Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Okay.

Bringing the meeting to order.

Anyone for update agenda? How about public comment?

I have public comment myself. Okay. I'd like to be able to speak here until I'm done. I would like to have no interruptions. Okay. When I first came on the board, I thought it was gonna be a boring thing. And over the years, I've really enjoyed being on this board because it really gets you involved in the community and the individualism of this community. I was really taken aback when I saw the draft for the town of Hill Hall. This draft really upset me. This draft, I believe, is overstepping boundaries that I've never seen before. I really believe that some of these things that Allison has been bringing to us has been good. I like to see the town center and how things were evolving around that. And when we first started talking about all this, one of my first concerns, and I raised my hand and Mike canceled me and so did Alison, about how this was going to affect our zoning regulations that we have now. And I was assured at that time that we weren't gonna change the zoning map We may be doing a little bit of reclassifying, but that's as far as the conversation went. So now I'm getting this town of Gil Hall rough draft, and I see what's going on in this draft, and I'm very upset over it. There's some things I agree with. I think it's good for the town. There's some things that I think is way stepping over the boundaries of our individualism of this community. I don't agree with it. I just received now this introduction to what is a plan. And there's some things in there that I just kind of skimmed over, because this is the first time I see it, because I wasn't able to download it. There's some things here that I think is overstepping the bounds. We as a community, we worked on our town plan for over six months. And we had made changes that we thought were effective to the zoning regulations of this community. And then all of a sudden, it stopped. And now we're at a point now where we're allowing, from what I can see, the state telling us of how we're going to write our zoning laws and how we're going to do all this stuff. And this is really upsetting me. And maybe I don't understand this. Maybe I'm overlooking this. But this is, I'm upset over this. I don't like the state telling me what we're going to have for laws for this town. We're supposed to be an individual. Island Pond is what it is today because of the people in this community and how we wanted to move forward. And now all of a sudden, And in the town of Gilhall, in the rural section, I see these tiers. And all of a sudden now, this is all coming together over these tiers of one Act 181, tiers one, two, and three. And some of those things are incorporated in this, and I don't like it. Especially why should we divide rural into three different tiers? I don't understand that. We can add some things into it to allow some low-cost housing in those areas. But why do we have to have three separate tiers? I don't understand this. And maybe somebody should help me to understand it because I don't. So, I mean, now I just got this introduction to this plan and all these laws now since 2013. I didn't have any clue that this stuff has been passed. Just like the people on Act 181 didn't know Tier 3 and what the state had passed and how it was affecting the communities. Just like in Gil Hall's town plan, which I'm sure is going by the state regulations, You're looking at a farmer who has 10 kids, and he has 150, 200 acres, and he's only allowed to separate his property into subdivisions only twice. But what if he wants to give five acres to each one of his kids? This won't allow you to do it. And it's his land. I don't understand what's going on. And I need some clarification and help to understand this because right now, before I feel, before we adopt anything that the state is pushing on us, that we should go line item by line item of our original town plan, which we worked hard on for six months, and go over what they expect from us. Do we have to swallow this? Is the state pushing us to do this? I just, I'm confused. I'm confused. And I don't like all this paperwork that's coming down the pipe now and telling us what a plan is. Well, we know what a plan is. We've been writing our own plan. I had the floor, Mike. I have the floor. So I want to be able to speak here, and this is what I'm getting upset about. And I've talked to other people, and they feel that, you know, why should we decide... For the community. I think the community should have some say in this. I think the community, we should have a subcommittee before we draw up a new town plan for this subcommittee to say, yeah, this is a good idea. Let's go with that. I just, I don't like what's happening here. And maybe I don't understand it. But we haven't been really explained to us what was coming down the pipe. And that's why I'm getting upset. I don't like this. And that's, I've had my say now. I won't bring it up again. But I think that this is, we need some explanation here because this is getting in too deep. And now it's almost like we as a town have to accept a state's boilerplate of a zoning plan. And I don't like that. That gets rid of the individualism of this community. We should be able to decide If we want Farmer Joe here down the road to be able to subdivide his family, a five-acre lot out of 500 acres that he owns, I'm all for that. It's his kids. It's his land. Why should the state tell us that we can't do that? So this is where I'm coming from. And if Allison can help us down the road here when we start working on our town plan, but I just wanted to make everybody understand where I'm coming from. So thank you for the floor and I appreciate it.

So I'm kind of confused by some of your statements. Were you looking at the Gill Hall unified development regulations? Okay. So, okay. Please let me finish. So the town of Gill Hall contacted me because they wanted to adopt subdivision regulations. And they wanted to adopt subdivision regulations because their zoning typically runs along roadways. So it might run like 500 feet from the center of the roadway. So they have very deep lots and they do have developers who are coming along and creating multiple parcels out of really deep lots. And they were also concerned about, in some cases, they were doing this in land that didn't have road access. So, typically, when you have a lot that doesn't have road frontage, and you don't have subdivision regulations, you have a process in site plan review where you approve an easement. And that's what your regulations currently have. However, for some reason, they didn't even allow for site plan review. So the first thing we did was allow a process for site plan review that allowed for an easement for development on a back lot. But then they also wanted full-fledged subdivision regulations if they were creating private roads that were entering town roads. So we went through that whole process and then they wanted to identify ways to simplify the subdivision process. So we said, well, you know, the obvious one is if you're just going to be moving the lot line, that doesn't need to involve the zoning board of adjustment. So we'll let the zoning administrator handle that. And due to a statutory change back in 2023, they were also allowed to give the zoning administrator more authority to approve subdivisions. So they said, okay, well, we could do a simple subdivision of a lot. Like if you're just taking a lot and dividing it into two lots, then it's still, it just goes to the zoning administrator. Let's not make them go to the zoning board of adjustment. So we were like, okay. And I said, now you also have the option to determine if you have a really major subdivision that involves multiple lots or planned unit development, you could involve, you could ask for like a preliminary plat before you approve the final plat. So we decided, and this was a back and forth with the planning commission, we decided that, okay, we could do four lots to do just final subdivision review, but then skip the preliminary plat and then more than four lots or a planned unit development, then we could do a preliminary plan review. So we updated all of that. Then they also had flood hazard regs and they also hadn't been updated in a long time. And technically there were some things in there that were incorrect. They were calling what is the area outside of the floodway, what is typically called the flood fringe, where the water just sits. That's part of the floodplain. They were calling that the fluvial erosion zone, like the river corridor. And that's not the correct terminology. So we cleaned up that terminology and we tried to provide some illustrations in the bylaws that explained what the difference is And then we also developed a flow chart. So if somebody, we wanted to make it as clear as possible. So if somebody was proposing a subdivision of land, they'd be able to tell from the flow chart whether or not they just had to go to the ZA or whether they needed to go to the zoning board of adjustment and whether it was gonna be treated as a minor or a major. But all of those things were done at their volition. There's no mention of tears. In their subdivision regulations, and so I'm not sure where that's coming from. But you understand my concern here. Well, I'm trying to understand your concern, but there's no mention of tears. In the Gil Hall subdivision regulations. There's none whatsoever.

I mean, this stuff that we just got today on... energy permits and state highway permits and shoreline protection and all this.

That was Allison sent us. That's just all the updated regs that came out from the state over the last. Is that something we have to adopt? Well, it's stuff that we have to take into account when we're doing our zoning. Make sure we meet it. So that goes back 13 years.

Right. But that's why I said that when we start writing up our final town plan, that we need to go line item by line item to see what changes we want to adopt. But we're working on the zoning plan now. Yes. The zoning bylaw. There are two different documents. That's correct. But I'm talking about the zoning bylaw.

Can I add another point here? And that matrix was developed because every year the legislature makes tweaks to statute and most of our communities don't update their zoning regs every year. So if they're making a change somewhere, then we tried to come up with this matrix so that they could look at that and say, oh, okay, well, I need to take care of this. So that's You're looking at 13 years of statutory changes. It was an attempt that I made to summarize the changes. Joel sent me a draft update of your zoning regulations sometime back. Yes. And he'd already caught most of those. Mm-hmm. He'd already caught most of those. That's just a reference document that I was hoping it would be helpful for anybody who was working on zoning bylaw updates. And we could just update it every year so that people could look at it and say, oh, if I'm going to be making changes, I might want to look back at a change that was adopted back in 2014.

May I add that when I was working on the bylaw, that was a nice, useful piece of information to have. Thank you, Allison. Thanks. But there's things in there that I haven't incorporated that I didn't know when I was working on that, which is why our zoning bylaw hasn't progressed further than it has. There are some things that still need to be added.

So are you telling me, Joel, that some of these things that we're not going to be required to incorporate in our zoning laws?

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Which things?

Well, here's one thing. Energy permits for certificates of occupancy. I mean, Bruce isn't going to be able to handle that. In order to do some of this stuff that's in here, you've got to be an attorney.

I think you're talking about something that was passed in 2014. And if you issue certificates of occupancy, the applicant just needs to show that they've complied with the state energy requirements. It's a self-reported certificate. They fill it out themselves. And again, it's self-reported, and there's an exception if it's an owner-built. It does not require an extra visit to the site.

All these changes, Alison, you must have to agree, it's overwhelming. And I don't know what we're going to adopt and not adopt. I mean... From what I saw, what the town did of Gil Hall, I mean, holy cow.

So what I did with the town of Gil Hall is we started.

I understand that, and that's what I'm trying to get at.

Okay, but let me finish. How much of this do we have to follow? I think that you're conflating this with Act 181 and a lot of other things, and that's not the case. So when I worked with Gil Hall, I was working on their regulations, not their town plan. So the first thing we did, I said, look, you haven't updated your regs since 2013. So we should do a review and catch anything that does pertain to your zoning. And I will do it in red line. And then I will provide footnotes. So that way, if you have any questions about the statute, then we can talk about it. Okay. So we did that.

So you're going to help us with that too?

I'm working with you on your town plan.

Yeah, but the zoning stuff also falls into play with all of this.

The zoning is a separate document. We've got a grant that she's working on to do our town plan, not to do our zoning.

I understand that.

They're all intertwined, Mike.

Allison is always available for zoning. Whenever a zoning administrator has a question for Allison, she's always there. So that's just a service that NVDA provides up to a certain point. I mean, but we use her always as the knowledgeable person if we have a zoning question. Now, she's not going to go through the whole process of adopting our zoning bylaw you know, without some kind of contract with NVDA, but we know how to do that. Well, yes.

And we have other staff planners who are cross-trained in this as well.

I'm just wondering then why are we giving these statutory changes for the zoning? If we're working on our own zoning plan, why are we getting... You gave that to us as a reference document, Mark. It was not a demand that you had to do anything with. I know that, but it's kind of overwhelming us. It's not. I asked her for that.

I asked her for a copy of a draft of what subdivision. You didn't tell us this. I did it at the meeting. You were here. I asked her for a copy of somebody's subdivision ranks because we keep talking about it, but I don't believe that any of us have seen any of them. That's why I asked for it. It was not a mandate for you to go and adopt Gil Hall's... No, no, I didn't say we had to. This was a reference document that she said she'd send to us.

I only saw what they did. You stand up here and then lambast everybody because we gave you... I'm not lambasting anybody. I'm just getting overwhelmed. You're not able to do anything, Mark. I just don't understand... Why we're getting all this stuff with zoning, it's the town plan we're working on. Right.

She said she would just send it to us. Okay. It had nothing to do with... Ignore it. If you can't keep them separate, ignore it. Just throw it away. Okay.

No, I'm just, you have to understand where I'm coming from. We're getting all this stuff sent to us. And wow, are we supposed to incorporate this? I mean, I just don't understand what's going on. Okay, we're working on town plan right now.

So let's just skip all of your zoning questions. Let's move on. We'll be here all night. Thank you. It's fine.

Can I just, the reason we've been talking about subdivision regulations. Did you understand all this? No. no neither did i okay the reason that we've been talking about subdivision regulations is that you all wanted to pursue a partial exemption of act 250 in your village center and you could extend that except exemption in the neighborhood areas around the village center so you remember when Liam came up here and we went through a map, we produced a map and it showed, well, if you were to adopt subdivision regulations, this is what your Act 250 exemption area might look like. That's what we're aiming for here. And that was the only reason we were talking about subdivision regulations. And that Act 250 exemption would be a very important part of your land use plan.

And also for low cost housing.

Exactly.

That I understand. I understand all that.

Okay, so that's what sparked the conversation about subdivision regulations. Okay, but that's what sparked the conversation about subdivision regulations. And like the town of Gill Hall, if you were to adopt subdivision regulations, it would be your choice to do so. If you chose to not adopt subdivision regulations, you would not be able to get that, but they call that Tier 1B exemption to Act 250. But again, that's your choice. And when you're talking about tiers, the only tier that really is now is that Tier 1. Because the Tier 3 rulemaking went away. That was repealed and the road rule for what was going to be known as tier two has also been repealed. Yep. So the only thing left. from Act 181 is that Tier 1B area. Now, if you're looking at either of those zoning documents, you're not going to see any discussion of tiers in there. Because the irony is Gil Hall is going to the trouble to adopt these subdivision regs, but it's only because they are facing some development pressures and they really had some confusion about how to handle them. even though they would technically qualify for 2-1-B exemption, they don't want it. They just did it because they felt that they needed it for the clarity. Okay.

No, I just, this town of Gillihall thing that you gave us to look at, I just thought that that was the route that we were going to start taking. And I just, I got upset about it. I just didn't like it.

Well, what do you not like about Gil Hall's regs?

Well, some of the regs are identical to the regs that we have in our own zoning stuff. And there's some things that I highlighted in there that I just thought it was too restrictive. It's going to keep people from wanting to move there.

But again, what's in their regs is also, you know, it reflects their choices. Yeah, that's their choice. They have like a design control district, and you don't, for example.

I just wondered, you've answered quite a few of my questions just now with that one statement. Okay. That helps me a lot. Okay. I know where we're all standing now. It wasn't really clarified before. I'm sorry, but it was not clarified. Okay. Okay. And I had nothing against you, Alison.

No, no, believe me, I don't take this personally.

Some of your ideas have been great, and I followed them right through, and I agree with them.

Well, I don't take this personally. I just want to make sure that there's no misunderstanding. That's why I adopt subdivision regulations.

Because I'm not the only one that was confused here. Some other people have expressed concern also. So that's why I was willing to stand up and say what I said. I appreciate it.

Okay. So we're moving on. Yep. Next topic. Anything are we talking on the town plan? Yes. Okay. I'm playing. So how do we start that? Like, I mean, we have a kind of an introduction here. Are we following that? Are we moving into these other regulations? Well, this is the first time I've seen this. Yeah, well.

I'm not sure how we start. Well, it's Allison is the one, I guess. Allison?

Do you want me to, like, I can share the screen and just tell you what I did? Yes.

Okay, that'd be fun. I got the paperwork, but it would be nice to see there, too.

Yep, yep. So the introduction was a chance to cue up some of the major ideas that we were hearing. A lot of this in the first section called what is a plan actually comes, a lot of it's actually lifted from your existing plan. If you're going to be looking at this, comparing it line for line, this stuff doesn't just come out of the blue, in other words. We did try to, in this introduction, we're talking about the town plan and why it's needed. We also wanted to talk about the other benefits that don't involve regulations, such as the village center designation. And that's something that you've had in place for more than 20 years now. And it also allows you to access grants like the Better Connections grant that you got a couple of years ago. And then it also provides guidance on projects that actually do trigger Act 250 or Section 248 hearings. And those are reviews of grid-connected energy projects. Like your previous plan, I am assuming that you are going to write an energy plan that would give you that same heightened consideration from the Public Utilities Commission. That's because grid-connected renewable energy projects are exempt from zoning, but if you want to have a heightened standing in the review process, then you would have an enhanced energy plan. So I'm seeing a hand up. What's the question?

Oh, I have a mic.

Did somebody raise a hand? No, no, I didn't.

There's a hand raised. I don't think that's real. I think I saw somebody raise a hand and it's saying it's us.

Now, we as a town, aren't we getting a special deal through our solar project that we allowed? Aren't we getting something in line with that? We do get credits on our electric bills for that. Should that be mentioned in that town plan?

In the energy section, absolutely.

Okay. We should write it down so that we remember we're doing it.

And we might want to add that to the timeline, too. Okay, so then the greatest, you know, what probably the greatest advantage is actually a long range vision. And again, it's hopefully an inclusive process that invites everybody to participate. We are assuming that this is a. Complete draft and we've gone through the entire planning process, but our scope of work also includes a couple of other publicly worn meetings once we have a draft ready. So, um, I know you've had a meeting on the planned infrastructure upgrades. But, oh, shoot, we're also going to have a meeting on the local economy and housing. And then we've also referenced the survey that we distributed where we yielded 146 responses. So that brings us, and we just mentioned here that we're going to call those out in like call out boxes where we feel that it's relevant to highlight those, but we could also attach the full survey responses as an appendix to the plan if you're so inclined. Um, then any questions about page 1.

So I can go on.

Yep. Okay. So the main thing here, and this was also stated in the municipal planning grant application, your town is facing some pretty complex infrastructure challenges. You know, you have a wastewater project where you've managed to close up the gap, and then you've got some important choices to be made about water and also the downtown crossing, because if that would be implemented at the same time, but that has also been a long time coming. So we've also talked about... I'm sorry?

I just coughed.

Oh, I'm sorry. I thought somebody was cutting in and out of the audio and it was just breaking out. We've also talked about the cost of water and sewer and the cost to the taxpayers of doing infrastructure upgrades in the village. And one way to reduce that burden is to find ways to wherever possible to increase density in and immediately adjacent to areas around Island Pond, in neighborhoods around Island Pond. And when we talk about the village or in the core, we're talking about the village and the surrounding neighborhood areas. So this plan, therefore, is going to be intended to identify new opportunities for residential infill, but as well as permitting and regulatory barriers that we think we should address. So in some cases, there are some fixes that you could make to your zoning bylaws where zoning might be unintentionally getting in the way of housing. And then the other big discussion is Act 250 exemption for housing.

Any questions? Anyone? No.

So this I've lifted from your plan. That's your history. It did update your census. It does show, you know, you are losing population, but you seem to be losing population faster and slightly quicker in Island Pond than the rest of the community, which is troubling.

You need to edit out the Island Pond Historical Society. The museum is not in the depot anymore.

Oh, shoot. Okay. It's at Ted's Market, right?

Right.

I wouldn't exactly put it that way, but.

Yeah, it's changed. It's not in the depot anymore.

However, in the historic and scenic places and historic assets, we do want to remember to talk about how It's come up a couple of times how, you know, there must be a better place for the historical society than a modern steel building. Okay, good catch. So, and again, these are all just like the major challenges that we have, but also that you've accomplished a lot in recent years. And this goes back to, this segues into that planning timeline. that led to improvements that might have cascaded into other improvements and then beyond there. So the planning timeline, I think graphically, we were trying to use photos and try to treat it as more telegraphic so that it would be written in present tense. But you can see there are some areas that I still need help on background information.

It's occurred to me that while we're looking at the meetings that we still haven't had, that we have to have the housing and stuff we were talking about. We've had these big town community-wide meetings about every 10 years.

Yeah. Yeah.

We had Take Charge. We've had three of them. We had VCRD. It was the last one. That's now 10 years ago.

Yeah, and they're all referenced here.

So, well, would it be worth our while to try to have one of those again and combine it with the necessary meetings that you're talking about here? Absolutely. Absolutely. And that way we could tell the town what has been happening as a result of their last visioning session, what the initiatives have been taken, and do they still want to hopefully do that or whatever. Anyway, just a thought that maybe it's time.

No, I think it's a really great thought because you do. You seem to do like these big visioning sessions like every 10 years, and you – be right on time to do it again. So it would be great to have a convening that not only focuses on what's happened last time, but focuses on the key challenges you see going forward. In your scope of work, you had highlighted economic development as well, even though we've spent a lot of time talking about housing. and removing barriers to housing. But I think that we could combine both into like a big visioning session. And once we have like a reasonable working copy of the core draft of the plan, we could consider doing that. We don't even have to have the whole plan in place, but maybe like the land use section, economic development section, housing section, that would be great. Does that make sense? So, there is stuff in here about the designation, receiving the designation. There's information in here about Take Charge Brighton. There's the sidewalk study, the Island Pond Welcome Center being built, Stantec doing a study to look at connections to the Lakeshore Plan, the Opera Block. with its uh restoration project the community visit wow it's starting a storm here sorry yeah yeah get the door can you get the door yeah thanks um then um the revitalization plan that you paid for with better connections And that's a super helpful reference that wherever possible, we try to incorporate it into this plan. Then the scoping study for the downtown transportation infrastructure that also includes the water main and stormwater. The downtown transportation board giving you an award

um also um their wastewater i need to update you on that one allison because that dollar amount i don't think is right the dollar amount isn't one yeah that's that there was there was there's it was updated it was amended because it's over 200 000. okay so i'm just going to march this for get the right number i'll get it to you because i've got the grant document so under the um

You've got, and couldn't find information, the VOREC. Yeah. It only goes back. That was the dock. That was the town dock.

Okay. Let me go back and find that. Oh, it was over here. Okay. Do you know what year? Probably.

Well, I can find it. I've got it. I've got it in my. Yeah, you've got it.

Oh, I see.

Because I think there's something else in that too. It was the dock. What else did we do that year? The map.

The big map. The Bluff Mountain Trail. And something else. And is the playground in there?

No. The playground was paid for under ARPA.

And we do have the ARPA grant to build.

But still, it was a project that we did.

Yeah, we have in 2021 that the town used ARPA funds to revitalize the playground. So what year are we looking at for the VORAC grant? What approximate year?

I'm going to guess 19 or 20 is my guess. I have the grant documents on that. I'll get it for you right after the meeting. Okay.

I got it right here. Okay. 2020. 2020? 2020? Yep.

What was that one for?

Okay. And a map for the Bluff Mountain Trail.

And a map.

Right.

Is it for the public?

It's a regional recreation map that's interactive. I don't know how it's doing, but Paul Chambers put that all together, got a grant to do that. You can go on there and click on things and see things. I don't know. I forget how to work.

Yeah, it's built into the Brighton Recreation website. And we have the actual hard copy of it is at the Welcome Center. Because it was a two prong. It had a big printed one that's framed and everything. And then there's the online version that you can.

Okay. Did we not in our old town plan? mention recreation, snowmobiling? I don't see it here.

Am I missing something? This is just the intro.

This is just the intro.

This is the intro? Yeah, this is just the intro. This is not the plan.

I didn't see anything mentioned for recreation. No, that's... That'll be coming. Okay.

So the building and general services grant for tennis courts, that was mentioned.

That'd be a Joel question.

That was years ago. That was years ago. I'd have to look it up.

We'll go in your filing cabinet, Joel. I bet it's in here. I'm sure it is.

Okay. The town garage, was it built in 1991?

I'm going to assume...

1891. Oh, that's different. She wants to know. Okay.

How was it built? Using what funds? Just taxpayer funds?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think the fire station soon after the town garage.

Right? So the town garage is 1991?

Some ways, yeah. Yeah, I think, yeah, it's right around then. Because I just had to look that up.

Okay.

1994. 1994 for the fire station or the town garage?

Town garage. I have a picture.

Thank you. You do have a picture? Can I have it?

Wait a minute. I don't have a picture. Hold on. I probably actually do have a picture, but I'm not sure the one I have is at that time frame.

Okay. Okay.

That's Marty during the construction.

Fire station was just before year 2000.

So sometime late 1990s?

No, it was a 15-year. We did the fire station with a 15-year payoff period, so I think it had to be done after 2000.

Yeah, it would have to have been... 2005? 2005? Actually, maybe a little later than that, because it was paid off here before last. This is the second year without a payment on that. 2010?

Yeah, somewhere in that range. 2009, maybe? I can look it up. It would first show up in one of the town reports when we first had to start making a payment.

Okay. Are they on your website, too?

How far do your town reports go back? Only go back to not that far. Okay.

It'll be easier for me to look it up. I'll look it up.

Okay. So can I assume that the town garage and the fire station were both built with local bonds?

Yes.

Okay. Okay.

We should have got money from the surrounding towns that we served, but we didn't. We do now.

Right. When did that start?

After the UTGs got started.

So after the unorganized towns and gores became the UTGs?

After the unagonized towns and gores.

Yeah.

Because we used to get $19,000 a year paid to all the organized towns in Essex County because of the power line revenue. by statute and then when the unified towns and gores didn't like paying that money they decided they wanted to be their own government instead of being run by the supervisor of the of essex county and so they organized and then we told them that hey listen you come over here and use our library you come over here and use our buildings our services our parks And guess what? We supply you with coverage for your fire protection so you can have insurance. So you're going to pay us and they do. Okay. They didn't like it, but we sued them.

Oh, ouch. Hey, that's really good to know for the section about adjacent communities where we usually just put in like happy verbiage. So that's helpful to know. There was a VCDP grant to build a playground, establish a revolving loan fund, and hire a coordinator for microlending.

Yep. That was 1992, I think. Okay. Shortly after I started work, 1991 or 92.

Okay. Do you have an idea of the ballpark figure?

Well, it was a $27,000? $250,000 maybe? We set up a loan fund of $200,000. The school built a playground for $11,000 and we tried to build an ice rink and actually did do the construction for an ice rink in the downtown park. It never got used because the snowmobiles had to park their snow there.

Okay. But that was back when you could do something with a lot of money. You could do a lot with $250,000.

At the time, yeah. Might have been a little more than that, but I think it was around that.

So I'm assuming that all the funds were obligated from the microlending program and paid back?

We got back. We only made one loan. And that was to the buck and dough when this fellow bought it. That's a long time ago. And he paid back $8,000 of, I forget how much we loaned him.

Okay.

But it was a lot. And he paid back $8,000 before he went belly up. And we used that $8,000 to start a microloan program And we made maybe four loans for $1,500 from it because we thought that was, remember, you have to use that money in accordance with their rules and regs, and we couldn't do just anything. So we used it for microloans, and we made three or four of them for $1,500 or so, and some of them got paid back and some of them didn't.

Okay. The walking path funded by NBRC.

Right, 2000. I don't know the dates in the sidewalk. I'll have to get back to you.

Yeah, I did an extensive search on this one and I reached out to their staff and I tried to find something on their website. I couldn't find anything, but You know, if we don't get everything, that's great. But, you know, it's fine. But it would be nice to be able to show, you know, what has happened. Finally, the solar project. When was the solar project established? And where can I get that information?

Oh, let me look up what I've got. Because it's only been three years. Yeah, three years. But I think we might have been getting credits for the start of last year.

This is the second year.

I can get you the information on that, though. I think I have it.

So when you get the credits, I'm just assuming that it helps to underwrite your operations?

It does. It does. It's credited to our electric bills. That's the one off of Meadow Street. Not the other one.

How about, so this isn't really town, but it's related. So the Brighton Community Forum has received, God, over a million dollars in grant funding from USDA, RBDG through the last nine years. Is that something we should include?

Yes, and we should include it here. Okay.

Because that's what's funding all of our economic development work.

Yeah. So this million funds totaling a million?

It's over a million that we brought in over there through that.

Was it just from USDA or other orgs?

Well, I've gotten other grants as well, but USDA is, I think we're over a million with just USDA now. Okay. We used to get Tillotson every year as well from New Hampshire. And then we used to get, we got some smaller ones in the beginning stages.

Okay. Good. Okay. All right. So, we'll, we'll flush this out and then work that back in. So, we're going on to environmental benefit and burden. So, your existing plan talks about the statewide planning goals. And you have always reference them in your plan and taking them seriously. And you've also in your existing plan, which I really like, you also reference the general goals of the planning process where you create a coordinated process, but you try to engage with as many people as possible. You work to develop and implement the plan. Then in 2024, there was a new planning goal added to statute, and it means to equitably distribute environmental benefits and burdens. So, in other words, everyone has to enjoy equal access to the same assets. And you can't single out groups of people to be stuck with burdens, like such as cost or like flood risk. You can't say, let's put all of the trailer parks in the floodplain. So, you know, I mean, but I mean, that's really basic and really simple, but so we've tried to, tried to start articulating that here. The first two are things that are actually voiced in our proposed regional plan. So the first one is, we talked about environmental protection and its relationship with regulation. But we also acknowledge that our economy depends very heavily on small scale and self-employment. So we want to make sure that we're not disproportionately burdening the self-employeds and the small employers with high permitting costs. So when in our regional plan, we ask that municipalities consider income sensitivity when amending their municipal regulations. It felt like something that would be relevant to Brighton. So I attempted to articulate it here.

I like that.

Okay. The other one. And again, remember. We have, we have concerns about lands that have an elevation of 2000 feet or more. And we try to protect them from many large-scale commercial and industrial development that would create protrusions into the ridgelines that can be seen from multiple communities, would result in fragmentation of wildlife corridors to the point where we're harming linkage. A lot of these concerns stem from the regional plans opposition to utility scale wind. So, again, considering that you have in the past adopted. An enhanced energy plan that would give you heightened standing in the section 248 process, and you don't support utility scale wind. I thought that this would be relevant.

That should include our watershed, which is well above a thousand feet.

So what would you say about our watershed from a environmental benefit and burden standpoint?

should be protected because that's, I mean, I know that we've had a little bit of problems there this past year where they logged in there and it was kind of muddying up the waters to our mountain street plant. I don't know how much the town, we as a town can prevent something like that. I don't know what the course, what our course could be to try to remediate problems like that in the future.

Well, if you are, for example, clear-cutting higher elevation lands and you're removing the tree cover that could attenuate those waters from coming down and carrying sediment into your bodies of water, that feels like it's an important concern.

Okay. That it is.

We've had problems with it. We did have problems with it this year. Not so much Pleasant Street, but Mountain Street.

Mountain straight?

Yeah, it was. Well, it was the north, the north plan. But that just had to be where they clear cut above it here last year, wasn't it a year before?

They started the year before and they finished this winter.

And what elevation was that clear cutting?

Well, I'm at 1100 feet. I'd say 2000, 2500. Oh, so it was at 2000 feet.

Yeah, I believe so. It was above our water treatment, above our water, our streams up there. So I could probably look on a map and figure it out. Sure.

If you, so what I'll do is I'll work this into, I'm just going to paraphrase it now and then I'll work it in. So it was clear cutting above your water sources?

Yes. Yes. Okay.

Okay, thank you. Okay, so the last 1. And this was, you know, if you looked at the survey responses. I know we've always talked about, you know, building a recreation tourism economy and I, and I know that it's important. And I wanted to. Make sure that. You know, some people kept saying things like, well, we need to do this for the people who live here all the time. And I don't want that sentiment to degrade into an us versus them mentality. But it's just a reminder, as it says here at the end of the first paragraph, that Brighton has to remain a safe and livable community for all. So we, and the, a good place to understand where that, you know, where sometimes people differ is over here, we showed, we asked residents, oh, I need to fix this. I need to remove the negative signs. They somehow ended up back again. In this graphic, I produced this in Word, and they weren't there. And when I uploaded it into Google Docs, they came back. So I'll just pretend those negative symbols aren't there. But you can see 88% of the resident responses, they cared more about housing opportunities than non-residents, obviously, and affordability. and having a strong local school, being a great place for startup businesses, being able to age in place. They kind of tighten up in being safe for walkers, and they're kind of getting somewhat closer about having year-round recreation. But again, building that social capital, having a community that cares, that was pretty important to residents. Having a vibrant downtown, they're pretty much, everybody's in agreement. And stewardship of the lake, they're all within striking range. So it's just showing, it doesn't mean that any of these parts of the long range vision are less important than others. But if you want to have a livable community and it's also a destination, you know, it also, you want to have a sense of authenticity. Like people actually live there. They can stay there. They can age in place. You know, so they all, they all do kind of go together. Does that make sense?

Okay.

Okay. So I thought that this was a way, this at least was a way to talk about that without igniting an argument between different people. So then from there with that, with those considerations for environmental benefit and burden, then we start into the vision for Brighton. And this first sentence actually comes from your existing plan. However, it doesn't articulate how you're going to achieve that. Like, how are you going to ensure that your community remains a vibrant place for generations to come? So I attempted to add some priorities here. Maintaining the natural environment. And again, everybody seemed to be in agreement that the integrity of the lake was really important. Having recreational opportunities in transforming the village of Island Pond into a walkable thriving center. The other thing that these three priorities do is they kind of mean they they build on what is kind of a matrix called maintain. and improve and transform. So you, you identify the things that you want to keep, that's where you maintain and you identify the things that are good, but you need to improve on them. And then you identify the big picture. What do you like? What are the big things that you really like transformative things that you need to do? So that was my attempt to articulate a vision statement. And this vision statement would resonate through all of the following, the remaining chapters.

The only thing I'm wondering if we should beef up a little bit more is discussion about expanding employment opportunities beyond just tourism. Only because if we wanted to pursue anything grant-wise in the future, if it's not in the town plan, it's really hard because they always ask that. Please show us where you have considered this in your planning process. And so I think adding something in there, if we wanted to pursue something, I think there should be a little something about that that we could like let John to and say, yes, we did consider that. Because housing is great, but if people don't have a place to work, it doesn't We could build all the housing in the world. They're not going to be able to afford to buy it. So I kind of see that as a, they kind of have to go hand in hand. And so I think we probably need to put a little something on there.

Okay. That's helpful. So what if we said livability also involves creating more employment opportunities that go beyond the tourism and hospitality sector?

That works.

Karen Hollweg, Okay, and I think that there are there are some statements and open ended comments from the survey that could also reiterate some of those.

Hal Hallstein, yeah I saw you you put it in there, that it was one of the other considerations that people have brought up so. Hal Hallstein, I just thought it should be you know if we're going to put it in the vision statement, we should include something about that yeah.

Karen Hollweg, Okay. Okay. This is great because this is the kind of feedback I was hoping to get. Okay. So this is where we go. We also talk about pursuing Act 250 exemptions. And we can get into greater detail, like the devil is in the details in the land use section, but a lot of it is, all of it is hinging on the ability to adopt subdivision regs, but I think it's an important part of your vision. Does that make sense? Yep. I think that's it. So we got through 10 pages. So I'm going to stop sharing.

I have one little thing to add. We have the senior housing over here by the lake.

Yeah.

And I'm one of the ones that are guilty of this. I never think of the low-cost housing units that are off of Mountain Street. And a lot of people don't think that we have that here in town, and we do. We have low-cost housing between Back Street and Mountain Street up in that area that is government-funded. They get a stipend from the government depending on their income. And it's kind of out of the way of the eyes of the town. And I think a lot of people forget that we have that here.

Yep. Well, we could certainly in the housing plan, we could talk about, and I think you have in previous iterations. I don't know how I'm going to get back to the screen because now all of a sudden I can't see you.

It's just something that I have found. You didn't know it? Oh, yeah. We have low-cost housing.

Well, yeah. Gilman Housing. Yeah.

And a lot of people don't know it's there. Yeah. And it's too bad because we do have it.

Yeah, but they're all full.

Oh, I know they're all full.

Trust me, they know. It's probably a waiting list.

Well, not only that.

It is something I think we're working on the housing section and we're talking targets. I don't know that looking at trying to entice somebody else to do another Sunrise Manor kind of facility would not be... I think that would be a worthwhile endeavor for the town to pursue somebody to do because that housing is what people need right now.

Yeah. That's the kind of housing they need.

Like subsidized? Well, not necessarily just subsidized, but for senior, you know, senior housing opportunities. You know, there's when you get to a certain age and you can't take care of a house anymore, there's only 23 units or 20 units over there, isn't there? Yeah, 22 isn't it? Yeah, 22 somewhere.

We've got a couple on Mound Street. There's four on Mound Street, and then there's some senior housing. Yeah, I mean, yes. On Mound Street.

I know there's some up on Mound Street, but I thought they were just regular low-income housing.

I was suggesting for like senior kind of housing. Only because we have an aging population. It just seems like that would be a worthwhile. The seniors in there.

The seniors on, yeah. I think, and I don't know, you'd have to ask Melinda for sure, but I think, I mean, I don't see young couples. A lot of people in the town forget it's there, I think. Yeah. No. Trust me, there's a way to move. There's like...

When you're talking about aging in place, I think the size of the unit really matters too. Yeah. And those are often hard to come by. Yeah, a lot of them are just one bedroom because you're seniors. Yeah. Okay.

Come on.

Are we all done with this discussion? Anything else to add? All right. Then moving on, Bruce did tell me that he wasn't going to be able to make it tonight. So we'll just go on to, I can't believe, approve the minutes of the previous meeting.

I'll make a motion to approve the minutes of the previous meeting. I have a second. Second. Second. I was here.

Anybody want to do anything for other business?

Yeah. The walk path grant was applied for in 2011. So I presume it was probably built in 2012. And that was an NBRC grant. We got a grant for the depot roof in 2018 from Historic Preservation. And I don't know, did you have the big stormwater project in there where we combined three culverts into one to dump it into the lake and built the wetlands? That was a...

Isn't that part of the 2004 grant?

It was an ecosystem restoration project. And I think it was... I have to look it up exactly, but I think it was 348,000 maybe or something like that. We had three culverts. We were dumping all the water from downtown's drainage, stormwater drainage, went into three culverts, and all three went into the lake. And we used the grant to put those pipes all together and buried them. These huge tanks in the town park between the town hall and Sunrise Manor. Infiltration or exfiltration tanks or something. And that's where they're like big catch basins, I guess. And then that from there went to the wetlands and the wetlands treated it. And then from the wetlands, it went into the water all treated. So that was a stormwater treatment project.

Anything else on that?

Wasn't that part in 2021 where the water main and storm water system and infrastructure on Cross Street?

I don't think we did much on Cross Street except bring one of the catch basins there at the top of the I don't know if we got to Cross Street on that project, actually. I don't remember. It was mostly this side of Cross Street. There were three catch basins that we put together. Brought them over into the park between the Town Hall and Sunrise Manor.

That must be before 2021. Yeah.

Yeah, that would have been the, is that where the weed pit over there came from? Is that part of that grant too?

The wetlands?

Yeah, yeah, the little thing over there by Brandy. Yeah, it goes, the pipe goes from there.

over to there, over to that wet, from those infiltration over to those wetland things and then into the lake with some system that they have.

That had to be light. Yes. Yeah, I think, I know, I think I was on solar or...

I can dig it out when it was. Wow.

I think that like 18 maybe.

Yeah, it was a while ago now.

It's funny how time flies. You're like, wow, it's been a long time ago now.

Are we finished with our discussion? Are we still thinking about the date?

I think the fire station was around 2010, I believe.

Fire station?

Give or take a year.

You want to put that in? Give or take a year. That was safe, I suppose.

I'll narrow these down tomorrow. I'm going into the office. I'll look them up exactly when they were.

I used to put those up.

Joel, are you able to get into the draft as well?

The town plan draft? Yeah. Not that I know of. I haven't tried.

I seem to be having trouble. I shared the link. James was able to get in, but then everybody else had to request permission.

It's because of whatever email address you're sending to. okay so they have to have their it's because it's google okay that type your google account has to use that email address so people are using something else if they have a google account they they have to give you that address to use okay google demands that or they make them set up a new google account because that's what i had to do with um Was it that one? No, actually, it was one that Nick, the rogue foreman, sent me because he sent it to Mike at BrightonBT.gov, which is just a forwarder. It's not a real email address. Yeah. Okay. So it wouldn't let me into it until I created a Google account for Mike at BrightonBT.gov.

Okay.

That's what causes that issue.

Okay. Because in reality, I was creating documents in Word. And then I was uploading it into Google, the Google Drive. And sometimes I get really unexpected formatting results.

Do you want me to, I could set up, I use OneDrive, which is Microsoft. So I could create a folder for it and then share it to you and share it to everybody else.

Would I be able to just keep drafts then in Word? Yes. Oh, that would be awesome.

You can just upload them in there. So I'll create that.

That would be awesome. Yeah, that whole part.

Because that's how we do writing recreation. I think that's one that we use.

Do you have one drive a lot?

I have one drive for everything. Actually, I use both of them. I have a personal drive. They've done a study.

Drive for the Lakeside Park Path. The expansion of the town. I don't have it at all. That stormwater. You can log into it.

Another thing I think should warrant maybe while we're talking about community projects like this, although we'd have better roads projects almost every year in the MRGP projects, we did at one point have a Category A study that laid out a long-term plan for priorities for improving our town road culverts is that I mean that's significant to me seems to me like that's something that an accomplishment of some sort that the road is road system is doing yeah people don't pay attention to it but that's what prevents flooding so are you talking about the um uh flood erosion inventory road erosion inventory It's a Category A Better Roads study, I think they called it.

Okay.

I mean, it just laid out when they started that VOBSIT, you know, the state culvert analysis. Yeah. You know, and we had a Better Roads grant, and we laid out this, I don't know, it was a long document, and here's what we need to do first. This culvert's in critical, you had a whole book, this culvert's critical, this needs to be done first, then that culvert, then that culvert, stuff like that.

Yeah, but we actually just, we've got that updated too, because we actually don't have to redo ours.

Right, so it's just something that was done that was, to me, sounds like

A benefit to the community at large is, does that take the place of the road erosion inventory or does it just inform it?

Even informs it and now it's kind of a, I believe it informs it.

Okay. Is that because. it allows you better, it's easier to comply with the general permit?

Yeah, it identified everything that we need that was, that needed work. It was not going to be.

Yeah. Yeah. The general permit's the MRGP program, isn't it?

Yeah.

The Municipal Grant and Aids Program. Yeah, this was this was just like it said, OK, here's the worst culvert you have. Here's a picture of it. It's 12 inches. It should be 18 inches. You know, you should make this improvement, make that improvement. And then, you know, it's just down the list.

Right. So it informs the because that's what they go by now when we apply for grants and aid. If the culvert isn't on that inventory is needing work, they're not going to pay for it.

So it effectively becomes a capital plan?

Yes.

Okay.

Because we update. It's a capital plan.

And do you know the approximate year?

I could find when that one was done. I just know we don't have to redo ours because I just went to apply for the grant for it and they were like, oh, you already did yours. You don't need to.

Uh-huh.

Okay.

Because we do it ourselves now. We don't have to hire a consultant to do it.

Okay.

How are we doing? Are we done with the discussion? Everyone good? Would you like to adjourn?

I'll make a motion to adjourn.

I have a second. All in favor?

Aye.

All right. Adjourning at 655.

Bye. Bye. Thank you, Allison. Thanks. Are you guys meeting on Bennington Battle Day?