plan. We look a little strange. Peter Fairweather has the microphone attached to his shirt, and I'm using it. That's why we're sort of huddled up here. I'd like to introduce Peter Fairweather for those of you who have not met him or come to earlier meetings. Peter's been working with a steering committee here in Montpelier for the past six months or so to try to develop a process whereby we come up with a draft economic development plan, which is what you're going to see tonight, and respond to and ask questions and kind of react to before it gets presented to City Council tomorrow evening. So this is Peter Fairweather and he's going to carry on. Thank you, Gene. As soon as I get this back where it was. Okay, that should do it, right? Good. All right. Thank you all for coming on this balmy spring day. And, you know, Gene set out the process right. What we're going to be doing is going through kind of the conceptual approach we're going to take to strategic planning for economic development in Montpelier as based on the work we've done thus far. And I will give you a sense of the agenda. We'll first just do an overview of the planning process. Then we'll talk a little bit about what is economic development, what is an economic development strategy, what is Montpelier's strategic position, and then start talking about what are the opportunities and how should we pursue those opportunities. So in terms of the planning process, Gene mentioned the steering committee and these are the esteemed members of the steering committee, many of who are here tonight and I'd like to thank them for their ongoing support. A lot of the work they did was to review drafts to make sure that they more or less made sense. And also, they're invaluable in putting me in contact with important stakeholders in the city and beyond so that we can get a variety of different perspectives in the strategic planning process. And, you know, they're set up with four phases in the process, the analysis, the engagement, and this is where we started to talk to folks about what they saw as issues and opportunities and then phase three is we started to talk about conceptually how do we approach economic development in Montpelier, what is the overall strategic direction we're going to look at, and then the last phase is action putting together the strategic plan and, you know, we are here. We're finishing the creation process for the strategy and what we're going to talk about tonight is kind of the general overall approach that we're recommending. And then from there, depending on the response and review, we'll put together the final plan which will have an action agenda and sequenced order, metrics, and all the details to make this stuff happen. So what is economic development? It's stimulating or challenging economic activity which could be spending, job creation, investment, so that activity preserves and improves the community's quality of life. Economic development harnesses economic power, but it isn't economic power. You know, that's the tricky thing about this process. We're looking for ways to facilitate economic activity in the city. And effective economic development depends upon market realities and motivated business people. And, you know, what we've tried to do in this process and what we're doing all the work related to economic development that I do is to try to understand what are the market opportunities and how can those be engaged in the community to build opportunity, investment, jobs, and so forth. And what is an economic development strategic plan? It's a plan that defines an approach to use the resources we have to capture the activity we want. You know, that we've looked at what are the things that are happening from an economic perspective in Montpelier, what are the assets that the community has and how can we mobilize those to take advantage of economic activities to generate the outcomes that we want. And, you know, part of this is saying, well, what's Montpelier's strategic position? What's the overall approach we're going to take to bring this about? What do we see as the opportunities? And what you can do to take advantage of those opportunities from the position that the city occupies. And now we're going to start to make that a little bit more specific. Let's talk about Montpelier's strategic position. And the model we use to think about this is that some of you have seen already is called the process of market polarization, which I will lay out for you. And this is an important concept in our strategic planning process here in Montpelier. This model works from top to bottom, again, some of you have seen it before, and it shows how markets grow and develop. And I'll walk you through an example and then we'll apply it to Montpelier. The typical example is the automobile industry. Henry Ford figures out how to mass-produce automobiles. So the inventor fills a lead. Paralympic competition enters and expands the market. And General Motors also can basically do the same thing. They're providing similar kind of product.  Step three is the important one. The extremes enter and are disregarded. Suddenly people show up in the market that are offering superior quality products like BMW or Jaguar or something like that. Or lower price products. Volkswagen, Nissan, and so on. And what happens is the big three automakers think, well we're the dominant thing in the market so we can ignore what's happening at the extremes. Though what happens is polarization accelerates, consumers realize well I could have the standard issue car or I could spend a little bit more money to get something that's really neat and cool or spend a little less money and still get the same basic transportation. So if you stay in the middle in that situation you lose. And if you remember the auto industry in the 70's and 80's the big three automakers were sort of in a panic because they were suddenly lost their dominant position. And the same thing happens with locations. You know there can be a low cost location in that the location itself helps minimize the cost of operations because rents are cheaper and so on labor is cheaper. Or superior quality. The location itself adds value to the enterprise. It's a productive place to do business because there are skilled workers here. There's a high quality of life that enables you to attract and retain workers more effectively. So that's the situation we're looking at in terms of non-period can be summarized by looking at what's going on in two neighbors as an example. When you look at Barry and their approach to economic development in their documents retaining good on Barry's better cities heritage the blue collar community that is affordable for working class families. So they're clearly positioning themselves as a low cost location for economic development. At the same time what's happening over in Waterbury is they're positioning themselves as this place of uncommon ideas. A premium location for economic development. And what's interesting in this process is Montpelier which 30 years ago was kind of the just about the only lively urban setting in central Vermont. Now certainly is find itself in the middle. And so it looks like there's a need to start thinking about what is our position in the marketplace? How do we respond? Some of you have seen this data before. This will give you a sense of what's going on. This looks at employment from basically the trends from 2009 to 2014 which is the most recent data for the full year we can get. It shows Montpelier, Barry and Waterbury. If you look at total employment you can see Montpelier is bigger. The change in total employment well Montpelier gained 600 jobs Barry 650 and Waterbury lost 1200. So Montpelier looks pretty good in comparison except when you start to look at private sector jobs and take government out of the picture. Private employment about 6,000 in Montpelier, 4,000 in Barry, almost 3,000 in Waterbury over the last five years the change in private sector employment in Montpelier 10 jobs as opposed to 400 in Barry and 300 in Waterbury. So you know there's movement that's taking place nearby and Montpelier hasn't really participated that in the same extent so we need to start thinking about what is Montpelier's position in the marketplace and what will happen if you stay in the middle in that situation. If the community decides to stay in the middle the economy will be growing slowly for the foreseeable future and that's the other thing that makes this complicated. But if you look at what's happening at the national level the growth rate to give you a sense and this is from a study from the Congressional Budget Office the national growth rate in the 80's which was not exactly boom times you know it was considered a somewhat slow growing time it was about 3% per year. The Congressional Budget Office now projects like over the next 10 to 20 years average annual growth nationally will be 2% you know 2 thirds of what it was in the 1980's so that national growth is going to continue to be slow and that's reflected in Vermont you know the new economic partnership forecast last year it's the pace of recovery and expansion will continue to be moderate and again so this is a time of slow growth. So if Montpelier doesn't respond what happens and I think it's important but it's not like there's going to be immediate cataclysm that you step out onto Main Street or into your own cut as well one day and suddenly there'll be nothing there tomorrow but what will happen is you'll see the population will continue to decline really new housing is built the retirees will stay put housing remains rare and expensive for younger workers. The state consolidates its Montpelier workforce in fewer buildings in order to save a little money, freeing up downtown commercial space. A stagnant population means retail and hospitality businesses struggle and become more seasonal because they have to wait for people to come in from the outside because the resident population is slowly getting smaller and smaller and the cost of government services rise and taxes go up making the city less attractive to new businesses because there's fewer and fewer households and other kinds of businesses to cover the costs of running the city is reduced capacity for regeneration or transition as we talk about how do we respond to the changing economy, the changing energy situation and so on in order to respond to that we're going to need resources and wealth and if we decide not to move and we stay in that middle position we see a slow decline which again won't seem like a cataclysm it'll seem more like things get a little cloudy in Montpelier and then over five to ten years you suddenly see gee, how did this happen? There are a lot of empty storefronts here that didn't used to be that way it's getting harder and harder to find work and again it's nothing that happens dramatically but it's gradual over time and that's why it's a good time to do this strategic plan right now because there are many things that are going quite well from Montpelier so we need to think about giving this change and the market polarization that's taking place, what do we do? So based on the work we've done this far here's the overall approach we're suggesting first of all in terms of how do we think about what are the goals of this strategy? It's to increase economic activity private sector jobs and population by providing value to local businesses through a four-pronged approach and we're going to talk about what's involved in each of these approaches in a little more detail than just the slide we first need to support key sectors that can drive the economy and we'll talk about what those are next, to champion transformational projects that strengthen the local economy to be able to show that Montpelier can get the job done in terms of competing as a premium location for economic development and we'll talk about what those could look like to make strategic investments to strengthen the economy and to assemble the tools to sustain the effort catalyze projects and build quality of life and now what I'm going to do is to walk you through conceptually what each of those four elements would look like First of all, supporting key market sectors and we've listed them alphabetically based on the analysis that we've done which you can see a lot of that on the website Montpelierplan.com These are industries that we see have growth potential in Montpelier listed alphabetically, adult learning food processing and advanced manufacturing and that is manufacturing that uses technology either in their processes or in their products entrepreneurs, particularly in software development and IT finance and insurance, historically a strength for the state capital and still very much so not-for-profit services professional business and technical services including green businesses specialty retail and tourism hospitality and the arts so these we see as important sectors with growth potential for Montpelier in the future and the other thing I'll point out that little golden triangle will appear on these slides as a reminder you were thinking about a premium positioning for Montpelier and that's kind of the the effort we're going to focus on so championing transformational projects and we'll give you some examples, some illustrations of what could be transformational projects for the city thinking about those sectors how do we take advantage of the growth in those sectors for example, creating a hotel and conference center which might mean working with existing operators and or developers to create additional rooms and conference space to support business and tourism travel and which of those sectors would that help tourism, hospitality and the arts, adult learning finance insurance, not-for-profit services and services including green businesses that idea of providing opportunities for conferences for functions and even just for business travel in addition to the obvious target of tourism and the arts so that's the first kind of transformational project second, a comprehensive parking strategy to ensure employees have access to parking to reduce problems associated with the legislative session to accommodate tourist visitation in previous analysis, one of the important things that employers look for when they're evaluating a location is to make sure that their employees have access to parking so part of this would be to put together a strategy to address the issues of what's the capacity where is it needed in what form and that could be anything from the bricks and mortar of a parking garage to looking at pricing parking in different parts of the city to make sure people distribute themselves in a way that's more effective and provides better opportunities for businesses to find their employees' places to park and for retail operations to have a place for their customers to be. Other potential projects provide a variety of housing types to ensure adequate housing for what's termed in the consultant land as the talent pipeline and that is the workforce in the community and that could include executive housing in the downtown and other locations housing for young professionals with families first-time home buyers senior housing for retirees to free up existing housing stock and affordable housing for young singles and others and some of the sectors that helps particularly finance and insurance the services including green business you know the companies that are using high-scale technical workers the whole question of housing is important ingredient in their development as they look to recruit talent to bring workers in to make sure that they can compete on the basis of the skills of their workforce Another potential project is to create a not-for-profit advocacy training center you know the Montpellier is the state cap and there's some inherent advantage of that in terms of working with the not-for-profit sector and advocacy groups to build their capacity to do their work you know this is a great place to observe the legislative process to get a sense of how the agencies work and the rulemaking process and so on and we think there's some opportunities to create this kind of training center which serves the not-for-profit services obviously but also adult learning and tourism, hospitality and the arts a lot of those operations are not for profits especially in the arts sector A venue featuring locally crafted food, wine and spirits to again capture the whole local food movement that's increasingly an important part of the Vermont economy the central Vermont economy there are a lot of opportunities we feel to look at ways to encourage those kinds of activities to benefit the food processing and advanced manufacturing and specialty retail sectors Others, a retail arcade with small footprint spaces for start-up retailers in a larger space in the town to basically see if there's a spot to create anything from stalls to small shops to enable retail businesses that are looking to get started to kind of get their operations underway without having to lease a full storefront to test the idea, to test the concept and there are a lot of communities that have successful spaces like this one that comes to mind is in Northampton, Massachusetts the Thorn Building is a good example where there's a variety of spaces of different size and the sectors that that could help obviously retail but also tourism, hospitality and the arts food processing and advanced manufacturing but particularly food processing in this case for processes that are looking for a small retail space to get their goods to market Broadband connectivity to key growth sites and the target sectors this would help are services, entrepreneurs and adult learning and actually probably just about every business these days could benefit from broadband activity in the downtown so we see that as an important part of the positioning of Montpelier so those are examples of some transformational projects projects that will signal that Montpelier is making that repositioning to a premium location to go along with those are also some strategic investments that can be made either by government or by the private sector to get the city ready to participate and these could include creating class A office space in downtown and the Barry Street stone cutters way area for professional services, entrepreneurs and not for profits create sites for food processing and second stage advanced manufacturing in the Barry Street stone cutters way area you know there's a way in which Montpelier is for example more expensive than Barry so the incubator kinds of activities mostly for manufacturing and food processing may go to Barry but once those companies grow and they're looking for well where do we go next to really sustain ourselves there I think will be opportunities for Montpelier again helping to create that hotel and conference center in the adjacent to the downtown core creating family housing in larger parcels and adjacent to existing neighborhoods and creating infill housing in the downtown core for young singles you know there are ways that these can be encouraged and to get private sector to participate in getting these kinds of investments to happen ensure adequate employee parking at each site again that's repeatedly came up in the analysis of what makes a downtown attractive for business is for businesses to know that their workers have places to park and then also to ensure pedestrian and bike connections to development sites for a couple of reasons it helps in terms of the mobility of customers but also the idea of quality of life is important for employers to sell a community to their workers to say this is the kind of place where you can bike to work you know that that's an attractive thing and we would look to encourage those kinds of investments and also provide expeditious project reviews first of all I've always wanted to use the word expeditious in a sense and this was my chance to do that but are there ways to increase the predictability of project reviews and you know developers that's what they want a predictable process the answer could be no but they want to know that it will take X number of months or X number of weeks to get there and that the process itself will be understandable and reliably expect what each step will be one of the ways that my period can be considered to do that is to adapt the Municipal Administrative Procedures Act for projects which basically puts project reviews more or less on the record and if the project is appealed to the environmental court what the environmental court then does is look at the decision making process that the local government used to make sure that it was done sensible that wasn't arbitrary and capricious and made the best use of the information that was provided rather than having to start the whole review all over again so the idea is again not essentially to make sure that the process is high quality but also gets done in as effective a time frame as possible and strengthen community amenities streetscapes, facades, recreation facilities you know these are good things to do it's a civic pride point of view but when you're thinking about competing especially for skilled firms firms that use skilled labor it's important to have a quality of life that's exemplary and this is something the good news is my period can build upon you know basically an attractive community to start with this is a place that has a lot of this we need to sort of put a fresh coat of paint on some things and also make sure that the amenities are provided keep pace with other communities that are in the marketplace also marketing another important investment is once we've got all this stuff going to make sure the word gets out and some of that is to build a brand for the economic development strategic plans to indicate there's stuff going on here this is an interesting place provide personal service for business development approvals and financing someone to serve a friend and a broker with businesses to just get them through the process so that they understand what is the paperwork I have to submit what are the grants and loans that I might be eligible for and so they feel that they're getting support from the city in a systematic way because a lot of that stuff happens now but it's divided between three or four different offices and it's very easy for things to fall through the cracks that way and then lastly recruit firms in the target industries to Montpelier especially once the situation is in place where the community is known even more for its ever higher quality of life there are interesting things going on here then even to get the word out through peer networks the people that employers in town know that are elsewhere is the most effective way to get the word out to companies to think about Montpelier if you hear from somebody that's in your business that maybe is a supplier or even a competitor this is a great place to do business they really work with you they make sure that you get the assistance you need it's a great place, they're great schools a good quality of life that's some of the most effective marketing if it's coming from their peers rather than brochures so now I remember four we talked about investments now let's just talk quickly about assembling the economic development tools and we've got a few things here first of all, tools to catalyze key projects to build partnerships with developers and property owners almost like creating a round table to meet regularly with the development community and property owners to see what's going on what are you thinking about we've got I've heard from these kinds of businesses that are looking to come into the city folks interested in the space that would work for these folks and in this case the column on the right hand side shows who would the partners be with an economic development agency that's working in the city and developers in the city government would be working with that the economic developer create grant and financing packages for partner developers to produce projects that can be priced from unpeeler one of the things we've heard a lot from a lot of different sources which when you hear this you'll see it makes pretty much common sense the cost of building something is pretty much the same in Burlington as it is in Montpelier you're using the same wood the same sheetrock you're basically using the same workforce employed at the same wages the rent that you can get in Burlington is higher than what you can get in Montpelier right now so if you're a developer where are you going to go? and so what we need to do to start thinking about is can we put together packages to help bring those costs down for the developers so that they can price it so it'll sell in Montpelier but they'll still make some money on it so they'll say this project worked let's do another one and again that's what we see coordinating with city government appropriate federal state and local agencies and what's part of that is to also think about long-term and annual fee for vacant buildings and this is sort of a mixture of carrot and stick the idea is to leave with the carrot and to try to make these programs attractive and create as much of an incentive for developers and property owners as possible but if that still doesn't work then there may be a bit of a stick to say here's another additional incentive of a different kind to get you to think about moving your properties and getting them occupied again tools to improve amenities and infrastructure again the parking strategy is important in terms of thinking about how do we move vehicles and people through the city in a way that supports economic development maintains and improves quality of life that involves city government appropriate federal state and local agencies streetscape improvements putting the best foot forward for the city and even possibly using tax increment financing to support public infrastructure improvements and that requires work with the state legislature to empower that but basically tax increment financing enables a project to be done such that some of the tax revenues from that project I mean are actually dedicated to retiring bonds that might be used to create extended sewer line build some broadband infrastructure and so on so that's it we're getting a little wonky here and a little bit into the weeds explaining that but that's the general idea and then lastly as part of tools to sustain the effort to create a lead economic development entity and you can see up there this is at least a five year commitment getting this you know doing this reposition and getting into the firmly into the golden part of the pyramid it requires sustained effort so we're looking at how do we create an entity to carry this forward be accountable for it and make sure it keeps moving one of the things we're looking at is a local development corporation and you can see we've got relisting advantages and disadvantages of that on the advantage side provides maximum accountability for the plan through a contract in the city who's responsible for this it's the LDC ensures continuity across election cycles because it's a multi-year contract it's separate from the city government so there's more administrative flexibility and also can accommodate private sector participation a little bit better it's easier to do maintain confidentiality easier if the opportunity comes along to accept private sector support to enhance the activities of the corporation there are some disadvantages there are startup costs you've got to create bylaws board has to be constituted creating policies for the organization they're all reporting the requirements it seems like there's more every day in terms of what's required from federal and state government and it also adds another organization in the city so what we're looking at and this is something as we come down to the final part of this is we'll be finalizing a recommendation about what's the best way to move this forward again it might be a local development corporation but it might be using an existing organization it might be creating a position or entity within city government but we need to look a bit more at the details of this the key takeaway on this though is it's a minimum of five year commitment to get this project working you know as we think about this sort of summarizing it the strategic position maybe we can think of this Montpellier is the innovative capital of central Vermont it's the state capital it's an innovative municipal government it's the single business biggest repository of creative assets in central Vermont and it's the hub for innovative enterprises in the region now and so to think about the strategic plan is the innovative capital strategy and maybe the projects can be thought of as part of this long-term strategic plan the innovative capital strategy because again this is something where the projects are going to be rolling out over a five to maybe ten year time period in a sustained program so this and this is the one slide summary of everything I've just talked about but I want to put that up because at this point oops we'll take comments questions reactions maybe a turn on this so if any questions comments reactions yes I believe that we are the innovative capital I think that's one thing that makes Longpellier really juicy and why people like to come and there's a diversity and there's a life to it but in this plan I don't see a lot of innovation I see a concentration on parking and the use of you know it's not very green friendly it seems very innovative to me it doesn't in large part call for the engagement of the community for example for example you talk about food processing I think that's a great idea why not have model farming our garden so that our food sources are closer to the center of the community why not have a transportation system that takes parking out of the city and people there's an innovative way to move people into the heart of Longpellier of course the riverfront development that could be a whole big area of innovation so that's just kind of my first take on it that it needs this is pretty cut and dry to me you know and then I want to bring up of course you know I'm from Onion River Exchange which supports an alternative economy it's a social economy where community members help each other and they help each other by fulfilling basic needs to be met and that would be an interesting component to develop because I believe that would draw people into the community or it could be an organized way that our community could be helping itself a couple of responses though I think in terms of parking when we look at a parking strategy it's I don't think it necessarily eliminates the things that you're talking about but one of the things we have to do is make sure that the strategy we come up with is something that the businesses can live with bottom line that's where we are I think there are some opportunities long term to think about what would Montpelier look like in a low carbon zero carbon situation and I think that's part of being the innovative capitalist to look at that but in the short term we really have to look at how do we accommodate the businesses here with the needs that they have and that strategy could include a variety of things that some of which might include the shuttle system and so on the other thing in terms of the community involvement and agriculture I'll deal with those simultaneously is this is just the start of the process and I think that there will be opportunities throughout the implementation process that's where you really engage the business folks you sort of say these are the things we're ready to support and we'll do that in any way that makes sense and food processing that industry the local food movement is really just starting so we've got a sense of some things that might be possible now but five years from now it could be some of the initiatives that you just mentioned come to the fore and I think at that point when the market is ready to do that the city's got to be ready to respond as well so I wouldn't I would love to say I've got all kinds of fancy bells and whistles in this one but I think what it does in terms of being innovative the idea is to try to set the table where innovation can take place it's just I did it when you were outlining the transformational projects I didn't hear any of that kind of okay well that wasn't an exhausted list of projects but those were some of the kids that came out of the discussions and again as we go forward and if a project shows up where there's a business plan that suggests it's viable then I think it's it can go and the economic development organization can support other comments one of the biggest problems I see is development is so important but the people that live in Montpelier don't want to see development happening in their backyard like for instance Savins Pasture how is it that we can manage the community how important it is to bring in more development and more housing without having always constantly battling against you know it's just people that that's a good question I think I'm going to answer from down here first of all there are always going to be situations where a project is going forward and the people next to it don't like it but that doesn't mean it's bad for the city one of the things we're looking to get out of this economic development process is a vision from the direction we're heading such that you know if a project comes forward that's been identified as part of the innovative capital strategy let's use that phrase people will show up to support it because that's the other part of this process is there should be a notion of projects that are worth supporting because there will always be a small opposition to almost anything I mean I could name or you could design an ideal project that fits everything I stand for in terms of economic development and you put it in the property next to mine and I'll show up at the City Council meeting cranky as all heck but I think what's needed is a shared vision about how we move forward and what it's going to take because again when you look at the whole market polarization idea which I think is really at work here standing still is not an option standing still just leads to a slow crumbling of all the good stuff that Montpelier has to offer yes sir I'll talk about advantages of Montpelier being a capital city the advantages of Montpelier being a capital city there are some in terms of the restaurant and retail trade during the day the net immigration people coming in is very strong secondly state government employment is stable so that you're not in a situation like if Montpelier was Detroit for example and you know you go up and down with the automobile industry the employment situation in Montpelier largely or at least somewhat because the state government is relatively stable that being said because there are some advantages it would be a mistake to rely on state government to even play the same role in the future that it has in the past because it's not going to be funded at the same level all indications are the workforce is aging and as it retires there are going to be opportunities probably to do some attrition so it's important to develop a specific private sector of Montpelier even though having state government here is an asset I know that seems sort of heretical in some ways but it does seem good things for the city two things one is have you talked about how this overlays with a lot of existing initiatives that are we're in the midst of right now and quite honestly past consultants plans that are still in a cupboard somewhere and the other thing I think that fits in in a couple of places up here would be dealing with energy use and housing that strategic investment it's a key sector if you look at the amount of money that goes out of this town just to pay for fuel oil what can we do to keep that in here that provides job and stability this is about a shorthand on my part but the green services I'm including energy as part of that for some of the reasons you just indicated but also dealing with the questions of energy and environmental protection is becoming very sophisticated technologically and I think to the extent to which Montpelier is seen as the place where there's interesting green stuff going on there's opportunities for technology related businesses to come in related to that and there was another how does this could be in an overlay with existing initiatives that's going to be part of the implementation process the idea here is we've tried to do something that first of all would be could be used as a chapter in the master plan for the city so that's bringing that together but there are a lot one of the strengths of Montpelier is there's a lot of community activism which means there's like 7000 committees so I don't know all of them to be perfectly honest but the idea behind this is it's to help inform the work of those committees that's part of this process it's not necessarily that everybody suddenly becomes an economic developer but when we're thinking about what's going on and how do we address our work do you remember there's a lot of creative capital and we've got to think about this other stuff as well and maybe eventually there'll be some much more elaborate coordination but that's how we start yes I'm assuming you've done this for a number of other localities and I'm wondering for those success stories after this process presented all these ideas strategies what do you see in those cities where they've seen a lot of success afterwards what are the biggest barriers that they've had to overcome in order to achieve that success well let me turn around because the big the strengths are leadership and tenacity because they're going to run into barriers everybody runs into barriers sometimes it's ourselves we're going to do this we've got three things to do and this first one fell apart okay we're doing the second one and you just move forward and I think that's particularly critical from Montpelier in the situation because we're talking from a time of relative strength and capacity here there's a strong citizen sector here so we need to build that leadership and that commitment to a shared direction and this is intended to be the start of this process and that's what they all have in common there was a community I can't take credit for this but it's really a good lesson in the Adirondacks that really did a lot North Creek I don't know if you know North Creek but they really revitalized their tourism sector one of the ways they did it is there was this thing called the Friday Morning Club or whatever it was and the supervisor of the town said it's the one meeting I'll never miss because they met every Friday morning and they talked about the plan and how do we go forward and that's what it's going to take here is a sustained effort to say alright what are we doing this week? here's the plan, here are the three things we're working on this year it's not 11, here are the three major things where are we, what do we have to do next? is that leadership embodied within a local development corporation or is that leadership that's seen more in municipalities? I'll tell you the role of the local development corporation or whatever structure you use is to free that leadership you know it's difficult for the economic development person to set themselves up as the leader but there's a leadership cadre here and the role of that economic development organization is to cultivate that leadership let them know it's okay for them to take charge of this and help them move forward and this is a community that knows how to do stuff so that is possible here I was wondering when you developed your plan, did you look at the physical sort of two part question did you look at the physical restraints within Montpelier, i.e. we're not a terribly big plot of land here a lot of our land that might be good for economic development is in flood plain so there's real big restrictions there and I guess the second part is thinking about the physical location I didn't see anything in there about taking advantage of recreational tourism and recreational opportunities do you think that Montpelier is pretty much out of the loop on that where Stowe's got a corner on that and some of the northern locations or do you think there's an opportunity and it may not be the ski especially in this past winter that may not be a good idea anyway but this is a community where the infrastructure for biking and other kinds of recreation is being completed and it's a pretty easy sell to say this is a community that participates in outdoor recreation we haven't even looked really and this is something long term the role of the rivers in all that the community is more and more discovering kayaking and all these things that can happen on rivers that most people couldn't even name in their communities so yes recreation is part of that tourism hospitality in the arts sector recreational tourism is part of it there's a lot of constrained land so we have to think in terms of incremental steps a diversity of businesses this is not going to be one of those things where we're going to attract one two thousand person firm that's going to suddenly save everything it's important to retain the large employers that the city has but you'll see in terms of the growth it's small it might be five to ten employee firms that you know that's where the growth is going to come from are you? I think I saw you targeting Berry Street and Stonehenge where you chose the two primary areas that you consider growth potential growth potential for the business services you know the green services because you know they've got there's good space there to do some office space some new office space but you know there's opportunities downtown for infill for better use of the second floors and the other part of economic development here is the housing element I think it's really critical that housing is part of economic development because we need to build the population base both in terms of making sure employers know that they have an access to adequate workforce but also so that the downtown businesses have a residential population that does business there as a way of keeping them strong and avoiding just being tourism related Peter First I wanted to say from this person's perspective you and your committee have done an excellent job it's a well organized project and presentation and it makes sense I just wanted to speak a little bit about strategic investment and the most significant strategic investment this city has done in five years has been in city streets working on the abyssal city streets but we still have sewer pipes and water mains that are 50 to 100 years old that haven't been addressed and the last five years we've invested less than $600,000 over five years and our water mains and our sewer pipes except for district 8 we have a liability there approaching perhaps $75 million is this really realistic to talk about facades and streetscapes before he devoted substantial resources to rebuilding our sewers and water I don't think one excludes the other but one is so massive for a time of 7,500 people shouldn't that be addressed first an organized plan for how we're going to address the true cost of water and sewer before we start talking about this doesn't admire it I don't know that you need to wait to do that what you pointed out is an important issue to make sure that the capital needs are planned for and as a program to address them I think that's every community I know struggles with that and the extent to which my period gets ahead of the curve on that again I don't know of any American community of any size that is ahead of a curve on this but you can't I don't think my period can wait on that to start thinking about what its economic future will be but it can't, it also can't ignore that let's go to somebody who hasn't spoken yet I would just I'd like your focus on that entrepreneurship certainly if we're going to see private sector job growth I think that's likely where it's going to come from it's unlikely, traditionally we've had the state and the companies that are hoping to rely on those growing at this point as you said it's hard to bring a big company in all of a sudden so that really seems like a great place to start and get some businesses going and maybe they build a building and build up the grand list and that helps us pay for infrastructure needs I was curious so you specifically focused on software and IT that seems like a very competitive area everybody wants to add in their town and you're competing against all these larger communities from Burlington the Silicon Valley shouldn't the entrepreneurship be cast a broader net and not focus just on that the idea was that would be an important concentration but not exclusively and maybe it should be restated so it's even broader than what I've indicated here but I take your point there is an existing entrepreneur class in town right now dealing with those issues local 64 and people like that so I think there's some momentum there that could be tapped into already based on existing activity but I stand corrected that it's not just those areas where there's entrepreneurial activity one other thing I'd like to in your report was the idea of entity I think the LDC is a good possibility I look at some of the statutes of what they can do and include starting business incubators and getting loans from the state to build buildings so it has a lot of a lot of things it can do I also believe they have LDCs in the two towns are used as examples Waterbury and Bering so maybe you can just address that or whatever you know about how it's worked out there you've described the potential advantage as well that there's some statutory powers that LDCs have that could be very useful what I think the next step for us is to do is to think hard about what the action plan is for economic development to move these things forward what are the tools that are going to be required and is the LDC the best because every community is different Montpelier has its own distinct set of characteristics and idiosyncrasies and we need to be sensitive to that rather than just say yep LDC it worked here let's do it there but I think it's an idea really worth considering yes let's I was really interested to see the hotel and conference center on there I wanted to actually thought Montpelier should have built the hotel on the DLR Street project and was very disappointed when the city council decided not to do that and I assume that you've been told about that history so what I'm wondering is how that was a suspicion whether it was a lot of local opposition very much feared by the people who have a community hotel given that history how much sense does it make to put that as a priority or maybe it does because you're talking about a different part of town or you're talking about smaller things rather than one big hotel how would we how would we get how would we encourage the city council and the city leaders to stomach the idea going forward with that well I think it's an important opportunity one of the ways to think about in terms of do the existing hotel operators in town are they interested in participating because it's an opportunity for them too and if they're not well that's their choice but then to think about other ways to make that happen because it's my understanding now that Montpelier is losing out on events because there's not enough rooms for events to grow here so so we have to look at that and again in an ideal world for those of us committed to the kind of local growth it would be great to turn to the an operator of a local establishment say let's talk about ways of building a new facility or expanding your facility to do this but if that's not possible then we need to look at other ways to do that and it's likely from what I understand in the hotel and tourism business ultimately if it's created it will help the other hotels and lodging places in the community because there will be more events more demand for rooms all around I see a lot of people not in your head so I'm probably covering it's not that we've already heard but anyway that's now let's go here and then here I think it's been proven that that really healthy cities are walkable cities which is the reason why we need affordable housing for downtown it supports young families it supports the elderly and so when I think of the development of Berry Street for office space I think of perhaps office space should be out more on the fringes rather than in the center where on the fringes you could perhaps accommodate parking more easily and then if people need to get into town there would be shuttles into town I think we need to keep switching that we keep needing to build office buildings in the center of town when it's really housing in the center of town I don't know that's neither a proposition part of what makes things walkable in my hometown I walk to work I walk to my office and both my house and the office are basically the downtown sort of area and I think there are opportunities to do that there also can be situations where you've got office and housing in the same building and all the principles of smart growth suggest that you're right to talk about walkability as a key competitive advantage so that when we're looking at these developments the extent to which they can be made walkable continues to strengthen the competitive advantage Montpelier already has it's the idea that having office buildings and business development more on the outskirts is that you could deal with the parking more easily than burdening the downtown with additional very large parking space I think you're right I just want to speak to that the importance of having a mixture of residential and office I work in city center and there's more than 50 of us in my office in a space that would maybe be three or four residential units and so there's 50 plus of us every day at lunch who walk the streets of downtown and do our shopping and have lunch and walk and I think probably I don't want to malign my coworkers but I would bet that most of them would not drive into downtown to shop and eat at restaurants and things like that so there's quite a bit of value to having all of us right here in the downtown you want the residential too because you want people here at night etc but I think it's really important to have the mixture of the daytime workers and the housing again that's an existing strength one of the interesting things for me doing this project is that when I come into town I pretty much park my car and then I walk to virtually all the meetings I have to go to and it's I really enjoy that I'm a big walker so it's it works very well as a walkable community yes Peter two things first I want to underscore a point that doesn't mean beginning about the onion river exchange I don't know if you're aware of it but it is an organization with hundreds of members that are currently delivering services throughout the community it could be a very important part of your development the second the topic of the river has come actually you even brought it up and having come recently from Hartford Connecticut which has been working hard for years to capitalize on the river front of the Connecticut river modeling like what they've done waterfront or San Antonio one thing that struck me when I moved to Montpelier was this river that went on right to the city there's absolutely no capitalization of that river front that I've seen here there may be a flow level issue that comes into play because I know it does fluctuate in height but I'm curious how that issue comes into play that might be better addressed in the larger comprehensive plan the master plan of which this would just be a chapter but yes there are amazing assets the rivers in Montpelier I'll never forget this was 1980 the first time I walked over the bridge and looked back at which is the bridge with the buildings where you look and you look under it there was the river and the first time I saw that I just thought that was the coolest thing other questions comment on the potential value of the buildings across the street potential value of the buildings across the street they're potentially valuable especially with the opportunities for mixed use development there retail and either offices or apartments overhead that's an important thing I'll give you an example from work I did last year in Corning, New York which is a downtown somewhat comparable to Montpelier's nice they were amazed because there's a company in town in Corning called Corning 10 years ago the top executives of Corning all wanted to live in this place which was this housing development outside of town with 5 to 10 acre lots in these 4,000 square foot houses you know the type and now they all want to live above Main Street they all want to live downtown and I've mentioned this before the locals can't believe it why do you want to live in downtown Corning because they have a different perspective and the locals really want to be part of an urban scene so these buildings are real assets and you know the time is right to sort of move them forward can you talk a little bit more about the hotel and conference center because what I've heard is that there's a vacancy rate in the hotel rooms right now about 30% and then there's another hotel just within a while that I don't know how do I say this in a respectful way I mean they're like it used to be an old restaurant that's still and you know nothing's being done with that and mattresses are being thrown outside it does have a lot of potential and I'm wondering if the committee looked at that's still an existing vacancy rate and then there's this place that has lots of potential and has a lot of space really a new space yeah well you know it's a question of the ability of that space to serve the market that represents the opportunity which is kind of a little bit of the higher end professional and conference space and tourists and the Econolog wasn't designed to do you know its name suggests who it's appealing to the low end traveler having spent a number of nights in Econolog's in my life so there's a situation where it would be difficult to convert that property into to address the opportunity that the hotel and conference center represents that being said should the sector continue to grow then eventually there may be an opportunity to redevelop that in real life in Lake George New York and both in landing which is kind of the shishi part of Lake George there are a number of old motels and they're not quite as big as the Econolog's but a similar character a lot of them right now because that part has gone so upscale families are buying the motels and using them as family compounds now I don't know that that's going to happen as the market evolves new uses can be found other comments questions well let me take this opportunity to thank you for coming out on a again a blustery spring evening we're going to give you a short presentation also at the city council tomorrow to give them an update on this and I mean if you thought this was fun you can come again and do it but again thank you for coming out and stay tuned Montpelierplan.com is the website where you can keep track on meetings and other things and you know this is just the beginning of the process so after tomorrow night what are the next steps funny you should ask thank you then assuming we've got sort of conceptual buy and then we develop the full draft report which outlines the strategic approach recommends a structure for economic development which includes the entity LDC and also potential partnerships who else can play in terms of financial institutions state agencies business groups and so on we're also going to try to put some estimated costs and returns and metrics in this to say if a job brings X number of dollars into Montpelier and you know you attract through into jobs that pay you back the investment that might be required to get this to work and then an implementation plan setting priorities timelines and again metrics for completion but thank you for queuing that for me Peter can we ask you to do one thing when you present to the council which is to repeat this gentleman's question and your answer about what are the two most important things for success leadership and persistence because I think that's a really important message for them to hear and I think my sense of it would be well received I think it's a language that they'll understand and they know about I'm praying for these next steps I'll probably August no I'm only kidding every next month in a month to get this done and that's the good news the bad news is once this is done then it's your turn to get started all right well again thank you have a safe trip on


What is up guys? Joe Holland here. Thank you for coming along on another one of these adventures. This time we are heading up into the north main woods to a remote wilderness lake to try to catch the elusive muskie. I am super jacked up to catch a muskie again. Last year was the first time I ever caught one ice fishing. Little bit different circumstances last year. Last year I went to a place where there aren't as many but a tank bruiser. This time I'm going to a place where supposedly there's a little bit more but they don't get very big. It should be good fishing regardless of size but it would be kind of cool to get another double digit one put another DD on the ice. That's my biggest muskie I've ever caught. Roads are pretty clear so it's hammer down time. I got about two and a half hours behind me. I got about three to three and a half hours in front of me so I can't dilly dally. I'd like to stop at every bait shop and be a bait shop bum but I gotta get moving because I don't have a lot of time from when my estimated time of arrival is to till darkness sets in and I want to get camp set up because it's the only place I have to sleep tonight. Had to wait this morning till about eight a.m. before I could leave my town. I had to go and register the new snowmobile and I had to go and register my truck while I was there. I lost a little bit of weight this morning in there and finally got on the road. Two and a half hours behind me already made one quick stop at a bait shop to see if I could buy some hooks that I'm looking for. They didn't have the hooks I was looking for so I ended up buying a .22 target and a little tiny like sunflower heater for the buddy heater to have in my mobile shack and to use as a backup in case I need a little heat source either in the trailer or in the shack where I'm sleeping if the big buddy heater ever fails. This one's only a 3,800 BTU heater but it'll probably do the trick in a small area. Temps and weather for this week right now we are in the single digits we're at seven degrees Fahrenheit above zero and we're looking at some pretty cold temps for this week. I think the next two days are supposed to be like highs of like nine or ten with lows in the negatives at night and then the third day it's going to be negative 18 they're calling for at night with a negative as a high for the day so as always the case as soon as you get past those mountains the weather is always a little bit colder than they predict so I'm expecting another negative 20 degree night these mountains up here they make their own weather doesn't look like we have too much wind and this lake I'm fishing is pretty small so I'm not too worried about the wind I've never been here before so it's all up in the air it's like man it's just such a great feeling when you're heading to one of these trips especially if it's if it's new and new to you it's just so much anticipation so much excitement so much anticipation it's really hard to keep my foot from going too hard down to the floor give you a little trip update I have been off the tar road now for about an hour I have another 55 miles to go GPS is saying it's going to be a little bit over two hours to do those 50 something miles which probably right I'm hovering right around 30 miles right now 30 miles per hour right now but there's a lot of slow down areas with sharp turns and hills pretty rough going the roads are pretty rough I don't know if you can hear this rattling over here even peeps teeth are chatter hot holes and ruts looking pretty good I stopped in it the last trading post and it was funnier than heck the guy working there Jamie real good guy says oh geez he goes it's Joe Holland he goes great now we can expect some terrible weather if he's in the area oh man that cracked me up because he's been watching the youtube and it seems to be wherever I go I bring some pretty nasty weather with me I got a pretty good kick out of that so Jamie if you're watching thanks for the laugh today but hope I don't bring too bad a weather in six and hours and 20 minutes from when I left home I've never been here before the road in isn't plowed so I'm gonna have to take the snowmobile in first and find out how it looks if it's safe and pick an area to get set up in come back out get the gear but first things first I gotta put some clothes on I got my I got my driving clothes on and that ain't gonna cut it because it's five degrees out here and there's a little bit of wind okay I found the way in I found the way not to go into I almost got her stuck I got her half stuck about five times and some really thick drifts that blew off the lake if that was my old sled I'd be digging and digging and digging and she'd be buried right in there with no hope but this thing I just jumped on one side pretty hard and got her to level out push her down and get fed of the corn and she popped right out of a pretty amazing tool right there man is that thing worth every single penny I put into it already all right anyway so got out to the lake now what I'm gonna do is take a load out stop at the edge of the lake walk out do an ice test and drill and see how much ice we got it's not too far in there it's a couple miles so I'm not going to take a crazy load in I'm I could fit everything in one trip but there's no sense I'm gonna I'll do two trips new addition I built a Brandon box for the top of my auto that should be good I forgot something and it was right there I forgot my Milwaukee drill which is kind of dumb but lucky for me I got my strike master to drill holes it just won't be able to drill my tent stakes in or I was going to use it to go do some test holes and some other things around camp but forgot it it was on my list and right next to the batteries it must be sitting on my work bench happen sometimes so I'll take this first load out there and pick a spot and start to get set up okay I am out here with the first load I drilled a pilot hole when I first go in the lake I hit some slush over there where I came on and I drilled to like 14 inches and just stopped drilling I didn't go all the way through I came I went down like crossed where it was narrower came up here and dug down didn't get any slush digging down so that's good so I could put the tent probably down to the ice over here and then I drilled a pilot hole there I went down another 14 15 inches and didn't hit water yet so I didn't bother drilling through I don't need to bring any slush up if it wants to slush up so I think I'm going to unload right here go back out and get the rest of the load with the floor and then set up for the night I'm on the clock I got about an hour you can see the sun's getting a little bit low over there so I got probably an hour I'm feeling pretty confident about the time the more I do this the quicker I am at setting up so I'm not very worried about that as long as I keep moving and doing things the right way so I'm gonna unload here I'm not gonna dig down till I get the floor and then I'll get the floor and dig down okay we are unloaded that was pretty good load right there actually that's the first load I brought some more toys this trip I don't know have a little bit more fun I guess if there's such a thing there's quite a bit more snow here than I was expecting there's at least 12 to 15 inches everywhere and then there's some big high drifts that's not good looks like that chainsaw leaked on my tent yeah yeah hopefully it didn't go through the the tent case it looks like it probably did oh well we'll figure it out when we get there okay off to get the second load let's go all right the floor should ride pretty smooth pretty good just leaning up against the outsides like that then all this room in the middle for more gear so I think I'm gonna leave the bait hooked right up into the truck right here it's plugged into a 12 volt and just I'll just run out in the morning and then grab what I need aha I just I just spotted my clam bibs they're in that otter man I tore up the whole the whole house looking for those things the last time I saw them was in mill and I stopped to see my buddy Ozzie and when I did I changed out of those so I didn't track all that stuff into his house and I've been looking everywhere for him and I guess I put him in this otter thing that I still haven't opened yet this year so I just found them that's good there should be a handful of gopro batteries in the pocket that's what I was more worried about still plenty of room to throw some more stuff in and my box up here has got room in it too I'm gonna try something different this trip something I've never done is set the floor up on top of the snow so I just drove around about eight or ten times and really tried to pack it down it's still a little fluffy I don't know I don't know if I'll be able to get that to sit flat but it's worth a try and then I could just throw the kickers down into the ice and I won't screw the corners of the shack down let's see if let's see if the floor will lay down I think it's gonna work I probably shouldn't walk where I'm throwing the next one but that's all right let's try it to walk anywhere but right here so that'll be the part that really squishes down bed looks like it'll be flat let's set up the tent I think it's gonna work I could maybe still screw those down in the corners actually I think I can I don't want to go I don't want to put it super tight down because I'm like sitting on like eight inches of snow and I would lose eight inches of head room if my floor is eight inches up from where the tent's sitting so I think I'll still screw it down and just kind of put those at an angle guys you gotta you gotta get these anchored somehow even if it's just a spew because all it takes is a breath of wind and these things just kite right up I've seen it wow these are all in rough shape I didn't realize that they're in really rough shape all the tips are pretty blunt from that last trip when I was driving them into the rocks all right so I still have about four inches more I could go but I'm a good four inches in there so that'll keep that from blowing away see if I can find another semi-sharp one we'll get it so it's not looking good for getting these in by hand oh man they're pretty dull and they some of them bent over from that last trip where I was driving them into the rocks so I gotta bring these home and sharpen them let me see if there's I got two in that might go in that won't that won't nope nothing to catch all right no worries I'm gonna I'll throw snow around all the edges and worse comes to worse I could go cut a couple logs and tie my ropes down to those as downriggers when there's a well there's always a way just doing this will help the window tremendously I'm getting underneath last trip I could just about barely get my tent back because I threw so much snow on minute pros I still gotta be careful not to sweat I'm running out of time to get set up before dark but I'm ahead of it now so I got the floor in the tent that's the key the rest of it's just kind of house cleaning at this point sun's getting pretty low but we still do have some daylight left I'm not too worried about setting up in dark now that I have those great lights too but this is what you're gonna look like I'm gonna bring the snowmobile around so everything's closer and I'm not working up a sweat walking it in and out of that door from 20 feet away rather than just a couple feet away there's a difference between lazy and smart cots down now for the bed oh no the eggs again oh man the bag let's see let's see did we lose any yeah we lost one dang it shoot the other ones we might have broken yokes but that's all right let that freeze and then I'll clean it up so close so close freaking hand-offed brothers hand-offed brothers in your bags ain't worth a dime all right that's everything out of this sled the rest of that stuff's just various fishing stuff that can or can come in okay that's everything got the heater going sun's down so I don't know if it's worth it to try to run three or four miles back out and get set up for a hole I think I'm probably better off getting everything stowed away in here I get a little bit more work to do than normal because I forgot my drill but let's take a look at camp that's what she's looking like bed got my sleeping bag pillow and cot and a cot pad right there some various food got my heater going got the light got my boot holder which I cut down a little bit so it can fit right tight against the wall table here two totes with various camping stuff and food got 11 of the 12 eggs made it out which is good got my cook stove right there the waters were already starting to freeze up so I'm going to put those right in front of the heater and here I have a gun under that that little yellow bag there's all my video stuff and the big yellow bag underneath there is my clothes got my trusty chair some jacket sweaters a couple electronics there and just fishing stuff there so that's the setup for camp it went really quickly I'm I'm kind of curious to see how it's going to go being seven inches up off the ice I thought about it last second I hit some more slush coming on over there and I was like it just not worth it to wake up in the morning with four or five inches of slush there and I'm glad I did because I didn't have all my drill bits anyway I didn't have all my my screw anchors are all dull and bent I got to put those on the grinder and get them sharp again so they can dig in going into the ground last trip I didn't even think about it but hitting rocks and stuff definitely put a hurt on the tips but out here pack basket with the traps pretty well ready to go I'm going to go over those tonight I think I might have a little bit too big of hooks on there for what I think's in here I got my auger here I'll bring that battery in keep it warm at night just in case got a little target there got a video camera another axe that's my catch bag I'll probably bring that in because it's got a scale in it I brought the chainsaw this trip just to have I was going to see if I could cut a sight hole for you guys and really try something cool on musky but I don't know there might be too many inches of ice I'm not sure exactly how many inches we have I've test holes were like 12 to 14 pretty easy and I didn't go all the way through a shovel over here I changed out the handle on it to a wooden handle actually no I took a different shovel and I took this off of the one that had the bend so I got the handle on that so that other one doesn't have a handle and it's got a bent shaft now sun's down over there it's pretty cold out it was five when I left the truck and it's definitely getting colder got a slight breeze coming from this direction so I'm still debating maybe while I still have some daylight I'll see if I can find a log down or a leaner looks like there might be a leaner up there where I can go cut some logs and have some weight to to bring these tie downs to so they don't blow in all right trying to get this buddy heater going I don't know what what's wrong with it maybe it's clogged I ran it inside my buddy's barn on high for she's probably like a third of a tank and just let her let her fly wide open till she ran out and I got three tanks in here I got two and a half tanks full full tanks in here two full tanks and a half tank and the two full tanks for some reason what they didn't want to run with the two full tanks I just switched over to the half tank and seems to be going pretty good right now but it was blowing the pilot hard like wicked fast wicked high flame up for a pilot and then hardly anything when I put it on one two or three might be a regulator issue when I took it off and switched tanks I tried opening the valve and it went wide open without anything connected to it and I think the valve was stuck open on high because it was so cold looks looks like it's running now we'll see if it stays running kind of glad I picked up that backup now and I think it's going to drop a little bit more in a minute she's dropping pretty quick she's dropping pretty quick tonight I think we're gonna have a pretty pretty good low tonight temp is dropping like a rock pretty cold out there got the buddy heater running pretty good right now got the new one running just to try it out over here seems to be doing pretty good all in all I think I'm in pretty good shape for the shape I'm in got the shackle set up floor set up on top of the snow we'll see how that goes I don't know if it's going to be any warmer or any colder I don't think it'll be much different if anything maybe it'll let the wind sneak in underneath the door I threw enough snow around the edges but I got everything set up bed set up probably going to have have something real good tonight if if I can get them a thaw I can't believe they already froze just from being in the truck I guess and then the ride out but those are cask nuggets from last trip I've been eating them all all week while I was editing videos and I still had something left so I brought them out just to show you guys how much I enjoy eating them because I really do enjoy eating them so I'm gonna set them right here over over the buddy heater and let them cook on low till they thaw out enough so I can put them on the fry pan and then tonight I stopped by my buddies where my buddy works at a slaughter shop but I didn't want to bug him while he was working but to support a local business I picked up a nice chunk of steak right there so that's a what are we looking at here main grown rib eye main grown rib eye should be pretty good so I'll drive that into me with some potatoes and maybe eat some cheese and pepperoni as Steven would say ahead of time so be big dinner tonight because I didn't really eat much today traveling didn't eat anything I guess I had a little bit this morning I was so excited to get up here I hit the road kind of takes a lot out of you I'm actually pretty tired right now you know six hours in a truck six and a half hours in a truck and not really eating or drinking too well pounded a couple cups of coffee into me that was about it so I haven't seen anybody up here which is always nice it's crazy still right now that's why the temp's dropping right now we're at negative 24 and a half right now it's crystal clear sky you can see every single star out there I'll bring you out there in a little bit and hopefully we'll see hopefully you guys will be able to see but it's really hard to pick it up on the go pro but just how pretty those stars are at night up here in the north main woods where the nearest foreign light sources probably probably a hundred miles away here where I am we're close to it pretty excited about the fish in tomorrow let me see where did I put my paperwork I got paperwork here somewhere I got this paperwork with all my notes but I also have a map of this lake and this is a pretty unique lake because let's see before the 30s it was like 650 square foot I think and then in the 30s great northern paper built first they dug a canal so it could reach the Penobscot so they could float logs down to mill and auka it was like a two-mile canal and then they dammed the canal so that way they could build up the water high enough to get the float going and the flow going with all the logs in it so that brought it from like 650 680 square acres to 1280 or almost 1300 acres so it like doubled the size of this lake it's not a big lake it's small it's like two and a half miles long by about a half mile wide they stopped using it you know when they stopped doing log drives and the dam just kind of went to disrepair and went away and when that went away it went back to its original shape and size which is back down to like 650 acres so it's not a great big pond it's going to be fun to fish I I've never been here before I've got I've had two friends who fished here one in open water and he was telling me about the weed lines and then another friend of mine she came up and ice fished I think last year the year before and she did really well up here so there are musky in here I have not heard of anything over double digits being caught I guess it's a lot of fish but not big ones which is perfectly fine we're gonna have fun catching musky and a lot of musky and I might have a few tricks on my sleeve too so it should be a fun trip but I don't know about the depth of the lake I've read one of my maps says it's 21 says this is only as deep as 14 so we with the pan optics we're going to be able to find that out we'll be able to find the deep holes the edges any underwater points and we'll spend a decent amount of time tomorrow looking around I'll probably set five traps right away get those in the water and then go out and do some exploring with the pan optics and just do a bunch of pilot holes where I drill point it point it down and look ahead you know 150 feet or 200 feet in all directions to see what the depths are if there's any changes or how deep it really is pretty excited to fish really excited to catch a musky it's just such a special fish and we don't have many bodies of water in Maine that have them I have to thank my Canadian brother and thank you Canada for stocking them up on the St. John or St. Croix River that also flows in the Maine so that's the only reason we have them is they stocked them in the 1970s their fishing game is wise enough to put them in to great fish phenomenal fish so such a beautiful fish that is apparently it's really good eating too which we might try this trip there's no limit on them it's pretty weird in Maine no limit on musky at all I really like fishing these ponds or lakes that I've never been on it's just so exciting and you know it adds to the anticipation of if you're going to catch one what's in here I heard there's also yellow perch in here which I've never heard any yellow perch this far north in Maine so that'll be interesting if they're in here and it'll be fun to catch those I'm guessing that's your primary forage so a lot of the jig baits I brought up are are in that yellow perch family I brought up sea smelts right out of the ocean for bait so those could be a wicked treat for these fish that could be something really nice for them they're in the truck right now because I could plug that right in the 12 volt and it won't run the battery too hard on the truck I've done it like three or four nights at at home different nights and truck starts just fine in the morning so what I'll do is all I left them in there because it'll be probably warmest in the truck it'll be like probably 10 degrees colder warmer in the truck than it is outside the aerators running off the truck and then I'll probably go pick those up first thing in the morning bring them in so I can fish with them and then I have two aerators built into that fray bill it'll run 24 hours or more each to keep them alive I'm guessing I might be able to do four days on this trip I heard the latest snow report before I came in was two to four foot so four foot would be an issue getting out of here I would definitely need a plow truck to come in and I don't know exactly where they're cutting they're where the nearest cutting is so kind of hard to space the whole trip on just guessing where they're going to be cutting this road out here isn't like a major road so I think I'm going to go for four days guys I think it's important to talk for a second about safety when you're up here and you're alone and you're very very far from the nearest person the nearest town or the nearest help a couple things to really think about you have to think everything through don't just react like you normally would if you're downstate all your knives make sure they're sharp a dull knife is a very unsafe knife because you end up putting more pressure on and you end up cutting differently than you normally would always cut away from you don't cut like towards your fingers towards your leg anything like that always know where your auger blades are be super careful with your auger blades make sure you don't hit a foot or fall into them or anything like that your axes knives scissors any blades that you bring up be super super careful because like I said you're a long way from from any town or hospital or a person for help so you cut yourself you're on your own fires another thing so be careful with your propane you know don't take any chances with that and any fire that you're running you know that that's another thing that could get you in trouble then the snowmobiles you know there's just so much power with those things when you get the further you get away from town the more careful you really need to be so please keep that in mind if you guys ever think about doing a solo trip like i'm doing i've done this a lot of time so a lot of this stuff has become second nature to me but there's always in my head those thoughts of okay what could go wrong what's the worst that could happen how do i avoid that happening how do i avoid something wrong happening you know what kind of dangers do i see every single day or what kind of dangers do i see you know every minute of every day and how do i avoid those dangers and make sure that those dangers don't come into play so those are things that i think of from doing this for many many years so if you're thinking about just getting into this you know i've always said try doing it at home first try it in your garage try it on your local pond first before you start going on some solo trips into the wilderness and very far from town and and doing it alone and away from people just practice it's just like any it's just like a sport you know you wouldn't expect to jump into a sport and be the best at it right away so why would you expect to do something like this and be great at it right away without a little practice and learning you know what you like or your comfort level or or what you might need so those are a couple tips for you if you're going to do this and i highly recommend it just just take the steps to get there and and always be as safe as you possibly can you really got to slow things down so you get more time to think between those things you know don't work up a sweat when it's this cold we're already over 20 below zero right now so you can't be out you can't be sweating because it's really hard to warm up after you're sweating all right we're going to put some Louisiana fish fry in there with that cask because i've fished down in Louisiana before and it is the dirtiest nastiest water i've ever seen in my life and they eat a lot of fish out of that water so if anybody's if anybody tells you they got a Louisiana mix for a recipe they do know how to make a fish taste good especially eating it out of that slop water no offense this is cask and cask will stand alone but i figured i'd bread it up and then these are cask nuggets these are these are about as good as you can get in the state of Maine i don't care what kind of fish you put up against it i don't believe it's going to beat it here's a little pro tip for you if you guys are camping like i am where you shut the heater off at night or even if you don't shut it off tonight on a night when it's in the negative 20s get your coffee pot ready to go for the morning mine's all ready to go so if that freezes tonight it's fine i just put it on and throw it out whereas if it freezes in a plastic container it's awful hard to pour it so you got to throw it out first and then pour it but that one i don't care if it freezes it's going on the heater tomorrow morning cask nuggets baby it doesn't get any better than that i don't know why i'm out here fishing for muskie and perch when i could be fishing for cask that's going to be a heck of a horse derver and then after i eat that i'm going to drive a big old steak into me how big is this steak anyway that thing is one pound so 16 ounce or we can drive a 16 ounce steak into me and cook that up with some onions and peppers and mushrooms maybe do a little bit of mashed haters on the side probably don't need them but when it's this cold a little bit extra won't hurt we'll throw a little garlic in the pan too before we get started i found some minced garlic in town you could probably call cask poor man's scallops now they are good oh man it's like better than lobster i'd eat a cask over a lobster any day of the week you guys ever notice how the ugliest things taste the best there's a plate of cask nuggets right there guys that's a uh that's a 12 piece for you i can't buy that in stores that louisiana bradden seasoning it's got a pretty good little taste to it but it kind of gives you that nice crisp outer coating on it man you throw that on there and the insides just white pure white sweet meat on the inside once you get through that outer crisp it just adds to the flavor wow yeah that's edible mm-hmm yep that's gonna hit the spot tonight i don't know if i'll be able to drive that whole thing into me but be able to drive quite a bit of it into me have staking eggs in morning if i don't it's good it's edible i'll tell you one thing right now i'd trade 20 of these things for one piece of moose meat it's hard to beat moose meat i am pretty partial of moose but this ain't bad but it ain't moose well that's gonna do it for tonight guys thanks for tuning in had a pretty sweet day being able to get all the way up here with no problems no problems with the trailer no problems with the truck no problems with the gear and got all set up so those are those are great days when you have a day like that i wish i would have got up here a little earlier and had some lines set but i had to get that registration taken care of for the snowmobile and for the truck and i had to wait till my town office opened you can register a snowmobile online anytime day or night but if it's a new snowmobile you have to do it at your town office i guess for the first time so something the state hasn't quite figured out yet got a couple gopro batteries charging that's about it pretty quiet i just went through all of my tackle over here in the pack basket over here went through all of my tackle went through all my traps changed the line on four of them i'm going to run two with wire leaders tomorrow 30 pound wire leaders and three with 30 pound fluorocarbon i'm running two odd and three odd octopus hooks and weights dependent on the depth that i fish mostly one eighth and the bait i'm using sea smells about yay big they're eaters so if i don't catch anything on them i can take them off the hook and eat them they're pretty good eating actually gear is all ready to go i love working on tackle before night you know before going to bed and going fishing the next day it's just a great feeling knowing that everything's ready to go and there aren't going to be any problems tomorrow always always enjoyed working on my tackle the day before yeah that's going to do it we're settled in at 19 below zero right now fair and height it's pretty chilly out there wasn't quite as clear as i expected it to be so i wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't warm up by morning and maybe get a little snow on the ground i'm going to get up regular time and run out and get some bait come back in and set some traps up and maybe have maybe do a couple things off the wall tomorrow we'll see beds ready to go i opened it up so it can start to get a little heat in there there's not much heat in here we're sitting at 31 degrees where well where the over the heaters 31 degrees so probably in this corner where all that snow is still on the ground it's in the negatives or close to zero thanks for tuning in for the first day of this series travel day travel days are always fun i'm going to do a little bit of reading and drink a little hot tea and hit the rack and get at it tomorrow and hopefully we have an awesome day the question is sometimes asked why a state like main so sparsely settled poor weak in all external aids can send forth such throngs of masterful men who east and west step to the front to lead direct and do we who were brought up among pine trees and granite know the secret of their success it comes not wholly by taking thought it is in the blood