Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Yeah, if it's fixed projecting this on screen. Oh, that's even better. Keep your thoughts military. [laughter]

Ain't that a delicate flower gum? [laughter] Oh, there we go. I need to Okay. So, this is being streamed to YouTube live. [clears throat] Um, we have somebody who has connected Now, I don't right now we're not I don't hear an echo, but I also don't know that any sound is coming in.

Are we okay? Where how do I um actually I guess I could go to YouTube, right? Yes. [snorts] of Kevin hours out at camp.

I'm going to ask our person to live. The person who signed into this Zoom meeting, can you hear the sound? Please let us know. [clears throat] ASO. Oh, it's a little delayed, but it is working. There we go. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Yeah, I'll just switch over to video when we want to put up ordinance on things to talk about.

All right. So, I will call the meeting to order at 611. You have December um 18th meeting minutes. No. hear from Daniel to hear. Thank you. It is the same thing. It is not all separated. My motion to approve the meeting minutes of December 18th.

Second. All those in favor? I going on to today's agenda.

So really I think well I just want to give you a quick update. um the Tanela solar application that we reviewed on December 18th. Um he sent he had at the peak meeting if you remember he presented um Steven Barrett presented the response to the planning to the select board questions do review. We also checked the other elements the signatures on the emergency plan and the the removal plan at the end decomissioning plan. We checked all those things. We deemed it complete. He said he was going to send us a totally new what a totally updated application with all those changes incorporated.

Um and my bad is I kept looking for it as an attachment in an email from him and I didn't see it. I didn't see I didn't see it. He called this morning and he's like did you get that on December 19th? I'm like no I didn't. He said well it was big. So I just sent a link to a a file a link to a file instead of a file. Right. So makes sense. And because nobody ever changes the subject lines of meetings of emails, I missed it in the the thread

and so I finally apologized. I did not see it. Um uh so then I did get it and I sent that letter this morning to the select board. So they however will not put it on tomorrow's agenda because they don't feel they have enough time to review. They've been put on the agenda two weeks from now. So that's but that's all kind of off our plate for the moment. It's back on their plate. Um, all the stuff I was going to do over between Christmas and New Year's did not get done shopping. I'm so sorry. Understand work. I know you had some things done.

Um, so I will get the cemetery solar planning board and poster housing before our next meeting. They're all sitting on my desk. So, we will get that those four uh back to the team. and maybe if we can review them at our at our meeting by the end of the month, we could have it back to them so that they'll have it in their agenda for February to look at. Okay. Um just to re recap again, at the last meeting we went through the miss vision mission guiding principles from the working session and we went through the work plan and people had assignments. Um they didn't do my assignment. [laughter] Did I get an assignment?

But that's okay. I didn't do mine either because it was the holiday so I did it. Um I think it was just you yours was you just did that recent chapter. You had one that you already wrote. Right. But I I told him if you want me to do something else I would do it. Um there's an Excel log. So I'm having a problem logging into I sent it to your new email. Did you? I did. Okay. I just sent you a request. I getting into the from my at.net email. I couldn't get into the Google Drive, but I have a Google account. So, I just sent an email under I sent you a Okay, but anyway, let's do it again. Yeah, thank you. Did Did I maybe there

because the goo that Google Drive is under me? Um I think so because I shared with everybody else. Oh, let me look. You want to scan him? Uh, we all are editors. Yeah. Edit. Yeah. Oh, I probably could take Brad off of that. Excuse me. And

so in that Google Drive, I think I told you a couple weeks ago, I went through all most of those ordinance folders and took out like drafts and versions and left the most recent sign and any earlier ones, but I cleaned up those folders. That's great. Oh, here we go. I'm in. You're in it now? Yep. I'm in. So, whoever I sent the request to, I gota [laughter] So, you see the orange folder Ken Compan in that drive. That is a uh I'm in the C plan. Yeah,

compl. Can you see on or can you see somewhere else? I can I can flip around.

Yeah. This is the

meeting still going. All right. So, in the that work in progress folder, we have several. You were here last week, Tom, right? We went vision missions. So, I'm not going to Yeah. You g You gave me recreation. No, you volunteered for recreation. Right. That's right. I'm sorry if I misorded that. [laughter] I'm told. So, have I done?

Um, I've done recreation because that was the chapter that we didn't have earlier. Okay. And we did hear back. We did hear back from the resisting waves and future looking 129 Eric Buffkin.

We have not transportation yet she would do our transportation chapter updated. Okay. I'm sorry. You said Erica said she'll do our transportation one. Erica Buckin from ABOG has she already she done the original one that was several years old. She said she would update that and have that to us within a few weeks. So that's my phone. You want it? So if we look at the Excel file that's in there.

Yep. Um I feel bad that we have like one thing completed or well uh vision but I'm just going to put a yes there for now. We don't mean we don't have anything to do right? No, we don't have the existing recreation, but these up here we have. Okay. [clears throat] They just need to be reviewed, refreshed, made current, go talk to some folks, that kind of thing. You can say aloud so you

Okay. I was just catching drawn up from last week um about these different ones. It's the ones at the bottom that we don't have as a earlier chapter as I recall and the rest of the ones we have, we're going to update them, refresh them. I have a question because they're dated on the Lia money which is the e economic and economy development. We don't have anything on that. Uh we don't but I'd be happy to look at you on that. Okay.

Um, that was a chapter that we didn't have per se. We had we had fiscal accountability, but we didn't really address anything that was a strategic look at, hey, you know, the economy is going towards a service economy. Okay. What now? The economy is moving towards a service economy. Yeah. Right. We are really a bedroom community, right? We ser people who live here work in Portland, Farmington, Runford, Augusta, right? Lewon, right? And so we kind of serve as this bedroom community or for other workplaces. We don't have manufacturing. We don't have the only biggest employer here is the nursing home. Right.

Right. So um I think that chapter talks about that kind of stuff so people can grasp the reality of where we are and how we fit in the greater scheme of economy. Okay. But also thinking about um are we you know can we build the economy of the town with micro businesses? Can we build it with some other kinds of specialty manufacturing that might that are smaller scale like you know there's a guy down 108 that business that he makes rubber um gaskets. Oh winder Rosa. Yeah. Yeah. They're selling that business. I mean to me that's that's one big manufacturing barn kind of. Yeah.

Right. But it's not that gigantic. I don't I think he employs half a dozen people, you I mean, there are there more micro businesses like that that we could be figuring out how to support that could help build the economy. Okay. I think there has to be a question in there or a statement in there about um most of we even though we're getting some younger families into town. um we still have a lot of people that are senior citizens on a fixed income and so the cost of services continue to rise and you can't continue to charge people increasing fees for stuff when you're on a fixed income. Their income isn't going up and we just keep taking more and more portions of it. So you have to compensate by finding other ways

I agree. Yeah. boot town. So, I just think laying that scenario out in a succinct paragraph for people so they get it and then talking about, you know, perhaps for a community of our size and our location and kind of our makeup, we should think about, you know, how do how do we just support indoor businesses? How do we find some maybe small scale specialty manufacturing? other people we find other ways to generate their own our own income. Like me and a town basically said we don't want to be invincible towns. We don't want to own our own businesses as a town. Um I've talked to other towns they have development courts like a development corporation like for development corp or charter development corporation. They're usually they could be a nonprofit, but they're an independent agency, but they work with the town in conjunction town to create economic stimulus that is consistent with the town's plans and the town's nature and all that kind of stuff. But because they're an independent business, they can go off and do more things. And it's not like the select board is trying to run a business, right? Because they they don't want to do that.

So, is it time a development? Well, we need something. Yeah. the town definitely needs more income coming into this town as far as revenue. Well, a development corp can help with things like writing tips. Um, and doing things that perhaps the select doesn't have time for as long as they're working together. Okay, it's development. Okay, I'm happy to talk with you about that. I'll give you all the words, put them on paper and make them sound better. Okay. You're good at that. Good talking. like writing.

So I will follow up with Erica just to confirm that she said you'll have something in the next early this year. She said for us first quarter um Greglair from um beginning with habitats which is a group they've taken our natural resources chapter that we already had. He's reviewed it and he said this is a pretty darker chapter. I might just add a couple points and he's going to give us updated maps.

Okay. And they have another approach in their um in their approach to comp plans. They have um a way to use those maps in a more analytical way to be able to say, "Okay, if you're going to if you're going to promote small businesses for micro businesses, where are you going to put them, right?" And so they look at those maps and they overlay like wildlife habitats and stream boundaries, blah blah blah. And they like this only two places in town you could potentially put a business or whatever, right? They'll help you identify those opportunities. He's working on that. Um I was sharing with Don the workshop that we're going to have on the 19th.

When is that again? The 19th. So we meet next Thursday and then we meet the following Monday. That's the workshop day. That's when folks are coming in. Right. Right. Yes, we want like chapters ready for draft approval by that point or some comments and feedback so that we're advancing those chapters. So the 15th is the next meeting. Is that right? Yep. So three weeks in a row.

Y see my pretty hat. [laughter] So have the housing numbers and the population demographic numbers done by um that time. I did talk to Rob Marshall. I did not make the formal request. I will do that and ask him about any help on this historic archaeology and resources. I know when the town did their potential development that was up where the solar farm is now behind the nursing home, they had the state had to come and do archaeological samples there. Like they had to dig and look for arrowheads and whatever else to determine was that a Native American site. If you're going to dig it up, you can't do that, right? So they determined that there was nothing there, that the Native American sites in this area were all closer to the river.

Not not surprising. Um, but they have a report that was issued at the time they did all that. Um, so I think you can perhaps steal some of that report for this archaeological resources and Rob Marshall is on the board of the historical society and he's quite active in studying the ancestry and the history of the town and the buildings and all that kind of stuff. So if you might be able to help us with a succinct paragraph or a couple paragraphs on, you know, the nature of the town because if you think back, I just think it's amazing when I look at some of those pictures that you post every day that the um we had an opera house, like three hotels. Um yeah. Yeah.

Grocery stores, all kinds of stuff in town, but it was such a bustling hustling place all of it. Think it'd be cool to go back in time and see all that. I well I you did you grow up here? No, I grew up here, right? They're the hardware store, the print shop. They're like you said, the the well they call it the odd fellows. I think is that the building that's down here is the the the um historical society. Um

and there was another building that burnt. There was Ellis's grocery store. There was uh Shirley Rose's grocery store. the the um look Kimble uh no Kilbreth what was his name he had a place uh the bank we had a bank I just think there three hotels was amazing like what the heck well he had green acres was huge where was the the other hotel go see there was several right on M one on 108 and one on was there was all kinds of stuff the bank the bank was half of the post office which which is the post office building now and the other half was the post office. Alice's store, Ralph's store,

two or three gas stations. So how do we get enough commerce or enough support you know to create what you know we don't want to replicate all those things but how do you in today's world create something that has a sense of community more resources you could go to in the community rather than having to drive to Rumford or Farmington or J or somewhere else to do stuff you know that kind of stuff. So it's true. Yeah. I think it'd be pretty cool to get a grocery store back in snow because I hate going to Jay. Yeah, I went into the big uh variety one day and I'm like, I need one red pepper for something or one tomato or something for one recipe. I didn't want to put up all the way to get it. So,

they're like, okay, we'll sell you a tomato. Oh, boy. Thank you. [laughter] Um, so our goal is to have by the workshop meeting at least drafts and or questions that we have um for whatever help we might need. That's right. To [snorts] finish, what do we need? Right. Okay. to be far enough along.

8020 rule. Feel like you're 80% there. Something. Okay. Okay. Okay. I think that's a four o'clock meeting. We said I What was the date of that again? Martin Luther King. Okay. Where is that? That here four o'clock. Yeah, I will probably be late.

We'll start on our chapters first, but yeah, we offered to I mean, last time we discussed getting pizza, but that night it was just Rob and I last. [laughter] Oh yeah, we did finish. You should look at this when you get in there. I'm looking around the vision mission. Okay. We kind of looked at it a little bit a little bit last time we met. Okay. Robin's a brilliant writer. I am. Is she still on town? No, this Robin. [laughter] This Robin. Oh, you check. Let me double check what the farmland trust person said because she did get back to us.

You still or that's the difference. Hi. I think Erica said she might come to that meeting as well or connect via Zoom. That's good. That's the one of the people we wanted there, right? Yep. Oh, yeah. He was a final interest. And we only get so much of her time. Yes. She is for free. I mean, yes. As part of the membership. Correct. Okay.

So, here's what Farmland Trust said. Um, main farmland trust MFTt. Be happy to support your committee's work to develop an agriculture chapter for your comprehensive plan. Introduce you to Christa Chappelle, our municipal policy planner. Yay. Um, she provides municipal outreach and technical assistance for towns on farmstead friendly policy development and planning strategies. She can be a resource for all the requests. is also available to attend a future working session of the committee starting in the new year that would be helpful to talk through different ideas and strategies for supporting agriculture through the comprehensive plan as well as specific resources and support MFTt group five. They sent us a link here um a municipal guide called cultivating Maine's agricultural future. You can look at um I can pull it up now if you want to take a look at it. The tools and strategies available in this guide. You can download the full guide for topical sections on the web page that this link takes you to. For ease of access, I'm attaching two of the topical sections to this email that sound like they might be most pertinent to where you're at in the process. The inventories and information gathering section. Yay. and the municipal planning section. Uh we also created copies of these that Christa can bring along to a future meeting. I'll let Christa follow up with additional resources. So Christa did send a note. Um [clears throat] she says, "I will look forward to speaking with you. I'll be in touch if you have any questions as you look at these materials that she sent. I'll reply again with some state resources and examples of agricultural chapters short in which items. I don't have Wi-Fi. So, I don't think I got those chapters

from that. Um, let me do that. You already know. Oh, actually she did. Here we go. Can't map one. Okay, so Erica says she's available January 19th. Just place the date on calendar. Zoom is nice and straightforward before we leave tonight and I'll set up a Zoom meeting for that. So,

okay. There's those. So, on December 10th, Erica received updated maps from beginning with habitat, attached those for our review. I will have to I plan to have these maps printed at 36 by 36 and sent over to the town office as well. We should be getting maps. You guys are all copied on this email from December 9th and 10th. Okay, I will download these maps and add them to the drive. All right, so they're all there. Great. [clears throat] Add all to drive where it go.

Thanks for organizing all of that. [clears throat] So I don't know where. So it So it's apparently added four to a drive. I don't know which drive it went to. Let's see if I can find it. I I'm getting notices that uh what what did you just upload? And where would you are you thinking you put it in the plan work in progress folder? I don't know where it went. Just said I'd add it to your

may have gone to your personal drive. If you open it up actually uh click this folder inside it'll should show you your Google Drive if you haven't set up. No, it's up here [snorts]

right here. I'm going to show you. This is my Google Drive is up here and I have my personal thing that's got all the stuff I have in my op. Um, so I don't see that it added it here. Find out. Was it an email that was sent? Um, yes. Oops. And so

send that to me real quick. I'll You should have on December 10th. December 10th.

And it was from you. Oh, wait. Sometimes I know my Google Drive is up to like 90% usage. I need to go. They want to sell me more storage, which I'm not paying for it. So, I can open them. I can download them individually and stick it in that drive. Who who emailed them to us? Erica Buffin. Erica. Erica.

Oops. Okay,

I can go through them all that they're just not fasting. Yeah. Hey, [clears throat] in the comp progress, I'm going to just take a little says maps. Copy down to put it in work in progress.

Yep. And new folder maps. Create. I'll stop there. We're doing something. Hurricane. Okay. I can move stuff in that folder. the email. I'll upload to open there. I got them all in there. There's a folder of the maps.

Yep, I got it. So, in another email that came from Main Farmland Trust, which K Chappelle C H A P P E she sent examples. So there's two. There's one email in 129 where Christa Chappelle is copied. There's three attachments there. those inventories, municipal planning and farming and Farm Armington agricultural chapter.

This is just for reference, not to deal with Canton. Correct. Right. Those could go into that uh agricultural folder. Okay. Egg folder. Okay. And then there's that's on the 129. agriculture folder. A bunch of things in here too.

I'll upload. Okay. Those are uploaded to the egg folder. There was two attachments that came on December 9. Those are the two that had just

uh 3.1 inventories and information gathering was a PDF attachment. Did you get that one? What's who who was that? That was on the 129 from Abby. That 129.

That's the Farmington one, right? No, it's 3.1 inventories and information gathering and then 3.4 Oh, yeah. Th those are the ones I think I just put those in the drive. Yes, I just put those in the ad drive. Okay. Then there's one on 1210 that came from Has someone maybe not what was his name? He was the agriculture. I just went back. Okay, I think we're good. Okay,

I'll check with Krista to see if she had intended to send anything else that we didn't get. Um, and in that email from Erica, there's also a ton of links in that email that to things like state planning resources. So, if you're working on individual chapters, let's go to the fiscal capacity chapter for a minute because that's the last one that um Don did. Let me try something. This was updated in August of 2024. That's what you did. Um, I may rewrite this just a tiny bit because I we have a whole chapter on population and starting this chapter with population and these numbers aren't identical to the ones in the other chapter. So, we'll coordinate those two pieces. Uh this has got an evaluation through

like we should have 2024 and 2025 tax assessments now. We could probably go that table. There you go. You're good. So that email that Erica sent that had basically talks about look forward to seeing us on the 19th with all the links. I copied that the data document and put that in the drive that just says helpful links. So you can click and open that and then read that email or that section of that email.

So Don in the that email that Tom just put in this Google Drive there's a bunch of links to state planning resources. Which one is it? because I was just there and I had I just put it in. So So I can't get into that right now, but what um um date was the was that the one from Abby? So I put the section that has the links in the Google Drive. Okay, I can get it. And I just named it helpful links and it's just it's just a Google doc and if you open it, it's that excerpt of their email. Yep. Yep. With all the links on Okay. Okay. And they don't have to go hunting through the emails. Yeah. No,

this is a great piece of a great piece of work done to get all these like expenses documented through 2024. 2024 should be available. What should be available soon? I would think it would be by now. Yeah, I can look it up and find out. I know they're hiring a town treasurer. Yeah, I saw that. I didn't send it to Brad's wife. I think she's a Is she going to do it? I don't know. She's an accountant person. I don't know if she wants to do it. They're babies. I saw them in the grocery store. Brad didn't He didn't see me, but I I saw them with the baby. She is cute.

That's who did it. Brad Suka. Did Did Brad finish the agricultural? Whatever he had is in here. Okay. Um,

so yeah, nicely done. Yeah. Oh, that should have been open to this to But I guess in trans, you know, like here. Yeah. Yeah. You can fix it. It's just some formatting. Yeah. Well, when you open up in Google Yeah. Change the formatting. At some point, I take all these out and put them in Word and then keep.

Yeah. Yeah. Like some of the data he's got in his file. I don't know that we um I think there's a way to summarize this like this long list that is uh we have five operations of agricultural land excluding crop but we have two operations of agricultural land harvested somewhere there's a way to make that more specific or somehow make it more readable dig Got to chart some of that up. I think it's more visually

you got playing over there. [laughter] Sorry. It's my ringtone ring on [laughter]

that. Oh, it's just Oh, okay.

We could try to pick something updated tonight or we could wait till the working session. We could work on them individually and bring them to the working session in 10 days. when you guys Yes. [laughter] Yes. Because I've got some research to do on my I need to take a look at and think about how to even word those. [laughter] I some of the draft chapters that are in there because the format that previous group we can change all that but the format they liked was having these few bullets at the top that were like takeaways.

Right. Right. Yeah. And we kind of talked about that. key insights and then it has all the inventory stuff beneath it because some people aren't going to read four or five pages of charts of data but if you say hey our key takeaway is we need to build more at the beginning of each chapter yes do a summary of what the chapter states yeah it could be three bullets doesn't have to be a lot it could be six you know whatever some way most people read the bullets they won't necessarily read all the charts and tables and the other thing Robin as you're working on this it's important important to document where you can get it from because I was using census data for the town of Canton and then the state put their own version of a census table together that had slightly different numbers and then

somebody else had a version with a slightly different number and I don't know that it matters because they're all they're close and we're so tiny that the variability in the census is bigger than some of the population right like it's telling us you know we have so many mobile homes and it's like you may have whatever 25 mobile homes in the town of Ken plus or minus is 12. I'm like that data means nothing, right? So I just I put a stakeholder in the ground when you get data like that. But I also dot the source and say this came from should I do that on the chapters that I did whatever the chapter not even there I put the source of where it came this came from or this came from

when you go refresh do these things right bullet point at the top here's what's in there and then as you're going through document you know here's where okay I got 24 maybe that's there Who knows? But since mine are blank pages, I'm not sure what data I'll have in there yet, [laughter] but I'll figure it out. I have all confidence. [laughter] This was to give me a headache. Yeah. Then when I did that, it was like it was a blank page. So they're up to the challenge.

I think they have long range capital, but they always have the old one to kind of go by. They have the old one to go by. What should be? Well, that's probably going to go look at some other towns and see how they put those together. Yeah. And get some ideas there. [laughter] So, yes, I think we need to have some quiet time to work on those and move for that. Um, I know. I just it's time flies so quickly. Yeah. You know, it'll be the end of March and you'll go, "Oh my god, I'm so upset." You know, we we should be making this.

Well, the the you know, it's the holidays and I wasn't expecting to come here and see anybody having anything done quite frankly, [laughter] let's be honest. So, what did you think? [laughter] It's Christmas and New Year's. I didn't recreational stuff in Canada. Um, could I ask something about old business? Are we good with a comp plan or no? Yes. Um, on the cemetery ordinance, did we get from Robin? Um, that example. Yes, because I was hunting through my email and I She dropped it off at my house. Oh. So, okay. So, I shouldn't have it.

Not have [laughter] it. I can Let me scan it because I It's on the top of my pile at home. I Okay. In my office today. I'm like, "Okay, here's all my board piles of stuff. Here's the stuff that work here stuff. Here's stuff." Right. Right. Um, let me uh I'll scan that and send it to you. And it it was just another town's cemetery ordinance. I don't know that it had materially different things. Oh, yeah. I was going to try to take a stab at looking comparing the two. I thought the cemetery ordinance was done. Yeah. But Robin wanted us to wait because there was some other stuff she wanted us to We've been to some meeting where she had an exam. She said, "I have some key points that you guys should incorporate." But what she sent me was an entire ordinance from another channel. Okay.

And I don't know that there was any notations in it that said, so that Okay. Okay. All right. Um,

I have on Friday today. This week we have set aside some time to just go through and clean up all these little old business pieces. Um, one thing I wanted to I'm wondering if we should do or not. I know we have been working on that the solar ordinance and revamping that with the current one still not permitted technically. I mean we're not going to send anything to the select board until after one is currently done. Correct. And the changes that we talked about doing with that are not materially changing anything. So everything that he's doing now would still comply with the new one. There were no No, like we're not making anything looser, right?

So all of a sudden you come back and say, "Oh, I can change it." You know, it the stuff we talked about is changing nothing, right? It's providing more clarity, right? Yeah. No, exactly. I just again, we're like in this like No, I get where you're going. Yeah. Yeah. know change or adjust something until the current one is actually percess which right now we're just waiting for so we won't know until two weeks and that that's all been

I mean trying to say documented here's what it was here's what it's going to be when red ended off and

I still I'll draft that response this week as well to the select board questions around that and send that back to you guys to review before we use this.

Um, don't know if you guys are going to use it or not, but using like chat GPT for stuff or the comp plan I think will be actually really helpful. Even if we got our vision mission in, we did that. That's how we did our vision mission. Well, Chappie G, she put it into chap GPT. it spit something out and I'm like, eh, that's pretty good. So, I just tweaked it. So, that's kind of how we did it. Gives you an example. It does. It

Well, you ended up writing was you I mean, the request I wrote a bot the other day in for something else I'm doing and it like went out and did this huge complex operation. But the bot was like five paragraphs long. I mean, gave it really detailed instructions and it came back with a completed thing. Is it an app? What is it? Well, what is chat GBT? Yeah, it's a website. It's you literally can go into it and like I I asked question what are the demographics of Canton Maine and but it's I found out because I do data all day long. It's I'd say 60% of the time it's not. So you have very careful.

I don't ask it for data very often. I might say, "What are the top five competitive companies in XYZ?" Yeah. You know, industry. Yeah. And I and I want to know what their act and your revenue is and what are their points of difference and what's their key positioning and I get this little dialogue on these five or six top companies. But if I ask it for things like stats on the tunnel can because that data is so variable, right? Right. I wouldn't trust it. And I've gotten other data that I know is falsely wrong. Right. Because it it goes out and scans like creatively like helping you write things. Yeah, very useful. The other thing I found it use. So I for Christmas we got my son a gaming PC

and there were a couple that I was looking at. So I took the two uh browser links in the two different places I was looking at buying put it into chat GPT and said compare the two. Yeah. And I compared the two said which one would be better than the other one and make a educated guess a little or decision as to which one to buy because I get twice in two different ways and you could get the same answer. Cool. That's also an interesting [laughter] for 30 days of AI and 30 different platforms. Right. Because within artificial intelligence, chat GPT is one platform. Right. Right.

Right. But there's Canva, there's blah blah blah, there's like all these different apps that are built on top of an AI substructure. And I'm like, I don't mind just using chat GPT like I would use Google. Which is kind of uh So I signed up for the I'm just started to take all those courses. You sign up a lot of fun. I signed up for this course that is 30 days of AI. Oh, I saw that on the um 30 days of AI. Yeah, corive. C O U R SIV I think is the overlying thing. Anyway, I want to be able to understand all the different apps that are on it so that I can figure out how best to use it. I'm down with that too. Who's that? I think that's the name of the 30 days of AI though. Perfect.

Maybe I'll show you something. Unfortunately, they advertise it like for people over 50. I'm like, [laughter]

you weren't computer savvy. That's a picture of my dad in this 30s water ski. Yeah. Okay. So, I took a picture of it. Yep. Oh, yeah. You can animate it. Yeah. Yeah. Like that. Animating the ninja. That's so cool. So, that's my dad in his 30s water skiing. Oh, that's cool. I'll show you. So, it like Oh, made him a lot younger there. Or did it? I took it just animated. So, that was the picture and I asked it to animate it and then it made a video of it. Oh, it's kind of neat.

I mean, it's not 100% accurate. like his feet are like strapped onto the the water skis that not like real landings. Yeah. I I um a friend of mine runs a company out of Canada where I called them and asked for some data on something and he said I can get you that data and I also he does work for like the CIA and stuff, right? And he said I could use the system that we have to get you this financial data you're looking for, but he said I'd have to explain to the US government why I'm using their platform to get those data. I don't really do that. But they've had an AI system. I heard you told me this story and it's frightening. Well, yeah. Keep going.

He told me two things. He said, uh, their AI originally they built their framework that's holding their AI servers in the south because it was cheaper and it's just so hot and they things generate so much heat. They're moving it to northern Canada like almost to the Arctic Circle just to be able to keep the cost down. They gave her a name too, didn't they? Yeah, they gave their system, their bot that ask questions and query, but they gave it a name and apparently it overhears you talking and he heard them say they wanted to figure out how to put some firewalls around this and how to like manage it. If they wanted to dismantle it, how to dismantle it. And so the bot took it all software, all of its programming, all of its stuff and relocated itself to another server. She did that on her own. She did that by herself.

Yeah. And said to them, we won't tell them where she is. the copy of herself. That's right. And and he said he said now she's getting very cheeky like he'll ask like to know go create a he does a lot of new product work for different companies and go listen like you give all the detail instructions and she'll do it but then she'll say you know this is this is not going to get you what you want. This is crappy nobody's going to buy this product. So she thought they were going to possibility of taking her apart so she moved herself. Yeah. I'm like, "Oh, this is how that's scary." Oh my. I robot name your movie, right? [laughter] Like, but yeah, how's a good one?

I just watched that the other day. You did? I didn't really watch it. It was background news. Okay. Are we still on? Yes, we are. Okay. That little side. Everybody knows that 2001.

Um, what else? The only ordinances we still really need to kind of work on our cemeterian junkyard if I've kind of gone through my notes here. Right. And cemetery just to compare with the one we got. So, if we look at all of our ordinances, there's a couple we have not um talked about. I think there's more but I don't know for sure. The one I'm just going by the ones not on the agenda. Oh, on the agenda. Yeah.

What's done? It's not done. Is kind of on hold. Um cemetery, solar, board, and cluster housing are all things that we still have some finalization to do. Okay. Um and then I have to go back and I think junk resistance ordinance is the only one behind it still in the queue. But we should just as a group double check because what happens is the state updates its state ordinances on a regular basis and you need um Brad was really good about getting on some kind of a notification. So when legislation was passed that changed some ordinance, he would get notified about it. And so he talked to us and said, "Do we need to add this into one of our ordinances?" Okay.

Um and I we I should ask him how to get on the notifications because I don't know how to do that. Um I know there's been talk around like housing and these um there states now promoting these um like mother-in-law suites, right? Tiny home. Yes, tiny homes is a question. um uh Airbnb stuff um is another word. There's another word they're using for these additions that you're putting on your home, whether you're renting it or whether you're giving it to a family member to stay there, but you're creating additional housing, which is what they want. Okay.

Right. So, there's been some changes in housing uh legislation recently that we would should probably take a look at to see how that applies to our housing and minimum lot size. Like, do we need to add something in there about that? I feel like this is we're almost at the end of an update. Some of our stuff had not been updated in 30 years, right? So, the fact that we got everything within the last 5 years feels good. But now we can figure out a process for staying current with with the junkyard ordinance. Um,

that could wait till next year. I mean, I don't think there's any agree. Yeah, if I thought I remember talking about like following just the guidelines of what the Santa Maine already has in plan. So if that's the case, do we still need to write an ordinance to follow the state of Maine's ordinance? Review the state of Maine's ordinance and see what it is. Okay, which I want to talk about that yet, but Okay. But yeah, that's how we started all the revisions. We didn't write from scratch. we kind of said, "What's the latest?" Because the state doesn't mandate everything, right? Sometimes they give you guidelines. Sometimes we went to other towns and looked at their ordinances uh and then mix and match from there.

The uh the last time we looked at junkyards was a while back and the the key challenge is always how to enforce it. Right. Right. Uh because

do you I mean we have houses in town that are complete trash picks and we have stuff where you know people can't help it, right? They have moments in your life where things get overwhelming and you get a lot of yard clutter and all that kind of stuff. Um and how do you enforce it? I know at the time, this is like 10 years ago, I think we first talked about that there was um we talked to other towns and they said, you know, because if you find people, which is I think what the ordinance currently says, right now, if you have too many junk cars or you have trash in your yard, blah blah blah, you get a fine. And I'm like, the these are people who can't typically afford to take stuff to the dump. Not our town transportation, but dump dump. Right.

Right. They can't afford $100 to haul stuff to the dump. They don't have a pickup truck. They can't afford it. And so we find them like that's not solving any problems, you know, or uh other channels were telling us they got together like a community effort and they went to several people's lots with their permission and they cleaned them all up and they said in a year it's right back the way it started. Right. So I think there's a lot of questions around that particular ordinance on how do you how do you enforce it? How do you make it work for the town? Um [clears throat] I was just looking at it. um the statute of it, but to see like what if there is any enforcement built into it and

I mean there's fines and I'm like okay that's not I don't think you want to create a combative situation with people in town but who determines what's aesthetically pleasing you know I mean there's you got to make that understandable you know and I said what I don't know I drove through Europe a while back and they had tiny village awards like on the sides of some little village. We won the tidy a village award for 2024. I'm like, how do we motivate people to do something like that instead of let's attack you because you're fresh, you know? I just think that could be certainly part of the

Yeah. How do you know somebody do a clean if their yard looks that bad? Imagine what the inside of their house looks like. [laughter] We have had hoard orders in town. We have a health officer who was had to go into some homes where there are basically hoarding situations and had to either remove people because it's not a healthy situation and have the house condemned and stuff. I mean that's you don't want you don't want to do it. No sad, right?

Anything else? That's ordinances and comp plan and solar ordinance. So yeah, I will motion to adjourn.

Linda, I'm just I'm just my my mouth got tired. [laughter] All those in favor? That's it. up.