Excellent. So we're going to call this meeting to order. And we will, we have a quorum. Are there any changes to the agenda? Oh, exciting. So do we have anybody wishing to speak on anything that is not on the agenda? I don't see any hands or anything so we can move on. So we're going to move on to our staff introductions. We're going to have Taylor and Darren talk today. So shall we go with Taylor first? Is he here? Yeah. Unfortunately.  Not, not nothing. Health concerning. We're going to have to move on to our staff. We're going to have to move on to our staff. We're going to have to move on to our staff. So Darren, what did you start off? And maybe Taylor will join us, but we may have to push off Taylor to the next month. Sure. Hi, everybody. I know I've met some of you. I know some of you already. So it's nice to see everybody in one place. My name is Darren Shibbler. I joined CCRPC back in November, and I was in California. I was in California doing GIS work primarily with Melanie and a little bit with Pam. So I, my background is in natural resources. I went to UVM from 2010 to 2014. Originally from California. So it was a bit of a, I guess a culture shock, but not really coming to Vermont. And from there, I had a few jobs in more of the natural resources field, through the Essex conservation committee, which then led to the town planner job, partly through CCRPC, and then eventually led me back here. So in most of my time as a planner, I've worked as the town planner for Essex, doing lots of different things, mostly development review, but trying to get some time to work on housing needs assessments, urban and tree maintenance and urban forestry, other conservation work, what else, working on the enhanced energy plan. A lot of time spent on merger in the sense of, working on joint efforts that still were worthwhile, regardless of the outcome of that. So then eventually got back here to CCRPC because I really enjoy the people. I really enjoy working at this sort of regional level to sort of look at things from a bigger perspective and feeling like I'm making a big difference. So good to see you all and happy to take questions. Well, nice to meet you. This is my first time connecting. Yes, likewise. I had a question. Sure. Can you give us a project that you're working on right now, Darren, for instance, and what might be taking up most of your time? Yes. What I've been working on mostly since I started is housing needs assessments. We are pretty close to done with one for Williston, and then I'm also working on one for Heinsberg, mostly routine updates, but also all important to sort of talk about housing in the context of the moment and how dire everything is. But also there's a lot of really good work happening in both those municipalities, really strong efforts to meet the need. I caught Williston. I'm afraid I dropped the second city town. Heinsberg. Heinsberg, okay. And when you do the housing needs assessment, do you look at total build-out versus what you have existing right now? How do you go after that? How do you come up with numbers? Yeah, it's not exactly a build-out analysis. That's a whole other can of worms, but we are looking a little bit at sort of what exists today, the general trend of what we expect in the future, general sense of demand, and sort of gives a scale of like, are we talking, do we need tens of units or hundreds of units or thousands of units to meet demand? But it's also looking at affordability in the sense of, are you meeting the income thresholds for people? Are you folks stuck out at the bottom? Are you having enough renter housing versus owner housing and the size, the number of bedrooms, the context, the support of services? It's a whole comprehensive look at everything. We haven't talked about specific targets for any municipality quite yet. Although, Williston kind of wanted to go in that direction trying to sort of put some numbers to it as they have their growth management system that they are very prescriptive about. Well, that sounds interesting. So it's a completely separate animal from, say, Heinsberg with their water issue or sewer issue in their core and trying to, that's a build out. Is that correct? And so will you come up with some bullet points for the Planning Commission and or DRB there, the zoning board that they can act upon? So the good news for Heinsberg is that they're kind of already doing a lot of what they should be doing, which is compact growth, planning, water waste, water funding and making sure that they have an inclusionary zoning provision. So some of that's affordable. They're doing a lot of great partnerships with non-profits like Shampoo and Housing Trust and Cathedral Square. So still working on what else they could be doing, but yeah, generally looking at a lot more of the same. It's the same story everywhere. Thank you. Thank you. Those are great questions. Why do a lot of communities? Any other questions? Seeing none. Thank you very much, Darren. And welcome to the CCRPC, then. Next is the... Catherine, I'm sorry, Taylor's here now. Oh, Taylor's here. Great. Sorry, folks. I wasn't here. I didn't see him come in. Yeah. I wasn't here. My wife got stuck in a car wash. The car died with my two under five children in the back. So I had to go deal with that. Deal with that. In a car wash. In a car wash. With a Nissan Leaf, a little electric car, which is only two years old. So it's now at the shop. We'll figure out what's wrong. But yeah, sorry. I was late because of that. Well, with little kids, you got to do things fast. Got to do things fast.  So I'm Taylor Newton. I'm the planning program manager here. Took over for Regina in September. Prior to that, I was senior planner here for a few years. I think I am the only staff member who grew up in Chittenden County. I grew up in Colchester. Jackie Murphy is not here, but I grew up with Jackie's daughters. And Jackie actually was the admissions counselor at St. Michael's College that let me in, which thanks Jackie. So I went to St. Mike's. I got a master's degree at University of Iowa in urban regional planning after that. I worked for a time as an AmeriCorps VISTA member at the city of Montpelier Planning Department. Worked a little bit for VTrans, doing some temp work, some field work for them. And then I worked in the town of Milton for three years as zoning administrator, town planner. I was also a health officer, serve officer, you know, one coordinator. Really great experience working in Milton. Milton is the place where a lot of planners go and train up. Thank you. Chuck, it was great. I really enjoyed working up in Milton. Sorry, I didn't get to work with you. You might soon, I'm working on a project there this next year, so we can talk about that. Super. I worked at Northwest Regional Planning Commission after that for six years as a planner, senior planner. So when I moved to CCRBC, it was pretty much the same job just in a more urban context. In terms of a project I'm working on, Chris, I, you know, I've been working on the SEDS, which we'll talk about tonight. You know, as a manager, I'm learning a lot about how the UPWP and budget are coming together. So that's been a big learning curve for me over the last couple of months. And I'm still keeping my fingers in land use planning a bit. The Milton project I'll be working on actually doing RFP right now for Milton to select a consultant for a downtown core charrette project that we'll be doing. It's hopefully starting this summer in the next fall to do a master plan essentially for the downtown core. And that'll lead into hopefully a zoning project after that. So yeah, I dabble mostly in land use and energy planning but can also work on a whole bunch of other issues. So any questions for me? Well, this is interesting. Any questions? Okay. Well, thank you, Taylor. We'll get you later then I guess. I didn't wanna let him off the hook even though. Oh, okay, Chris. How valuable do you find the charrette's, Taylor? In other words, it seems like part of the public participation process. But in the long run, are you really just getting a small group of folks visioning, going at maps with Sharpies and having pie in the sky approaches to things or is it more directed?  I don't think so. I've never let a charrette. I'm typically the staff person who's managing the consultant who's doing the charrette. And so I might be helping them with some sort of like subgroups or helping with engagement in some way. But I find the engagement or the charrette process really important, Chris, because I think it's a good way to break the public down into really small groups and have the public actually talk to themselves and work out ideas amongst themselves. I think it's a good way to get a lot of ideas very quickly. I think that really worked really well in Williston during TAF Corners Form-Based Code Project, for instance. And that was digital too. That wasn't even in person. I like that charrettes are really intensive or a very short window. So there isn't a lot of time to overthink. It's a lot of time to just talk to people and mostly listen to people and gather ideas from a really broad set of folks. Obviously, how many folks show up at the table is really contingent upon how much time you prep and what sort of outreach you're doing. And I think CCRPC can always help with that, but it's always great to work with the municipality and municipal staff that are really good at that and know who to talk to and what sort of groups that typically are at the table so we can make sure that we get them to the table during the charrette process. Great, thank you, because I think it's important when we're talking about our efforts with equity in trying to get representation from the people who can perhaps not have been at the table. And I'm hopeful that the end result of a charrette isn't necessarily written in concrete as I often imagine it is. And I think the people at the charrette imagine it is. So I don't know the answer to that, but thank you. Yeah, it is true about sometimes the charrettes can be a lot of pie in the sky and people really buy into an idea, but then it's really difficult to make it happen as we're finding with the Riverside. Number four is the consent agenda, the tip amendment, which was in your packet. Do we have a motion to accept the consent tip amendment? Tip amendment. This is Andy, move to approve. We have a second. I'll second, Mike. Thank you. Let's see, all those in favor, raise your hands. Alrighty, looks like the motion passes. Any abstentions? Any nays? All right, the motion is approved. Now, next is the minutes for the tip amendment that was done via email. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I missed the motion and the approval on that. Previous. Andy moved and Benjamin seconded. Thank you. Next, then would be the minutes of February 8th, which was the online. I move approval with Catherine's edits. Thank you. We have a second. That's Jeff. Yeah, I'll second that. Chris. Are there any changes to the minutes? If not, everybody raise your hands to accept the minutes. And it certainly looks good. Any abstentions? Any nays? So you've got it all. Amy. All right. Next is the minutes of January 18th, 2023. Do we have a motion to accept those? Point of information. I thought we just did that. No, that's that we had the minutes. There were minutes from the tip amendment. That was all done online so that, you know, that there's a record that we had voted on approving that one tip. By a consent agenda. And then January 18th was number six on the agenda. This is Garrett. I need to remove my vote since that was purely MPO. Oh, that's true. Sorry. Sorry, Garrett. I do have a question. I request perhaps for a clarification on the minutes for. For January. For January. For January. Okay. Yeah. So on page six. It's item number eight. Which was the. Had to do with the active transportation plan approval. But it's on page six. Lines 39 through 48. Specifically line 43. It meant it's, it was about a point that I believe Brad brought up about from under hill. Brought up about the access or use. Condition of rep. Repa trail. It's right on the border from. It's the last 238 feet of rep a road becomes rep a trail to the boundary with Westford, a town line with Westford and under hill, and then it becomes good rich trail. It's the. Clarification I'd like to make it reads. That I stated this is a town trail for Westford and there's access, although he. Agreed with Brad, very rugged. That's all fine. It's the. Westford is interested in this as well for sure, but the select board has a court order for access. It's rather that. That there is a final court order. Requiring the towns of under hill in Westford. To allow access. To property owners for all uses and that those rights run with the land for their error successors and signs. It's a little technical, but it's after years of involvement in hashing things out. So it just to make sure that it's clear. It's not just that the town has a court order. It's actually that the towns under hill and Westford are subject to. A court order, a stipulated court order, which is a final judgment. Thank you, Ben. Ben, can you email me that? And I will get that in the final. I would love to. Thank you very much. That's, that's a real. Other than my usual little technical kind of things. That's a real. Possibly. You couldn't possibly know about all the history. There's technical. Yeah. Thank you so much. Did we have a second on that? I don't have a motion. We, we, we haven't had a motion yet.  He thought he was the other one. Yes. Jeff, did you not motion here on the second round of minutes? I did not. You did not. That's what I thought. Yeah. No one has moved yet. But I will move it if you want me to. I don't. I will move approval of the. January 18, 20, 23 CCRPC minutes with Catherine's edits. And Benjamin's augmentation. Thank you. You do one second. Chris. I'll second that. Are there any other comments, questions? Things like that on it.  I mean, it's really, as I said, very technical. Page four. Line. 15. The, it talks about the federal raise grant. And then we'll move on to the second round of minutes. I'll second that. Are there any other comments, questions? Things like that on it. It talks about the federal raise grant that, that one is not in capitals where the other one is. So just be to be consistent. Like I said, very technical. Not, not as important as a real change of things. So are there any other changes? Comments. Things. Well, it's then. Everyone who wants to approve the minutes. With edits. Raise your hand. All right. Got that Amy. Are there any abstentions? No. Garrett. Get that just to test you, Madam chair. Yeah. Sometimes I don't remember. Even after two years of doing this. All righty. Thank you for the vote. Moving on. We're going to. Spend time with the West central Vermont. Comprehensive. Yeah. Economic development. Strategy or, or a sense of information. So. I guess Taylor goes to you. It does. Let me see if I can share my screen. One second. All right. So tonight we're going to. We're going to talk about. Fully debrief the West central Vermont sets project. And at the end of this presentation, I'll ask for a motion on resolution to adopt the West central Vermont sets. So we'll talk about what the partnership is who the sets partners are. We'll talk about the actual final sets itself in terms of key findings and. Our goals and actions that come out of that plan. And then again, we'll talk about the resolution. And then we'll talk about what the partnership is. And then we'll talk about what the partnership is. And then again, we'll talk about what the partnership is and the geography that typically works together. It's made out of four sub regions. Addison County, central Vermont, Chittin County, and Rutland County, 90 municipalities, about half the state's population. In the past, Chittin County has adopted its own sets. But this time around, we were encouraged by EDA to work with the three other sub regions to adopt a sets together. And economic development district can only be created if there's more than one sub region. Involved. Or that has adopted the sets. And so we decided to pursue this alternative path. Compared to what we've done in the past. And I think it's. Resulted in a pretty good product. Work to date. We did a lot of engagement with the course of two plus years of writing this, writing the sets. We held some public workshops. We held some focus groups with. Specific communities. Most notably members of the BIPOC business community. Did that in cooperation with Vermont professionals of color network. Notably this past summer. We did an employer survey using. The networks available to us through our regional development corporation partners. Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation being our partner here in Chittin County. We also did work to create an economic profile for the region. That's one of the appendices of the sets. And that is just a full data dump of. Demographic information. Information related to. Jobs. Related to wages. Related to home ownership. Related to childcare. It's a hundred plus page document. And we did it in the beginning of this process to really understand the context, the economic context of the region. We're also required by EDA. Within the. Sets to do a traditional swap. Analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. And we also decided to do a sore, which is strengths opportunities, aspirations and results. And that really helped us. Develop kind of data indicators, which we'll talk about in a little bit. Within the sets itself measures by which we can, we can measure how successful or unsuccessful we are being in terms of economic development here in West Central Vermont. We developed a draft sets that was available back in June. It made some revisions. Had a second draft available. In November. During the course of this project, we also have been working on bylaws. In case the partners decided to be an economic development district. So it's another deliverable that'll be forthcoming that you guys will see. If we pursue this option later this summer and next fall. And of course we completed a final sets on February 1st. Key findings. I think you guys already reviewed these key findings with Regina back in July. So I'll move relatively quickly. But, you know, as you can imagine looking at that map, you know, West Central Vermont. And I think that's one of the things that's really important. Is kind of the economic heart of the state. With Chittin County really being the center of, of economic activity and population and population growth. I believe not only half the population, but I believe well over half of the state GDP within our geography. It is also the most diverse part of, of Vermont. And in terms of population growth. And then this geography between the 2010 and 2020 census. This region has been greatly impacted as the rest of the country by COVID response. You know, we couldn't break down amount of money coming into this geography versus the rest of the state. But, you know, 11.3 billion dollars federal assistance into the state in response to COVID between 2020 and 2022. Economic stability is challenged by the labor shortage that we all know exists, you know, labor force participation in the state. We couldn't break that down into the, our geography, but we know that labor force participation is at its lowest rate in the past 40 years, around 60%. We know that this region through some work we did with the UVM office for engagement, looking at NAICS code information. We know that our region has very high location quotients for very specific value added agricultural products. And very niche manufacturing. So we identify that as, you know, two areas of the economy we can build upon in the future. We know that our region is impacted by economic inequity like the rest of the state and the rest of the country, but particularly the home ownership gap between white residents and BIPOC residents in our geography is greater than that of the country. Same with educational attainment and income. And there remains a gender wage gap. And really the key that we identified in terms of the focus of our SEDs and their implementing are essentially should be on infrastructure. And specifically on infrastructure and areas planned for growth. And, you know, sort of those things that are peripheral to more traditional water wastewater infrastructure, which is, you know, thinking about housing and essential services like childcare is infrastructure. Any questions on key findings before we move on to goals? Okay, we've got six, six main goals. I want to make sure six goals, not five. We had five for a long time. The first goal really is about attracting new workers and expanding the labor force here within the state. And the main focus of that being housing and childcare. And really providing security for folks in those two arenas for folks to be able to re enter the workforce. And also some actions related to marketing folks from out of state to come to the region. Which is understandably difficult to do when we have a housing crisis. Our second goal was focused on equity. A lot of the actions under that equity goal come from consulting with our EAC and working with Vermont professors of color network who reviewed our SEDs. You know, actions we have is really focused on making sure that we continue engagement with these communities and underrepresented folks as we implement the SEDs. We need to do continual engagement over the next five year period while the SEDs is valid. And that we continue to partner with organizations that operate in this space to make sure that we're fulfilling the needs of all underrepresented communities. And our focus here was really on women-owned businesses and BIPOC-owned businesses. We also identified that we should have some sort of prioritization for trying to fund projects that address equity if we seek any EDA funding in the future. And that we need better data about who we're serving when we do access grant funding and potentially sub-grant funds to businesses. Business development and job creation was also very important. Like most SEDs, we identify entrepreneurship as something we need to support. And the RDCs, our RDC partners were also very much focused on this idea of economic gardening. From their perspective, the ideas of landing a big IBM business are gone. And that we should really focus our efforts and our time and energy on supporting those businesses that are here and helping those businesses grow. And access to capital remains something that a lot of businesses in that business survey and a special lot of BIPOC businesses we engage with remain a challenge. So trying to lower barriers to access capital. Workforce development, I'll skip over that really quickly. I don't know if that's good news enough, but that employer retention were identified as really important goals. Infrastructure resilience, specific actions related to the transportation network, about utilities and about the need for electrification and how that's going to impact our transmission and our distribution grid. And then a lot of focus, particularly with our more world partners about trying to find uses for under infrastructure. And then a lot of focus. And then a lot of focus since merger. This could be, you know, older historic buildings that just haven't received the upgrades or necessary tension the past few years and trying to recharge and revitalize those sites to strengthen the local economy. Quality of life goals mostly related to land use and land use planning and making sure that we grow in areas plan for growth. We have economic development in those areas. We have agriculture, tourism, forestry. Those very Fremonti things that we, that are important to all of us. Any questions on goals and actions? So I am going to ask you to adopt the resolution, but if you are interested in looking at the site itself, it is located at west central Vermont, west central VT.org. In terms of next steps, all the partners, so all eight partners, the regional planning commissions and operations are considering adoption of this document. Most of our partners have already adopted. Once everyone has adopted, we'll submit the SEDS to EDA for approval. I'm fairly confident that we're going to be in a place where we'll be able to receive approval. Jeff, you're clapping or do you have a question? That's a question for when you're done. Okay. We'll close out the grant this summer. And then we'll discuss with our partners and you folks about the potential for creating an economic development district through an MOU and then applying to EDA to get that EDD approved and we can talk more about that in a second if you want. We're going to talk about that on this slide. So an economic development district. All other parts of Vermont are covered by one except for this four county region and the two counties down south, which have submitted an application that hasn't been approved yet. But the idea behind creating an EDD is a few things. One is just continual collaboration with our partners that we've worked on the SEDS with. And the second thing is really related to funding. This EDD could be an entity that could draw down specific EDA funds and it may be easier for the EDD to do that than some of our partners in terms of their ability to do that. And these three bullets, planning, technical assistance, public works, disaster supplemental are just some examples of different EDA grant programs that are available that this EDD could apply for. So that's what I have for you this evening. Jeff, you have a question. Yeah, actually it's two. The first one is why didn't they encourage us to have Franklin County in the West Central Sands? They're already in one and they're kind of the leader of the other EDD. Sorry. So yeah, that just makes no economic sense because of the commuter relationships between Chittenden County as an employment center and where people live. And we have, I doubt we have any relationship with Orange County or, you know, or even Rutland County. So it's disappointing that they encouraged us to do this, but that's just so we can compete for federal funds. Yeah, Jeff, I did explore that years ago with EDA and frankly with Northwest RPC also, you know, to see like, but they were part of that district and they didn't want to break it up. So yeah, it's a victim of history there. Yeah. Then secondly, and I know I just read this a month ago, Taylor, I just can't remember what's the employment concept that you used for looking at the job changes in the location quotients. We looked at NAICS codes. No, no, the employment, employment survey, there's six of them. Is it the American community survey you looked at for employment or was it the jobs by place of work from the Labor Department of Labor. So, so in terms of number of jobs per sector. Yes. ACS. You know, that's employment by where the people live, not by where the jobs are. I'm going to go back to the economic profile and check Jeff. Yeah, I just. And so my second question is moved because I was going to tell you that the Labor Department just updated revenge mark all their jobs by place of work survey. And that doesn't obviously apply to ACS. Because that's a survey of employed residents, not the number of jobs. So those people can hold multiple jobs and it's by where they live. So somebody could be in Rutland County and hold the job in Rutland County and they'd be counted as employed in Rutland County. Yep. Let me double check on that because I know we looked at LEH data and we looked at commute patterns, which, you know, there you can look at either place of employment or place of residence. So I might be misspeaking because it's been two years since I looked at that. Yeah, I think I looked at it a month ago and I think it was ACS data. But you lose the whole commuter dynamic. When you look at people who hold jobs by where they live, you don't really marry it very well with the economy. So your location quotients are not real location quotients because location quotients are jobs by place of work, not by employed residents generally. But that's okay. It's a, you know, it'll, we're just being able to step up to the plate to, to compete for federal funds with this. And there's no, we already established, there's no economic sense to it because Franklin County, the county had been broken up. But the interesting thing is, and for those of you that are, aren't economists, the way economists know it's spring, it's not that the days are getting longer and the temperatures are rising. It's that the labor department, Rebenchmarks the employment date. And the real interesting thing that happened in this Rebenchmarking because they're starting to put the 2000 census into the employment, the employment surveys for the household side. And they're updating, they've been updating all the data. Most of the updates. Because they've discovered that there's more jobs in the Vermont economy than they were counting over the last couple of years since the COVID pandemic has happened outside of Chittenden County, which I thought was fascinating. More than 95% of the changes. All the upward changes have happened outside of our county. So that hasn't always been the case. And we've been running around talking about how we have two Vermont's Chittenden County and then everything outside of Chittenden County and outside of Chittenden County. Chittenden County hasn't even come back to 19, 2005 levels. So, but there was a little bit more activity outside Chittenden County than they originally counted when they updated the employment by place of work or the jobs by place of work. That's all. Bridging that Chittenden County versus the rest of the state divide was a challenge during this project, I think. Well, I mean, it's always Chittenden County versus the rest of the state. And everybody's always envious of Chittenden County. And now with the employment re-benchmarking, they don't have to be. Dan. Yes. Regarding Jeff's comment about employment. As to whether you're working from home or at the. Employers facility. With the advent of online people working remotely. How does that work? I'm just thinking. There are multiple companies outside the state. People work within the state. How's that play into the numbers? Actually, Dan, I didn't say that it was related to remote working. It's where the jobs are counted. Right. Okay. Regardless of where the person who's holding the job lives. So in a remote working situation. If you're counting jobs by place of work. Even if that person lives in California, the job is counted at the place of employment. If it's in Vermont. And that's where everything gets confusing. Because if you're doing an analysis based on employed people by where they live, you lose where the job is located. And that doesn't always, that isn't always the most helpful thing. For economic development efforts, you really want to know where the jobs are located and where the people who hold the jobs are located. That's why it's so important to have Franklin County with Chittenden County because so many people who hold jobs in Chittenden County live in Franklin County because of the housing issues and the cost issues. That we have. So there's nothing really economic about SEDS. It's all about checking all the boxes so you can compete for federal funds to build wastewater treatment plants and roads and things like that. I agree with you. I agree with you on that.  There are a ton of people that come across that ferry every day to work in Chittenden County. Yeah, but not as many as you would think, Dan. Well, there used to be, I guess. Well, the lake is a pretty significant barrier. From Point Bridge, there are a lot of people coming over to Addison County from New York work in there. There are, but it doesn't bear any semblance to the over 10,000 people that come from Franklin County into Chittenden County to work. I'm sure it's still significant though. I can ballpark it. I think it's about a third of Franklin County workers. I believe come to Chittenden County for work. Huge. Are there any other questions for Taylor before we move to the resolution? Jeff, that's noted for next SEDS. That data point. I bet you don't hear anything back from even the EDA on it because they don't know the difference. Okay. Shall I read the resolution or are you happy just having. To vote on it. Because it was in your packet. No need. I'll defer to past practice. I don't remember either. So. So anyway. We need to approve this resolution. I'd move approval and that the chair should fix our name to this resolution. Thank you. All those in favor, raise your hands. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any abstentions or. Nose. Okay, we're good. Thank you very much. The result. We've adopted the West central. We've adopted the West central. We've adopted the West central. We've adopted the West central. From a comprehensive economic development strategy. Thank you. Moving on. We have. The appointment of the energy subcommittee to long range planning committee. And technically. You know, we can ask questions about it, or you can make comments, but in the end. It's the chair's job to. So we have the. We have the chair's job to long range planning committee. And there were. 10 names submitted. I had actually put my name in there as well because I wasn't, because Melanie wasn't sure she was going to have enough, but fortunately there were 10 and they only need seven. So I'm not there. And on what. Who is going to be appointed is Jeff forward from Richmond. He was on the past. He was on the original energy subcommittee member. Jim Donovan of Sherlock. Was. Also post. Past energy subcommittee member. And then we have some new ones. Daniel. Parkans from Essex. Henry bonger. Bunges. Sorry. From Milton. And Dwight DeCoster from under hill. And Kevin. Thorley from Williston. And white's a great one to be on because he's impacted by. The labor shortages and everything else. Cause he's director of CV OEO. And doing all kinds of weatherization for homes. And so I, the. The. Board chair. I'd move approval of the slate is presented. Thank you. Jeff. Garrett seconded it. All those in favor will just raise your hands. In support of it. Thank you very much. We now have a new. End of. Next. Oh, no wonder I couldn't read. The long glasses on. I had the long glasses, not the short glasses. Next is the. Charge the board development committee. How exciting for the FY 24 nominations. And Michael Brian is chair of that. And so we have sent on to Mike that he. Will. Work to get nominations for next year's. Officers for the RPC. And. Just to remind chair. And Mike. Is it. Is Andy Montreal now off this committee? Yes. Bummer. The torture ends. Yeah. Because I will be chair and then it's you. I, and I think Dan signed up for it. Yeah. Catherine. Yeah. Andy did volunteer at the September meeting to join. Rejoin the committee. So he's also, he's the fifth member of the committee. So yeah. And Dan had also stepped up, didn't he? I thought I'd never Dan. Yes. You're correct. Yeah. It's Mike. Dan. You Catherine. Jeff and Andy. Module. Yeah, I've been there forever. Just like. It just feels that way. All right. Next is our. Andy. We're still hot. We're still hot. We're still hot. We're still hot. We're still hot. We're still hot. We're still hot. We're still hot. We're still hot. We're still hot. All right. Next is our Andy. Andy, we're still hoping that. I shouldn't say we're hoping. Just stay on board. So if, if Catherine decides to walk away, I'll walk away through. You can be the immediate past chair again. There's always a good thing. I can be the immediate past chair. I mean, all kidding aside, this is a very important committee because this is the farm team. For the board and for the officers. Okay. So this is. We joke about it folks, but it's not a laughing matter. This is for the leadership. For this committee. For this organization. So we take it very seriously. And we also talk about what, what we need to do in the future for training and education. For new and old members. Although we love torturing Andy. Oh, yes. Andy just anyways, like the ever, ever ready bunny. He just kept coming back. Andy. I am in the car. Okay. But I'm not driving. Good for you. That's right. That's terrific. So we have the equity update on the agenda now. Yeah. And apologies from Ann Nelson. She is not feeling well this evening. So I'm going to try to pick up. Her report and an apologies to you. Cause I think I have this report and then I have my report. So. I'm apologizing to you in advance of how long I'm going to be talking to you. So equity update. Just some notes from Ann Nelson. She's been working on kind of operationalizing the equity advisory committee. They've had the first couple of meetings and they're meeting on the fourth Wednesday of every month.  Meeting schedule for them. That's going well. So we're going to have a meeting. We're going to have a proposed project in the UPWP. We'll talk more about that next month. When you look at the draft UPWP. There's some work groups starting on very specific pieces. Of our work there. We're going to do in a network map. And Nelson has a couple of interns on board to help with a community engagement guide and also a residence guide. And we're going to do that. We're going to do that. And this is probably the most, maybe the most important bullet point here is she is. Trying to reach out and make contact with individuals in each municipality. That are maybe working on equity or just to get a better sense of what's happening with all the towns. And I think that was an important part for us to figure out how to be most helpful. To the municipalities, which we talked about before. And then there's some project level work. Some of those projects developed. For example, for the new ski walk, walk bike master plan, the battery street corridor study, South parole, and the climate action plan where she's engaging there to help with some equity perspective on those projects. I don't know if that raises any questions for anyone. I can do my best to answer. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much for the update. Now we go to the chair and executive directors. All right. Annual meeting. We talked about this at the executive committee. And decided that it would be in person again. So M is in the process of finding a spot. And we're kind of, I don't know, we've kind of fallen into a little bit of pattern of. Kind of go urban and then rural. So last year we did. So we're looking at some rural sites. So. Just stay tuned. We'll let everybody know as soon as we land on. The location. But if you want to make a note in your calendar, is it June 21st, Emma? Yes. Yeah. June 21st. That evening. Yeah. We typically start a little bit earlier, maybe around five 30. So if you want to kind of. Reserve that evening in your calendar. Now that would be great. Any questions on that? Do we get to vote? Um, Like McQuan. You may not have a location. Yes. Oh. That. I'm sure it's already booked. I'm sorry. I'm sure it's already booked. Well, um, it, there's, there's kind of a lot of, you know, are they available that night? What the cost is and things like that. So that's what Emma's working on. I'm sure the cost is exorbitant, but it's lovely. It's a lot for there for that. I'm sure it is. I just thought, you know, coming out of the pandemic, we might have three years worth of backstop to buttress us. It's about a three quarter mile drive for me. So I'll vote for it. Let's just go to catamount again. Then we can play golf too. We could do that. It's perfectly fine. It's the longest day of the year. We don't want to be inside. That's true. That's true. Especially it was nice. Oh, thank you. Starting to come out. To it. Yeah. So anyway, stay tuned for that. She's, uh, she's a master at figuring it out. So. Yeah. Thank you, Emma, for that work. The second quarter financial report. I don't know how will you were able to see the giant spreadsheet. In your packet. I'm hoping you were able to zoom in and blow it up. But. We really just wanted to have that available to you. And let us know if you have any questions. I'll. Sorry. I'm scrolling to the bottom. It's good. It's good. Yeah. We're pretty much at a balanced budget place right now. And so we're, we're, you'll see the bottom line. If you look at row one 12. You'll see zero dollars. Is where we are in terms of net position right now. But we usually have a better second half of the year than we do the first half. Just because there's fewer vacations and holidays in this, this half of the year. So. Any questions. And I'm not going to go row by row unless you ask me to, but any questions at the budget report raises for you. Or things that you might want to know more about. I don't see any. Hands raised. Okay. UPWP. We're on track. The UPWP committee is going to have their third and hopefully final meeting on the FY. 24 draft work program at the. Is it March 30th, Marshall? Or 29th. We did change it. Let me just double check what that date was. Yeah. It's not necessarily board, but they're meeting the last week of March. The 29th. 29th. Thanks. And so there should be a draft EPWP, you know, getting to the executive committee in April and we'll review it at the board meeting also. So. You know, we've had a good amount of. Transportation planning funds, the PEA. Funds have been increasing with the infrastructure bill over the last couple of years. So we're in decent shape. But there's also, it means there's. More money. That also means there's more work. We're still digesting. We're trying to confirm that we can actually handle all of the work as a staff. So we've had a good amount of. Transportation planning funds, the PLMTO funds. Have been increasing with the infrastructure bill over the last couple of years. We've had a good amount of work as a staff. So we just went through an exercise in the last few days of. Like. Entering all of our hours for the whole year and seeing how it plays out. We'll know a lot more about how it plays out next week. So stay tuned. And then legislative update. There's. A lot of things going on in Montpelier. I will tell you my attention has been pretty focused on two. Major things for RPCs. And so, and I hate to be crass, but one of them is just about our funding. So, you know, there is still conversations in different committee rooms and different bills about RPCs helping with this and helping with that. You know, natural resources, energy, equity.  And so we do have a request into the house appropriations committee to further increase our regional planning funds. So I'll let you know, you know, how that goes next month in the house. I think. They're probably going to be voting on it in the next week or two. And then we'll see what the Senate thinks later, what the other things will be. We'll be doing some RPC money thing. The other big bill that we've been tracking and had more engagement with is S 100. The housing bill that Senator Rahm hidden's, Hiddensdale worked on and. That guy voted out of Senate economic development of housing. No. Two weeks ago, maybe no. It's just got voted out of Senate natural resources today. There are some changes that that committee made. And I'm still hopeful that something happens to address the housing crisis. Not sure if it's all the right pieces yet, but please let me know if you have any particular thoughts. I know VLCT just sent out a press release pretty unhappy with the changes that the natural resources made today in the Senate. And so that's not going to make crossover then. It's, it's I think it's kind of getting some special dispensation Jeff, just because everybody attacks the big bill or something like that. Okay. It's going to be its own bill but there's such a big priority. I think they've said okay you can get another week or something. There's also a lot of money attached to it. A lot of policy changes around permitting more focused on the municipal side of permitting in this bill. And there's a bit a lot of discussion in the legislature about waiting for some active 50 studies to get done that are supposed to get done this December. They tackle more substantive active 50 changes in the 24 session. So, anyway, that's a quick update. I don't know if there raised any questions or people have comments on other things that maybe I should be paying closer attention to that I'm not. Oh, you guys are really being nice tonight. Thank you. No questions. If there are, and you've gone through the whole list of executive directors update so we're going to number 12 which is the standard the committee and liaison activities reports are either my link, or in your packet however you choose to do so, which brings us to the end. Unless there's something somebody wants to talk about. I move. I move we adjourn. I second that. Well, all those in favor say aye, or the extra raise your hands. I think the motion passed. Amy that was me making the motion in case you didn't remember. You can pick between I think. Oh, there is a question at the moment. You're muted miles. Yeah, my hand was up because I didn't I was on a question. Oh, okay. That's a long adjournment. I got to pay attention to focus on which, which is which. Thank you very much all.


And now, great moments in unintended consequences. Part one, the yacht plot. The year, 1990. The problem? A national debt that had exploded. The solution? A 10% luxury tax on expensive boats. Sounds like a great idea, with the best of intentions. What could possibly go wrong? It turns out that while wealthy people buy yachts, it's usually middle-income people who make them. This giant middle finger of a tax plan and cut sales of luxury boats by 70% sent companies overseas or into Chapter 11 destroyed hundreds of thousands of middle-class jobs and resulted in a net loss in tax revenue. Turns out, it was all for yacht. Part two, who's hungry Mao? The year is 1958. The problem? Birds eating too much grain in China. The solution? Chairman Mao labels the Eurasian sparrow as the capitalist enemy of the state, kicking off a nationwide campaign to eradicate the species. Sounds like an idea, with the best of intentions. What could possibly go wrong? It turns out, sparrows also eat insects, and insects eat a lot more grain than sparrows do. A hundred million dead birds later, grain yields plummeted in China, resulting in massive famine, starvation, and deaths estimated between 15 and 45 million people. On the bright side, at least China learned its lesson about rounding up unwanted population. Part three, vaccination proclamations. The year 2021. The problem? Effective distribution for a vaccine with a short shelf life. New York's solution? Create a massively detailed yet questionable priority schedule, then mandate appointments, pushing applicants, including the elderly, toward a buggy website to answer lengthy questionnaires and upload multiple attachments. When that slows things down, find distribution centers for giving up out-to-expire doses to non-priority patients. When they throw expired doses away, find them for not using their entire supply fast enough. Also, remove the priority status of frontline workers who don't get it early enough, and threaten to strip medical licenses and future vaccine delivery for those who don't comply with all the rules created and changed on a daily basis. Sounds like...  Just don't forget to cover up nursing home deaths and blame the federal government when you collect your M.A. Great moments and unintended consequences. Good intentions, bad results.