more I think this is not, this is not fast. This is a real conversation. So. And I agree with you. I think it's gonna take at least a full meeting. And I think that it would be beneficial if it was a joint meeting with the housing commission. Do we sort of want to know where we stay, or do you think that we'll learn a lot from them? Because I think it'd be nice if we had something with them, but then also had something with in ourselves, so that. Well, I say that because they're the ones who are now drafting it. So we want to hear what they're saying and have the discussion with them and give the input to them so that our thoughts are incorporated into whatever they present to us. Because again, what I fear and what we don't want is, give no input, come to us and we have totally different thoughts that they didn't consider. Can we have a joint meeting with them or have the meeting as them presenting what they have and then the rest of the meeting is just us without them discussing it? I think we certainly can have a joint meeting. I think that it's going to be another meeting. Because we. Another meeting in addition to what we've scheduled. Yeah, we can't do it as part of our schedule. Right, no, I understand that. And I wasn't suggesting that 15 minutes would be sufficient. All I was saying was that if it takes, whatever it takes, I really think we need to prioritize this. If people are on board with having an extra meeting, either, I don't know what their schedule is this month or next month. Let's do it. When do they meet? Second, I think it's the third Monday. It's off-counsel cycle, so it's the second or fourth. Oh, I think it's the fourth then. I think it might be the fourth Monday. But do we want to schedule it? Do we want to go a date? From what I've been, they have a really aggressive schedule, too. We may need to schedule a special meeting for both of us that's outside of all of ours. We'll look at this step. Yeah, we'll talk about this as part of our strategy moving forward and bring this as a component of it to make sure that we're all on the same page and get something moving forward. So. And I'm just going to give everybody this. It's second, we gaze on to the housing commission as well as does. So you'd have two hats on that one meeting. Perfect. And just one other thing about the zoning. I heard an interesting thing on the radio this afternoon. That was about, it wasn't about zoning necessarily, but it was about gentrification. And it was in San Francisco in one of these districts. I can't remember which one. And it was how they prevented gentrification in one of these districts. And it seemed to be fairly successful. I can try to find it was on here and now sometime this afternoon, I think around 2 o'clock. So I can try to find that and share that if people are interested. It was just a short little five or 10 minute thing about it. But it was kind of interesting. What's up? They didn't abolish zoning. They didn't abolish zoning. It was it moved a lot of districts. They went free will on it. No, this was actually opposite of that. This was more that I think if I understood it correctly, that they required more affordable housing, not less affordable housing in this one area. And managed to keep it from not getting gentrified. So anyway. So I'm going to jump in here to this 500% let's leave it to staff to figure out a time when we have maybe a joint meeting and pick up on this. So let's move on. I have one other. No, no, no, no, no. If I may, I just wanted to let you all know I believe I can't remember if I sent this around or not. But I think I did. Yeah, we got some updates, some zoning updates from the city of Burlington that I've ordered around. I've read through and there's nothing of significance. So I don't know if this is something we want to talk about at a future meeting. I think we will have another meeting before they want comments back. So if you get a chance to look at it and have any thoughts, we can bring it up if necessary to craft any comments to them from us. So why don't we, if anyone has any comments on us, send them to you. Yep, perfect. Yeah, and then we can review them quickly at the next meeting. Yeah. Okay, review of edits and updates to the municipal infrastructure chapter. Regina, is this you or Eric? Want to introduce it? Yeah, well, I'll just do a quick introduction here that I'll turn it over to Regina, sent around the latest draft of the municipal infrastructure and actually I have an additional handout. We got some comments from public works folks. So I just printed off the email that I got and I don't know if I have enough copies, but I think I do. It's the email from public works on some general comments and then I've printed off the relevant sections where in the draft that you all have already, there was a few items that Regina had flagged for specifics for public works that they've commented on in here. So I've got their specific comments associated with it. So it's, I don't think there's anything critical in the text other than more data points, just a few comments in the email for from public works for us to think about. So that's the only thing I wanted to add. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Regina. Is this because they received the copy that we're looking at today? Correct, yes. And are we doing that with all the committees? Yes, yes. All the relevant committees or groups are getting the drafts as well for their comments. And are they just the first one to submit comments? So the economic vitality section, we did get some comments on, we discussed those at the last meeting and they were pretty minor. So, but then we will send it all, we'll send the whole thing around to everybody, all the city departments after we've got the full draft to get additional comments then. I need that. And are we going to have another time when you sort of, I'm assuming we're going to be able to review this several times throughout this. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, so all of the drafts I would say are still pretty drafty. So definitely don't be concerned that this is the last version by any stretch. And we'll definitely take a look at it more comprehensively down the road. So, one excuse for that is just timing-wise, this has been super fast and I've actually had some vacations. So like, trying to get these out and get proper feedback from city staff before you get it. Like in an ideal world, we would have all those yellow things filled in before it even gets to you, but it just has not been the reality of the timing of this. Okay, so, sort of big picture things that we talked about last time is that the sort of general feel of the chapter didn't feel quite right to folks, particularly in terms of sort of the overall kind of biking, walking kind of pieces and the parking piece of it. So I tried to rework that. So I don't know if that feels better for folks, particularly in the introduction of this or if it's still kind of missing the mark. For me, it's stuck out the use of anomaly. I get what you're trying to say, but I wouldn't call when you see Vermont's greatest anomaly. Like, it just seems like there's a better way to capture the spirit of what you're trying to say here, which is like for this great urban, dense, dynamic, small city. Yeah. Great. Anything else? Wait, I grew up just like going to that section. I always thought it was like a model of urban sustainable living is kind of like how I see us. Awesome. This is just unlike this typo, but in the second sentence of that introduction, newer cities, it's C-I-T-I-E-S. Yep. Thank you. In the last sentence, under transportation, it sounds a little weird to say improvements to walking and biking and infrastructure will help the city achieve goals and walkability and then you'll forget biking. So what about achieve goals and connectivity? So just so you folks know, so part of that parking introduction is really sort of where are we going on this? So in brief from city staff in the version that probably Eric just passed out from their side of things, the four things that they're really moving forward on is improving parking garage access control systems for data collection and space management. So really working the operations of the garage itself in as better way as they can. Enhanced way finding for both on street and off street parking. So that's huge on your folks list in various ways. Explore potential shared use, off street parking opportunities. And then also looking at applications and coordinating with surrounding communities for better customer service. I'm not positive that this, what I read that to say is that potentially following the same system that Burlington's got for parking. I don't know if that really is what that means, but that's my assumption. But we can get that clarified and try to work that stuff into the introduction for that. And it's my understanding that that decision's already been made that when you see some moving towards Park Mobile and getting rid of the current system. Okay. What was that moving towards? Park Mobile. What's the app that you've ever used in Burlington? So that you have to go online in order to? You don't have to. It's gonna be the same key off thing, but it's not, it won't be a different app. It's like in Burlington, you can download this app on your phone and then when you park you just go through it. So that would just give us, like you wouldn't have to do a separate system. You could optionally or in Burlington you can pay the meter to anyone else. So are they gonna get rid of the kiosks? It'll be the kiosk. It won't be the individual meters. Yeah, but it'll be a Park Mobile kiosk. So do you think you're gonna go away? Yeah, it'll be a replace. But you won't notice the difference unless you're using the app and then you can use the same app across the three cities. That's good. And then you wouldn't have to use the kiosk. You could just use your app on your phone. So we've got then a few other numbers in here filled in from Public Works for wastewater treatment, essentially just so you know for your overall design capacity of the wastewater treatment plant, you're at about 45% of the flow and load design, which is good. So the city has capacity, which is a good place to be in. So that where this X, X, that's 45%? Yeah. And so in what I just handed out, after the email, the first page labeled as 22 of the plan corresponds to what Virginia is talking about now. And you'll see the little flags for the comments. And then on the back of that page are the specific comments from Public Works that we're adding in. So those four related to parking that Virginia just read through are at the top there under number one. Number two is the capacity. And then number three was one to get to. So you're aware, just to follow the comments from Public Works. So the second piece of the wastewater treatment plant is particularly because we have this phosphorus problem in Lake Champlain. There's something called the total maximum daily load. That's from the EPA, Environmental Protection Agency. And essentially Vermont is on the hook to lower phosphorus in the lake. One of the inputs to phosphorus in the lake are the wastewater treatment plants. So you've got great amount of capacity in your wastewater treatment plant, but over time you are gonna have to reduce the amount of phosphorus that comes out of that plant. Some of that permitting stuff is still sort of on the table and getting worked out, but there will likely need to be some improvements at the plant just for that component of it. Even though it's at 33% right now? Yeah. Am I right that they are requiring all municipalities to cut down even if they are out there? Yeah, so the 33% has to do with an old permit number which meant you can reduce, you can produce more phosphorus before than you can now. So what's happening with the new permits is you have to reduce, you have to produce much less phosphorus than you did before. So the 33% is kind of, it's not really relevant towards the new requirement. Okay, so that's just to give you some sense on some of the other pieces that go on in this old infrastructure. Okay, well, it's off the point. There's other yellow highlights in there. Some of that is just a reminder to me to make sure we kind of get all this going. Okay, so on the second page there, energy. Just super quick, brief overview for folks. This is real quick. Page 23 for you all. I know sometimes Regina. It's working. She's using her draft which is not necessarily aligned with ours. So page 23 is where energy is. Thank you. Okay, so over the last few years, the state has adopted very aggressive energy goals. Essentially 90% of our energy produce, the energy that we use should be produced from 90% renewable sources by 2050. There's a number of other goals too, but essentially the way they've tried to start implementing them, those goals is for the regional planning commissions to do energy plans. We have done that. And then the municipalities can do enhanced, they're called enhanced energy plans. Essentially, municipal plans have required an energy component for a number of years. This is not a brand new topic by any means. But this new enhanced energy plan is really the benefit to a municipality is to have greater weight in a public utility application process. So the Public Utility Commission approves all utility kind of projects in the state. That's solar projects, wind projects, electric utility lines, all kinds of different things. So grand scheme of things, Winooski's not likely to see a lot of these applications that you would necessarily want to weigh in to these proceedings. So I'm not sure that it's necessary that you go through an enhanced energy planning process, but having said that, we basically at the Regional Planning Commission have created sort of all of the data and the maps that you would need to get that enhanced energy planning criteria in your plan. So that's essentially what I'm recommending here is we can sort of include it just like in appendix, like we include in other things. There is lots of information in there. Some of it's interesting, some of it's very confusing, but it's a lot. And so we can certainly talk more about that down the road. Ultimately the way it works is the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission would actually approve Winooski's plan as we do normally. And then we would also kind of review it for this extra level of criteria. So it's really, that decision doesn't need to be made for quite some time, but for the most part, we can get what you need to have in your plan. Just know that it's not likely as big of an issue for the city as it is for some other places. And what was the reason again? Why this the case? So some municipalities have a lot of property, have a lot of land, open land, in their town that could easily be used for large solar arrays or wind. Those can, not in all places, but they can be controversial. So this whole process was set up to actually give municipalities a little bit more say in the permitting process than they currently have. So municipalities with ridgelines that might see some interest in wind development would maybe want more to say at the table. There's just not a lot of open land in Winooski where you're likely to see a big project that would be controversial. What specific, like energy sources are, do we plan to see or we have for Winooski? This is generally for the area for the county. Is this, are we gonna have a region plan that's in red here or specific for Winooski if I didn't see anything? Yeah, so it's gonna be specific for Winooski. And that's actually a live link so you could click on that right now and see all the data for Winooski. We're gonna redo it a little bit because right now all you see is data. There's not really any text that helps explain what's what. So we will improve that for you. But as an example, each of the municipalities in the county have a target, have a low and a high target for energy generation. Winooski has already met the low target, largely because you get credit for half of the Winooski dam right here. So it's, that's potentially another component of why it's not necessarily all that difficult or challenging to include it in the plan because it's not necessarily holding you to something that is unreasonable. The state goals are, they're not unreasonable but they are really ambitious. So for some municipalities that target might be really hard to reach. For Winooski, it's not because essentially you've met it. I just have a question for moving on to the communication services where this information came from about the cost. And I mean, it doesn't matter, because that is not, I don't know about anybody else in this room, but we don't pay $50 a month for internet. We pay way more than that. This is only 10, this is a tiny, look at how fast Burlington, like I'm assuming you're putting Burlington telecom in here as comparison because that's what we would like to achieve. Yeah, and this is from Economic Development Plan. And if that's something that we would like to achieve, which I think it is, maybe the word in there should say why we're talking about Burlington telecom. Yeah, I think the Economic Development Plan essentially just had it in there as a point of reference, particularly because it can be a potentially competitive market, right? Versus here, right across the border in comparison to what you can get. So yeah, I can clarify. But in the Municipal Plan, again, going back to trying to get specificity out of it, isn't it, would it be better to have a statement that says, you know, working for the goal of obtaining the fastest internet speed available, you know, something more general? Maybe like to try to create a more competitive landscape of internet providers. Yeah, I guess I also see the speed in there too. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, and I think we'll get there when we get to the goals. This is intended to just be sort of factual up top, like it is what it is. And then the goal is down below, but we can certainly clarify either way. Yeah, because if it just reads in the ear, why we're talking about Burlington telecom. On the bottom of that page, are you talking about, you may move the tree discussion to the community chapter? Yeah, potentially. And those kinds of notes are just like, I probably shouldn't say note to PC, I should probably say more note to myself to just figure out down the road where each piece makes the most sense. Because a lot of that content really is talked about more in the other chapter, but we can get there. Yeah, why is that note there? Because I don't see anything about urban tree canopy. There was something. I think there's a goal. There's a what? I think there's a goal in this section. Maybe it came from the note that came from. That was part of there. It's number five on the goals is to maintain a healthy and diverse urban forest. So it's just a point there and just decide where that ultimately will go, which chapter. I think they're also looking at it as trees provide stormwater treatment. They do provide utility. And there was mention of it in this document that came from public works. Yeah, yeah, so we could, you know, it might be that that actually makes more sense to include here. Or in both. Yeah. Yeah, I think both is very important. As you look at it from a different perspective. Okay, I'm just getting that note down. I thought it was interesting when I first moved into my house, the neighbor asked me if we could cut down my big silver maple so that they could put solar panels on the roof. It was just sort of interesting, the different ideas of like, you know, trying to be sustainable in certain ways, but not to get all the time. Okay, so this section, again, inside there's gonna be a lot more work here. It's not gonna be super helpful because a lot of these are just sort of placeholders for you. But I did, I was able to get one map from staff in my office earlier today. So I'll just pass this around. It's super drafty, but you folks had mentioned at the last meeting about a goal of having a sidewalk on at least one side of every street in the city. So this map more so than the map that you saw in the current draft helps explain what streets don't have, currently have a sidewalk that's in the sort of magenta pink. The other thing that's on this map that I think is important to include in the blue, and there's actually two other pieces that are missing from this map that we'll add, but they're the high priority pedestrian sidewalk improvements from your municipal transportation plan, which got lots and lots of public engagement and feedback on. So I think we don't want, we certainly don't want to lose sight of those high priority projects in comparison to this other sort of larger goal. Maple Street, I think, does not have a sidewalk. The lower part from the wheeler. Actually, can there a sidewalk down to the hill? Down the middle, though, is there? No, but on the north side from Maple to the top of the hill? There might be at the top of the hill, but going down that road, I've walked in many times. There's no sidewalk on either side. And the blue in this, there's no sidewalks. There's like a recommended pedestrian network enhancement. So this is from a map that's from something else, obviously. Yeah, the blue is from the, are the high priority projects from the transportation plan. And there are two more that aren't identified on here. One is kind of your concept a little bit of a, what do I want to say, north, south, east, west. West side of the city down by the river and kind of going out. I think it sort of shows it eventually going out through the wastewater treatment plant or something over the river, somehow. But, and then there's one more on there, so. The blue bridge isn't gonna work. And this is just looking at sidewalks as it's, include lighting of those sidewalks, this is just sidewalks. We simply just looked at the sidewalk inventory and highlighted the roads that didn't have any sidewalks. What does the pink represent? No sidewalks. Oh, streets with no sidewalks on either side. There might be other streets with a sidewalk on one side, but those are not identified here. But you can tell just by the, she has two brown lines. That means there's sidewalk on both sides, but it only has it on one. That means it's missing one. Sidewalk on the other side. The brown lines are the existing sidewalks. Right. Sorry, what about the streets that have the two light pink out on the side, but not highlighted in pink? What is that pink? That just means if it's not brown, if it's pink, that's no sidewalk. Because the browns and overlay on the pink lines. The browns just sitting on top of the pink lines. Like what about like, so I'm looking at like railroad lane that has just like two pink lines, but not. Oh yeah, that would be a no sidewalk. I would think maybe not just for the highlight. I don't think it has a sidewalk, but it looks different than the. Yeah, I don't think it does down there. Yeah, there's also a little nub above that. So that should have hot pink on it. It does like alleyways or something. Yeah, if you look off a left out and you can see the same thing like on Franklin Street, that should be pink. Yep, two on there, just a sprig. Okay. That should be pink. It's not a road. That's like the alley by the restaurant. Yeah. So that should pop stuff on here. It's probably public. I think that everything on here. If you wouldn't put a sidewalk on the alley, would you? I guess I'll think of an alley that's like an alleyway. What? I would encourage behavior in the alley. That's right. So that's what we got here. That's helpful though. Yeah, I have a comment. Unless level of service on calculations have changed recently, I think there are poor indicator for how great our streets can be, right? Because level of service is movement of traffic and movement of traffic is not our priority. So it just doesn't seem like the best indicator to have in our plan. Yeah, it's a good, we had a debate about that in our office as well because it's not a great indicator. So thoughts on what you would like to see? What would tell the story that you want to tell? I think the amount of traffic, it tells the story. Without level of service. Yeah, without level of service because a great amazingly bike and pedestrian friendly road could be a level off or D, right? But that's not an indication on what a great road it is. It's just saying people have to slow down to move through it. Like it's a pinch point, right? And I don't think we want level of a service roads. It would be like highways through our town. So, and I don't think the lay person understands level of service. So just having ADT in there gives people an idea of how many cars are coming through our city without making a statement about what that means. All right, I was thinking that the ADT is just hard for folks to understand what that means exactly, but I guess not, you know, it's relative to the other roads. So, yeah, sounds good to me. Maybe instead of saying ADT, just say traffic down or something. Yeah, all right. Any other? The other thing on traffic that we've talked about is, I'm not sure how to say it, I guess accessibility off the street into businesses. You know what I mean? The ability for cars to stop easily and get out and go to a restaurant or go to one of our businesses. Well, like a strip mall would do really well with that score, right? Like, oh, it's really easy to pull into a strip mall and go to E-week. If we're using that indicator, that's like giving that a higher score than pulling off into a side street in parallel parking, which is more what when you ski is. And that makes when you see wonderful it makes a strip mall terrible, right? So you just have to be careful with. Right, but there's a, and I guess it depends on what your goal is. But one of the things that I know I often heard was, no one, it's a drive-through city, as opposed to a place where people come and stop and spend some time. I guess that's what I'm getting at. I'm not sure how to measure that, or if we even want to. But to me it's, I don't think we want to be a drive-through city. We want to be a city where people will stop and spend some time doing whatever. And I haven't been here anywhere as long as you have, but I thought we went. What's that mean? I thought we used to be a drive-through city and now we are a stop-and-play city. We're much more a stop-and-play city. And we certainly have made improvements. I don't know, there's still a lot of drive-through traffic, I guess, so. I don't know if that'll ever go away just because of the vicinity to the highway. It's just that connectivity that our roads provide. Right. But I do think also, because it is a walkable city, people, I go home and I park my car and then I walk into town. But people who don't live here then maybe trying to attract that. But which is interesting. Maybe we don't need it, I don't know. I think it's interesting. Like I don't know if we can. I heard that complaint too. It's the same complaint downtown Barlington gets though, right?  But it's our most vibrant area in the entire state. So it's sort of like, what makes it so great is because it's walkable and bikeable and people want to park and walk around. But then some people avoid it because it's not your pull-up, park in front of the store type setup. But I think for some reason there's a perception that we lack parking when we actually don't. And so maybe getting at the way finding and ways of really trying to point out where that parking is, is a point. So we address some of that. Yeah, maybe that's the tie-in is the parking. Way of finding the parking, existing parking, which is exactly what Barlington's dealing with, right? It's like they have the parking, people don't think they have it because it's hard to find. As we grow though, and we expand in the Gateway District we're gonna need a broader solution in our parking garage to think about. And that is other things like investing in alternative forms of transportation and other things like that. I do think it's, I've never seen, I don't know if it's part of the Economic Development Report but you do wonder of the people that are commuting every day and drive through Winooski. If you look at other places along the route, if they're going up Main Street, what percentage of them are stopping in Winooski on a regular basis versus stopping right over the border in Colchester to go to Costco or Shaws or whatever? Who's stopping here and why? And I think that that's an interesting thing to ask and like are there opportunities for us to capture a larger percentage of people that literally pass through Winooski every day for different things? Like we've also talked about how we lack many kind of like food service places that aren't like sit down restaurants that you spend an hour or people that are going to work who wanna pick up some coffee really quick. You know like. That bagel shop is a good thing. The bagel shop is a good thing. I'm fortunate. I'm fortunate. Right over the border, right over the border. We don't have anything like that here. That's not good. No, that's Colchester. Colchester, I know. What's in there? Such fun. So good. Yeah, so we can really have that here. We have subway. Right. Yeah. Right. One, well two things. I mean for one again I think the shifting the paradigm of like everybody has to drive to get somewhere is one thing in the city I think that's important. The other thing is that with the form-based code we're requiring parking behind the building. So there's parking. There's gonna be parking. Like we, my 75 year old dad was here last weekend. We went to Fodang. We had to drive because he can't walk there. And there was plenty of parking there.  New one, there's plenty of places to park. So I think as these gateway districts get developed that that notion that there's no place to park is gonna change direction. And maybe referring to that parking map. Not have it within here. But where they could go find a parking map to try to educate people where to go. Well, and then the plan too, so we'll have a future land used map that will show the gateway districts and maybe that can be enhanced to show the plan with parking in the back. Yeah. Okay. In the next statement about map or percent of current street miles with sidewalk. You have and percent of sidewalks deficient. From 2015 inventory. Is that mean sidewalks in disrepair or sidewalks that were just left out of the 2015 inventory that are now existing? Disrepair. So it's actually in that screenshot map. It's probably impossible to tell what that percent deficient means. But essentially, and I didn't confirm this with Pam but we can get more detail on it. But essentially I think red means bad. So those two red highlighted sidewalks are bad. Where are you referencing? Sorry. Page 25. So what street is this? First scent deficient. Okay. And part three is one. Pickax not on that. My recommendation here is to actually just sort of more go with your bigger goal and try to keep this high level and just go with this kind of map and not really talk about this. So it's not a sure say, it's a variation. I do think it's worth mentioning though, disrepair, right? Like we're talking about where the sidewalk isn't but of our existing inventory, how much of it is in disrepair quality. Yeah, and the other, that's kind of where the transportation plan priorities come in on this map also because the highest places I think that are in disrepair kind of float it up. But the transportation plan does include a number of listed sidewalk areas that are in disrepair to the point that they should be brought up to standard. The whole other component that you can get into once you start talking about this is ADA compliant. And that's a much more intense and long inventory that the city might want to look into some point down the road but it's certainly not a level of data that we have for you right now. So not, you don't have ADA data but do you have the map with the sidewalk and disrepair data? I mean, I guess that's what you're kind of saying this map that's included in here? Yeah, that's what the percentage is deficient. It's deficient but deficient could be if it's 48 to 92%, it could be either in disrepair or not existing. Maybe just further clarification. Yeah, it's a good question as to what is going on in there and what it means exactly. Because I like this, it's very straightforward if we just finish filling out the pink spots but like a separate map from this showing like, okay, all this brown area, we know there's sidewalk in there but like what's good and what's bad? Yeah. I'm looking at this map in the two deficient areas are Park Street and the end of Reginald. No one walks there. Park Street. Right, like it wouldn't rise to a level of priority. It's not chilly or there. It's the important part of not forgetting that a lot of work that went into the transportation plan because a lot of public input and prioritization went into what the city can actually fix. So it would be my recommendation to stick with that information from the plan. Reginald, I was just looking at this. I mean, this is one type of utility sidewalks because they're gonna be any kind of plan for like sewer, water, like those type of things too or? Yeah, it's a good, it's a good question. I mean, you could go, keep going but. Yeah. You know, we have the benefit of the transportation plan just being done. So that's a really great plan that was done with a lot of effort, a lot of public engagement to really help prioritize what can be done. So we, I don't believe there's a, don't benefit today of that same kind of thing happening for all the other utilities. But what you got from public work staff that Eric handed out today is a note that the city really is looking at asset management type software and programs for the other utilities. And so ultimately that will really help the city help figure out how to prioritize those other things in conjunction with everything else in the capital improvement plan. So I'm gonna jump in because I have two things. One, just on that point, I believe that when Palmer was here, there's an inventory of existing water sewer infrastructure. So I think we have that information. Yeah, the inventories are done.  Yeah. The other thing I'm gonna say is it's almost quarter of eight and we've got another chapter to go through. So we may want to wrap this one up if we can. Yeah. I guess I'm just one comment on that is that I did meet with John and he was telling me certain streets that we were gonna be repaired soon. So I don't know if that's something we wanted this or not. Yeah, I mean, there's a capital improvement plan and it will be referenced, right? That includes everything that you know that's gonna happen relatively soon. There be any kind of summary or something? I don't know, I'm just curious. Yeah. Probably makes sense to have it in here because I think it'll only benefit down the road for it to go on to the grass, right? So. But I don't think that matters because they could still refer to another plan. Right, but I mean. Right. We'll reference it in the municipal plan minutes. I would just suggest that we do a summary of the CIP capital improvement plan. Just talk about what's in it, what the intent of it is, things like that and then just reference it so that we're not identifying specific projects that may change in priority. And then we've got it in our plan directly and then when we have to report on how we achieve that project that makes it a little more complicated down the road. So that would be my suggestion on how to address that. Because I do think there is a perception of people who think that all the money is just going to downtown and not going out to the neighborhood. So I think we want to try to change the perception. Yeah. What? What? Did you get that? So. No one in particular. To try to wrap this chapter up under the goals and objectives, you saw that the edits, any comments, concerns? I would just put the, and this is before that in the schedule, you have the current schedule, so next gen is going to happen, right? The recommendation of 15 minute headways. Should our plan have that schedule instead of the existing for these tables you have entered in here? Yes. So I don't know when it's going to be adopted. I was told 2019 next year. Yeah. So it's a matter of whether we will have that information in time to get it in here. It already exists. The schedule that they, it's their no cost solution. They have like three proposed. They're going with the no cost one. So it already exists. We can pull it directly through the next gen plan. They're feeling confident about it happening, which it sounds like it ends. It sounded to me like they still had to talk with the municipalities, which could be a real game changer. But I haven't done that in any sense. But for bus service, can't we just, I mean, can't we, should we maybe talk about next gen, talk about goals is having frequent bus service more general, so we're not tied to something. I'm just afraid that if we say next gen 15 minutes, starting in 2018, it doesn't happen. I think that could go where we have the goal that includes, there's a goal on transit. And we say that it's reliable, but I would suggest we say that we would like to have a reliable and frequent bus system. I take it quite a bit and it's usually never on time. So I think that would be, yeah. So I think that could be, yeah, stated in the goals. Yeah, it's under, or I guess it's under the, under the key issues, under challenging. It's like perceived scarcity in parking and a reliable, but limited mass transit system. Okay. I wouldn't call it reliable. Yeah. And I would call it limited, but I think it's worth mentioning also in the goal. Well, in goals, we've got an enhanced pedestrian bicycle transit connectivity, and maybe it's maybe a little expansion of that, what we mean. Yeah. What goal was that one? Number seven. Number seven. I mean, it just says enhance these things. Oh yeah. And I don't know, do we really need to enhance vehicular connectivity? I think so. Yeah. Cause I just, it seems like the, there's pretty good vehicle connectivity as is, but yeah, that's fine. I'm trying to think. I mean, I like to put it as one of our goals to get cars to more places. I mean, where can't, where can't they go? I don't know. I don't think it works to have it in there. I just don't know if it weakens. Is it necessary though? It does weaken the other modes of transportation that we're trying to do. I don't think it weakens the other. It's just an all inclusive. It's just a, you know, we're still saying enhance pedestrian bicycle transit, you know, so adding vehicular and there doesn't weaken that. It just is one more thing. And that allows whoever. Exciting. Yeah. Yeah. That allows whoever is in on the council or whatever make the decisions. They can decide if they want to, you know, prioritize bicycles, pedestrians or vehicles. So there is, there's a street maintenance, street and sidewalk maintenance goal already, number three. But this is particularly talking towards connectivity. Right, true. I guess you're right. I don't feel that there's that many places you can't get. There's no place you can't get without the car here. Right. I mean, the only thing it would, if we left vehicle connectivity, it would be like turn a cul-de-sac into a through road. Right. That would enhance vehicle connectivity. Do we have many of them? Would there be, could it be vehicle connectivity like a park and ride? No, I don't think in the, I don't think that, yeah, in this context, that would do connectivity that would provide options. This is talking about connectivity to adjacent towns, within Monewski into adjacent towns. So this is really. Getting from point A to B. And this is really, I think, based on the transportation plan, the priority was for bikes and pedestrians and mass transit. Right, Regina? Yeah, I think so. I saw that somewhere. Maybe it's in a different area. I think we still have to, you can't ignore the fact that there are cars. And we need to keep, we need to keep connectivity for cars. Well, I think it's already connected. Maybe it's maintaining connectivity or, do you know what I mean? Yeah. I personally don't see that it hurts being in there, but I'm one of seven, so. Would there be a situation where some of the vehicular connectivity would be enhanced, such as connections into Colchester, for example, that would then allow vehicles to have to spread out over more routes, therefore making it, making the traffic lighter on primary routes that are often used for bicycles or pedestrians. That would be like building new roads to connect to the Mallets Bay app. I just feel like there's no, no fountain or something. It would be. Feelings are so few points to connect to towns that. Exactly. Yeah, there's Main Street in 15. In Mallets Bay. In Mallets Bay, yeah. There's not likely to be new roads connecting Muskegda. So that enhanced vehicular connectivity is kind of irrelevant. I just don't see what difference it makes. Well, we've talked about like a redoing the bridge or whatever that seems like something that is pertinent to. That's true. Yeah, that's cool. Good point. And I believe the statement came from the Public Works Commission, as is minus transit. The red means I've stuck it in there. And that's it. I think Palace makes a great point. I think that's, because that's a huge infrastructure need for the city that needs attention. Okay, and then Abby, I'm sorry. I missed what we originally came down here for. We came to talk about transit reliability and frequency. That should be stated somewhere in our halls. So not just enhanced transit. We're not. Yeah, talking about connectivity, although we could be, but it's more about providing better. It's, I don't know if we wanna include it. Do we have any say over that? Like is putting it in our municipal plan empower us in any way to get it? Or is it a GMT control thing? And it doesn't need to be in the plan. I mean, the municipalities have to pay for the service. So, you know, it comes with some. I guess we sit on their board. Yeah. Okay. So there's some room. It's not a large amount of room or influence, I wouldn't say, but there's some. Enhanced. So it could, if you wanna keep it in seven, it could be enhanced pedestrian bicycle and vehicular connectivity, and then improve transit. Is there any reason it couldn't be like two sentences in the same goal? Include, improve transit access and frequency reliability. Something like that. Another question, just about like the goal five of maintaining a healthy and diverse urban forest. I just sort of feel like people don't know me not understand the purpose of an urban forest. So I just didn't know if there should be maybe more text within how it does have importance to stormwater to certain things and habitat connectivity, which I know you'll talk about later on. But from a utility standpoint, maybe there needs to be more explanation of why so that it doesn't get lost. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good point. And I think down below, it's not really talked about from an infrastructure perspective, so we probably do wanna keep it here. And then, again, that goes back to the part that John sent about the city trees. Yeah. So maybe that stuff goes there. Yeah. Maybe. I'm gonna, it's five minutes of eight now. I know. So maybe we jump into safe, healthy, connected people and go over it quickly and maybe. Is there anything else we do in five minutes, or is it, I sort of feel like going for five minutes is that enough? Well, that's why I'm thinking if we can do it for maybe 15 or 20, have a real quick overview of the highlights. Or if you just wanna address the red, the stuff in red. I mean, I feel, this is a very critical chapter. It might be our longest chapter. We may need to, we may just not get through it. I mean, we have to get finished next time. I have a feeling this might get pushed off. Yeah. Okay, so I have three big questions about this that are kind of more broad and overview. So it might be helpful to kind of talk through those. Okay. So the big question about this one is there's two commissions that are feeding into this. It's the Public Safety Commission and it's the Community Services Commission, I think. Yeah. And they provided input for the plan in a much more detailed way than the other commissions provided input. So when we get to the goals of this particular chapter, it was a little bit more challenging to figure out what actually rises. If we're trying to keep this high level, we're trying to sort of stay up above. It was more challenging in this chapter than the other ones so far on how to kind of keep it high level and what to do with all that specificity that came from these folks. So you'll kind of see on the goals that there's only like eight that I sort of stuck together or didn't do a great job sticking it together, but it's in there. And then you'll see a lot of a lot more detail from the other commissions. So I bring that up not necessarily that we can get to a solution tonight by any means, but maybe you guys can sort of take that with you as homework a little bit and think about what you wanna do in this chapter where you kind of wanna land on the goals in terms of broad overview versus specific. So that would be super helpful. The insights in this section, so the data is a lot of that is just kind of placeholder of stuff that I was thinking about. Some of it is definitely not available at the municipal level. So that will help narrow this down. The other person I think that will help me narrow down a good amount of this is probably Ray and I haven't had a chance to reach out to him. So we can kind of circle back with him and figure out from his perspective what would be the good sort of data to highlight here. And also from public safety folks as well. So we can kind of, you'll see a better version of that next time we meet. Then the last piece, which is kind of an interesting piece is the Public Safety Commission also put together a story. I'll keep this down, I'll keep that in enough copies. Which is really interesting. I just don't know the best way to kind of incorporate this sort of input into the plan. I feel like I sent this around to you all. Maybe a few weeks back, but this may need one that I didn't send to you. Because I know I sent it to Regina. I took an extra one, I don't know if someone sent it. So you may have seen this before but it's possible you haven't as well. I said to Eric earlier that the master plan was a newspaper. This would probably be like a good op-ed kind of piece. So, I don't know. This might just be another kind of homework piece maybe for folks to read this and think about it and figure out how you kind of want to incorporate it. Or if we want to incorporate it. Or if, yeah. It may be that it's not appropriate for the plan. There is also a police, I'm forgetting what it's called, but the police put together a, I'm gonna say strategic plan right now. That might not actually be what it's called. But, so, sorry, vision statement. And it's pretty detailed. So, that I think will be a good piece to consider as one of your other appendices or like things to kind of refer to. But this piece is a little, it's a little bit more interesting. So, I'm just skimming this, I haven't read it. I actually think this to me is like more useful in many ways than what I'm seeing here, which I feel like it's really, really specific and often is answering the how question rather than what. And these seem more like, what's written in here seems more like the larger goals and purpose rather than this is like, here are the very specific things we're gonna do. It's just in general. Like, so now the goals you mean or the introduction? The goals in this draft here, like, I don't know. Like, there were like, let's just start with the very first one, police increase staffing to appropriate levels on all ships without incurring overtime pay obligations. Like, that's the, like, without incurring overtime pay obligations, for example, is like a how, a very specific, like it gets down to a level of specificity that doesn't quite feel appropriate for, it's like an implementation thing, whereas the level of specificity in here, there may be things that are too specific in here too, but I feel like it's slightly broader than what's in here. So, I got what you were reading was from the ones that Regina had as these are really specific. We may not want to include it, you know what I mean? I thought that my read, my initial read, is that's all I had a chance to do. The goals in this, I thought were vague enough there. I didn't think they were that specific. Wait, goals meaning up to which point? Up to point eight, because she is going. Right, and even up to 25, I thought, I didn't see anything that struck me as in those first 25 as being really specific. The only one I marked as too specific was part of point 11, because I thought stating like the very specific, like community health center of Burlington, Ed O'Brien community center, remote dental care Ed O'Brien community center, partnership with UVM medical center, like do we want to really state all of the things that are filling that space as part of the plan? Like things can change. We may decide to reconfigure part of our city at some point where people might leave and I don't know if we want to be so specific about every use of every space in that building. And I also on that one, I made a note to myself about, it doesn't, it's talking about these specific ones, but it doesn't mention UVM medical center. Partnership with UVM medical center. Well, I had that related to O'Brien for me. Oh, okay, I got it. But I mean, just to, I think more of a general about healthcare availability, including the hospital, which is the big one. Yes, oh yes, yes, yes, yes, that makes sense. Yeah, and this isn't about specificity, but for point 10 on food access, I just thought this was interesting, because I know when we did the economic development piece and we had the public was talking about things, like the public perception is that food access is very limited in when you ski and where it turns. Food desert was brought up multiple times and this is just like the way this is coming across is like everything is perfect. And I agree that we do have a lot to be proud of with food, but that doesn't, that wasn't the feedback of the public. So this is definitely a goal. Like this doesn't exist now, but this is what they're suggesting when you ski when they come. Got it, got it, got it, got it. Okay. Retail venues would be encouraging grocers is that what's meant by retail venues. That's how I read it from them. And a quick glance at this, I think 11, 12, 13 can all be one point, which is access to healthcare and health permission, right? They all follow under that. So they could just be stripped of their specifics and put into a bullet point. And then the same. Sorry, that was 11, 12 and 13? Yep. And then I think we can do the same for 14 through 20, which is basically community programming and resources. I know in many cases we're trying to restrict specificity, but I did find section eight on the Wenuski School District to be a little more sparse than I expected. At one point we were hoping to get some more direct input from the school board on what they wanted in this plan. I don't know if that has happened in any way, but we talked a lot about the, so you're some, you know, something. No, I think we're going to be parking to choose. Yeah, there was a shot, right? Yes. Yeah, I think they've been on break. Yeah, they're on break. I have provided, I have on some, you know, some articles, something they have prepared and have sent them back to the city manager. The city manager, so I don't know where that stands. I would like to, like, I think that this piece is really important because I think one of the demographics people who are going to be looking at this plan are families thinking about moving into Wenuski and this is our opportunity to make a proud statement about our school system and maybe even highlight a couple of the initiatives that our school system has undertaken that are innovative. I know, for example, and I don't have kids in the school yet, but I was curious and I went and I toured the elementary school and the principal talked about how she's instituted a no homework policy, which I thought was fascinating because when South, and she mentioned this when South Berlin took the same thing, they got covered in all the papers, it's doing some innovative, amazing thing that Wenuski had done by at least a year prior and received no coverage for. And so I think that trying to combat some of the stereotypes by actually presenting facts in this plan would be beneficial. Great. Yeah, and I definitely second that because I think when it comes to perceptions about Wenuski, that's the biggest one that I hear is that we don't have an adequate school system, so go anywhere about Wenuski when in reality, I've heard great things about it, both from parents who have their kids in school and also just like hearing from the administration and what they're working on. So I do think that story is particularly important and should be in this plan. Yeah, great. And yeah, and there's been a lot of things through the years, innovative things, starting Wenuski that have caught on other places but we don't have credit. The other thing is, and I've been preaching this for I don't know how many years, but talk about the successes we've had. Kids graduate from Wenuski High School and they don't just fall off the face of the earth. They go a lot of places, you name a profession and there's kids who graduate in the last 10 years from Wenuski who are in it. And that's part of what we could also put into as a goal. Like I actually was curious like where are the kids at Wenuski going after graduation? I went and I couldn't find any of that information on the website for the school system or anything like that. And I was curious as a resident, but that's something that could set a goal to like highlight the accomplishments of students going through the Wenuski school system. So my question is, I think the goal is maybe to highlight these things, but would it be in like the insights or intro someplace or an addendum to the plan somewhere to talk about specific innovations or whatever? I mean, it's just a matter of where to fit in the plan, but I think you're right, it does need to fit in there because schools is the biggest thing that comes up, why people don't stay in Wenuski. Young families move in and they say, I'm leaving. I think the story that people, that gets told is people look at test scores, right? It doesn't factor in the ELL, right? So if you can't speak the language, it's gonna be hard to do good in a test. But I was told when you take out ELL, we're actually above average in test scores for the state of Vermont, but nobody hears about that. Like that's a really important thing. If you go to createschools.com, we're an app for something. Yeah, I've heard a lot about this store.  And so it's an incomplete picture. And I think we have all these anecdotes where parents will say, I'm very successful kids, I went through the system, but if we can just show the data and to support it, I think it'll get over that great school score that everybody looks at. Cause it comes up that great, you know this, as a realtor when you're looking at houses, it's like the great school score comes up with the housing and with the walkability and the other factors. Absolutely. And as a parent of small children, my social community in Wenuski is, they're leaving at a quick rate. Me too, really. For sure. I have been, people have been suggesting me that I have a nine year old now in fourth grade and people have been suggesting me, you know, when you go to middle school, get a, you know, it's high time you move here. So I'm turning the place. So my kids have all graduated, they're all your ages. But my two oldest went K through eight, then they went to Rice. My youngest went K through eight and my oldest said, you gotta send her to Rice. I said, it's up to her, she went to Wenuski. And she did very well. And she's now a high school English teacher in Massachusetts.   It's her choice. So, you know. But she did very well as did, you know, most of the kids in her class, you know. And it's interesting because she went to Providence College and she got down there and it's like, so there's a bunch of different, you know, people from different races and ethnicities and whatever, she had it, you know. It makes me wonder whether even putting the school system into, fitting it into this broad thing is the right place. Like, I would love to have kind of an overview of our school system and just more have a way to put it in this plan where they really can, can have a place like this can be part of a resource where someone thinking about moving the community can read it and feel like I'm really excited about this. And I don't wanna squeeze that into like three sentences. Can we do a separate chapter? Thanks for that. Sash has a thought. We'll get set. I just wanna point out, the school has a strategic plan that they work really hard on and a large document and huge. And, and I'm sorry guys, but maybe a different way to think about this is looking holistically at educational and growth opportunities for kids in the community of which the school is a portion or part of. And lean back on that scope and have a model again where we say there's a strategic plan for the school and reference that. We could leave some, like some pieces of that. I don't really like some of the language, like maybe we wanna take that. I just, I don't want, you know, at the end of the day, like, I don't know like where parents or some of them who might be commuting just commuting their first stop. But I'd hate, like I'd want enough in here if this is what they're looking at that they can get it. Like they don't have to like follow every footnote. Yeah, and you can be sure like the South Burlington city plan is gonna have quite a bit about every school system in it cause they're really proud and they brag every chance they can about it. Like what should we do? We should point out the new school plan need to show some kind of coordinated effort around facilitating positive growth of children, right? I mean, that should be part of the portion more so than like trying to restate exactly what the school and the set of their strategic plan. But I think what I'm hearing is kind of more highlights in this plan.  Yeah, yeah. But the other thing that I think we have to remember is there are other educational facilities in the city. We do have St. Francis, we got CCV, we've got the center point, so we have to make sure that we incorporate those in there. So I guess going back to what Pallas just said then is it doesn't make sense to have a separate, I don't know if you're thinking about a separate chapter but now it almost seems like maybe we should. Regina, would you think about that? I mean, it would be outside of the city's strategic vision structure. Okay. But we don't have to necessarily be banned into the world. But that was a starting point. I don't think it was meant to be like where we're supposed to be, we feel limited to that. I mean, I think it's... Don't work for you, Regina. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's an important point that Seth makes. It's interesting to have a whole chapter that the city itself doesn't necessarily control. All the other chapters and what you're kind of, I think the goal at the end of the day is to try to help the city determine what priorities you have to fund going forward. And it's not to say that the schools aren't important at all but it's not necessarily within the purview of the city which is why there's a whole other strategic plan that the schools do for themselves. So... I think the argument against that is the municipal plan, as has been said, it's a place where people may be coming to get information on the city. And schools is an important part of the city even though it's not, it's a separate municipality from the city itself. It's still part of the city. You know, it's like... I was actually hearing education, not just schools, because we're gonna include CCV and CenterPoint and St. Francis, you know, it's not just the school district, it's education. Yeah, I meant to say schools, not, but education is a better term. I think education is even broader. Yeah, that's a better term because I think it's important, too, that people know that St. Michael's is right there. UVM is right there. Champlain is right there. So not, although they're not located in Muruski, they're right, you know, they're within two miles of us. There's also the possibility, I don't, like, originally I thought, like maybe we would end up with, like, two levels of chapters, like sections and chapters. So we could divide this, which is one of the media sections into several chapters that fit within it, just because it's healthy, safe, healthy, connected people, covers so much. And it overlaps with a lot of the others. Right, exactly. On Goal 21, we may be able to beef that up and get into transit. It's talking about transportation for seniors. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I saw that one, too, Mike. It seems like it's more than seniors that we wanna provide all those great things, too. Yeah, this, the- Independence, social connection. The next plan and the education. It seems like youth could benefit from that, but really everybody benefits from the independence that you get from transit and access. Sorry, going back really quickly just to schools, I just wanted to point out, originally when we started this plan process, we cited the Essex Plan as an example of a successful plan because it did win plan of the year. And they actually have the subsection model and the big section is called Living Here. In Under Living Here, they have YFIs, tourism, education in schools, community organizations, Green Mountain Transit and Essex Senior Bus, volunteers, so like, other categories. So, and then they have like a separate section called Doing Business Here with subcategories. It's just interesting to see how people have structured it, but they do have a school and education lumped together. Peace. I think I support that idea of breaking down into chapters just because there are so many goals in this, that it's daunting. So if you did break it down into chapters, you could distribute those goals and then get a little more. Yeah, and I think they fall under food, food, you know, like healthcare, community services, education, transportation, I think these are all. So, if I'm understanding, it almost sounds like this is more sectioned out, this chapter. Instead of like a laundry list. Right, instead of a longer piece sectioned. Sectioning it out a little bit more to address some of the specific topic areas. So we're not looking at creating necessarily a new chapter or new chapters, but more reorganization and compartmentalizing some of what's already in here to expand upon it in some areas, but also to kind of group the relevant topics together. And I think we should keep that in mind because it might be applicable to other sections. That's a great point. I'm actually just looking at that SX1 reminded me that one of the things I didn't see as much in this draft, other than a little bit mentioned in the introductory section that we had talked about really on was how are addressing as a goal making this a friendly destination for tourists and visitors and making sure that they had a good experience when here in the area. Yeah, that's one of those things. But just as a goal, even broadly speaking, I think that is something we would like to do. Stephanie, do you want to add or are you happy? No, I mean, I think that makes sense. I think that's getting back to it without having to dive too far into the philosophy of education, right? I mean, that concept of wrapping the piece together with the city's role as an holistically trying to reflect about it, I think a document that would be good for all of you to see when you get to some of the details of that too is the MOU between the school and the city because it speaks to kind of the spirit that is there right now and how we think cooperatively about what we're doing to coordinate, you know? But from the structure standpoint, that makes a lot of sense to me, too. My air is running out. Good. Anything else? 30 seconds. Are we going to do 10 years of conversation a little bit more next time? I think we all probably have some additional thoughts, but... Yeah, so we've got some homework to do. So, overview. So, yeah, just a quick overview for our next one. It's going to be on August 23rd. We will continue the discussion on this section and hopefully introduce the housing section as well. That's what our job is looking like right now. So that's just to let you know what's coming up. I'm just thinking, introduce the housing section, is that, we all have a lot of time, but is that an opportunity to talk a little bit about this, you know, that... Well, so let me touch on that under other business. Okay, Ken. So, our schedule has a, we have a small gap in our schedule on our meetings for the 27th of September. We don't have any plan sections scheduled. So, if we need to extend some of our discussions, we can. And that might be an opportunity as well to get more into the discussion of the housing, which we had at the top of the meeting. So... Are we going to struggle in our conversation on the housing piece without having had that other conversation first? I guess I'm wondering because a lot of what's in that section is coming from the housing commission and one of their biggest priorities is the conversation on this replacement thing, which makes me wonder, would it make sense to do, I know it's short notice and we want to get the housing commission involved, but like, could we try to make the next meeting that meeting to have this discussion and invite them and then do the housing section during the meeting at the end of September instead so that we have had that conversation before we jump into that. That sounds like a really good idea. I guess the only thing I would say is, I would hate to, because we've just started on this, I'd like to continue on this. And what, do we know what the housing, what they're gonna, are they, it's not gonna be presenting this housing replacement stuff, right? Well, so the housing commission hasn't provided something like any of the other commissions have because they've been so focused on particular implementation tasks, which is awesome. But so right now, I don't know what I'm putting in the housing chapter, but I'm sure I'll look at everything that they've had and put together and figure it out. I imagine there will be a lot in the chapter, that'll be much like the other sort of introduction insight. The retention thing would just be like one of the goals that may be among many goals. The specifics of how that shakes out. I mean, I don't know what's gonna be in that chapter yet. So I'd like to say there might be stuff that helps inform you guys, at least from a broader perspective, that might be helpful before you start getting into this housing retention conversation. But that's a hope, because I haven't looked at any of it yet. Yeah, and I think kind of to that same point, I would almost think that our discussion on housing for the master plan is going to be, still gonna be at that more conceptual, broader level. So as long as you're okay with the concept of some sort of replacement ordinance or inclusionary housing or things of that nature, I think we can have the discussion on the housing section separate from that more detailed discussion. What might be helpful is in the meantime, Palace gave us an article on inclusionary zoning. If we can find something on replacement policies, whatever they call it. So we can maybe have that in the back of our mind anyway. I don't know if it'll come up or not, but at least maybe we can have, dare I say, a 10 or 15 minute discussion. Half an hour just for the room. Well, unfortunately we're starting kind of at a disadvantage in our next meeting, knowing that we only got through some of this thing this week and I think we do our best. Yeah, it is possible we may need that September meeting to catch up on where we are with some of these other sections. So, but I will talk with staff about when we could potentially get a joint meeting together and what dates they've already got scheduled and things like that to see what might work as far as coordinating something. So we may not be able to pull something together before our next meeting to have that joint meeting in advance, I guess is my point of fact. So our next meeting is the 23rd? 23rd of August, yes. Is everyone available? Sorry, so that again? 23rd of August, two weeks from today. Which is a first time? Yes. It's our typical meeting. Thanks, Sarah. It's our typical meeting. Yeah, and sorry I missed that, but is there any reason why we can't have that specific housing discussion next week with the continuation of this and connected whatever discussion we were just having? And then since we have that gap here, we still talk about housing, not that gap here, that gap week, we still talk about housing. Thanks, and just push everything out so that we're filling, we're not pushing housing way off, but we're just pushing everything out a week or two weeks. Are you talking about a joint meeting for our next meeting or just more discussion on? It could be with it then or without, but I was, you know how you mentioned we could put housing on at the end of September because we don't have a topic? Right. What about just instead of putting housing, we just push it so that everything gets pushed so we continue with the same order? So that the last one ends up being like city demographics or whatever it is. So next meeting would be finish up this, this connected, start on the housing. Talk about specifically this housing issue that's coming and then the following meeting would actually be the housing chapter if we don't get, if we don't start it or get to it. Yeah, well yeah, so the next meeting and the following meeting would be housing. Housing. Whether it's how are we going to do it. Or part of it. Okay. In general, I just process wise, like and this may not apply to the next meeting, but I was thinking like based on today, for example, it might be helpful to start the meetings with doing the new chapter before the second draft because it, like the new chapter is always gonna have more conversation. It feels very hard when, if we end up talking to the last 10 minutes this week is in a new chapter to like maybe start with the stuff, the new stuff and then just kind of reverse. And if possible, maybe just allotting a certain amount of time so we don't get off task too much. I don't know if that's possible, but I know other boards that I've been on, there's like a certain amount of time and that's it. I tried, but you guys just kept talking. Yeah. If there was a specific input before the meeting, like if it's in a Google doc, if we could put comments and suggestions in there that could be a way, because a lot of the stuff I had could have been like Google doc-ish, right? Like where wording and where things go or just spending time for each one of us to do that. Well, the other thing today too, remember we spent the first half hour talking about that, the council meeting. So that threw us off. So, I mean, no, no, no, I think that's fine. I think if we just keep it in mind, we'll do basically 45 minutes for the recap and then 45 minutes for the new chapter. And you have to really keep us on task. That is your job. That's my off task. Okay, I'm gonna get a big yardstick too. Yeah. Or a switch. Like when I was in school, they used to have. I was waiting for that. So I think, so just on what I'm doing, I think I'm just gonna keep moving forward. I think. I guess it's out of my purview for sure, but the one thing I would say in terms of having that housing retention conversation in two weeks time is it's really, would be much more helpful for staff, I think, to be able to prepare for that so that you guys don't have a bunch of questions that he doesn't have answers to. So I would just say that in your favor that that could be something very difficult to prepare for. So. So maybe what we're gonna do though is we'll finish this, start the housing and have nothing technical, but maybe just a brief discussion. And then the meeting after it would be more in depth. Yeah. I mean, we could find, there is so much on housing in the world and academic writing and organizations. And it is a massive, massive topic. So to try to find you guys one thing that helps you understand housing retention policy would be pretty difficult. So that's just my thought about it. And then I feel more confidence seeing that there is a body of literature on housing replacement policies because I really did struggle to find that particular structure when I researched it. Inclusionary zoning, there was information. Housing replacement, very limited. Yeah. And I would, you know, Seth is more of an expert that I am by any means. So if in the reality that the majority of the times these are actually one ordinance, then it's probably where you're gonna find it as opposed to something separate. But I can certainly look and see if I find anything. And like, yeah. Yeah. And I will also, I've already done some looking because I'm starting to draft what it, what the ordinance might actually look like based on the input that the housing commission has already provided.  You wanna move this forward or not? It's definitely more just to get what they've commented on in some form of the structure that looks like a regulatory type document. So it's, but anyway, we will do some research. Okay. Sounds good. So, motion to adjourn. Nice. So does. It's starting secondated. Okay. All in favor. All in favor. I adjourn. Thanks, everyone. And I'll be here with a gavel and a rule.


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