I think she had the same idea. What the topic is, yes. Yeah. That's pretty good. Right. Wow. So much love. All right. I'll call the meeting of the S extension city council to order. Recording in progress. Are there any agenda additions or changes? Yes. Like to pull the minutes from the last meeting out of the consent agenda. Okay, we will make those. And I think we need to add the block party to the consent agenda. That'll be D as well. Great. Anything else? We have a motion to approve the agenda. Second. Excellent. All those in favor of the agenda as modified, please say hi. Hi. That's great. Great. Move on to public to be heard. And before we do. I already reminded Bridget, but for folks in the room, please sign in. And for folks online, if you are joining us in zoom and we don't, we aren't able to see your full name. It will not be accurately reflected in the minutes. So please adjust your name and the participants panel in zoom so that we can accurately reflect your attendance and your comments. If you make any. So this is the portion of the meeting where members of the public can bring concerns or comments to the board. And we'll start with. Bridget who's in the room. If you'd like to come up to the, I know, but this way we. Loud. Loud. So I, I sent you all an email. Expressing what I was going to bring up. And so here I go. There's a lot of chatter. There's been a lot of chatter both online and in, in just out on the street about the train station bus station, the condition of that building. And a lot of speculation about what, what's going on there. Apparently there was an allocation of some funds and. And myself and others want to know how that's going and what the plan is, you know, as succinctly, and as much as you know, you may not. So I don't know. I'm just asking. Okay. You want me to bring my things one at a time? Oh, no, let us have it. All right. And the, the second, I wanted to know what the status was of the, of the. The pocket part. I think I know, but I'm not sure. And in that I'm on that committee, I think I should know, but I don't exactly know what our plan is. So I'd like to know that. And the third thing is, I walk from my house on Pleasant street to the library to city, you know, to Lincoln Hall, all of the, to wherever through the, through the alley behind Martins. And there has been a broken window. And I think it's eight railroad, railroad avenue for well over a year. I took a picture of it and send it to you. It's not just a tiny crack. It's, it's, it's, it's an enormous break in the window. And I mean, I suppose there are some who would say, does it really matter? But I think if you don't value where you live, if you don't value it by hoping and planning that the, that the properties in your downtown will be taken care of, you're kind of on the, you know, losing side of all of this, especially since, since I've lived here 22 years. And most of you will remember also, there've been several efforts to rejuvenate that area to, you know, and some has been, some have been successful and some not, not quite, but I just think we need to pay attention to that. I didn't do what I should have done, which is look through the ordinances and see if there's anything. I know there, there are ordinances in other communities that you cannot have a damaged property or or vacant property or any of those things for a significant period of time. And then you're fine. So I don't know if that's a question for you or the planners or whomever, but I just wanted to bring it to your attention. So you could keep it in, in, you know, I do do what you can. I'm not sure what that is, but I hope you can do so. Okay. Thank you. Okay. That's it. As to the first two, as to the first one, the bus station train station. I'm going to ask Regina, who is vastly more knowledgeable on the exact status of that right now than I am. To maybe answer that. Can you hear me? We can. Hello. Okay. Awesome. Okay. So the Amtrak station. We have a number of documents that we need to fill out in order to move to the next steps of that project. There's essentially just an initial design done of it. So we still have to do final design and then move forward to construction. I just want to make sure everybody's aware that the Amtrak project is really a envelope over the existing building. It is not a total reconstruction. It really is putting on a new roof and size essentially to that building. So just to explain what will ultimately happen there. And really the hold up on that moving that forward has been on staff as soon as we get the town planner. Sorry. City planner. We'll be able to really move that project forward. As I mentioned, the plant straight park. Those funds they did get that grant. And we've got that grant Monday for two construction seasons. So at the beginning of this construction season, consider if we have three others happening in the exact same vicinity essentially right now that is just on hold until we can get through some of that and free up some staff resources to think through. moving that project forward and so hopefully by late fall we can move that forward to bid so that we're ready to go next construction season on that. I saw the photo of the broken window that Bridget sent over and I will have to through that further. I don't know that there's anything in the ordinances that we can do about that but we'll certainly take a look. Yeah thanks. I mean that I you know Regina and some of you know as well that there were there was a design plan for the train bus station. Help me out here 10 years ago 12 years ago. UBM students and I want to say they worked with John Alden and came up with a great plan. There was a great community meeting about that. I don't know if that's what you're talking about or if it's another another design plan but I definitely remember that meeting and seeing the what was planned there. And I think that overall and this probably isn't the right place to say this well overall I'm a little disappointed that we're hiring a planner before code enforcement person. We have needed code enforcement in the in this city village and now city since I moved here and we're really paying a high price in terms of everything not by not having one because people do whatever they want to do. They widen their driveways they put additions on the the village city is is is infamous for not having that in place. There's no one who is looking at what you know at what happens here and and I think that that there maybe what I'm looking for is some kind of a I know you're committed to hiring someone and that's great but I'd love to light a fire under that because we're not we're just going to continue to have trouble and unless we have someone who's out there on the street that's my opinion looking for what's going on here and we haven't had it since I've lived here for 22 years. That's a long long time. So that's my take but thank you for your answers and I'll be eager to see what happens. I mean the train station bus station is not only does not only needs a redesign it's pretty shabby I mean just in terms of maintenance and care and I don't know whether that's the bus whether it's Chittin and whether it's Green Mountain Transit or the trains people I don't know but it looks pretty awful you know and again it presents a picture to people who are coming and going through our community that that in some ways we don't care and I think that's way too bad and I'd like to see us work on that a little bit. Thanks. Thank you Bridget. Is there anyone in Zoom like I'm seeing one person but is there anyone on Zoom who has anything to add for public to be heard? I'm not seeing anyone so we will move on to the first business item which is the discussion and consideration of strategic plan consultant selection. I don't know who's taking that. Ashley, great. Yeah so tonight we're going to discuss the community vision and strategic action plan RFP. As you guys know back a few months I came to you with the draft version of that with your feedback we put that RFP out. We received five proposals from consultant groups and they're listed in the memo here. After we got those five RFPs we put together a selection committee that consult consisted of staff the city council members and some of our committee members to help us evaluate these proposals and to ultimately select who would be going with. The committee met and evaluated those and out of that evaluation and conversation we came up with two finalists which was future IQ and creative discourse group. We decided that we wanted to interview those two groups and so the committee then met with those two groups and interviewed them and after that interview process we did decide to move forward with future IQ as the consultant we would like to move forward with. The big difference between the two of them was really not anything to do their work. We felt that they both could do this project and do it very well. It was their approach and the cost of the project and so that was really kind of some of the evaluating criteria that. So the committee felt that future of IQ proposal really aligned more with the RFP that we presented. We felt that they could widely engage our community provide staff with additional support. We're very data driven in the information that they were providing us and they provided an additional value added items such as an online project portal and communication plan. So future IQ's budget did come in at 30,000. They did also include additional budget items that were options and the selection committee did believe that some of those option would enhance the project. So the selection committee is coming to the council tonight asking for you guys to consider an increase to the budget to 42,500 to add some of these additional options into the project. Staff has looked at the budget and looked at the rebranding effort money that we did put aside for that and we're suggesting that we take the 12,500 to come out of that rebranding to pay for this and to it will leave 27,500 in for the rebranding effort. So that sums up the project. I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have and give any more feedback that you need. Thank you. I'm going to move the TVs. Any conflicts? I have several questions. What was the difference in price between creative discourse and future IQ? So again, like I said, future IQ came in at 30,000 with just their main budget which is on page 24 of their proposal. I'm not sure what it is in the packet. But there is some options that were highlighted in red. All of their options highlighted red added would have brought their project up to 47,500. We didn't believe that all of those options were beneficial. So we chose to add the steering committee monthly meetings, the key stakeholder interviews, and the community vision sessions which brought us up to that total of 42,500. The creative discourse group, on the other hand, their proposal was broken up into phase one, two, and three, and then phase four. And so phase one, two, and three was going to be organizing the committee, analyzing some of our documents that we had, some planning documents, conducting the visioning process which we're going to include in survey and some listening sessions. And for that price, they came out at 28,560. To add on the phase four, which is the action plan of the proposal. So we were asking for a vision and an action plan is what we asked for in the RFP. So to just do phase four, which would be the planning committee meeting again, doing their research and writing based off of the vision information and the information that they gathered throughout their interviews, doing some more outreach to review and refine the plan, and then presenting the plan to us would be an additional $24,225. So while they both came up over budget, future IQ's budget was not as much as creative discourse. And even if we didn't go with the additional option that future IQ offered, they were giving us a full plan. So they were, it was all going to be included, whereas we would have to spend more money with creative discourse no matter what, if we wanted a full plan. And who are the trustees? Excuse me, City Councilor. Marcus and Andrew. Awesome. Okay. I'm just curious what spoke to me with the future IQ proposal, and it was addressed in the cover memo, which I really appreciate, was that there were no specific efforts listed to engage marginalized communities. And there was no acknowledgement of the necessity for a future city to be more inclusive. And so I'm just really struck by the pretty much utter lack of addressing inclusion and diversity. There is one place where it talks about engaging the different aspects, the demographics of our community. But I kind of thought we were really leading towards becoming a more diverse community. And I just don't see that at all in this proposal. And so I'm curious why, what was the thinking around that piece of the committee? I'll say that we did actually address that in the interview process, because that was something we were thought, and when we initially, initially read the proposal as well. So I will say that that was some of the discussions that we had. And we felt that their answers from the interview process did address those things. They do have in here information of the name of their, that they brought up, sorry, the town of Hilton Head Island, where they kind of did a whole approach around their native islander there in South Carolina. That's a big part of the island there. And so that was some of their work that they touched on in the interview process that they had done with that. But they also wanted us to consider obviously the marginalized piece, but also the people that we might not think about, such as working families. And so they did have those aspects that also Creative Disforce had as well. Creative Disforce's proposal leaned more towards the engagement. And while we definitely think that that's important, that was their main focus of this project. And we really want to have an ultimate action plan at the end of the day to where to move us forward. Now, do we need to work on engagement? Of course we do. But that's not something that's a one project time. That is something we start now and we continue to do throughout everything that we do. And it's something that I feel that we need to continuously work on. Okay. Also, if I may, they did address their work experience with diverse communities and stakeholders on page five of their submission to a full page with seven different pieces of work they've done in other communities specifically for that purpose. A couple other questions. One was they mentioned a couple different times that they intend to use SWOT analysis and strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Did they talk about any other, I didn't see like any other sort of approaches like maybe a appreciative inquiry or like they're definitely focus groups and they seem to have a branded method called the think tank. I guess what I'm trying to get is I want to make sure that this process is as forward thinking and while SWOT analysis is very important, it's also I think a little outdated at this point and appreciative inquiry is more of the way we look at things like strategic planning for communities. Just want to make sure it's more forward thinking and less, not less strategic. That's not the right word. But I want to be sure that they are taking a variety of approaches and not just using the ones that are more economic development oriented, but also community development. I'm going to jump in and say to that that I both love the data driven part and was concerned about the data driven part connected to the SWOT analysis part. So my all the whole process, my main concern goes very well with what Elaine is saying, I was incredibly my main concern in this whole thing is engaging. We are our biggest difficulty, and we'll talk about this a lot later, is how do we reach people? And it's a big, big group of people, it's a majority of the people in the community. And so that is something I'm just really concerned about. Yeah, it goes it goes to the data driven thing is great. If it's melded with everything else. So I think this looks good. I'm, but yeah, that's, that's something that occurred to me too. I would, I would add to that. I didn't what I would want to encourage them to do and to include is I didn't see any reference to communicating or doing conversations with our committees, our planning commission, our bike walk, I mean, we have been actively trying to bridge the gaps between us and those groups and then be amongst those groups. So I would expect that to be a part of this process because they say they're going to interview staff and key people. I think it might need to be a little bit more broad. And I'm, you know, and I don't want to make it sound like I don't appreciate the hard work of you and the committee and this organization as presenting their proposal. But I just want to highlight those areas where I really feel it's important for them to kind of stretch. And I would expect it to be included and not an extra to have those kinds of conversations. So if I, if I may jump in on this. So first off on the analysis piece, I felt during the interview, because we had that same concern concerning SWAT that they address that by acknowledging fact that they were using other methods as well and bringing that all to fruition. They did show us some examples from some other communities and they're in those reports. And so coming out of that, I felt more comfortable that the way that they were looking at it was again, we're going to get this data, we're going to look at this data, we're going to do it in a couple different ways. We're going to take a 30,000 foot view and take a look at it. You know, we're also going to be able to slice and dice. The other thing to talk, to mention what you said specifically, and I think this was kind of resolved through the discussion that we had during the interview in the fact that we want to see those, we want to see those parts of our community represented. That steering committee, as we discussed during the interview process, not only should include people from marginalized communities, it should also represent and have members from our other committees on it as well to participate. So while they will get interviewed by by future IQ during this process, they will, by I think the way they acknowledge it, they will also participate in these other ways in that process. I do want to say in the overall, as we looked at this, the delta between these five was huge. So at the end of the day, the two that we looked at were the closest to it. But I think the strongest thing, and I hear exactly what you're talking about, and we, we did go after this in the interview. The big difference really was, again, that approach at the end of the day. So I look, we recognize creative discourse did a valuable job with heart and soul. So we recognize that particular experience, but their approach seemed a little off from what we had said we wanted the RFP. And when we addressed it in the interview process, we were still going down the road about communication engagement versus talking about feeling more strongly about the strategic plan at the end of this. So I think coming out of that, we really did feel that future IQ, address some of these concerns. I would say if we need more input on that to address the concerns you may still have, I think we should ask for that. But again, even in these final two, the delta felt wide in what is going to be delivered. I will also acknowledge that in our discussion, it was also said, knowing the fact that we felt strongly that engagement is a strong portion of what we want and we need. It just wasn't in this RFP. There is, there is a discussion I think for us to have and we acknowledge this and during that meeting, that we should talk about whether or not maybe creative discourse or another group. But with that in mind, do some other work with us to help improve our engagement. And because we saw value in what they were offering us, it just wasn't the right fit for this particular RFP. I appreciate you're saying that, Marcus, because like Ashley said, of course, we know that we need to work on that. And yet it's not part of this strategic planning for the next five years. And so that's a huge gap. And I think I don't know if that means engaged in doing another RFP specifically for that thing, although in our conversation later this evening about engagement will touch on this as well. But we should absolutely be focusing on inclusivity at every step of every project we undertake.  My apologies. But how to how to communicate with the public just on a regular basis, depending upon what the topic is, who needs to know how we do it, even that most basic of communications is not in place yet. So and we will address that. And the only other thing I want to point out, and this is just me expressing a concern. Creative discourse does know us. They know Vermont very very well. Future IQ said they know Vermont. They had one Vermont project amongst all the lists of all the towns they could have sent to us. And it was a forestry project. And they kept referring to us as an urban center. And while yes, we are getting there, I'm concerned that they're not understanding the interplay between a rural and rural that exists right out there. So I just want to put that out there that the we are rapidly approaching urban in many respects, especially as a transportation hub. But everybody who lives here still thinks we're a village. And everybody who lives here can go five minutes up group 15 and be in the woods. So I'm a little they have some experience in Maine. I just want to it felt like a disconnect for me to put them to really assert how well they know Vermont. It does not appear to be the case from their purpose. So I'm just pointing these things out as a reader of the proposal. And I appreciate and I'm grateful to everybody who did the vetting of each proposal and made the ultimate decision. Those are some of the things I'm going to be watching for as we go through the process. The other thing is I can just really like that I wanted to fit you back on with the community engagement side of this. And it's talked about in the next memo. He did a great job about it really was a separate project. Community engagement really was outside of the scope of this is something we should pick back up. Whoever we went with, both entities or all five of the entities have a process to get to a strategic plan. Who then informs that is going to be really incumbent upon us is going to be incumbent upon the steering committee is going to be incumbent upon staff. It's not going to be incumbent upon whoever gets this contract or whoever we wore this RFP to and it took me a little while to get that through my own head in this process. So we can say we want this, that and the other thing. But ultimately it's not going to be on future IQ if we go with them. It's not going to be on creative discourse. It really is going to be upon us to make sure that we have the right people for that steering committee because they're going to be the people who they then meet with future IQ on a regular basis and are going to be the point people were reaching out to informing the community beyond. So when we get to that point in this process, make sure that we keep this back in mind that we have the right people to help reach the right people because that that engagement is so multi layered. It's it's all about right. I mean, just this is silly to say all that sometimes, but it's relationships. It's being out there. Absolutely. It's it's everything we'll talk about later. And I think we should have serious conversations about how we get some facilitation around that. Whether it be partially funded by grants. We find it in another way. I think that just goes to everything else. But the considerations you bring up, I mean, it goes as deep as all the policy review we're going to do. You know, everything that gets done basically gets has that lens or multiple lenses that we haven't traditionally applied. I think that does sound like it's probably outside of the scope of this. But it's absolutely worthwhile to come back. I will also acknowledge based on your last comment. So because I think in reading their response to our RFP, it's the right tone in language. Having worked with agencies, knowing the fact that you got to you got to come out with a certain level of confidence you have to pitch yourself. But his first initial comment to us in the interview was we I'm looking forward to deep diving into the village city store.  There's a history here that they also need to understand as part of this particular process to then look forward. So just to just to acknowledge what you said there. So I think again, we going through the interview process. We had concerns. But I think coming out of it, we had a lot of valuable information. We felt more confident. We acknowledge the other thing I want to acknowledge to was staff effort. Because looking at what both were proposing and again what they were their style in the way that they were going to approach it. I think future IQ will get the staff more support at the end of the day versus discourse. Really, it felt I'll say it felt to me. I think universally we all kind of felt this though that this was going to be really the staff effort with them from behind kind of helping guide. Whereas future IQ felt like they were going to be involved in participating. Because one of the other things that we were concerned about because again, you're right, they're here in our community. They're in our backyard. But the interactions when we started to ask future IQ because we were concerned about how often you're going to come business, how often we need them to. So they started to acknowledge and I felt like they wanted to participate and they wanted to get to know us along with them. Putting all these pieces together and then I have to echo exactly what Andrew said about that it becomes incumbent on us to really put together that steering committee that's going to make this all work exactly the way we want it because we all have the same exact attention. And I will say that I did reach out to some of their references that they provided and actually one of the references that they didn't provide, which is the town in Maine that they mentioned during the interview process. And they have all had glowing recommendations from them. One of them was actually from a rule kind of out skirt of Kansas City, Missouri. And she said, our dynamic here is we are more urban now, but everyone thinks that we're rural. She's like, and they actually have done five projects with future IQ. They started out with their strategic plan moved on to their comprehensive plans and their parks and recs and their transportation. And they started their strategic plan and then they're encompassing that within all of their other plans. And so it's all building a cohesive thing. And the work that they did there, their school district is now using future IQ to move them forward with their strategic planning process. And then the other two I spoke with the forestry, they're still in the middle of their project with future IQ and they had said, everything is going great. There's nothing we would change right now. And then the last one was the town in Maine, which was not originally part of our references, but they had mentioned them during the interview process, the saying they're very similar to the city of this extension when we look at what you guys have and what they, the work that we did there. And they were in a complete upheaval and within their community where things were changing and it was during the pandemic. And they said, he laughed at me and he said, I figure if I asked David, we would be there, one of their top five hardest customers. But he was gracious and he was patient with us and he went back and forth with us and he probably lost money going back and forth with us as much as they did. And so just the recommendations from those references that I had felt made me feel even more confident in our decision moving forward. They do have a more national and international lens. And so even in our discussions when we were first starting this RFP, part of that was, how are we going to compare nationally and internationally? And I think that they will have maybe that broader lens for us to look for. And there is some, as we talked in our committee meeting, there is some benefit to having somebody who's not known here that might have a different of ideas. So we'll put that for it as well to kind of help maybe alleviate some of those concerns that you have, Elaine. No, I appreciate that, Ashley. I have a slightly different question. How, so staff is recommending that we take some money out of the rebranding effort. So I'm going to assume that staff feels like we can do that. But we haven't seen any kind of budget for rebranding or anything or a list of what that's going to be. So I'm just going to ask out loud. Are we good with that? Because we don't know. Yeah. Regina, do you want to tackle that one? Yeah. So I would say that we don't know exactly. But it seemed like in order to make this project work, to get to the product with the right level of engagement, activities along the way, 42, 5 seems like the right amount. And for the rebranding effort, you know, on the one hand, Ashley has been able to sort of switch over the village logo to a city logo. And on the one hand, that's pretty great fix for the time being. But I think definitely we want to take more of a look at that and figure out how to get the actual names switched out on all of the parts and pieces. Okay. I think I'm just speaking for myself. I think there's going to want if there's going, I think we've talked about this before, but I'm personally going to want to see an effort to look at the logo and its totality. Moving forward. So that's going to be not inexpensive. Probably be engaged professionals. So I'm just putting that out there. I think I'm grateful for what has been done so far. We need to move on and move forward. But I think longer term, I think it would be great if we can still try to figure out how to have a larger effort to do that. I'm hoping some insight comes from this effort that would help that effort. Yeah. Because I, yeah, yeah. So I think this is a re-prioritization right now where the funds are, but we'll have to re-engage and I feel like there's a lot of things to whenever we're building the conversation that we want Future IQ to have with our community to really think about some things like, hey, how can we throw some engagement pieces in there? Like, how do you want to engage with a city-based extension in a survey? Or how do you currently engage with a city-based extension the same way with re-braining? Like, what do you think are, I think those kind of things like what do you think our city is known for? And what are, you know, what are some ideas associated around our city? I'm hoping that those will come out at the strategic planning process and we can help guide some of that direction as well. I don't feel like they're going to be like, this is what we're asking and you don't get any input on it. I feel like it's going to be a two, definitely, conversation with what we feel that we need as a community and what they're going to, how they're going to approach that. Okay. I'm going to call on Amber because I just looked at my Zoom screen here and she has her hand up that I couldn't see her on the big screen. So Amber, sorry about the way. No worries. So Marcus kind of touched upon the one concern that I had, which was the difference between how much they were going to be doing remote versus in person. It sounds like this was touched upon in the interview and I'm hoping that you guys can just share that with the rest of us that weren't in need. Number, what, with a, how they addressed it with us is the fact that it's really based on our desire and our need. It really did sound like especially initially they're going to probably be on site because they're going to want to be here for those initial interviews.  So there was going to be the, there was going to be those moments. But I, that's the best way for me to address it right now because there was no absolute number of them. But it really felt like if we felt at some point that they were shorting us, we would make the call and then the day would correct it. So I felt that that was addressed. I think you kind of addressed it in the proposal and saying that they were going to go into places like housing developments and stuff like that and try to see people, you know, and also addressing one of the things that we, we should go with which is, you know, not everybody's watching, you know, reading Front Forge Forum and not everybody has the ability to get to technology and stuff. So I really would hope that that they are going to follow through with that component of the proposal and have no reason to doubt they wouldn't. But it's a little confusing from section five because they have a, they highlight virtual versus in person presentation and it looks like the only one that's, that's marked is actually the final presentation to, to us. So I'm gathering that most of it will be in person, but that was just, you know, me reading between the lines. To out with them and just be very specific of which one of these are virtual, which one are in person. And they were like, these are definitely in person. These were definitely these can be virtual if you want them to be or they can be in person. And I asked that the other question was, is there any additional costs? And they were like, no, all of our costs is upfront. We don't tack on any additional costs for travel or anything that like that. So that was something that they did address to an email personally to me, because that was something that even after our interview, I'm like, I just want to make sure. Yeah. I think again to this, you know, not to repeat myself over and over, but again, this comes back to some of this labor will fall on the steering committee. And again, if we want to make sure that these communities are reached, we want to make sure that these things are happening. We have to find the right steering committee to make that happen. Anything else? Before we get to a motion, the only other thing I just wanted to mention in the past, these kinds of decisions and our peer reviews would be done by staff behind closed doors closet, if you will, not necessarily that's very important to everybody else. This committee had six people who were not staff members who were elected officials appointed individuals on committees, which outnumbered the number of staff who were part of this. So personally, I just really appreciated the openness that staff had in this process to help really diversify the opinions and to really just engage the community, if you will, in this process. So Ashley or Gina, I just thank you for allowing that really open this process up. That's great. And let me let me add on, let me pile onto that by saying it was great because there was a lot of various expertise in the room that brought a lot of really great questions and a lot of great experience to the process to planning to strategic thinking and it was really helpful through the whole process. So yeah, it was great. Thank you for that. See, it started even before the project. We'll take public comment on this to see if anybody has anything they want to add to it. Bridget's in the room. Do you have anything to add, Bridget? You've got a three comment limits tonight. Here, I'm both. Can you?  Yes, thank you. Having been involved in several of these over the years since I've been here and I remember the first one was with Charles Safford. Doing a strategic plan. I'm always hopeful. I'm always hopeful. And yet I'm a little cynical. I mean, it's when we did OVOV, we sat down the first time we met. I said, I won't. I can't be involved unless we are door to door unless we're speaking to everyone. A lot of the efforts that I've been involved with come back to speaking to what what, you know, you all have as. It's good memories. I do probably eight hundred. Maybe, you know, that kind of thing. Really, I'm not going to be satisfied with that. Me personally, I'm just talking about me personally now. And I think that we have to make a greater effort to to engage with people we don't normally engage with, which means going to them. It does not mean having. I mean, focus groups, great. You know, all that. That's fantastic. But it doesn't really get to the nitty gritty of this community. So my inclination would be to watch that and see how how they're and I don't mean watch over Lord. I mean, I'll be a part of it. I just that's what I'm looking for. How are we going to engage two thousand people? How are we going to have two thousand answers to questions about what do you love about Essex Junction and what would you change? Because strategically, that's those are the questions. OK. And then my other issue is that a lot of these these documents when they're finished are put on a shelf. And never looked at again or occasionally looked at again or but probably never looked at again. And I I guess. I guess that I'd like to see a living document, a living something living, something alive, something that we can refer to and say, wait, we said that by 2030, I don't know, I'm making this up. We're going to be, yeah, we're going to have a community center and it will be hosting or having yoga classes and art classes that I'm making all of this up. And but we said that in 2023 or 2024. And nobody's looked at that again. You know what I mean? And it's really easy not to look at it. It's really easy to not see where you've not measured up. And I feel like that's what I'm going to be watching for. And again, not as an over Lordy person, but this is probably the fourth. Thing I've been involved with like this since I moved here. And I really think it's a great idea and I'm really, really hopeful. And maybe this group has has the way to do this. This is an incredibly difficult community to engage incredibly difficult. We were only successful with OVOV by doing the door to door part. And it was a tremendous amount of work. And we had crazy deadline, but we did and that's that's what works. People want to engage one on one. They want you, their neighbor to say to them or ask them these questions that I'm sure will be asked by this group. So yeah. OK. All right. Can I just add to that real quick? Bridget is absolutely right. The door to door piece is critical. And I'm not saying that we have to have these folks develop a door to door. However, it's not a bad idea. And I also want to just reflect back on the last time we had an enormous community engagement process was when we were quizzing the community on separation and merger. And even that didn't get 2,000 responses. But we did at OVOV because we went to every single door. So. Yeah. And Heart and Soul was two years which engaged just over over a thousand people. Right. With two communities. So I think we're jumping we're jumping on the agenda. We are. But expectations as well. A little bit of expectations. You're absolutely right. But that's what I'm saying. Like if we could whatever the the the largest version of outreach that this plan. Ames toward. Should really have a door to door aspect to it. Even if it's just one, you know, bunch of clipboards and three questions like what some kind of qualitative and quantitative data collection. They'll get the they'll get better scientific or statistically relevant results if they go door to door. You're going to say something about what Bridget said too. I get where you're coming from. I I tend to bring a whole bucket load of cynicism with me. But we are in a really interesting time right now where we're starting a community again. We've got a committee next year or sometime in the next 18 months that is going to look at how we're governed. It's going to look at all of that that's going to come on the heels or overlap with this project. We are going to start looking at policies. We're going to start looking at other things. We're going to start looking at continue to look at planning code. There's so much going on right now that I think I really feel enthusiastic that this will actually be used. It's coming at almost the perfect time to. And frankly, it's there's so much going on that it's like trying my patience. I just want to get it going. All right. So I do hear you. I think I do think though that this chance has a better opportunity than many of the other ones to actually make an impact. So hopefully in four years when you play that back, it's true. But I think I do think we're well positioned to actually use this and use it really well. Well, during the discussion, during the discussion, obviously we acknowledge the fact that they needed to have the history. So we made sure that they had understood what the heart and soul project was and what that went through. OVOV was also brought up. So that was important to make sure that we vocalized to them because obviously that experience was a good one for us. And we want them to be aware of that experience. So again, they can play off it. But again, to go back and with you, that's why I think this action plan in the RFP is going to be so important because that in itself is going to be a thing that we part of this that will walk away from the bill be able to go check, check, check. This one's been sitting here forever. What's going on here? Check, check. Hopefully it's more checks than blanks. But that's one of the pieces I'm really looking forward to with this process. And remember that if people walk away after they've done this, it's our responsibility to follow through, to see that in this topic. And I think that's another major kind of downfall of doing this kind of thing because it's done. Looking on the shelf and hey. Is there anyone in Zoomland who would like to who has a comment on this that would like to offer that now? Not seeing anyone. So I will entertain a motion if the board is so interested. I'll move that the city council increase the budget of the community vision and strategic action plan project of forty two thousand five hundred dollars with additional funds coming from the rebranding effort and the local option tax fund and for the city manager to initiate a contract with future IQ. I will second. Sorry. Motion in a second. What I was waiting for. I was waiting for you. You got this one. We have motion in a second. Any comment? No. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed nay. Motion passes. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ashley. Thank you, Regina. All right. Backing up in. This is item five B discussion of council communication policy and strategies. Who wants to do we? I can start us off. Yeah, maybe. Can't see anybody in there. We are. OK, there you are. Hi. OK, so if folks recall back after the council orientation, we identified two older village documents as part of that orientation process. One is the communications policy and one is the meeting policy. We'll bring the meeting policy forward. Potentially at the end of the month, but we really wanted to get the communications policy in front of you in light of sort of the theme of this meeting that we're having tonight. So thank you to Raj and Elaine for working on this and for Ashley as well. So the communications policy itself, there's a clean version for you in the packet to look at. And there's kind of two parts to this agenda topic. The first is essentially taking a look at that communications policy and seeing if it works and makes sense. And really, this does a great job of defining people's roles and how you communicate with the public really in terms of your official city business that we have going on. So probably makes sense to sort of go through this first if anybody has any thoughts and comments. Then we can kind of circle back to the other, to the next half of the agenda item, which kind of carries on from what we were just talking about under the R&P process, which is how do we actually do a better job engaging folks and especially underrepresented folks? So that's a good starting part. That's great. I just want to acknowledge that a lion's share of this, if not almost all of it was done by Elaine. So I appreciate the shout out, but this was for the most part I had other things going on. There was a lot of editing in that document. It wasn't just me. So a lot of crossing out and other things. So I tried to keep up with the track changes. I very much largely agree with what was done. But I just wanted to thank you for that. Thank you. That was very good. Any comments from anyone? I do. The first thing I just the one thing that stuck out for me is this is a communication policy. So being a policy, I'm curious what the consequences are for violating said policy. Because if this were guidelines, I would it's perfectly fine. But as a policy, I start to wonder then there's no teeth here. I wouldn't. Can I? Yes. I wouldn't look at this as a policy with a punitive aspect. I think I don't know that all of our policies have a punitive aspect to them. And I think many of them do serve as guidelines. And I think that this is just falling into that same this is how we address official business that this board does. I think some of the consequences of not following this policy are going to rear their ugly heads, whether they come from the staff or from the chair, but more likely from the public. And I have found that communication missteps. There's no need for consequences in the policy because you get your consequences pretty quickly in all sorts of ways. That I don't know that we need to delineate here, but some of them could be things like, you know, you may say something in your chair might reach out to you on the side and say, not the best course of action. Remember what our policy says. I think this in this case, I think there's a these are guidelines and not, but it is also policy because it's binding to committee members to council members and to staff. So as such, therefore it's a formal policy, but I think the consequences sort of are what's the word? Organic. Well, I think about ask me how I know examples. I think about examples, right? And when we talk about within the policy disseminating honest, truthful information in a world where your truth, it depends on where you sit. And sometimes your truth is your opinion, not necessarily facts on a sheet. So then it's a matter of I put out information to the best of my knowledge. How do you then we choose to respond? I get, you know, so it gets a little muddy here. And I don't want to. So but generally speaking, I will say as far as this document is concerned, I feel. I feel good about it. Just a matter of I start to think of examples in the past. And I agree that there is a consequence that will come from the public. If if you speak for myself, I say something untoward. But I've also seen in recent history where people have spoken untruths and they still seem to be celebrated for it. So but anyway, the thing is that we shouldn't be joking. And that's who this policy covers. Travis, is it possible to see Amber on there as well? Thank you so much. I think, you know, this is almost, you know, part policy guideline and code of conduct kind of stuff. And I kept thinking when I was reading it and I've talked to Virginia a little bit about like wild tangents about some of this stuff. But we can come back and modify this too. And I think what's likely to happen as we move forward in the next year or two before we just talked about partly is what we're going to talk about next, you know, as we, I'm going to be positive, get more adaptive engagement, we may decide that there's a different way we want to structure this. We may say your question months ago, what is the role of clerk, you know, we're going to get to some of that conversation in a minute, but might be as the voice of the board, you know. So I think to your point about disseminating factual information, you know, and this goes into it, we have to make sure we're right and or not say it or make sure that we don't put staff in a position because almost everything we say could put staff in a position of having to either correct us or do something because we said it was this way. So I think, you know, understanding that there are other people impacted by what we may or may not say is part of the part of the consequence of, you know, slowing, slowing down a little bit. But I think it's pretty basic. I mean, a lot of this was in place. A lot of this seems to have come from the town. Yeah, this is probably this is probably 40 percent former village policy and 60 percent new town. Yeah, the other thing I want to just acknowledge is I appreciate that the expectation is built in here in regards to communication that comes from the public to us. As often we've we've spoken about and we as a group blind copy each other because of the fact that we don't want to violate open meeting law. I think it's important that the public understand because often I think we all encourage communication from the public to its council. And so recently in the case Bridget, I'll point you out. You sent an email that CC multiple of us and I appreciated that this document acknowledges the fact that the acknowledgement would probably come from the chair. Now we can we can debate whether or not that's right or wrong, but I appreciated that because of the fact that I think most of the public doesn't know or have that know what that expectations about where that communication is going to come from. So I appreciate that that was a few years ago. I don't I don't think it's currently on the city website, but a few years ago we used to have a little intro paragraph on this on the village trustee page that said it was basically like how to interact with the count with the village trustees like if you literally said if you email all of us together, you're only going to hear from the chair because open meeting law. However, one of us may get back to you after we've all agreed like we explained to the public. This is what happens when you email us as a group. And I think after we approve this and we also take care of the meeting policy that maybe we also address the public on our website to say this is how you can interact with us and be super clear. This is what happens when you do this. This is what happens when you post on Facebook and you at us and you like how we have to interact with people so that they understand and we may discover as we go down the engagement road a bit more and get deeper into and get and become successful. Let's say in reaching communities we haven't reached before that we need to adjust this so to make it, you know, we may we may be erecting barriers that we're not aware of. And I think a lot of how governance in Vermont works is set up that way and makes it difficult. And I think this is just one example of potentially some unintended consequences of making it overly difficult to have frank conversations with decision makers. So anyway, I think I think we can we can amend this at any time. Yeah. And so I wonder if that piece of the policy again, expectation on response shouldn't be if we can't come up with a creative sense that we might look in our signature lines. Or even spots. Oh, so that again, if they respond to us, maybe we ought to reply with it. We've received this. This is the expectation of response, you know, based on so just so that again, because I'm glad that it's in this document. But again, as acknowledged before this document will live somewhere else and people will have to be reminded. You're right. And I, you know, as the chair, I would I need to get used to making sure I'm fulfilling this and making sure you're all aware, because very often every day, it's a different collection of who gets I'm included on one of my feet lane and then the next hour it might be Andrew and I, and a lot of naturally because Andrew is president for you know, that still happens a lot. Sorry about that. Anyway, so I need to do better, I'll do better with the and with the included inclusionary CC and forwarding. But Marcus, if you want to come up with something and send it around as a suggestion for that after the meeting, that'd be great to do that. Just had a couple of things. Sure. In the public communication portion under city counselors, there's a sentence about when responding to an email comment question, whether from another counselor, staff member or constituent counselors are encouraged to copy the city council president. So the president should be copied on all emails that we send. That sounds like a lot. Speaking of unintended consequences and email workload. Sounds perfect. While I understand warning Frank, I'm not going to do it. Paragraph two under public communication. Second paragraph is again, these are guidelines and aspirations. I'm just telling you now, I'm doing it. Maybe you could just add a little where practicable comma. It's underlined. Lane's suggestion of where practicable sounds good. I think some of it also just needs to come to some level discretion. It's something that feels like it that you should be copied in this one. But when I did the story time for the library a little while ago, I'm not going to copy. I don't want to know that. I mean, you can send me a picture. Sorry, I finally found it. When appropriate or practical? When appropriate, yeah. Sure, you know, I think use your judgment kind of call. I think it gets maybe. Yeah, maybe we can even figure this because it I think I think the issue would only be if at you know, after the fact, if it turned out that, you know, and either an inadvertent or however intentional comment ended up speaking for the board or the city. And then that wasn't the that wasn't appropriate, but that's the discretion part. So yeah, I'm just trying to think about I do not want all those emails. No, I don't need to. And along that same line of copying, you want all the emails that next sentence that says they may copy other counselors in this email thread and really think we're open to open meeting law consequences that we might not be thinking of in that sense and maybe taking that sentence out might be more beneficial that risk management perspective, frankly, if there's something we all should be notified about it should be a reading file or some agenda here.  You know, line copy and say, you know, counselors on VCC do not respond for your information. And then and then typically we'll figure out who's going to respond and often it's either Regina myself. But whether we should put out that the guidelines and practice is to send something out to everybody versus that just be a part of practice when it feels right. Yeah, I agree with Andrew that maybe that sentence should come out because it could also just be more of a personal preference of the chair. Some chairs are less interested in being likely and being copied on every piece of business and other chairs are. So and then if there is something that chair needs to have attention, pay attention to then the whole thread can be forwarded to them. So that might removing that sentence might be a good improvement. So they may copy other counselors in the email thread that they must avoid having any in-depth discussion amongst themselves via email regarding regarding city business that sentence. No, not that one. The one before it one before when responding to. Right. Then you can change the word they and the next sentence to counselors may copy other counselors. Ashley, do you have that? Does that make sense, Ashley? Yes. So I was saying to strike that whole so they may copy other counselors. That's what I. Yeah, that's what I was saying. You know, you were you saying the when responding sentence or the they may copy the they may copy. I was saying strike that whole thing that to I was only saying to strike the whole portion of they may copy the where practicable or whatever the other phrase was used could be used in that sentence previous to them. My concern is the city putting out that is part of the policy of the city encouraging counselors to copy everybody on our emails when open meeting law has many instances when we shouldn't do that stuff. Oh, I don't think we want to put that out there. But you're not concerned about the city council president getting all the email. You're concerned about everybody getting all the email. It'll be meeting law. Got it. I mean, we can put something in counselors will fall. They'll will be. Fully aware of and follow up and meeting. Well, it's pretty much in here. There's another section here that I talked about. We'll be meeting. I'm sorry. This sentence my only concern is that we are saying that it is OK to copy everybody on everything. And that's. That's a great. OK, so yes, I agree with you, Andrew, but I also still think that that other sentence. So the when responding sentence. I think could be a personal preference of a president as opposed to a policy. And then they may copy sentence. I agree, encourages potential violation of the meeting law. So maybe both those sentences should come out and we stick with if a resident communicates that's at the next sentence. I'm good with that. And there's one portion on that sentence when we're ready for. Would you agree with taking both of those sentences out? I guess the delineation. Generally, yes, I guess the delineation would be. If a resident is saying, Andrew. You're just using you right now. Yeah. How do you feel about? Making front porch form city. Well. Versus what is the board going to do about front porch form? Or is the board going to ask that sort of thing? The second one, I think, should probably. Be a consideration to include either the manager or the president or both. The first one, absolutely not. Yeah. What you feel and how you communicate to a constituent is none of my business or the chair's business. So if we feel like we're all in agreement on that and that's obvious, then I don't think we need to put it in the policy. Is that what you're kind of getting at? I mean, it's simply. OK. Yeah. And to me in that paragraph, the sentence that really summarizes what you just said, Raj, I think is the second sentence. And that to me is kind of the most important one to keep in there. OK, so I think we can get rid of both. OK. Yeah. But that's what we're saying. Andrea, something in the last part of this, that last sentence is one of the things that I never did when I sat in that chair is when somebody was had emailed all of us, I never sent anything out to everybody to say, I've got this or I'm emailing, I'm responding. And I know that there were times where I would then get responses of, hey, did you ever get back to someone so about such and such? And I wonder if it would make sense to either for the chair to respond to everybody saying, I've got this or this was addressed or whether that email response gets put into the reading file, something around the realm to make sure that everybody knows something happens. Yeah, I mean, I've been in that vacuum before. I'm not knowing. So I don't know how folks feel about that. So you want to check on that. You want to follow up on that. Basically, I'm good. I trust you. I'm perfectly fine. I just know what I heard myself. I should. So what are you saying we do with this one? If we're having a policy that says the council president should respond on behalf of council want to resident communicates with the council, then we know that it's the president's responsibility to do it. So do we have to also say the president must let the council know that they did this? That feels a little bit. Or is it that you want to know what the response was to? Which is totally valid. I mean, you're saying the second part of I think what you said was that that should appear in the reading file. I think that's fair. I think the board should know how to respond. I have definitely done that like when when I was a chair of the select board when the resident emailed the whole board and I responded, the response went in the reading file, but it wasn't every every email like depending upon the relevant business are really important. I don't know that we needed in there. So we struck when responding to an email and the sentence they may copy other councillors. So two sentences from that paragraph. Any other thoughts? Thanks, Amber, are you good? Excellent, come up. Great. I'm pretty sure we can adopt this as amended. Do anybody do we need to do this again, half of this particular piece or I mean, we could we could talk about and see if there's anything else we want to adjust this evening. I mean, I think this second half of the conversation is over and above the communications policy. I don't know that anything we say. Whatever we say next might inform the communications policy, I think it's unlikely. Yeah, I guess I'm acknowledging whether or not I don't know whether or not voting ends. Voting ends that topic, but we can bring it up as much as we want in the next conversation. Anyone in Zoom have any comments, any members of the public have any comments on the communications policy we were just discussing. Please raise your hand. Anyone in the room. OK, no. So I would entertain a motion. I'll move that the council adopt the revised communications policy as amended. Second. Excellent. Motion and a second. No further comments. All those in favor, please say aye. Supposed nay. Motion passes five zero. Right. So we're still in the same agenda item, but we're going to talk about communications in a slightly different way. OK. So. Raj, I see it. I do have it. Oh, I apologize. Where'd that come from? I was just there. There it is. Well, sure, Raysa, I didn't see it before. OK, thank you. I think it was a zoom thing. Can you do me a favor, Raysa, and say your full name for the record? Yes, Risa Naran, and I will fix it in Zoom. So that you have it. Thank you. I did raise my hand in time, but I think Zoom was just being, you know, zoom. No problem. I think it's great. I love that you're coming up with a communications policy. The thing that I noticed not in here is anything in terms of endeavoring to respond within a time. You know, last meeting, somebody spoke and spoke very eloquently and had a proposal. And in this meeting, the very next one, you're discussing it and making a decision about it, which is super fast. And I realized that not everything can happen that quickly. But they're not being anything in here in terms of what's going on. So, you know, last meeting, in terms of, you know, when we get our however many numerous comments and emails and questions and everything from constituents, how quickly is our goal to respond? There's nothing about that. Thank you. Thank you. I think my expectation for myself is 24 to 48 hours. I think there's two questions there and one was around responding to an email. The other one was how things get brought up at a meeting. We will be having that meeting process discussion sometime in the next month or two, I believe. And that will come up then. Generally speaking, I think things get on the agenda in a number of different ways. In the case you brought up, Risa, as you probably got realized this evening already, tonight is oddly about largely one topic. Two related topics, engagement and communication. So the front porch forum topic last week just happened to fit perfectly in what we had already set aside. So it's a little bit coincidental and luck on Mr. Eustice's part of how that got brought up. So not necessarily a science, but we will be talking about meeting procedure and agenda setting may come up as part of that in the next couple months. Thank you. All right. So I don't know if you wanted to say anything about this for Gina. Yeah, just to just to sort of explain that this is the start of this conversation. I think it was as we've already talked about tonight, there is just a lot of in this topic. There's a lot of different ways to figure out how to tackle it. And I do think the strategic planning process certainly we will work to improve engagement in that process itself. But I have to imagine that one of the priority areas that's going to come out of that work is to improve our engagement with underrepresented folks as well. And so ultimately I think we would probably be well suited with some kind of more official plan that talks a bit more about what is the level of engagement needed based on the type of process or project or policy we're working on. So I think there can be a lot more science to this down the road. At the moment I wanted to just capture everything I've heard at least in terms of individual specific ideas since I've been here and really I think the benefit of starting this conversation tonight is to just think through a brainstorm some pros and cons of this. Yeah, I think that's about it. Thank you. Thought a lot about how to have this conversation but I think with this group we'll just sort of dive right in. I think this list as Regina said came from all of us essentially. So we can all pretty much identify what we brought to it. So again this isn't we're not trying to find a solution tonight. We're just trying to figure out what's missing from this perhaps. Are there any of these that we can build on and start moving forward with now? What does that look like? Do we want to work in one of my curiosities is how do we work as a team and with an intentional schedule for instance or plan for outreach calendar it's just one idea. I don't know if anybody wants to start this off. I'm looking at Andrew because he's wearing red. So you're just kidding. No, I have nothing to add. I see many of the things on this list from conversations I've had with Regina since Regina's been on here and through emails I might send that say hey Regina random thought here's one. In terms of things we could do with budgeting for example there's a whole host of things we can do differently some of which are very small some of which are more significant. I could talk for probably 20 to 30 minutes on some of them I don't think that's the point of tonight so I'm kind of unsure where to go. Fair. So, kind of feel the same way but at the same time to acknowledge the fact that we have a communications expert in the room so I'm kind of curious what our communications director believes strategically would be beneficial to S extension. Because I can add to this list. Yeah, no. When this topic was brought up I was like, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. So, I appreciate you asking my opinion on this. I am a very deep person when it comes to doing our research first and we analyze that and then we find how we're going to communicate and then we are evaluating how we're going to communicate and I feel like we're missing that research piece. So, I don't know if it's going to be chats a year and do, you know, all this kind of online stuff but is that really, are we reaching these people and is that how they want to be reached and I think those are the questions we need to be asking first before we start coming up with the tactics which is what this is to accomplish that. I, and I keep going back to the strategic plan and some of that data from there but we can do other outreach as well. I don't want to fatigue our people before we get to strategic planning because we're going to be asking a lot from our community to give us feedback. Like I mentioned earlier though engagement isn't something you do in a project that's going to start. It is something that we need to build into everything we do from the ground up. So, when we say we're going to do a pocket part or do this we need to be starting with engagement first or communication first not at the back end after we say hey, we've got this great idea we need to be saying do you like this idea what do you think and it needs to be short burst of those conversations. We could throw out a question if our community is used to those kind of avenues of this is how we're going to communicate with and part of that is me establishing that and I will admit my first year I didn't want to change anything because we're in transition and you come into a new position you're going to change anything your first year or you're going to have a big pitfall. I found that in my 10 plus years of career. I did that at the very beginning and it was not a good idea. I'm very much thinking about evaluating the situation and plus again like I said we've been in transition so that was for me I don't want to start something that might change in 5 to 6 months kind of thing. So that's my take at this initially. So to play off that and I agree with your points I think there's two things first off I will acknowledge that during my campaign it was something I spoke about a great deal it was something that I heard a great deal about but I think that there if I could try to summarize a couple of things I thought it was based on two factors. One the community knowing having knowledge about what's happening in their community and then accessibility to its government. Those are the two main factors I felt during those particular those engagements that I had so when I think about the list we think about how we're going to do this work or what we're going to do around this work I think that for me there should be a strategic tactic to how we communicate and how we engage but I also think that if we wait for that we're going to miss a lot of opportunities and the community is not going to have some opportunities to engage with us so I would like to see some things happen in the short term that allows the community to engage us and then work on getting to that point where we have a plan that really helps to engage further. I mean one of the reasons this is coming up now is because we have a strategic planning process coming up that's going to help inform us on how to engage the community but we need to engage the community to get people on the steering committee and participate in the strategic planning process that we haven't normally reached and we haven't been very successful in doing that so we are going to have to make some slightly non-data-driven decisions and throw some darts that miss between now and three months to get that more clumsy outreach attempted then I would say as a council you guys come up with what is your goal what is your goal in the next six months and I can help with that and just help you hear some thoughtful goals and then we start building some of these things around that and I definitely think we can do that and I would be happy to help start that process I don't necessarily think we need to go through all of these one by one tonight at all but I think exploring what Ashley just described would be worthwhile and whether that's conversation at the next few meetings one or two meetings and fleshing that out whether that's conversations in the background and bringing stuff to the council for feedback as appropriate and legal Andrew and Marcus just spent time on the committee if there's one or two of us that want to work more closely with Ashley to Amber can't tell I'm looking at her on the screen she knows she just went off screen can we share some thoughts so I have a lot of thoughts so I took some notes so I'm just going to go through them and hopefully they're germane and helpful I think there's two things that we need to talk about how our government communicates and how the council communicates and our communication is somewhat different in some respects because we're getting out there wanting to know what do you think tell us what you want that kind of thing but then we're also supporting the government communication of we're having a meeting or we need a committee member so there's two kinds of comms we're talking about here in my opinion there isn't a standard communications protocol for how our government shares information and way back when the Essex governance group communication program or report was submitted one of the recommendations we made was for a communications policy a standard protocol across staff for how information is communicated and it was based on the model from Portland, Oregon I think it was Oregon not me and it was basically a rubric and down one side was the importance of the topic and across the other side the extent of the broadcasting of the information and so if one street is getting a new street light all you need to do is send an email to all the residents on that street but if you're, you know, just it radiated out in terms of quantity of communication and distance I need to dig that out or if you go to the Essex governance group it's an appendix in there it's a really excellent model and I think it's very important that we include how our government, how our staff consistently communicates from department to department all the information that needs to get out there I think we actually do already know a lot of the ways that we communicate and how our residents want to be communicated with we are on front porch forum we are all over Facebook we are posting to the Essex reporter when you know online it's going to be in print soon like we are doing, we know where a lot of our residents want their information to come from it's the new places that we need to figure out what are the things that we could do to enhance that to expand it when we were doing OVOV one of the questions we always had was how do we communicate with renters how do we get in those apartment buildings how do we build relationships with the property managers that will allow us to get that information to the people who live in those apartments we have lots of apartments so where are those gaps that we have that we need to identify that's really important on the more immediate level Marcus you posted on front porch forum the other day coffee with a counselor I think a really quick short term thing is we formalize that and coffee with a counselor happens every two weeks and it rotates or it happens once a month and it rotates and we all do it how many people do four repeat there are people I know in the community but not to my events I'm not against it there's nothing against repeats that's great I just feel like we need to figure out how to bring that to neighborhoods and to apartment buildings and to those other micro communities and really really really think about when, how, where and get creative with you know maybe we have to hold a few more events a year and make some of this a venture I'm interrupting my project no it's okay but you're right I mean we can standardize how that works Mayor Weinberger in Burlington goes to the same diner every Thursday morning people know where to find him you know we could do something like that but that I don't want to derail into that how we actually pull that off but that's a thing we could do very quickly very easily the last thing I'm going to say and this is related to the Essex Governance Group as well it is time for neighborhood assemblies it's part of the it's the final recommendation of the good governance group that we did not get to yet because we were waiting we were going to merge first and now we've separated and now I think it really is the time especially with the committee you referred to earlier and ready to talk about governance in general neighborhood assemblies doesn't have to start out as a full governmental entity but we could start small with identifying neighborhoods and making them places to communicate and then as that takes hold we lift them up more in terms of quantity of information responsibility the way we talk to them what kind of feedback we get but I really think it's important for us to start building a model of neighborhood assemblies if that's going to be work it's going to require staffing but I think that's where we're headed if we want to have more really hyper-local communication between city government and residents slash and so so far so great so moving this forward we can do a number of different things I mean we can pick from this list and try to get a couple of things going with the goal or we can work a little more intentionally behind the scenes for a couple or three more weeks and flesh out a plan for one or two trying to build towards some success around fleshing out that steering committee and finding people at the risk of adding more to the plate I would be willing to volunteer to talk to Ashley one on one about this list and maybe prioritizing and coming back to the council with another draft I will acknowledge that again I believe that we should do this there should strategically there should be something but I think that in the long term that's where we need to be and go but I don't think that I want to wait and I will be honest that I will continue to do coffee with the council because I think it's important I think that having making sure the community has access to the council is important and I think that look for me the council that I ran no they didn't have the turnouts that I wanted them to have but at the same time I need for myself I needed to kind of figure out how I can do this but I hope that we can figure out a way to do this better but in the short term I just don't want to wait for another couple of months to have something kind of running that the council wants to talk to us we're going to approve we're going to approve a block party tonight so I'll volunteer to go to the block to ask if I can go to the block party request a nice invitation to go to the block party if they'll have me for a few minutes maybe at the end but that's the kind of thing I'm thinking as well or maybe we just host them and I will suggest too that these opportunities that you guys are already starting we can have a standard two questions that you're going to ask how do you want to be engaged with and how are you currently engaging with council two simple things that you can bring back and we can start micro doing that data which I think will help can I just say one more observation I can't resist in spite of our best efforts we're going to communicate with everybody or even 50% because there are people in the world who don't interact with their government at all unless they get a ticket or they're paying a bill the clerk's office and they don't are not interested and that is okay we always try so hard to reach as many people as possible and to be honest getting feedback from 35% of the local community that's like huge success statistically so I just want to temper our expectations that it's we're going to do our very very best and we're still not going to hit everybody or hear from everybody and when we do hear from people they're mad that is when you get there it's either a super contentious issue or a really passionate issue but when there's people in those chairs they have something to say for me it's not about quantity it's about who it's you know we all know who we hear from all the time and who feels comfortable being able to be angry in public in front of someone and it's the people that don't necessarily feel like they have that voice that I'm absolutely most interested in trying to figure out how to reach absolutely one thing I would like to also bring up and because I think it's probably better to bring this up now than during our FPF discussion is as I was looking through the materials for the upcoming FPF discussion I acknowledged the fact that you have eight opportunities to put something out there and I was starting to think about the number of times that we might need to engage the community like for instance just our committees alone what communication is going out about the committee meetings or these committee agendas we send out information about ourselves I think we send out some stuff about DRB or planning or maybe both but it's only eight interactions in a year it really seemed like a month sorry sorry no if it's a year okay like is this enough is this at all enough so okay that makes me feel sorry misread it but that brings up a really important point can we just segue into the front porch one thing on his comment some of this may be structural and tool based you know we need to figure out a way to get people to be able to sign up I don't know what the status of our ability right now to send out newsletters to have people it doesn't seem incredibly simple for people to throw an email address or to do something like that right now and do you meet on the website like when we send out news yeah we're just capturing willing people to give us their information so we can get the information I'm going to kind of go to what you were saying figuring out a reach more close off communities like that was all I was going to say sorry go ahead and segue actually somebody wants to comment so Ashley I think I cut you off no so you're fine yeah anybody else Amber anyone in the room have a comment about this time no okay I'm going to pull up zoom Elise Serta Heidi Howe neighbor hello I wanted to I wanted to just point out something that Ashley brought up that I think is very important and I think may have gotten lost in the stampede towards tactics which is goals and what are your goals for engagement because ultimately is your goal to engage is it to be informed and then how you're going to measure it success that's critical because there are all these things that you can do from a tactic standpoint and because you don't have the data necessarily up front that Ashley's talking about how are you going to measure that these are effective what does success look like is a coffee chat enough that you're showing it up on a regular basis is it the amount of people who show up so I just really encouraged the council to work with Ashley to come up with what those engagement goals are because that will help inform the strategic planning but also make sure that you're sending your resources in the right places you guys are all volunteers you're very busy you have personal lives you have council lives so you know getting the most bang out of your buck is really important and how are you going to measure that and I'm sure Ashley's an expert at helping you do that so I really encourage you to use her expertise because I know how valuable that can be if you've the other thing that I will and it sounds like councilman Serta and I are in lockstep here but people have been cleaning about the communication avenues for a very long time so I think even if it's a short-term survey that you put out really really quickly that could gather some of the basics might be really helpful but I'll just say from my experience and you guys are on it from Port Form is critical to our community and is where a majority of our people get their news so utilizing that I think is in my opinion really critical but thank you so much for taking on communications it's close to my heart as everybody knows but I think you have a great it has to have some measurement so you're not just spinning like a top, thank you thank you I look forward to the debate later we're going to move on moving right on front porch forum well let's back up a second Regina let's hear what you have to say so before we jump off this topic I would like a little clarity on the steps so Elaine offered to sit with Ashley and narrow down this list or prioritize this list which I think could be helpful the other thing we could just do with this list is throw it into the big list of things that are going to go through strategic planning and see what rises to the top there but to Elise's point and Ashley's earlier point the best next step might be figuring out what those goals and metrics are and Ashley I don't know if that's something that you could take an initial crack at drafting what those might be or if that's asking too much no I think I can definitely take a stab at it obviously your feedback is critical because you guys are going to be doing some of the work and hopefully most of a lot of the work you'll be doing the engagement pieces within the community as well obviously I'm there to assist you in any way it's possible but it's got to be something that you guys adopt and are behind because if not it's not going to go anywhere and so I would say I'm happy to start drafting some goals that I feel would be beneficial for you and then we can move from there so we're doing that so we're going to do that and hold on the list with Elaine or we do it we're going to come back maybe you know what's the time frame on that do you think Ashley what are we doing Tuesday getting I was him you know obviously also I just want to preface I'm fixing to start the strategic planning process so I would say let me start working on this process in the next couple of weeks and then I would definitely be able to mention to Regina where we're kind of I'm at in the process but hopefully in the next month have something to you guys to start looking at thank you and sorry I missed one other next step that I heard which was something that I think we can definitely look into also is the appendix that Elaine was talking about based on Portland so that we can because like Elaine said I think that was good really awesome helpful way to think about it we're talking about two separate things the government communications basically from the staff out and then what you folks are doing on the council end so I think what we're talking about in terms of the goals and metrics are a little bit more in in assistance to you folks as the council I think that that appendix document you will definitely find and take a look at in terms of standardizing the government communication and then that third next step about prioritizing this brainstorm list and if that's helpful or needed at this stage I think looking at the list in the context of getting strategic planning going and figuring out the most efficient use of resources to populate that process is important so you know sort of alongside the goals and all of that I recall the timeline from an hour looking at the work from the strategic plan that's coming up and we're all going to have to figure out how to schedule time in to do whatever it is we're going to prioritize so I think that sort of has to almost go hand in hand I don't know that we can wait a month to start having to start really diving into picking two or four things to try to really dive into and lean into in terms of actions that we can take or at least start talking about what those look like are they feasible, what kind of time does it take how will we split that up how does that split up with staff or what's the role there we're going to do the work how can steps I don't know that we can wait a month but that's your wrapped up in the strategic planning process so if my recollection was it was going to start a coverage well it's supposed to technically start as soon as after we get the contract signed so August-September was when this was supposed to start was the initial like what they had put in their proposal as well obviously that contract has to be we have to get the contract has to be reviewed by legal all that kind of stuff before we can start the process I can start working on this though at the mean time and then hopefully come to you guys as soon as possible obviously this strategic plan needs to go along this with the other committee members deciding who that's going to be and how much you guys are going to be involved with that process as well so I will say they kind of need to align together too we'll wait here for me great thank you for this Ashley appreciate your conversation in the work alright front porch forum okay so as you guys all know Steve you just met with the city council and asked us to consider contacting front porch forum to discuss changing the S extension forums to when they call them forum or neighborhood instead of before that we figure out we currently do pay front porch forum the $2,808 a year it gives us 17 accounts we have a bunch of you guys and the staff who usually have about usually have two posts a month there's two other myself and Wendy have more posts just because she is the only one from the library posting so she gets extra to post all their events and then because of my position where I'm posting for lots of different things I have more posts as well and so a little bit break down this is just what's in their best every year about what we get for that fee and then right now I broke down what those forums are the south, the north, the countryside and the therapy farms those are the ones that are just at the extension and we at staff and as you guys you guys can post into all these five so when I post I post all these five I will preface and say that I also still have access to the town as well because we do have interactions with the police department and with the assessor still so in the event there's something that there's a tie over that I would need to post on behalf for both of those or if Tammy for instance she can still post an S extension as well because of that still continue tie that we have so right now it's basically we if you guys are interested in making this change we can move forward with talking to Front Forge Forum about that and going from there I'm curious what you all think about this number or like capacity that we have to post for them do we need to increase it I've never had a conversation about where this sits is there an opportunity to renegotiate that's one question I have for tonight or to find out for later I can tell you for myself too is very limiting but sort of the way Front Forge Forum works your question is valid but I think what I read here again is us having a discussion around whether or not we're going to make this ask the Front Forge Forum we are not this fee does not create use five neighborhoods is my understanding we are not in control of these five neighborhoods or the decision around this we would just be sharing an opinion so while we should discuss the fee and use and all that I just want to be clear because I think there's some confusion in the public in regard to again our participation in this and our authority so I want to make sure that's clear yeah so yeah again we don't have control over what the neighborhoods are or that's all Front Forge Forum they have decided where the cutoff is on all this and who's in what neighborhoods we don't have any control over that so I had been in a conversation with Michael Wood Lewis the founder from Front Forge Forum and we were talking about S-Exjunction and one thing he did point out is that most municipalities the balance of resident postings to government postings is like 80% resident 20% government and it's kind of the opposite in S-Exjunction we're one of the only municipalities that really uses it to its that municipality is allowed to have and that's why there's a limit because it has for us has kind of become a city newsletter and their goal is to encourage more of the can you help me find my cat can you help me move I've got plants to get rid of like their goal is to foster community conversation and that's happening in other municipalities we use it that does happen but it's far more that we post governmental things so it's just an observation it's not a judgment or anything it's just that's how we use it and so we are already bumping up what they put against what they consider to be the fullest capacity of municipal postings so but that said Michael has also said that they're very willing to take suggestions and they work with municipalities all the time I don't like in my opinion if it all was one email everyone would still get the same posts because when I look at the same all five because we get all five of them every day and I look at all of them every day there's overlap in all of them because you can cross post and so I don't think people should be worried that they're going to lose connection with a particular neighborhood their own neighborhood they will continue to see those posts they will continue to see they will also see posts from other neighborhoods so it's not like anything is going away it's like aggregating it instead I mean I'm the only reason I was well I'm interested in having this conversation because someone brought it to us but it fit in with tonight and it fits in with the greater concern we all have about how we reach everybody I think Front Forge Forum I don't know the rhyme or reason behind how they came up with this I don't think it seems to make it does make a little sense to me but what's end up happening is they've sort of separated this the village in very interesting ways demographically the number of different and I think I said this back to Summa Cormack online when we were having the merger discussion the idea of wards and districts came up and we would never have driven drawn wards in this way with these demographics or with this we would never have considered these in any way sort of diverse delineations of our community in the widest sense or the narrowest sense and you know a bear doesn't recognize the Front Forge Forum boundary compost pile so you know I think what was striking to me in Steve's argument was the number of households in each one one being 299 roughly 1900 roughly 1950 and 113 this doesn't tell me that this represents a breakdown of the city so I don't really know frankly if it's our role to make a request at all of Front Forge Forum but because we're a board in the community and we can make contact with them and have a conversation I think it's fine I don't know that I have a specific request of them myself except to say can you look at this again and say if you had to do it again if you had to do it because my personal opinion is that it doesn't represent any sort of basically what I just said so that's my only I don't necessarily want to the other thing about Front Forge Forum is you can cross post you can go on their website and see all of them anybody can even if you're not in that neighborhood you can still pull down and see what's going on in the neighborhood next to you so I'm not sure how huge an issue this is but Andrew or anything it's always bothered me that Fairview and Countryside get their own forums just has always felt exclusionary to that end they are a private company there's limited things that we can do with them say the city council wishes that you would reconsider your drawings of your districts or your neighborhoods since they are not reflective of the diverse community that this extension is to the point of how much duplication there is the number of times I go through them and I think I thought I just deleted that email because I just read these exact same posts it feels like just a lot of duplication from my perspective I'm completely fine asking Front Forge Forum to relook at their the way they've divided the community up based from the conversation we just had about goals I would hope that Front Forge Forum would want to engage in community in that conversation maybe we are just those five individuals who would inform that process but hopefully not and they could ask the community how they would like to see it changed but yeah I'm open to change whether it's one or two not by me I seem to recall years ago we had even more Front Forge Forum neighborhoods we had like nine at one point it was ridiculous and they collapsed them without any they didn't outreach out to the community at all they just said you know what we're going to reduce this for whatever reason from their end so I don't know that they do a community involvement process when they make those decisions it could be financial too they do sell ads maybe they just was destroyed by not having ads I want to respect the fact that they may they may be keeping four or five districts to to make sure that there are four or five different newsletters that have ads and I can't say I blame them if that's what they're doing that's a business model so I think we have to keep that in mind too and I just don't know the answer but I don't know if any Amber anything I don't think you've said anything yet sorry you know I think from my perspective this is good conversation I think it's worth more conversation with Front Forge Forum or just suggesting to them and asking these questions of them I did receive one email which I shared with you folks of somebody who thought that this was not a good idea from the community I didn't see any other comments and certainly there is no rush or anything on this topic so no need to do anything tonight I also want to say too someone else brought this up to me when I was away sort of an outsider perspective they asked when you reach out to a company that was operating in your community if they thought they could operate better in your community and I was like yeah actually and I think that's all we're doing is having a conversation about engaging with a company we think might have a better way of doing things for and in our community I know a lot of people seem upset about what we're talking about this but I don't see it any differently than the conversation we'd have with any other company that was working with something could be improved to that particular point I think about the discussion that happened over noise and I remember the council at that time the trustees talking about talking with the haulers and engaging the haulers to try to improve the situation there I think that again I acknowledge what you've all said especially with Andrew just again reminded us that this is a private business I'm happy to acknowledge the fact that I think if I were if I were mapping this out myself yes I agree with you Raj I would not draw these lines in the same way either so I'm happy to just acknowledge that but again I want to make sure the public is aware it's not our decision and we're engaging in this conversation because a member of the public asked us to have this discussion so happy to do that on behalf of them I don't feel like any further action is needed from us but I suspect this will just be part of communication and engagement conversations we have going forward but is there so there's nothing else from the council or from staff there's one thing I do think that we can certainly ask front porch forums to be a part of the conversation and I don't think it would have hurt to have the city council say we want to be a part of this conversation we want our community to be a conversation as front porch forums mission is to help neighbors connect and build community so hopefully they would be open to engaging the community in how they engage the community I don't think it's outside of our burden to ask for that do you want to formally ask staff to reach out to them and have that opportunity? Sure. Great we can Regina do we need to we don't need a motion to ask for we could invite them in for a future meeting where it fit and have this conversation with them when this general topic comes up again or we can just reach out and try to schedule something for a meeting or a conversation where it works for them I don't know that we need a motion to have an action I don't think you need a motion either so long as you're clear that's what you would like us to do we can we can do this well you know that sounds good thank you yes Risa you'd like to join us thank you I did try and change how my name shows and Zoom isn't keeping it even though I've changed it many times I'm still Risa I just wanted to point out countryside neighborhood has 566 members that sees numbers are just a little off and also those of you who regularly read on will know that I were countryside and these my other three that I can post in I regularly post for SF's junction DEMS when there's a meeting mentioning this because there's somebody who regularly posts for SF's west so is that another is that one of those quote unquote neighborhoods that sort of spans SF's and SF's junction boundaries for SF's west used to include my neighborhood no longer does no longer does portions of Pinecrest, Susie Wilson and the name of the neighborhood off of Pinecrest that I cannot remember but it does not include the Warner Villa, Edgewood neighborhood any longer when Frontport Shorn first started and at that point my Frontport Shorn neighborhood was my very short street it was literally just our street the next street over was a different neighborhood so they regularly change this I you know in countryside and I hear you Andrew that it feels exclusionary that countryside and therapy aren't of their own I don't know how that came to shape but in countryside we regularly use it as what's happening with Jews what's happening with this what's happening with things that are truly specific to countryside which wouldn't interest people outside of countryside yeah there's no you know one neighborhood from another but there have been things in the I guess it's five corners north section that well this doesn't really apply to me because it's it's not my area other than I hear what Pleasant Street is going through so I'm doing everything I can to avoid driving on Pleasant Street while brickyard is closed but I you know I'm one of those people who wants it to stay the same and you know hopefully the front porch will do the right thing for everyone thank you can I just mention one quick thing to the point of Steve's numbers his numbers were based on households and what Reza was referring to were members so the difference there is because in countryside there are 560 members from 299 households so that's why there might be a discrepancy there thank you Bridget yeah I mean I don't have strong feelings about creating one or more front porch forum I read it every day and I'm coming at it with a little bit I'm hearing what Elaine says about how Michael would like it to be more resident you know postings rather than government or council or whatever it's interesting I live on Pleasant Street we have two communication two communication forums that are they aren't front porch forum on front porch forum it's more I don't know how to even say what it is but we have the Pleasant Street Neighborhood Facebook page and that's where you go to borrow a crib or you know something like that because it happens continuously that's another big deal so somebody says oh my god my daughter's coming with her infant we need a crib within 15 minutes that person has a crib and we have also an email the nice list which is an email communication forum so I think it's interesting though when you think about it because if he's wanting front porch forum to be that yeah I don't know how in our neighborhood that would ever change it's just like done, done, done I mean you know so I'm not sure how that would ever translate to a front porch forum I think people see front porch forum differently that's what I think I'm trying to say it's more formal-ish yeah I don't know I don't know how we could ever change the complexion of that but it would be an interesting thing to try and I think partly the reason that we have communications and maybe other I think Countryside has another way of communicating as well I think partly it's because the answer is instantaneous pretty much you know the answer to your question is quick and solid I don't know I mean to me in this extension I'm as concerned and interested in what's happening in Fairview Countryside Cascade, Braj's neighborhood Athens Drive you know you know Autumn Pond it's all the same to me and I do read the other forums but it's often so repetitive it's the same thing so I don't know how to fix that but maybe front porch forum I think it's a great idea to talk to them because they may have faced this somewhere else and have figured out a way to combine and make it more personal I guess thank you alright there's nothing else I think we'll move on Marcus you asked the minutes to be pulled out for adjustment yeah so in the minutes I believe it was line 191 if I recall my name is miss that is important well yes curious how they did it oh works it is 191 yep do we need to can I remember this we need to do I have a motion to approve the minutes as amended some second Marcus second here's Marcus Marcus now that's going to be in the minute you're a horrible person welcome all those in favor of approving the amended minutes without Andrew's commentary please say aye aye those opposed nay carries do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda so we need to do was the acorn circle that's in the consent agenda that's in the consent agenda we have a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended as amended with the acorn circle second all in and Marcus all those in favor say aye aye those opposed nay reading file Regina do you have anything tonight I don't have very much tonight just to say thank you all and Jess covering my job while I'm over here in May and I understand that the meetings have been a little tough on the brickyard project so they are doing a lot of water pumping out of there instead of being able to advance things so hopefully the weather starts cooperating soon and again just to be clear pretty small problems for us that we are dealing with as opposed to other communities so thank you thanks for joining us too on your break I don't have anything sorry Amber I didn't see the hand again it just went up I was just going to note that one of the things that's in our reading file is the delinquent tax memo and I would hope at a future meeting that we can have the policy regarding delinquent taxes I just have one thing sure last meeting it was the first meeting we met since the flood and while I know the flooding wasn't bad here in our city Regina I don't know if you could talk at all about some of the experiences from staff who have to come into the city who may not live here and just some of the difficulty they may have faced so Jamie took an ATV through the woods because he couldn't get to I believe it was his father's house to get another vehicle to then drive that so he could be here at work so pretty phenomenal dedication pretty awesome Jamie thank you alright there's nothing else we'll be back all second thank you bye forever be banished thank you very much thank you all try not to bother you much more