Well, John's here. So everyone that we know is planning to be here is here. So let's go ahead and call the meeting to order. They call it order this April 11 meeting of the popular planning commission. First, we have to approve the agenda. So if we can get a motion to approve the agenda. Anybody moved. Okay. Motion from John. We have a second. Second. Second from Jeff. Okay, those in favor of approving the agenda say aye. Any opposed. Okay. I think that. Aaron is not here yet. So that was like a four O vote for the record. He's just, he signed into the meeting, but. Has to be away for the beginning. And Gabe and Ari on or both out tonight. So this meeting is just a big update session. The next item on the agenda is comments from the chair. So. My comments are that tonight's, tonight's for updating and maybe preparing for what we're going to do in the short term, there's a few things that have come up. And along with the things that have come up. We're going to talk about. Mike having a really busy time right now. So some of the prep work going toward the city plan is going to probably be slowed down. So maybe we can turn our focus. In the short term on some of these other items.  We're going to talk later about the city council. Meeting that happened a few weeks ago at this point. And I'll have some, Michael have an update and then I'll have some, like follow-up info and some questions for the planning commission regarding what we want to do. About that later. So I'm going to save what I had to say about that. But there's some other things. One thing is that we've gotten a request from the mayor. I just emailed everyone this. So I'm going to send a message from Anne of that with an attachment from. A community attorney named Diane Sherman, who is who would ask the city council to look at. This question of whether the DRB should be given the authority to possibly deny a permit based on the reputation of the history of the applicant. It's been some things in Vermont. There's a seven, it basically was seven days story that exposed one particular business that seemed to be a bad actor. In a lot of ways, who does development work. And there's interest in not letting people are trying to permit people from like that, doing things about failure. Obviously this like legally is extremely thorny of an issue. This is literally discrimination, what they're asking us to do. And discrimination is sometimes okay, but. It's definitely territory that we have to try lightly with. So everyone should just take a look at. The email I sent because you'll see Diane's request there. She at least points out a few specific things that we can have the DRB consider. I think step, like since Anne's asked us to do this, we've got to do something about it. So we should have a discussion. I think we should have DRB come in and give their opinion before we do really much of anything. And I think we should do some additional like reading up and research ourselves at this point, which is, you know, extremely early on my inclination is to try to avoid any legal violations, to avoid any legal violations. So I think that's something that we should do. I think we should do something else by just give, if we're going to do anything, I would be in favor of something along the line. So giving the DRB discretion to. Require a bunch of additional information when it comes to compliance issues from an applicant. So if they're not, if the DRB just in its own discretion.  If the applicant is shady, you then ask for more information because that would look like, I don't know, something more legally troublesome. But if it's just in their discretion for whatever reason they want, they can adapt, ask for a bunch of additional information from an applicant. That gets at this without with, while also sidestepping the legal issues that come with the discriminatory practice. So it's like not a good legal basis for things and really open joke to challenge. So I would be inclined to, if we're going to do something like this, just give the DRB some more tools to more thoroughly review an applicant and get additional information about compliance without actually getting into bad territory. So that's kind of like what I'm thinking, but we can look at this more, look at what the options are. This Diane says that the state has authority of some instances to deny an applicant based on compliance history, but I think in that case it's probably compliance history with that particular agency, not maybe compliance history with like other towns and stuff. Like, so there, it might be some apples and oranges type stuff, but we'll have this whole thing to look at before I move on. I just want to see what people's thoughts are about us. Proceeding with this, how much time you think it's worth. If you think it's a good idea for us to pull deep DRB, someone from the DRB, and the first time we ever talk about this, if that's what it sounds like you want to do. Let me know. What do you guys want to do? So I can jump in real quick before Marcella goes just to go through and say that we've, I've sent up my office sent this off to this, our city attorney to review about an hour before we, we, this week we got a written response as to what his recommendations would be for council. I don't want to go into it right now. All the, you know, all the details, we've got a couple of questions that we want to get clarified first, but a lot of Kirby's concerns are pretty much the same concerns is that it really has to be tied to the land and land use and the structures in the building. It's not in the individual person. So we're going to try to get a little bit more clarity. And when that is in a form that is, I guess, shareable, you know, there's some attorney client things that are intended and written in such a way that it's really intended for, for our consumption. And then there's some of it that's written for public consumption. So we'll get through some of the clarifications and we'll get some of that out. And that I think will help dictate. I mean, it's always up to the boards, you know, the lawyers are giving recommendations and it's up to council and commissions to decide whether or not you want to take the advice of your legal council, which I usually recommend you should do. But obviously it'll, that'll be up to, up to them, but a little bit more of the background of the case. This is more than just kind of an arbitrary, you know, potential. So the issue that came up out of seven days was about the Bove brothers and some of their properties that they own. They've been there. They not only own the Bove's restaurant and the Bove's pasta and the pasta sauce, but the family has also owned a number of rental units over the years and those units have historically been low income and have been very problematic. You know, it's a owning and operating low income housing is in as a for profit. Remember he's doing low, low income housing and you know, without the low income tax credits and all the other benefits. So he's had a lot of problems. I'm not going to make excuses for him. He's got a long history, but a lot of that has come out from those projects in Burlington and Winooski and a number of places. And they are proposing, not they, one of the brothers is using his own money to go and decide to do a market rate project on Northfield Street. And that's the one that has been getting a lot of attention. So opponents of the Northfield Street project want to give the DRB the power to deny this application. The application hasn't even been submitted yet. So, but they would like to have the DRB have the authority to deny this application before it's submitted based on the grounds that he has violations in other communities. And so that's, that's really kind of the nut that is we're at right now. And again, from my office's perspective, we are sitting on this as a legal question. We'll see what comes back as the final legal recommendation. And then up to, at that point it's up to a policy decision. Do we, or don't we change the rules? In this case, and we'll see as we get going, you know, kind of what the recommendations are of the attorneys and whether or not this is something that, that would even make a difference in this case, but it's a legal question. It'll be up to you guys to kind of make a first cut decision on. And then it'll be eventually up to city council to make a decision if they want to overrule or, or adjust what you guys come up with. So that's getting a lot of attention. But yeah, look at, look at her, her note. And at some point there will be a legal. A legal. Opinion from the city's attorney. That will. Yeah, Mike, a couple, couple of follow-up things based on what you said then. For one, it sounds like maybe we'll need to do an executive session later so that we can review the. Legally confidential. Information. That's another possibility that we could do. We could, we could organize an executive session where we could discuss attorney client privilege pieces. That would be the other option. So one option. Eventually we've got to have something that goes to the public because we can't just. Not tell. There's been a request from the public to, to address this issue. So at some point we've got to come up with something that will be public. We may go into executive. To discuss the details of the attorney client letter. But eventually there'll be a second letter that will be the public. And maybe the same letter. I don't know. I'm again, I usually rely on the opinion of our attorney. And if our attorney says there's nothing in here that's. That's protected. We should just release the whole letter than that's what we would do. But again. It gets to, it gets to bill. Bill Fraser. So the other's a possibility of an executive session for us to review that. Obviously. Yeah. I mean, it'll be public eventually, but it's just if there's any details that for whatever reason, we can't speak about publicly. Just to make sure we're all informed. We need, we'll need to do that. Or as it, if it turns out that we don't need to do it. That's fine too. That'll just be like one step forward. There's also an issue here about the timing of when the law or the timing of how this should go down. If this is literally in response to one potential application, then. That application could get in before, before the city council does anything to change the law. And if anything, this whole thing could backfire because. If, if we say that. Some big new changes need to happen and the application gets in before that, then that actually gives the applicant the ability to argue. Well, none of that stuff's already in the law because why would they be proposing it? If. If the DRB could already review those things. So it would almost be like telling the DRB what they can't look at. So I don't know if there's that. Issue. Yeah, there'll be a timing issue in there. I mean, obviously if they get their application in before this. Amendment got approved, then. The amendment would be moot in their case anyways. Right. Yeah, exactly. And like I said, it can be backfire. So that's one thing to consider here. Okay. Marcella, what did you get? What thoughts did you have on this? Just that it might be nice to have. Well, it sounds like we have. Let's just going to respond to your question about involving somebody from the DRB, which I would appreciate. And it sounds like we have other things to do before that, though. Anyways. I think we could possibly do those things at the same time if we plan a meeting where. So Mike, you'll just have to let us know. When you think you'll be ready to talk about the legal advice stuff. And then. It could be helpful in that same meeting to have someone from the DRB speak and just kind of handle it all at once. The city council is going to want some decent turnaround on this. That's one reason why I think it's important. I mean, there's not a lot of work on my part to get that set up. As I said, I think we probably would have had things a little bit more prepared for tonight. Had. Had I gotten it a little bit more in advance. Cause I do have a couple of questions. I want to clarify. The city council is going to want some decent turnaround on this. That's one reason why I'd probably like to do those things together. And we just, and we have to think about. We could try to have it for them. We could try to have it for the next planning commission meeting. Try to get that arranged. I mean, there's not a lot of work on my part to get that set up. When you go to the city council, We could have had some decent turnaround. I mean, we all want clarified. You know, buy our attorney. Before going out, did you kind of lays out a, a pretty clear box that says this is the box that you can be in. And there's kind of just one or two questions of, okay, you didn't actually expressly say that's the box. But. Is that really what you're saying. So I just want to get a few clarification points. If I had those I then, The best we could do is to wait, get it on the agenda for next time and see where that goes. I think that sounds good. Just for the planning commissioners, there's gonna be certain legal boundaries we wanna stay within, which is what the legal advice is gonna help with. But then there's gonna be other policy issues that I'm assuming that the legal advice isn't going to go into, but we should be thinking about like the chilling effects or the possibility of whatever we come up with being too broad so that it's applying to people we don't intend it to. But like I was saying before, I think leaving something up to the DRB discretion I think is a good approach. I think we tend to have a very reasonable DRB. So okay, does anybody else have anything on this or are we just content to wait until it's on the agenda? The other thing I had that I was gonna bring up and I can revisit this in context later on when we're talking about the city council stuff and the updates from what's going on there. But it's not entirely related. I think I'll bring it up now. I think that it might be a good idea for us sometimes soon to write an article for the bridge of the Times-Argus or both where we pull in some other committees like the housing task force and CJAC and have like a multiple city policy related committees to discuss the housing need and kind of get the word out about the direction that we're hoping things will go in soon. We'll get to it later, but we need to do some better outreach to make people committed to like housing as an issue and to make sure that whatever like fear-based concerns are out there or whatever NB based concerns are out there don't like win the day in the long run. So we'll get to that later, but I just wanna just throw that out there as its own thing and about what that could entail. But that's something I'll probably do a draft thing for next time, a draft letter with the idea of being we work on that then we pass it to those other committees and ask them to modify it as they want and then to sign on to it so that it's a kind of a group thing. I guess I won't ask for your opinions on that until you understand better what I'm talking about. Next on the agenda is general business. Does anybody else have any comments that are out on the agenda before we move on just if any planning commissioners have anything? Okay, general business where we can discuss comments from the public about something not on the agenda. There's no members of the public here are there any there with you Mike? No. Okay, so we can move on. Staff updates. Mike has five updates. So I handed it to you Mike. All right, so this will be most of the meeting because we don't have the economic development chapter to review my apologies for been very busy and add to that being very sick. So it's good to be back and feeling a lot better. And so thank everybody for your patience. So the first update I wanted to let you guys know about is the community economic development specialist job search. So we did hire Josh Jerome. Some of you may know him, he is actually local. He had worked for the very partnership. He worked for community capital and most recently he'd been working for the town of Randolph as their economic development coordinator. So he's got a great deal of experience. He has a Montpelier resident kind of very surprised that we ended up finding somebody locally. And so we are really looking forward to having him get on board and kind of get going. He'll start in May. So did want to say we did fill that position. It's challenging to fill positions nowadays. So it was good that we got somebody experienced and also local so we don't have to find a house for him. So the second thing is, so municipal planning grant award. So actually after being denied their municipal planning grant in the fall, the legislature decided they would go through and allocate extra money to the municipal planning grant program to help fund projects that had been not funded. So municipal planning grants are really the basis of so much that goes on. And this got hit really hard. Back in 2008, 2009, when the recession hit, everybody in the state government got cut. And then eventually by about 2012, they came back and celebrated and said, everybody's back to fully funded except for municipal planning grants. Municipal planning grants used to be almost a million dollars and had been cut to 300 and something and they got it up to about 400 and something and it kind of sat there. So it really kind of decimated the consulting field. And so it also made a big difference there but we've always been waiting for those numbers to come back up. So this year they finally restored all the funding to municipal planning grants. So that's a good sign. So this year they did put some additional money back in and we got awarded. So we had put in a municipal planning grant to hire a consultant to help us develop the web side of our city plan. We've talked about wanting to do this digital plan. We want it web based. We want it with storyboards and it was gonna cost some money and we had $20,000 set aside. Well, we now have an additional 10. So we now have $30,000. So this kind of ties in directly to the next one which is the RFP for hiring a consultant. We had a ton of interest in our project. I bet I sent out 20 copies of our RFP. I got contacted all over Vermont, all over New England and places far flung across the country about interest in our project. And ultimately we got one application from a local company who's been working with the city in the past. So we'll have some questions that'll come up about whether or not because we've got the extra 10,000 do we re-put the RFP back out for a second cut because it's got an extra $10,000 now or do we kind of review the folks that did come in? So we'll have to kind of make a decision. I know John was interested in helping out to review it and maybe we'll take a look at that first proposal and see if it meets what we want. And if not, maybe we put that RFP back out knowing that we've got an extra $10,000 and maybe that'll make a difference and we'll get a few more folks to put in a proposal. So unfortunately we got awarded the MPG on Friday and these were due on Monday. So we really didn't get an opportunity to send out a notice to applicants to give them a chance to revise their proposals. Had we gotten it a week or so earlier it would have given us a chance to kind of send out a notice to everybody who had requested a copy of the RFP to let them know we had extra money and maybe that would get a few more applicants. That's where that sits right now. So we do have extra money. I am confident we'll have somebody. The question is whether we're gonna put this out to re-put this out to bid again. I don't know if anyone has any questions on that before I jump into the council hearing update. So the fourth piece is our council hearing update. I know Kirby was there and I think I saw Aaron in for a bit of time. It was not as bad as I thought but it was still very long and it was, we did get a lot of comments and I'll skip to the end which is that what council ended up voting on doing was to remove number eight from the proposal which was removing residential density from 1500 and riverfront districts. So that proposal was struck and most of the public comments we got were focused on that specific proposal. And I think Kirby and I tried to at least explain things. At least explain things. So I did put together a memo, follow-up memo which outlined a couple of points that is going to city council to kind of clarify a few things that kind of maybe got misrepresented by folks in the public that, so I guess I'll go quickly step by step through that memo to really look at four items. One was there was a complaint by one resident that all of the changes, a lot of the changes are not consistent, not in conformance with the master plan. Master plan that was adopted in 2017. So I have written a memo and outlined and taken about three or four pages to do it to kind of outline what conformance with the plan means, how this is in conformance with the plan, ultimately it's up to city council to make that decision, but I don't think I'm very comfortable that everything we've done is in conformance with the plan because really conformance with the plan legally is a two step process. And it really looks at if you're making this, whether it's a zoning change or whether it's a program, whether it's a project, if you're doing something, the question is if it's in conformance with the plan, does it help achieve one of the policies in the plan? You don't have to meet all of them and you don't have to negatively impact any of them. So as I point out in my memo, if you have a hundred policies and a proposal only helps to implement 99 of those 100, but hinders one, that's an impossible bar to meet for every proposal because your master plan looks at so many things that inherently there's inherent conflicts within it. You know, our downtown is a floodplain. If you wanna do economic development in our downtown, you're doing more development in our floodplain. And so you're balancing these two competing things, historic preservation and energy efficiency. You know, should we remove those historic windows to put in energy efficient windows? It's a balancing act. You sometimes have to accomplish one while hindering the other, but what's required is that you have a goal of more housing or more energy efficiency. You have to be accomplishing one of the goals. Now, if what you're doing does not is not discussed at all in the plan, then you go to the second step of the process, which is does it negatively impact something? Then, you know, if it's not supporting if it's not supporting or hindering anything, then it's in conformance with the plan. So it's kind of this two step process that's the way it's looked at. So I'm comfortable because we have a number of housing related goals that are proposals that help to increase housing are sufficient and that we are in conformance with the proposals that we presented. So that was the first piece. The second piece I talk about really briefly is that there's a lot of times and we heard it sometimes in our hearings and it came up again in the city council hearings was this idea that they don't need to adjust the dense you don't need to adjust the densities of these neighborhoods because they could simply do a cottage cluster and double their density. And that just kept coming up. It's like, well, you know, Heaton Street could do a cottage cluster and double their density and they can get all the units that they need except the proposal is to do everything inside one building, which by definition is not a cottage cluster. So they can't double it. So you have to stop this argument of well, they can just do a cottage cluster. Well, that's not what they want to do. You know, well, Northfield Street can just do a cottage cluster, but that's not what they want to do. They don't want to do a cottage cluster. So that's the, that is a little bit of the thing just to go through and make sure council was clear on that. The third piece was to get into what I was just talking about earlier. Number eight, I know it's been removed. This is why, and this is my opinion. I wanted to write it because there's been a lot of letters and things that have kind of put my name to things that I don't necessarily agree with because I disagreed with the planning commission on the recommendation. I therefore had these opinions and so I just wanted to clarify what my opinion was and why, and what I was concerned about in our rules and that I wasn't concerned about people demolishing whole neighborhoods to replace them with flat roofed giant buildings. I don't think that's going to happen. I think we've got plenty of rules in place to protect it, but I think there are other things that could be at issue. So that was my third point and my final point was with the other change that city council made, which was that they struck your amendment to our amendment to the shading requirement. Remember, we went and said currently you can't shade somebody else's walls, roofs, or yards. So you can't shade anybody's yard on December 21st. And so we all agreed. We've looked at a bunch of options and we said, we're just going to protect existing and proposed solar facilities, solar devices. Well, they didn't like that. So they just eliminated it. And my memo to them in the fourth part of my memo goes through and says, that's really not good enough. The issue is that you're going to have, you're going to make single story infill. We want infill, but it's going to have to be single story so it doesn't create shade and it's going to have to be moved. And there's a lot of issues that leaving the rules as they are written is going to be a problem for. So we need to change it. And so I'm giving them a list of the six things. All right, so if you don't like what the planning commission proposed, and they got a lot of comments from the public on that. Well, maybe not a lot. A handful of people were very vocal and very emphatic about the importance of solar access and shading trespass and a bunch of things. So I just wanted to go through and give them some options that said, here's where you can look to try to fix this. If you don't like what planning commission came up with, here are some other options. All right. What are the options? Or Mike or John? I'm just going to ask, this is something you are giving them. And if so, would it be helpful maybe to have some visuals on how our current rules are maybe worse for solar access because trees are much taller than what we allow for buildings. So for example, my solar panels are blocked by trees that are within the setback. If there was a building there, they would not be. So I think we can show the net solar access there would be a gain in like net solar access if there was an increase in building. So it's hypothetical and depends on the certain situation. But I think the rule as it is written now is not, it serves more just to prevent development and not at all related to solar access, really. That's a great point. Tony, I guess I'm asking, could it be helpful to have any visuals that show shading? Yeah. I mean, if we've got some, that would be helpful. I just emailed the memo to you guys. So I probably should have sent that out on Friday when I was wrapping it up for council, but you guys can have copies just to see what I sent out. Oh, and I was going to open it up so I could read to you what the options were that I sent them. So one thing that we could do tonight is decide if the planning commission would like to do anything about the solar shading question. The number eight, the density thing, that's dead for now, but we'll return to that and I'll be talking about that later in this meeting. But for the solar shading, that's not necessarily quote unquote dead for now. There's something that could be done at the meeting two days from now about that. And we could still possibly save our proposal on that. And I'm basing that off of how I understood the way that city council was discussing it. They're still undecided basically about solar shading. They just kind of set it aside for the first meeting. The density thing, they set it aside, but they said, like, we want the planning commission to come back with a more thorough thing for this. But for the solar shading, they're still deciding what they're going to do. So it's not too late at all for like Micah sent info, which he just sent to us about what he said to them about solar shading. But we could get in touch with them ourselves with a recommendation if we want. And also individuals can get in touch with them too. Like if John Adams wants to reach out. So just like however you guys want to do it, we have some options and it's not too late on the solar shading issue. So I gave them six options, one of which was what you guys had proposed. So limiting the area of impact to just roofs or just two walls in roofs. So basically taking the yards out of it. Adjusting the language to require minimizing or mitigating the effects of shading. Currently it says prohibiting shading. They could exempt more high density zoning districts from the requirement. Currently urban center one, two, three and riverfront are exempt from the shading requirement. But we could exempt a few more higher density districts. The lower density districts have larger setbacks and less likely to have shading issues. Change the time of year that the analysis is considered. I mean, we're talking about no gardens are going to be growing on December 21st when the shadows are the longest. So right now, if you make a shadow for 10 square feet only during three days in December, that's going to result in a denial of a zoning permit. And that doesn't make any sense really in my view. We could add waiver language for the DRB to make a case by case review based on the potential impacts of the shading. Again, it starts to make things a little bit more complicated, but that's certainly a way to go. If we've got some clear guidance as to what waivers should be approved and what waivers should not, that's okay. Or apply the rules narrowly to existing and proposed solar devices, which is what you guys had proposed and we put in the rules. So, and then I said the planning commission felt that the dense urban setting such as Montpelier in a dense urban area such as Montpelier that it is going to be unreasonable to expect no shading of any portion of a neighboring property. It is especially true when we desire that in some cases require multi-story structures. Many of our neighborhoods have old, well-developed tree cover, which already shade areas and slopes on many properties have other features that make development in a proposed shade area unlikely or impossible. While I understand you do not wish to take the recommendation of the planning commission on how to solve the problems, I do believe that leaving the bylaws as written is, I do not believe that leaving the bylaws as written is appropriate. There will be consequences to future projects that I believe will run counter to city council priorities. So, I think we've kind of set the stage for them to reconsider it. I hope they will, but there is certainly a vocal minority of folks who really are very much concerned about the shading issue. So we'll see where that goes. So those were the four issues. You guys now have a copy of the memo. So, planning commission, so while we're on this item, I tend to think it would be a good idea for us to back up what Mike's saying with our own contact to the city council on this. Question is how to go about doing that. We could, I would be willing to write it up and send it out by tomorrow. So they get it at least the day before they're deciding on Wednesday. Then again, if someone else wants to write it, that's totally fine with me too. I know John's the most informed on this, I think, out of all of us. We would need to gather what we want that to say right now and then just delegate that to one of us to get in touch for the group. Does that sound like something you guys wanna do? And if so, let's talk about what we wanna make sure is included if you do that. Seems fine. Does that sound fine to you, John, or do you think another approach would be more helpful? I'm just thinking, yeah, I think it sounds fine to me. I just didn't realize it was like this Wednesday. So I've limited time to pull something together. Yeah, the reason why I haven't reached out since the last meeting is that in the first meeting of city council, they asked Mike for more info. So they asked him for the memo and just sent them. So I was waiting for that in order to figure out what we were gonna do, if anything. And I wasn't sure if we were gonna end up having more time. But if we wanna defend our original recommendation, then we can write the letter for that or we can look at these things that Mike said and we could, or we could do both. We could say, we really think our original recommendation is gonna be the best thing for the city. But if you want to compromise this in any way, follow these X, Y, and Z that Mike is saying here, something like that. So he's put out limiting the area of impact just roofs, not yards. Just the language require minimizing or mitigate effects, exempting high-density zoning districts, change the time of year, adding waiver language, applying the rules narrowly to existing and proposed solar devices. You can pick any or all of those things or if we have anything additional to add. It sounds kind of like it might not be wise to say, to defend the original, if they've already said that that's not what they're gonna do. I don't. They haven't necessarily said that they're refusing it. From what I remember, there were only two or three people who came out against this. Maybe there was more, but I'm just considering so much nastiness was surrounding the density thing that it's like I almost don't remember anybody talking about this really because it was like really drowned out. But there's one or two city councilors who are worried about, like they wanna see solar development. So I think that's where the hesitation is coming from that there's actually people in the city council who are wanting to see solar happen. So I believe that if you point out to those people, what we're trying to tell you is actually helpful for solar. Just might not be intuitive. That would go a long way. Yeah. Are we qualified to make that to describe that? I mean, can we say this will be a good thing for solar? Yeah. I think 100%, like, which is why I wanna create the graphic to explain it. But basically, I mean, you'd also say or explain, if this regulation was in place before anything was built in Montpelier or most homes, if we were asked people to come into compliance with this, we would have to take down most homes and buildings in Montpelier. And there would be very little gained in terms of solar access, again, because most of the shading is provided by trees, but also roofs are the preferred location for a photovoltaic panels anyway. So, John, you definitely seem the most educated about this. I don't wanna throw it on you to write a letter for us, but I mean, I'm willing to help and I'm sure some of the others are willing to help. What, I think as far as the illustration thing or the graphic goes, it's like, yeah, I don't think, I don't know if we have time to throw a graphic together, but what you could do is we could go to the city council meeting and explain it, like a graphic, like just to try to visualize what you're saying. So I think for one thing, for you to go and to speak would be huge if you're free Wednesday. They're probably not gonna get to this until late-ish just so you know, it's gonna be probably post bedtime in your house. Yeah, I'm not sure I will be able to try to work on something like right now. Okay, well, I mean, I can go and try, but if you could put down like, if you could put down bullet points of like the main points to say, I could turn that into something written if you want. Okay, let me see if I can work up a graphic during this meeting and then put some bullet points down. Okay, yeah, and that's good. And is everyone okay with it? Okay, does anyone else wanna be included in writing this letter for Wednesday? And at the same time, I encourage everyone to show up on Wednesday to talk about it. The first question was, you got Jeff? So I'll jump in. I'm certainly would love to attend Wednesday, more so to highlight the trade-off between, I don't know, let's say an environmental goal, like more solar panels and a housing goal, you know, the social and economic side of that and really make that trade-off clear to the council that they can't, well, solar panels aren't a panacea for problems and it might be good to build some more homes in the, or whatever development in the shade damned, you know. Yeah, I think another good point that it's to some of us, this is obvious, but I think it needs to be set out loud more often. If we're doing things that prevent housing from getting built here, then housing will be built somewhere else that does not have all of the great environmental regulations that we have. So, you know, that's easy to forget, like when we're trying to do these things that we think are good for the environment, but we're actually hurting it. Okay, well, that's great, Jeff, if you want to go to talk to that. Are you guys okay with delegating to John and I? Does anybody else want to be involved in the writing of the letter? Okay, I'm not hearing anyone. So, can we get a motion to delegate that Kirby and John draft a letter regarding solar shading for the city council for Wednesday? I'll make that motion. Okay, so we have a motion from Marcella that John and I draft a letter stating planning commission's position on solar shading to represent all of our voices in this. Do we have a second? John or Jeff, for parents here? Do we have a second? I'll second. So, I heard from John first, do we have a second to that? Those in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, so parents here, so that was five ayes. Any opposed? Okay, so that's what we'll do for the Wednesday meeting. Well, John and I will prepare something, we'll send it along before the city council meeting on Wednesday and then as far as the solar shading issue goes, I encourage everyone to show up in support of that. One problem at the last meeting was I personally did not know where the animosity was going to be directed. So, I didn't know how to really prepare adequately for backing up our recommendations. Like for instance, we kind of thought maybe Northfield Street would be attacked, like the proposal there, like number three in our memo. It wasn't really, surprisingly, even though that was the experience during our hearings was most of this space was taken up for that issue. So, it was a learning experience for us and as far as the solar shading being something that got picked on a little bit, it's not too late. Okay, Mike, go ahead. Sorry, I was just thinking, you know, we need to understand why we wanted, why we brought the changes that we brought anyways, but I don't, I think we ought to be careful about responding too directly to comments. I mean, we can, I think we respond to broad concepts, right, brought up by comments, but not comments in particular. So I just couldn't quite tell from what you were just saying that sounded like maybe you were wanting to respond to directly to people, and I think that's not a good idea. No, no, that's not what I was saying when I meant was, you know, when it comes to the political side of this, we have to be good advocates for ourselves, you know, and if we're making suggestions, we do have to be proactive in advocating why we are and explaining why and actually being part of that conversation. And we didn't do that the last meeting, which I don't think that a mistake was made, but I think it would be a mistake. Like if we continue to do that and we allow, like misinformation in the community, for instance, to rule the day. So just being proactive in defending our own message, but in no way am I talking about responding directly to people. I'll say this though, and I might get into this more when we're talking about the density stuff in a minute, but I do have some misgivings because Marcel, like my attitude generally is, if something's kind of an absurd claim, then a dignifying it with a response actually gives it credibility and I think that's a bad thing to do. So I think that, and that sounds similar to the earliest part of what you're saying about responding specifically to things, but to my surprise, we have a couple of new city counselors and at least one comment was made by one of them where they seem to believe some of the things that were factually incorrect that have been claimed at these hearings, at the city council hearings. So I'm starting to think that not responding to individuals, but addressing things that I normally would think, well, I don't need to address that because on its face, it's not accurate. Apparently I've got to reassess that assumption because. Yeah, well, I was just thinking. My experience was. I mean, yeah, it makes sense to me to address things that are factually not accurate or mischaracterizations or something, but we can't, I mean, there's too many people to respond to everybody. So that was more what I was thinking. We don't have the bandwidth, the capacity, the time to respond to every comment. Yeah, and my approach about that is actually, I think it's a matter of like noise and like, whether a minority of voices is drowning out like a majority of opinion, because the authority's not like, we just got to make sure there's other voices at these things that are speaking because we know that they exist in our community. We know there's a lot of pro housing because we hear from those people from time to time and they're passionate, but, you know, for instance, when it comes to this, they weren't at that last meeting.  So just being aware of that, just to having more voices involved is something that we can do a better job of leading about, well, I shouldn't even say a better job because it sounds like I'm being critical. I'm just saying like, when it matters, we need to do a good job with it and not like, I don't think we've done anything wrong so far. It sounds like we're in agreement though. Just from a process standpoint, so people understand a lot of times when I'm doing it, I have to kind of take my cues from the counselors and the mayor and whoever. So unfortunately, I had a couple of times I really wanted to respond to the shading stuff, but they weren't asking me my opinion. So I was a little bit boxed out and I was trying to get their attention to ask me, but I couldn't get them to ask me my opinion on what was being said. So by the time, you know, they moved forward and made their votes and their decisions. So it is tricky. There are a little bit more opportunities as Kirby said to provide public input that I sometimes can't. If I get asked, you know, sometimes there's a comment goes to the council and the council will ask me to respond, but if they don't ask me to respond, I am really not at that liberty to kind of jump in. So that's just, just a few, if you see me not jumping in, that's sometimes why. It's because there's an expectation that I'm to be addressed before I, sometimes I will if it's something critical, but. Yeah, thanks for pointing that out, Mike. And just so you know, I mean, I was aware of that at the meeting, and I also felt a little frustrated later on in the meeting when they didn't return to ask you to address any of the things that they seem to be basing some decisions on. Yeah, that wasn't on you. They just didn't ask. Did you have any, you had more things on your? Well, that was for the council hearing unless people wanted to talk about the residential piece. Yeah, I do, I do. So while we're on this item, I want to focus on the other part of the council hearing because there's quite a bit of repercussions from the meeting, from the hearing. So I told you guys a lot of the details of things. The meeting went really late. So I'm not sure. I know that I think I was the only planning commissioner that was there by the end of it. It was like midnight-ish. I think it was 11, but yeah, it was getting there. Well, I remember, I was definitely past midnight when I was right, like the city council asked me for some additional info and I definitely emailed them past midnight. And that's like after the thing was finally over. So, okay, so what happened going into that meeting was there was a couple of members of the community who reached out to people. There was one person who went door to door with flyers about the number eight issue. It seems like this is my interpretation of how it seemed to have gone that because number eight was an issue in which Mike didn't have the same exact opinion of us that that was perceived as a weakness that could be attacked. I do think that, I mean, I'm speculating at that, but I feel like it was, because based on what we, the feedback we heard during the hearings was about lots of different things, but then the tone at the city council hearing was number eight's the problem. And then there was even claims because Mike had mentioned the Congress for New Urbanism in his memo that there were claims that like we were going against the Congress for New Urbanism, which is like the opposite of the truth because these were people who were trying to defeat this idea when Congress and the urbanism's telling us that we should do this city wide. So it was kind of rough and it was targeted and folks were definitely like marshaling forces that's without question is like, is how that happened. And they chose their topic after our hearings that already taken place, I think. The takeaway though is we have this report from Congress for New Urbanism that's asking us to look at several big changes to our zoning. The number one on the CNU lists was density caps and they're unequivocal in telling us that those are unhelpful. And just like every major planning think tanker resource would be probably saying that too. It's just textbook not helpful for promoting housing and the development that you want and meeting the goals that you want under if you have a city plan like ours. So what I think we should do and this is what city council directed us to do was to reconsider and look at the density stuff. I think that it makes sense to do that in the context of reviewing the Congress for New Urbanism's proposals. We should do that sooner rather than later. Have a very well-developed proposal based on all of that. I would think that it's going to be much more drastic than this proposal that was just removed which was just to take out density caps in two neighborhoods. I think Congress for New Urbanism's asking for much, much, much more than that. So I think we should do that. And I think that we should do it with accompanying that work with some outreach. I think the article that I was talking about before would be a good first step of outreach just to show the public that there's a lot of voices on the city's committees who are serious about housing solutions and to get that word out first. Then when we come up with our recommendations based on Congress for New Urbanism, ideally it would be something in which we all are in agreement on the entire planning commission and something that Mike's also talking about and forward this as a unified voice. And at the same time marshal our own forces so to speak is in to let, we know there are housing advocates around and each of us individually know them and then as a planning commission we know some and letting those people know that, hey, this is being proposed and we do need you to go with the city council know that there's voices in this community that there's voices in this community that want this because I think that when it came down to it my takeaway from the last hearing was they were just hearing from one minority of people and it made it seem magnified and if we drown out some of that with our own approach then that's what we need to do and I'm confident that we can do a lot to bring forward housing solutions if we take the steps we need to take to make sure the city council is aware of the support that's behind us. So I'm thinking about that I'm also thinking about so we'll need to take it to Congress for new urbanism stuff pretty soon. There's a few takeaways by the way just as a general awareness thing we were kind of attacked by some people for apparently in our memo we used a gender pronoun when referring to a member of the public so that and then and then in the comments that were the written comments that received that was attacked so I guess from now on we should just be aware that if we're writing anything in which we're responding to a specific member of the public and what they said then we should not use a gendered pronoun that seems like an easy accommodation to make sure that people don't feel offended I actually in general I don't even know how helpful it is to respond to specific people when we talk about the hearings this kind of goes to maybe I don't know if that's what Marcel was getting at before or not but speaking generally about the input we receive rather than been talking to about a single person I don't think it's so in the future whenever we're writing that stuff I think that's just like a good lesson there because I'm not saying that we did anything wrong at all but I do think that it just added more muddiness and nastiness to this whole thing it was pretty nasty I feel like by the way just to make that clear it got personal and nasty and then people were acting like they were offended because we were personal and nasty but I didn't feel like we tried to be as professional as possible but that's kind of we should just be aware that people could some people will respond that way in the future another thing that happened after the meeting was I met with Lauren who's a city counselor I had asked all the city council if they were interested in learning more about what we're up to that I would be available to talk to them one-on-one Lauren was the only one who took me up on it but we had a nice talk where we walked around town and I showed Lauren for instance I showed Lauren that the development that's on Cedar Street that is always pointed out as quote-unquote ugliest thing in town and the worst-case scenario if you allow more housing there's going to be Cedar Street and then because every time I look at Cedar Street I'm really confused because I'm from East Tennessee and if that building was in a town in East Tennessee that'd be the prettiest building in town so I'm just like kind of confused and like she was kind of in agreement about like this is our worst-case scenario it's like apparently this is our worst-case scenario is this building that provides housing to multiple families is just so we had a good talk she was in agreement with the direction that we're going for instance I did talk to her about the solar shading issue because she is a person that's concerned about the solar shading and I also just knowing that about future struggles I also brought up to her that in our in our city plan that we're working on now if everyone remembers we had the version or what we're suggesting right now in the city plan is that we kind of scaled back how much we're going to require energy efficiency and new development because there was a proposal to have really strong energy efficiency requirements in new development which is part of the energy plan but we thought for housing that that was going to be too difficult so we scaled that back remember I want to let her know about it because I feel like that's going to be something that the city council is going to be worried about so I went ahead and put a bug in her ear about like this is something that could really be harmful to housing and we know that it's a major it's also part of a major energy goal so this is a big tension and I went ahead and got her feedback now and she talked about having energy putting a cap on how much extra expense could come with that for new development or something like that was like what she was thinking so I'm thinking that that's going to be a common ground that we're going to end up doing so that's way fast forward into all with the city council's looking at our city plan stuff but I thought that was helpful to bring up so we had a good talk she said that she's going to try to be an ally with the city council to help them understand I explained the policy stuff behind density caps and why they're not helpful for our goals but then they're hurtful for our goals and they're not helpful for making the neighborhood look any certain way because that's not what they're regulating so we talked all about that so she thought it would be a good idea for us to do this article thing with the other committees and I think that's all I've got so I know that was a lot of stuff but the takeaway is let's take out the CNU thing let's put together a good proposal quickly and get back to them they are asking that we get back to them on it and revisit that but now that we know what we're facing we can go into that prepared does anybody have any questions about any of that and we may not be able to go for our ideal in removing the density caps but we may be able to find some other ways we may be able to remove density caps but do other things again that in general if you were asking me on a plane open thing I would say no but let's say you remove density caps but then make multi-family a conditional use that helps to kind of take the blunt off the top so we're not going to look at how big the parcel is to decide how many units you can have but once you go to five units then it becomes a character of the use issue and of course you and I can all go and say yeah but if they're putting multi-family into an existing house and nothing is changing on the exterior of the house why do we have to have this go to conditional use but again we may just have to work with there are a number of ways to get to the same place that we might be able to remove the density caps and still put some other guardrails on that help people feel better and that's not necessarily great but sometimes that's what we have to do sometimes to get these rules passed but it's something we can all sit down and kind of talk about you know how we want to propose what we want to propose how we want to try to go as options but there's certainly other ways that we can get where we want to get to and open things up a little bit more without maybe you know got to make a little sausage sometimes the thing is Mike though is the density caps and continuing to rely on density as like a major of how we regulate things is it's flawed in and of itself and it's also clearly like the people in our community who don't want development use density as their weapon as their proxy all of the time and there's a lot of misinformation and confusion about what it means right now so it's just for a lot of reasons I just want to move away from density by the way one other thing that came up and one thing I would like for us to look at when we're considering the CNU's recommendations is this is it's just a superficial change but I think it's important because it gets us away from having the wrong kind of conversations I think we should actually change the names of our neighborhoods and the zonings to remove the reference to density because right now I mean that's actually like our neighborhoods are named after their density designation which makes people believe the density is like that important that they're named that way and I think it was a name of convenience it's not meant to have some substantial meaning behind it but it's just another thing that in people's minds they think that zoning means density and that's the most important thing when that's like we just have a long way to go as far as people incorrectly understanding what the stuff means so that's that's why I want to tackle it if someone's against development in town I want them to come and talk about okay right now they can just say like density is bad and like make up worst case scenarios and if they didn't have that option they'd have to come and say well it should look this way or it should look that way and that's a much more constructive conversation so that's kind of what I'm hoping for long term after we work on the stuff is that if someone's against development they need to actually articulate specifically helpful things as long as people can argue about density they just say someone's going to tear down my neighbor's house and build a four-story apartment complex and we know that that's not financially viable that that's not you know it's just not a helpful conversation but that seems like what the conversation always is right now so changing that part of changing that is getting away from this density language stuff yeah that's going to be that'll be the challenge I mean it was it's as I said this for those of you who weren't here during 2017 when we were doing the original zoning these these are the identical arguments that were made in 2017 that said if we pass this zoning to make the densities match our neighborhoods that people are going to bulldoze the neighborhoods and put in these giant flat roof buildings and they're going to maximize their stuff and and the reality is that there hasn't been any bulldozed buildings to do that so it's it's it's a straw man argument it's really hard to defeat I don't know how much the city council really took that as a case as much as it was just the concern about not having enough information and I think I think we just if we could make the same case we just need to if we're going to make the case we've got to go through bring the graphics bring bring the other arguments as to why this density argument and have it graphically there and I think we could make a better case for it so I think that's that's a little bit of where I think that'll go next time around do we have is it is our president like are we allowed to host like a workshop thing does it have to be a public hearing if we wanted to like do some more thorough education about what we mean and the research that we're you know make this a more thorough interactive process or does that have to be in the hearing format doesn't have to be in a hearing format I think if I think if we were going to do it you know my professional recommendation would be we find a third party person maybe CNU and AARP to come in and give that presentation because it really takes the wind out of the sails when they're relying on this CNU recommendation to go through and say yeah we shouldn't be doing this because CNU said we shouldn't do it and I think if CNU were actually there giving the presentation they would say well you know actually if you made these three changes to your zoning then you should remove it well that starts to become really hard for the opponents to then turn around and go through and say yeah but I still don't like that that removing the residential density but if you know if we get if we've got a consultant come in you know congress for new urbanism or somebody else who's affiliated with the group to kind of come in and say these are the three changes you'd have to make to your zoning in order to be able to to remove residential densities in a manner that's not going to risk loss of neighborhood character yeah in which case we then go through and say okay that's what we'll do we will adopt these three or four changes and and put this back through and then and then see what they do because then it becomes a much harder case because like hey we went right back to them we got the recommendations and here it is it's compliant with what CNU says and yeah yeah well I'd be kind of I think I'd be in favor of some sort of something like that you know when we're ready something other than a hearing where we feel like it's not just we have to listen to to written or feedback but we can actually have try to have more of a conversation I think we can interact with people and I think I think I definitely want to interact with with the public more and just and just my some of these issues and have that come from us and like Marcella like anything that you could do to like if you if you feel like writing something to reach out or asking like I hear what you're saying like you want to hear from people and I wonder if we can I mean we could do the try to set up a workshop thing we could also we could also reach out to people other ways and just write more but I think the more the dialogue and the more reaching out the better I think we can do in multiple ways I think we should I would be really in favor of us continuously doing that you know seven days is doing this thing this year where they're writing about the housing problem all year long I would I assume it's on people's minds but it's not always so the more that we can add to to talking about the different parts of it and and asking for for feedback from the public it's better so if you if you have any ideas of like because like setting up a thing with CNU's course is going to be like work and it's contingent on whether CNU is responsive to that I'd also just like for us to like to reach out you know individually and do take action that way too I don't know if you have any ideas for for how to do that let's do it yeah I guess my thought was like we would do sort of we could do a presentation and workshop at one of our meetings not quality hearing you know just information session sort of thing yeah yeah I think we I think we should try to do that I mean I feel like there's things I would like to know too like I would like to understand better what the problem is with the house on Cedar Street and how what we have now is better specifically from that point of view like I just don't I just don't understand it so it would be nice to be able to have a dialogue to try to understand like more details behind some of the feedback we're getting I think it's really like no we'll leave you to like what to like hear people's views because when I hear the criticisms of Cedar Street I just hear like subjectively I think it's ugly and because I have a profession related to how houses are made I'm the world expert on what's pretty well I I don't agree that the house on Cedar Street is ugly I think it's just fine and I think it's it's nice that there are four additional units I also think I'm the only well I don't know about Jeff and actually I was the only renter on the planning commission for a while and I think I do so now there's a few of us and I think maybe we could I think we have an important perspective of what the housing stock is actually like in Montpelier which I think perhaps gets lost it feels to me as a renter as a person individual not so much and me as a person listening to that listening to the feedback so it does feel like it gets lost and we haven't really heard from anybody who's renting it's all it's all landowners so anyways I do feel like there's room for conversation and I feel like we kind of got to do that I mean that's kind of our job is our job yeah I think all kinds of outreach from every different way workshops, prints yeah I mean I'm really just like asking everybody on the planning commission like let's I think there's just a lot to be done with that and like let's all just individually work on what we think would be doable effective ways to do it like I said I'm going to do this one draft thing that could be an article that we can do with the other committees but you know I'd like to do a lot more and anybody that wants to take on like like if Marcel if you want to look into getting a workshop thing together that would be super that would be so helpful anything anyone else can come up with to to you know get through to the public about how like fixing this housing problem is a huge huge problem and from our position as being like one part of one city like really limited but there's tons we can do though to help but it's like it's going to take tons because it's a huge huge problem and just so the more we can talk about that with people to make them understand there's a lot of work there I mean people know people know that housing is a problem but then when something comes up with this solar shading thing for instance you know my personal value is like I'm an environmentalist in a housing advocate so like it's like yeah but this is like killer for housing potentially like and it's just we still don't have people there in their minds when they're thinking about these tensions to realize that like more barriers for housing is the wrong direction and yeah yeah go ahead I hear you I also I think people have legit concerns though I have to meet people where it's not so much that we have to make them understand what we understand and I'm not sure that I even understand all that completely but we have to it has to be community conversation I mean we're just it just has to be yeah I just like right now from what we've seen recently with these like hearings it's like that's I don't think that's community conversation though no I agree with you and I don't I think that that's why I'm thinking of a workshop because I don't know that the hearing process really because it puts this like sense of urgency on it that potentially is not real but it creates like oh we're at the hearing stage already and that elevates it for people up to you know the point where folks are going to get they're going to feel so threatened that they're going to be angry or whatever it's going to come out in certain ways so I think if we could to something that isn't called a hearing I wonder if that would help I would think that that would help a little in certain circumstances yeah yeah yeah if you if you would like start yeah I can yeah and I just on our very practical I am pretty underwater with CVR PC through April because I'm chairing the nominating committee and that needs to get done by me so I'm pretty underwater through April but I don't want to I can definitely try to come back into this after that out of the game who's going to start going to the meetings hopefully yeah yeah that should help a lot so yeah everyone else you know Michelle talked about the workshop like any other ideas to get outreach going out there just I just know it's a need and like there's no such thing as too much of it right now just one thing such a big part of this conversation there are people who aren't even here yet because there's no housing or they're in the future when the town is say more developed yada yada yada so I'm wondering who would be who who would be a good stakeholder representative for those who have not benefited from the policies that or not policies our work that we have done what we'll do to promote more housing because I could yeah you know we can't constrain this community so much just to serve the existing residents as diverse opinions they may have but yeah I think targeting or thinking about that um that group of people who will be going about building your own is crucial to moving this forward or at least instilling look to this group that will be coming along I think about that a lot and that's why when we we put together proposals that are very pro housing going forward we need to reach out to I know there's like a world development nonprofits other nonprofits that are like a state state nonprofits state maybe the regional planning commission but they have an awkward role where they're not sure how much they'd be willing to pressure mob killer to do one thing or another but like there's definitely nonprofit agent the organizations that are trying to see housing in the state and then they would see the regional aspect of it us as members of the planning commission to see that role I think Jeff like I think that we go and talk to city council about our duty as part of a region that that would have weight Lauren and I talked about that in our conversation that we have a regional duty as an urban center to provide housing because if it doesn't happen here it's going to be undesirable development potentially and it's bad for the environment it's bad for the economy and everything that's behind planning and smart growth and stuff but yeah please think more about who to reach out to for that I know I have one or two ideas from people I know but anybody else that there are stakeholders though finding them and getting involved in conversation is big conversation is big okay well I think we've kind of been that stuff but we know revisiting the CNU thing and then this side task from Ann are two things that have come up and then we're going to have to the side task being that you know the reviewing the RB applications based on reputation those are two things that we've got coming up that are not part of this city plan stuff we're trying to do so that stuff's coming up I can find my agenda here so then okay so I think we talked about that quite enough and I'll hand it back to you Mike to talk about the Elks Club yeah this is just a quick update so I will also be making a presentation on Wednesday to City Council on how to plan for and implement large projects as many of you know the city approved a bond to purchase the former Elks Club the golf course so that's going to be a big undertaking for the city and for the planning department and so the first thing we wanted to be able to do is to start to have a conversation about how to do big projects because it's there's a lot of misconceptions and there are a lot of right ways and wrong ways of doing large projects and I've done a number of them mostly in Berry City so we're kind of just trying to lay things out as to how you need to just frame yourself and get yourself ready for these big projects and it's really going to be a three step process I always break it into plan prepare implement the first step is to develop a conceptual plan master plan for the area and get everybody on board and agree that's what we're going to do and then the second year now take a whole year the second year you do your preparation steps and then the third year you're going to be working on implementing that plan so it really helps to get people this isn't anything we're jumping on building this year or next year it's something that if you're going to do it right you really got to slow down and really take the time if you're a private developer you don't have to take public comment and you can move forward faster but municipality it's going to take time so I just need to give a presentation to council and to the public on what are the next steps that we need to take how do you do big projects so you can actually get them to completion in a relatively short period of time and while you think three years is a long time the projects that tend to jump around or projects where you get you know let's go get the money to build the project first and then we'll design a project that matches the amount of money that we have that never gets you the project you want that gets you something less than that so I always encourage people to go through a planning process decide what the conceptual plan is and then we continue to refine that plan as we move through the preparation and get ready for implementation so that's a lot of the message of what I want to have with the city council but if you stick around for the zoning discussion on Wednesday and you decide you want to stick around a little bit longer you can watch that presentation and then we're eventually going to get some very specific recommendations for what we want council to approve so we can start to move forward we want to hire a consultant we want to basically direct the city manager to develop an RFP to review and hire a consultant to manage the development of the conceptual plan so that's really the outcome where we're going so we'll kind of take a little bit out of the planning department we're busy we've got a lot going on I want to continue to be focused on getting this master plan going and wrapped up so I'll still be involved in the Elk Club process but we want to be able to hand it over to somebody who can coordinate all of that process so that's it for my staff updates as I said I don't have anything for the economic development chapter but if there are any questions I'll be happy to take questions otherwise we can move on to the minutes I guess anybody have anything for Mike for anything additional about the updates okay yeah there's nothing new with the city plan stuff so we're and we're running out of time so I think it's probably best for us to see if we can move to the minutes approve those and then we can gather them so if everyone can take a look at the minutes from March 14th and when you're ready we'll take a motion to approve those or make any changes first so moved we'll take a second one second we'll take a motion from Jeff to approve the minutes second from Marcella does anyone have any discussion or changes they'd like before we vote anybody need another minute okay there's in favor of approving the minutes say aye aye opposed okay and it's approved okay so we have some busy time ahead hope everybody's ready we have a motion to adjourn before we do that John I'll be in touch with you through email so when you're ready just email me tonight and we'll get this together sounds good I was just getting the sun angle on December 21st here at 1pm it's 22 over 22 degrees thanks for doing that John I'll send it around I've got a cool model here okay for me please send like the main points of discussion for the letter and what if I just send a cool looking map with no words yeah helpful that is very artistic yeah okay so we'll get that together John I'll get that together and I will do my best and maybe hopefully Mike will also help because I don't feel like I have the technical background to talk about this well so I just want to say the main points which is this bad what we say good okay anyway so do we have a motion to adjourn yeah motion to adjourn motion from Marcella we have a second Erin come on can I pressure somebody to make a second that like found fun second yeah I think we should have a more of a bully approach from Ella that'd be good did we get a second from Erin there I seconded come on let's do this shut up okay hi okay those in favor of the journey say hi hi okay we'll see you guys in two weeks hopefully we'll see you on Wednesday bye


A course in Moodle is basically a space on a Moodle site where one or more teachers can add learning resources and activities for their students. What your course might look like as a teacher will depend partly on the chosen theme and settings of your administrator. But you can usually expect to see blocks, for example here on the right hand side but yours might be on the left or on both sides of a larger central area where the actual teaching and learning resources will be added. In this course there are as numbered topics but if we look at a different course which is still Moodle but a different theme you can see that these are divided into weekly sections and there are blocks on the right and on the left. In another video we'll look at the use of these blocks. In order to add learning resources you need to have the editing turned on and you can do this by clicking the button top right or by going to your administration block and clicking the link turn editing on. This then displays a lot of icons allowing you to move, add, delete or hide activities. For example there is a news forum here and if I wish to move it into a different topic section I click the cross hairs icon and I can move it by dragging and dropping. If you aren't able to drag and drop then it's worth asking your administrator to check your browser settings and the Moodle site settings. In order to add files, documents or activities for your students you need to click the link add an activity or resource in the section where you would like them to appear. It doesn't matter if you choose the wrong section by mistake because it's always possible to move afterwards. When you click add an activity or resource this displays Moodle's activity chooser which then allows you to choose what you would like to add. We'll look at this in a separate video. If you don't see the link add an activity or resource it might be because it hasn't been turned on on your course in which case you can check in your administration block activity chooser or again ask your Moodle administrator to check your settings. In the next video we'll look at how you can change the name and the layout of your Moodle calls.


Following the recent launch of the St Lucia Moves campaign, the Ministry of Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs issued a call to individuals to remain active and strive for improved health. The St Lucia Moves campaign is aimed at reducing the burden of entities by encouraging individuals and organizations to promote and support healthy behaviors through various interventions. St Lucia MOves campaign aims to further secure sustainability of individuals'miş Today as we launch the Souls Moves campaign we commit to move, to move forward, to change, to progress and. a positive journey towards wellness acting permanent secretary in the ministry of health journey daniel believes the saint lucia moves campaign will play a significant part in taking steps towards ensuring overall wellness of citizens today we also launch our saint lucia moves campaign which is a most visible and key component of our journey towards overall national wellness whereas physical activity is an essential component of wellness we would like to emphasize that exercise does not singularly inquate wellness by any means at all but rather that wellness encompasses a holistic approach towards healthy and positive lifestyles and living that extends beyond the lifespan of the saint lucia moves campaign however it is a start the ministry of health wellness and elderly affairs therefore invites you to embark on this journey with us as we rebuild our national health profile and health sector minister for health the honorable moses yabates says he's extremely grateful for the campaign which demonstrates the dedication towards taking action against the impacts of ncds the aim of saint lucia moves is to get solutions physically active to combat conditions like obesity high blood pressure diabetes heart disease and cancer we extend an invitation to all saint lucians to get even more serious about health and wellness i invite all organizations whether religious or sporting business or recreational all of us get active let us change the way in which we work and play remain active let's keep saint lucia moving the saint lucia moves campaign serves as part of the caribbean moves initiative which calls for original commitment focused on tackling ncds for preventative actions officials within the ministry of health also participated in the caribbean moves launch which was held at the emancipation park in kingston jamaica on september 14th during this activity saint lucia was recognized for its recent launch of the saint lucia moves campaign ahead of the launch of caribbean moves reporting from the communications unit of the ministry of health wellness and elderly affairs i am phenol neptune


Mary-Helene Mordini-Yang, who's a wonderful friend, has also, when she gave election in my class last semester, she made the point that social-emotional learning are not two separate systems. And in fact, there's this parallel processing that's going on and where people are thinking and feeling and feeling about how they're thinking all the time. It's this huge negotiation to create meaning. How do I use the thinking and the feeling to understand what's going on around me? So we know if you look at how people are thinking or feeling about things, how people are thinking about things, and then you can get to mentalizing, and then you can compare and contrast that over time, we know that these skills are things that we develop in our life, but we only do that in contact with others. So the big idea here about being able to integrate with others, to network, to talk to other people, well, how did you take away that information about hold-ons that Tracy shared? Talking to each other refines your own thinking and understanding about the information. How do you make meaning of what is shared? Okay?


We are now in 2011. It's really the time to use the eye from the sky. We can measure things on the Earth, especially on cropland from satellites. My real motivation is to start using this kind of technology that can help feeding the world. We have to feed all these people in the world. The problem is the water scarcity. We really have to develop very good information systems. In the end, what counts is what happens in a particular field. That particular field has to produce more with less water. If we don't measure what's happening and if we don't guide the local advisors and the local farmers, this is not going to happen. We invested a lot in space technology. All these systems are up and running and we are not using them. A satellite can scan the Earth, can scan the crop. We can measure spectral reflectance, we can measure temperature of the crop and the temperature tells you very much whether the crop is healthy. The satellite is reading the leaves. How much carbon is taken, how much water is used, we call that PI mapping, pixel intelligence. The vision of us is to make smart pixels for smart phones. Millions of people can start using that information. What it really means is that a farmer in India can get that information on his smartphone. Then that local firm in Punjab will really convert it in something like you should irrigate on Tuesday and you should irrigate 40 millimetres which basically means you should open the gate for three hours. So the strength is that we combine the smart measurements with the local knowledge By using this technology and by sending information to people in the field we directly give them access to information which I think is fundamental to improve the world.


On Monday, 27th January 2020, Express.co.uk published a result of a study which was commissioned by Bupa Health Clinics to mark the launch of iQuit. The study of 2000 adults was led by Dr. Naven Puri to find out the particular age when human drive and ambition starts reducing. Without any surprises, Dr. Naven and his team found that the age 33 is the time most humans reach the peak of their life's motivation and drive. Vision from age 34 most of us start giving up on life. That's why Steve Jobs said, Don't wait. Do something when you're young when you have nothing to lose. Don't wait for the right time to do what you want to do with your life. Don't wait for better weather. Don't wait for all the resources you need because the longer you wait, the harder it becomes. Don't wait. Do something when you're young when you have nothing to lose. Then the question becomes why do most people wait for a better time to start pursuing their dreams? The answer to that question could be many, but one is that most people think they will have better information, better ideas or more resources in the future. A few months ago, a man sent me a message with when something like, Hi Steve, I've been following your entrepreneurship teachings for some time now and I wish to start my own business but I don't know what business to start. Can you advise me about a business to start? Guess what my reply to that guy was? Nobody knows the right business to start. Listen to me young people. Nobody ever knew the right business to start. Nobody ever knows the right thing to do when they're getting started. People who succeed in life just start and move one step at a time. During these movements, they make mistakes and experience some failures. Then they change their strategies as often as the situation demands till they stumble on something which makes them successful. Don't wait. Do something when you're young when you have nothing to lose. Think about Samsung. We hear the name Samsung. What images come to your mind? You see this multinational phone and electronics company, right? Well, Samsung was founded by Yang Choli in 1938 in Taegyu, Korea. The company started as a food exporter in Korea and shipped items like dried fish and flour to China. Yes, Samsung didn't start with anything electronics. The company started by selling fish, dried fish and flour. Think about that for a moment. Yang Choli would have waited for the right ideas. But if he had done that, there would never be Samsung today. The reason why we have a company with a net worth of $326 billion called Samsung today is that someone started it by selling dried fish. Yes, dried fish. So what are you waiting for? Why are you waiting? Do you need a better idea, insight or knowledge? All of that is on the road. It's when you do something wrong that you learn how to do it right. Don't wait. Do something when you're young, when you have nothing to lose. On May 28, 1927, J. Willard Marriott opened his 9-stool root beer stand in Washington, DC. The business was to sell beer, period. Look back today. However, then you'll see that the same business had evolved to be a billion-dollar hotel business by the name Marriott Hotels. As of 2019, Marriott Hotels has it asset-valued at $21.05 billion US dollars. J. Willard Marriott would have waited for a perfect idea or a perfect time. But if he had done that, there will not be a Marriott Hotels today. The problem with waiting is that everything gets worse with time. Today you're 20 years old, you have a passion for music, science and trap in your ship. But you think you lack a few things. You lack the best ideas, knowledge or resources. What most young people do is wait because they believe that the next three years or five years will make them better prepared to get started. Well, I hate to tell people difficult things but I have to do that because I love you. You see, most things in human life usually become weaker after our 20s. So, don't wait. Do something when you're young, when you have nothing to lose. In the year 1968, American psychologist George Land wanted to test how creative people are from childhood to their adult life. Land gathered 1,600 children for this study and followed them from ages 3 and 5. This is what George Land found. 98% of humans were created between the ages of 3 to 5. 12% of humans were created at age 15 but only 2% of people remained creative among the adult population. What does this tell us? Well, if you wish to do anything with your life, the right time to start is today. Every single day you procrastinate makes you weaker. Human spirits get weaker as we age, will become more conscious and more careful as we grow old. We lose our passion, motivation, even confidence as we grow old. That's why I love to speak to young people.  You can dare big things. You can run, jump and fall without being discouraged. You can try many foolish things, get your hands burnt and still be fine. This is a precious asset most people no longer have as they age. Don't wait. Do something when you're young, when you have nothing to lose. I started this video by telling you about a study conducted by Dr. Naven and his team which found that when most humans pass age 33, they start losing their motivation and drive. We start losing our ability to try new things and dare something difficult. I then reminded you that nobody ever has all the answers when they are getting started. People who succeed in life simply start and learn on the road. I told you the story of how Samsung got started by Young Cho Lee in 1938 selling dried fish and flour. I also told you about how on May 28, 1927, J. Willett Marriott started selling beer, which today is a billion-dollar hotel business. The above two successful companies and hundreds of others didn't start with a perfect idea. Fully understood or even enough resources. They started with average or even bad ideas, then grew, learned and evolved on the road. If any of these guys had waited for the best ideas, they would never have started. I then told you about the 1968 study by George Land which shows that human creativity declines as we age. While this video wasn't made to discourage the old people who might be watching, I honestly wish to let you know that regardless of how old you are, when you watch this video, tomorrow can never be a better time to start anything. Most people lose in the game of life because they wait for tomorrow. Most people are poor, unhappy and unsuccessful because they procrastinate. True winners don't wait. True winners start with whatever they have, wherever they are. Don't wait. Do something when you're young when you have nothing to lose.