Planning Board - Regular Meeting

It's not in my way. Okay. Hello.

How are you?

Hi there.

Do you have? We're just getting started. I'm sorry. I mean, running a little bit late. We're looking at the agenda. Do you have an item?

Yes, I want to.

So we may know people that join the meeting online. Sometimes. I was just wondering if we noted their name.

We should. Those are the public attendance. Yeah. I can share your agenda.

I don't know.

We missed you. Yeah, what's that?

We missed you.

Oh.

Last week.

Yes, I know. I didn't want to miss the end of that game, though. I'm very glad I stayed.

Let's say an hour ago when the rain was pouring.

Yeah. That's where. Right.

Have you officially called the meeting to order?

No, I haven't yet. You already have the board attendance and the public attendance.

Yep, we're good. Okay, good.

So we should be able to call the meeting to order at 6.13?

i see that the permit log which is provided at the last meeting but it was kind of sparse so we had asked for um we'd sent remember we talked about we prepared them an outline of what we wanted to see as a permit log we had emailed that to aaron and had zero response now on the table at the last meeting there was a um I just gave him the site visit for it, which was not the information that we asked for. And some of that's updated. And was it even work that he did that's worked with the previous CEO? Oh, is it? Yeah.

Yeah. I didn't know. Okay.

So, cause the dates of that are like three years old or something.

So that, so. Well, this was, this was 2026 review though.

It says that if you look at the dates, they're not all 0.26 dates on there. I don't believe.

Are there dates on here?

Well, I mean, Lynn's property is on there, and she said nobody has been there in over a year. No, there's no dates on that.

Right.

So that was a question.

Okay.

So my understanding is Robin met with him between our last meeting today.

Yeah, she's working on that now. It's just it baffles me that this is what was left, you know, contrasting to what we asked for. Correct. Correct.

So let me ask one minute. Before we get into the permit log, do we want to approve the meeting minutes from June 4th?

Oh, I was just reading down through it.

Oh, okay. Okay.

And that was the first thing that caught my eye. Yeah. Move to accept. All those in favor?

Who's seconded that?

Don or Lynn. Thank you.

Do we have any other agenda changes for today? Not that I know of. Didn't make it to the office to see if there's anything in our box. It would be attention. Sorry.

I didn't want you to put out an email that they want us to go through our planning board stuff. Oh, yes. Yeah. Thank you. Good catch. Thank you.

Yes, that's fine. Evidently, we have a whole filing cabinet, is it?

That entire filing cabinet is ours. Oh, there was like three of them a couple years ago, and Rob McClintock and I spent several weeks going through it, and we got it down to one.

Okay.

But we could go through it again and see if we need to.

So purging, we've been requested to purge the file cabinet, and then there's an inbox in the town office. And it was really loaded. Last time I was in there, I probably should have grabbed it, but I grabbed this folder instead. It's an inbox for the planning board. Yeah, a planning board inbox. It's got a whole... Mostly what it's got is stuff. Most of what it's stuck with is the... Is the solar... Yeah, solar maps are in there. Okay. And all that stuff. So, yeah, they ask that we go through the inbox in that file cabinet, and that's when you get a chance to... And then maybe we need to keep all that in there.

Yeah. Well, and do they want to move the file cabinet? The issue was they locked the door and we can't get into the office, right? So we move our file cabinet in there.

You can't get in there.

And they decided to get something out of it. We can't get to it. So that's why it's sitting out here. Now we can decide if they want to leave us access to the office.

That'd be great. And then you get out of this room or. So that's the whole issue is they really want to remove it from this room.

I don't know if they want to remove us from this room. I wasn't. No, she just asked when I was here, she just asked that we, you know, don't take anything that's old in there.

There may be items from there that we want to move into a permanent file in the office.

Okay. So we're presently going through the permit log review.

I'm almost done, if you guys want to see. This is 2025, I just finished.

So that's what you're doing right now? Yes. Okay, so Robin is updating the template. which will then be on like a shared drive and we can all see.

That's what we agreed to. So I asked him if I created this, will you agree to keep it updated? So I just finished this. OK. This is all 2025. There were two things floating outside of this folder that are also marked 2025, but I don't know, you know, if they're supposed to be part of it or they were outside the folder for a reason or what. So I'm going to leave them outside and I have to ask about these two. So I'm going to leave those down. And then there's one here for March of 2026. Maybe that's valid. Maybe we've only issued one permit in 2026. What was it for? Should the solar permit have been in this folder? Yeah. Okay. That's not in this folder at all. Okay. I can give you that. So I have a couple questions. But the bulk of it on him, except for if you can see the yellow stuff here, is missing information from the permit. So on our way, though, and then the idea is we'll put it on a shared site so we never have to ask for it again. We can just keep the log updated and we'll just go look at it.

as we need. So that's the idea. So I had a question on the old business. I see cluster housing is listed in the old business. Haven't we already gone through that ordinance?

Yep. I have to provide you guys with a cleaner, a markup copy of the final recommended changes and a clean copy. Okay. So that's on my to-do list. Okay. All right. I got through like 38 pages of the comp plan. Nice.

I've got some.

All progress. The commercial ordinance, had we gone over that at all?

No. I think I do believe the next thing would be to this LD 2173 impact on conferences. I think that's cluster housing we can do pretty quickly.

Right. We've already gone through it kind of.

Yep. The LB 2173 impact, there's a couple of things. Eric and Buck came from AVCOG, sent us a link to the actual ordinance or actual state legislative document that says, hey, towns, you have to do this, this, and this around these auxiliary dwelling units or accessory dwelling units. There's a workshop coming up next week in South Paris. It was the same time we had planned our work session and something. But it's FTOG and somebody else are basically walking you through that LD2173 and its impact on your ordinances. So I don't care if either we can do it ourselves or we could send somebody to the workshop and come back with information. That was just something like that.

Well, it sounds pretty important.

Yeah. I was debating, do I put time in the comp plan? Do I put time into LV 2173? Cause I didn't have time for both. So I dived into the comp plan instead. But I think it's just going to take about two hours to sit down and read through the 2173, read through our ordinances and just say, Okay, we have to make an amendment to the housing and minimum lot size ordinance, or we should consider, and a lot of it's going to be considering. I don't think there's going to be a clear answer. That's what we have to talk about.

Yeah, exactly.

Do we want to move our setback requirements? Do we need to shift anything else in our, and it would apply to, which ordinances does it apply to, which ones doesn't it? Yeah. I think I just have an answer on this. Yeah, yeah.

And basically that shifts on auxiliary housing, right? This LD 2173.

What was happening was a lot of like coastal towns that have zoning and everything were saying, oh, we have these nice little key cutter neighborhoods with big houses. Somebody wants to put a... Like an in-law apartment or something. Even a little rental unit. Even a tiny home or whatever. On that property right now, they're not allowed to do it. And so the state passed a lot because of the housing crisis to say, you municipalities have got to make accommodations for this. You have to allow certain things.

Oh, okay.

And so they're requiring you to encourage these accessory or auxiliary dwelling units. And I don't know the impact to us because we're pretty... Yeah.

Well, I was just going to ask, is there certain areas in this town where it would be applicable?

We have no zone. So no... It doesn't, but so anybody can really do anything. The big impact I think is going to be on things like setback requirements. How do you, do they have to have a separate sewer system? Like sewer accommodation? Is it built?

And then how do you approach the taxes on it? I mean, it's not a complete.

Well, there's detached ones. Yeah. How are they being assessed?

Exactly.

That's the assessor thing. That's not us. Is there anything in our ordinance right now that precludes you from doing? So would we be out of compliance with the state regulations unless we make a couple of changes?

I don't think there's a lot, but I think we just need to- It warrants looking at it though and discussing it.

Well, this is what has happened in the past is that we just ignored those things for From the state? We didn't know. First of all, we didn't know they were passing them because no one really paid attention to what was happening in state legislature, number one. And then when we did find, I mean, some stuff was 20 years old. Like they passed accommodations on the housing and lot size ordinance about things like people with disabilities. Even though you might not meet the setback requirements for a garage, if you have a disability, you can automatically get a variance.

Yeah.

up to one bay for a car to be under cover so you don't have to go out in the snow, etc. So there was variances that were passed by the state that we had not yet incorporated into our fences. Some of those are now incorporated. So now we're trying to stay on top of the state stuff so that they don't fall into that. Right.

Yeah. It only makes sense.

Yeah.

And so you can pull it right up. I mean, just by putting it in main LD 2173.

So what did she give us something different? Same thing. So link to that.

Oh, okay. I'm just reading.

The next steps on the ordinance progress. Yeah. I understand that the select board wants to have, um, legal review on all of them. We've already got four of them done.

Great. Now, last week, the chairman of the select board sent a note asking, again, for the latest copies of each of those, which have been sent several times. So we sent them again. And so now it's at the top of the agenda. I don't know if it's on the agenda for our next week's select board meeting or not. And I don't know what they want to do. So that'll be a support.

I don't know how much funding is allocated to legal review for ordinances. Oh, we do 5,000 something.

I think we've, well, it's all, all of our legal expenses for next year are in the budget. And it was, I think, was it $5,000 or 10,000 for everything altogether. That means anything else that the support sends to legal review, not just our stuff, but any cost for a town's attorney. Town has a budget of $10,000.

So let's ask for this. Is it more important for those ordinances to be legally reviewed or the comp plan?

Well, I don't think it's an either or. I don't think so either.

Do you think we can do both? I don't think there's going to be enough money.

Okay.

All right.

Well, Mr. Sullivan, I think the... Not officially, yeah. One of the things that I think perhaps we could suggest or ask about is because... A couple of years ago, the select board removed the planning board's ability to talk with the town's attorney director. So initially we would have a conversation with the town's attorney. We'd send them an ordinance. We'd say, this is where we're looking for review. This is where we think there might be some sticky spots. They decided we couldn't do that anymore. They had to do it ourselves. So they took away our ability to talk to the town attorney. We have no idea what conversations take place there. And I don't know if they're saying things like, Mr. Town Attorney, we need the $1,000 review or $500 review, not the $3,000 review, or we only need you to look at these sections because there's been minimal changes, et cetera. So I don't know what direction they're giving the law firm. I think what we heard back last year was that a couple of times we sent something or that they sent something on our behalf, they got it back and they said, this was way more expensive than we expected. Like, well, did you set expectations with your So that's something that I think perhaps needs to happen, but we have no say over that. So really, we're going to check in at the next board meeting. I have not seen the agenda for next week. But because the select board chair asked for those ordinances, This evening with the agenda.

And is Robin McClintock still our liaison to the?

Yeah, she was 10 in the end.

Oh, okay. So that doesn't work well.

She's visiting family.

Thank you.

Do we want to spend some time reviewing LD 2173 ourselves or do we want to send someone to that meeting next week?

That's on the 24th. That's the one you were talking to me about.

Yep.

Okay, so reschedule the 24th?

I mean, either way.

Well, we don't all have to go to South Paris.

No, but we all need to be able to participate in the review. Yeah.

So can you just go to this? without having, do you have to pay to go?

No, it's part of our membership.

Okay.

But it's right at the same time in the evening that we were.

Yeah.

To our comp plan working session.

I think we should push it. Yeah.

So we have this. Which phone I'd be. We had two, as I recall. We had one on the 24th and one on July. July 8th. So I was thinking, can we talk about these sessions for just a little bit before we... So the goal will be for each of these two working sessions to get through all of the chapters in the comp plan, all of the chapters except for future use, because we want to do the charrettes first. We're getting the comp plan out now. Because, you know, as I was thinking about how those sessions should maybe work, is we should be reviewing you know, X number of chapters, deciding what else needs to be in them, and then also organizing the chapters into charrette sessions.

Correct.

Like this should go in this session because of the participants that we want at that session, you know, like public services and name another one, right, should be in a charrette together. So in my opinion, that should be two key outputs of those sessions. So I wanted to talk about, are we going to do all of these chat? Like what's the goal as I look at the comp plan here? So we've all, I think we've all kind of gotten behind the vision and mission on that. Unless you guys feel like we need further review on vision and mission documents. Well, I got to see the first 38 pages. I have a lot of notes. Yeah, I bet. Right. Like seriously.

And then I got, I went down the digital track. I'm like, Oh, I'll play with the graphics for five minutes.

So this population demographics, right. We want to do that one. Economy, housing, natural resources.

Are you talking review? Are you talking review?

Like which ones we do and don't want to review. in these working sessions. I just eliminated vision and mission. I don't feel like we need to reveal those as part of these upcoming working sessions. But chapters three through 12.

I had a couple of things on the vision and missions, but they're not that big.

So I'm thinking three through 12. When you say 3 through 12, have you been looking at the table of contents? Yep. So these working sessions should focus on, I'm eliminating existing future land use because I feel like that could be, those are going to need heavy updates after the sessions. And I'm eliminating the first two chapters. So like I'm eliminating chapters 1, 2, 13, 14, 15. but we should be talking about the rest. Is everybody kind of in agreement with that? Yes.

So you're not going to talk to?

She's saying in our work session. In our two upcoming working sessions. I'm trying to come up with an agenda. I know.

Okay. So we have a goal coming out of the working session.

So we're going to do this.

That's 10 chapters that are in the session. So let's do

That's what I mean. Do we really think we can get through 10 chapters? What's our goal? Should we print three per working session?

I would say no more than five.

They can be grouped together into two or three. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like that's a conversation we have. I think we just roll through this and decide if we like it. But as we're going along, we should start keeping track of which of these chapters would we want in which sure session. Right. Yeah. So as we're kind of talking through this and reading, reading through the, there's things that are just going to naturally make sense to go together and have people in rooms.

Right. Okay. That's one.

So those are the two goals is verify these chapters and then have an organized These are an organized approach for how we want to tackle Tourette's.

Tourette's are public meetings that we're trying to schedule. Tourette's are supposed to be in July and August, hopefully. And Tourette's are designed to be a very specific topic in front of a public group and get input. So it's kind of saying, give them some background. So who's supposed to be at the Tourette's? That's what we talk about. And you have to have multiple. One might be just to look at land use and say, let's look at the whole map of the town. And maybe, what's the kind of stuff we're going to do at our work session? And then schedule those.

So I was just trying to get, like, okay, this will be, It's different than our last working session where we all just kind of showed up here and we were working on each chapter individually, you know, on our own. This is more collaborative. Let's go through the document, make sure we like it, see if there's any changes. Diane's already made a whole bunch of them.

Yes. My mind wants to see things. It has to tell a story and it has to tell a story that leads people down a path in a cohesive way. So at the end of the day, you come out with this like,

as a group you go that was the idea this is where we're going yeah yeah right next okay okay so i'm i'm saying so there's 10 of these three three and four i'm thinking we're gonna need three working sessions yeah and then they won't be too long and your brain doesn't get too tired and whatever Does that make sense? It does. So back to the calendar. Since we're not going to do the 24th now, when do we want to squeeze this in?

Excuse me. Can we do... What is going on? Can we do something on the 26th or 27th? I just feel like I can. I mean. Yeah, I'm okay. Which day? 26?

26, but it may be a little bit later.

That's something that I would try to say for you guys.

Saturday is fine with me. Yeah, 27th is wide open.

27th?

By what time?

It's at her house.

Yeah. Whenever you guys want. Doesn't matter to me.

Are you a morning person? Early morning? Later in the day? What makes it better for you?

What works for you guys?

Morning.

I just don't want to do it in the middle of the day.

I want to do it early or later. 6 a.m.?

Yeah.

Early or later. I don't want to do it in the middle of the day. I'm up then. I know. I have a coffee going.

Oh, he's had a pretty cough. Really? It was pretty much it.

How about 9 o'clock? I'm throwing it out there. All right. 9 a.m. Got it.

Thank you.

Okay, working session number one on the 27th at 9 a.m. Working session number two is 7-8 at 4 p.m.

Thank you. Number three.

Can we do one? I know it's for the July weekend in between there.

Well, I'm kind of out that weekend. Okay.

I feel like these charrettes are going to take a lot of like planning and recruiting and stuff. So I feel like we can get ourselves organized and at least get those things lined up. That's going to take.

Maybe we do that first as part of the first working session then is organize which things we want and which charrettes. I was thinking we could do it, you know, as part of all three. as an outcome of all three sessions, but maybe it used to be a topic by itself in the first.

And we still can start doing that. I think we have to do this a little bit more so that you know what content you're going to do there. OK. But I don't want to.

So at the end of the work. So now we're back at the end of the three sessions. We'll have it as an output. OK. So when do we want the last one then? What do you guys do on July 1st? Yeah, that's really bad. I got, here's, I have, Jessie's coming that day. She shows up.

Sorry, I'm just trying to get around the July 4th holiday. Sorry. So you're going to have company July weekend. Okay. So can we, maybe if we do one on the 8th, can we do another one on the 10th?

Yeah. It'd probably be good. I mean, you'd be familiar with what you're thinking about at what time.

Is it Friday?

I think. 4 p.m.?

Mm-hmm. Okay.

So we should be a well-oiled machine by the 10th. July 8th is at 4 p.m. Yep.

July 10th is at 4 p.m. and June 27th is at 9 a.m. Yes.

And then Jake tells her.

I will bring flip-flop paper and post-its.

I will have some food and coffee. Anything other than coffee that you want, bring it yourself.

I've been making sugar cookies all week for a hobbit party. I'll send you pictures this week. All right.

Okay, so we've got the 8th, the 10th, at 4, the 27th at 9 a.m. Mm-hmm.

Oh.

Then I'm going to go to Freeport and get my oysters out.

What's that?

It's Freeport Oyster Month for all of that weekend. We either love them or hate them, right? Yep.

All right. So...

also in the old business was the permanent process and documentation so is that kind of what we're going over um that is a one of the things that we had tried to do was look at every ordinance and figure out which ordinances require a permit and some of them had specific formats and we don't the town office didn't really they had a building permit it was just basically a volunteer neighbor right It had nothing on it. So we had, Brad had started creating a framework. I think we now have, let me dig those out for you.

Okay.

And we can do that.

So that'll be at the next meeting.

Hopefully.

Okay.

I know someone's like, how can we carry this thing over and over? It's like, so we don't forget them. Right. But they're not a priority necessarily.

Right. Right.

So the LD2173, I don't, know that everybody has to go to that. Let me just look real quick what that is and who wants to go. There is, if we wanted to apply for, the state has planning grants to help you rewrite your ordinances to accommodate this new law. There it is.

That'll cover the legal review.

So you have to apply by July 31st for the Housing Opportunity Program Municipal Ordnance Development Grant.

I'll apply July 31st.

Okay, so this is The housing training. AVCOG in the town of Norway coordinated a training session with the Housing Opportunity Program at the Paris Fire Station on Wednesday, June 24th. It's at 6pm is when it starts. They're offering some social hour and live refreshments at 5pm.

What was the start time? 6.

And it's at the Paris Fire Station?

Yes. If we want, we want to send one person, two person, three people, whatever wants to go. And I can RSVP.

Well, I don't mind going, but I think if two people go, we get more information.

Yeah.

You know, instead of just one.

I agree.

When am I going? So you're going to go, Robin? All right. Robin and I will go. Diane, you were going to go too, but you did not.

I don't need to go. If there's three of you, I'll work on that instead. Okay.

Okay. And what, okay. This is, um, the 24th.

Yep. Yeah. Let me send Erica a note confirming that. And I will, um, you guys on that note so that she has a little carpool.

Yeah. You want me to drive? Either one. Okay.

And I'll just confirm the location. That was good.

Yeah, put the location and address, please. Okay.

So was that the South Paris fire station?

It just says Paris. So I will double check. That's what I mean. I'll look it up and get the address. It's like eight hours. I'll get there. Okay. There's a new Maine land use law book. I don't even know what that is. It's a booklet, not a book. 5x7 reference handbook, including Maine state law relevant to land use planning, zoning, local regulations, a great tool for planners, planning boards, and other staff. This edition will be current for the last legislative session of the 132nd legislature, which adjourned in April. Would be there. It's a $25 book. There should be them in July. Shall we pre-order one?

Yeah.

I think that would be a great thing to have for us.

That would be a good idea.

All right. Probably by July 4th. When you come back to the housing thing, we have to decide whether we want to apply for this housing opportunity HAB-Masyn Moyer- And ordinance development grant is that applications due to like 31st. HAB-Masyn Moyer- So our. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Are we going to meet on July 2. HAB-Masyn Moyer- That would be our normal meeting.

Checking?

The second is Thursday.

I know if you have out-of-town company stuff, I just don't know, do we want to move that date or not?

I'm 16 to 30.

Yeah, we'll do Kathy's graveside stuff that weekend.

Oh, the 4th?

Yeah.

It's just such a bad weekend, you know?

Yeah. You know what? If we could move that, that might work better for me, too, because I'll have that company coming in.

Okay, so instead of the first and third, we'll meet the third and fifth.

Ah, third and what?

Fifth and fifth weekend. It's five Thursdays.

So the 30th.

Okay, wait a minute. Wait.

We're going to meet on the... When are we going to meet?

We're going to July 16th, which is our normal.

Yeah. 16th. Okay. I thought you said third.

30th.

And July 30th. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. That'd be better. We got a lot of meetings all at the top of July. Yeah.

Spread some stuff out. Okay.

So our next meeting, we have plans to have somebody go through the filing cabinet, get the permit processing dug out.

Well, yeah. I'm putting the permit process on the bottom of the list at this point. Can we get a complete set of ordinances, like all, like The board that are waiting to review, the other three that are in the queue, perhaps then we can go through and look at which of those need to keep the work this important. Right now, I just want to focus on that conflict. Didn't get that done. It's exciting to have it on.

It's like there.

Look at that. It starts at 6 p.m. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's about an hour to get there from here. It's like it left at 30. Yeah, we'd be fine.

Is there any other new topics?

I mean, we could do the file cabinet tonight if you want, or I can go through what I've done on the comp plan. Whatever you want to do. We have to do timeshoots tonight too. Yes, I saw that. What's going to be most helpful, Robin, for the stuff? I printed out separately those first 30-some pages with my notes on them for you.

If you just want to hand me notes, I'll update. Or have you been updating online? No, I just went.

I converted it to a PowerPoint and made some changes in the document itself, but highlighted them and printed out the first 38 pages for you with notes. Okay. I didn't change it in the document itself because I don't, I didn't want to presume to make changes. Oh, but you should.

Because I'm just going to go make, I'm just going to go type in whatever changes you make, right? I'm not going to edit you.

No, they're just suggestions for discussion. And part of it was because like, for example, when I looked at the table contents and I even like, okay, page one, which is why I hate to do this. So the white box just sitting in the middle of the dark green background was really ugly. So I changed the logo on the front.

OK, yeah.

Oh, yeah. I just made a circle so it fits in there. Circular. Well, it's better. And I moved these around so that this was in white. Yeah, black and white.

OK. And see it as well. Can I look at that again? So you took the town of Canton, Maine.

I just moved it down. Oh, there it is. Okay, there it is. Because if you make a white circle, we're in a comprehensive plan. We're running over that circle. Right now, I get white and white. So I just took that up, made it bigger. We agree with that one.

We agree with that change. Did you take out the nobody's coming to save us? No. I like that. Did you leave it in there?

I think we need to set a little bit more of us somewhere in here. What was the other part you were going to add up? I want to make changes all the way through. The first 38 pages is as far as I got.

No, I mean, you wouldn't put something else with this. Nobody is coming to save us. We have to save ourselves. Yeah, I think that should go on there. If you're going to leave that, I think that should go with it. I kind of did that as just a joke, but if you like it.

Diane got that quote from the last conference she went to. The speaker was like, nobody is coming to save us.

This is how appropriate, because I think we tend to, as a town, I think we have to be proactive in setting out the strategy and the action plans for what we want to do. Not like, Oh, the economy is going bad. We're going to, we're going to get struck with this. Instead of being reactive, can we be proactive? Can we design and implement the town we want instead of just letting stuff happen to us and then have it gone? Yes. That's, that's a thing.

I think you're, what is a comprehensive plan? You put something in there.

Well, I just felt like those blanks looked really blank because sometimes I just like pictures. So I made little icons for purpose, process, and status as a draft. But can that be planned? So we have a nice alliteration. Say what now? Purpose, process, and events, but that'll be planned.

Oh, planned. Yeah, okay. So you want to change this to planned.

And so I made little icons. I could not get the icons on a green background, so I just changed the background to white so they would stand out. That's all.

That's interesting.

This is like, this isn't even content. This is just playing around. It's just playing.

And I call it, I just don't want two versions floating around. So let's do the one, update the one on the site.

So on the table of contents, I'm like, can we maybe be a little more implementation oriented so that the inventory stuff, if people never get to that, that's okay. Right. So, So vision, mission, guiding principles. Can we put community goals, which we don't have yet? Do we have a, and like the future land use plan and implementation? I mean, those things should go right up front. And then all this inventory, the population, demographic, all this stuff should be at the back. Because if people only read the first 20 pages, that should be...

So... You want to move its future and implementation... to be chapter three and four. Yeah.

Yeah. And take the population and economics.

Are you going to do that? Or do you want me to do that? I don't care. I didn't want to make changes until I knew that everybody was agreeing to that.

But then you have housing in there. So that shouldn't be with natural resources.

It doesn't matter. Because those are all the infant theory. Those are like the background business. Oh, thanks. Thanks. So I'm thinking of what happened with the last comp plan is everybody went rah, rah, rah. We voted it in and it sat on the shelf. Yeah. Right. Partly because it was so text heavy.

Right.

A lot of words. And even though there was an action plan, but it was like a chart with like a big giant table with a lot of words. And that's why I like this better. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it felt like it just wasn't useful.

Yeah.

And I feel like we need to excite people about actions. And then start actually, right? And so all this inventory about, it's all good support information, like the population shifts and the demographic shift in the town. What do we have for natural resources? What do we have for agriculture? All those things are great to know. But I feel like the meat of it is going to have to be the action plan, the implementation plan.

So basically you want to just move all of everything from population down except for... Move 14 and 15 to be chapter 3 and 4. 3 and 4, yeah.

And slide everything else back. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

I'll work on that then. Okay. It's all have to change the links and stuff. There's hyperlinks in there. Okay.

I knew that's why I didn't want to. That's all right. I got it. I didn't get it. Yeah. I'm hyperlink. Go ahead and move it. It's all good. If vision, mission, guiding principles, I just think we should have an image on there, which I know you have. It wasn't a little light green square, so I just put it in. Oh, okay.

So what's the picture? Does anybody know?

Not yet. No. I just left space for that. Okay. Got it. Because we had a really pretty one from some town in Utah or something that we liked all the visual elements of it. And then it looks like this.

Oh, yeah. Why don't you guys take one of your sunset pictures? There's a million pictures.

And I saw Prudy at some event and I asked her about accessing her. She's like, absolutely. You can have any of my pictures you want to put in. Yeah.

Between you two, you guys both hate rolling as pictures right on the light of sunsets. I'm sure we can.

I was wondering if this wouldn't sound better. I could be wrong because English was not my first language. Our town embraces its rural character, abundance of farming, lakes and rivers, as well as, other rich, instead of that other and. What do you think? This one.

Okay.

Because there's just a lot. We'll make this as well as.

Yeah, because it's like an, an, an.

It's good that we're doing this here because we weren't going to do this as part of our.

The only other thing I thought was missing from this particular vision statement was something about economic disability. this because that wasn't mentioned here at all so we're committed to fostering sustainable and carefully managed growth supporting local agriculture it does say small businesses that strengthen our economy without compromising the landscape well no it was the last paragraph okay that was all good so without applying fiscal responsibility we will invest in infrastructure town services vertical housing and community spaces. So I think we need to somehow invest in economic development.

Okay.

Because I think there's a lot of things like around like tax policy.

Didn't you already say that in the previous paragraph?

Not economic. Oh, our economic, that strengthens our economy without compromising the landscape. What do you think?

Okay. I just think that, okay.

I don't know. That is a Jeff one.

When I read it the first time through, I've read it. I felt like,

We were, it started to get a little wordy and we were not, I felt like the idea that we have to have, like, how about we will invest in our economic future, infrastructure, town services, and affordable housing and community spaces.

You said economic, right?

Maybe instead of small businesses, we just say economic development.

What is that? There we go.

Second paragraph.

Okay. What are you going to say? Put economic? Instead of small businesses.

Because it could be a big business.

We don't know. Economic development?

Yeah.

That sounds good.

But I think the idea that we have to invest in it. They're talking to a lot of these other towns. That sounds better than investing in a small business.

We're not going to do that. We do want to invest in economic development so that that leads better.

This looks to me saying a little not enough or something like that.

Was this the same one we had before? Okay. The only thing I wanted to... HAB-Masyn Moyer- Can I know what to can we say expanding access to a range of housing opportunities. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Because I think.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- What do you want to say it's been.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- So many about. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Expanding okay. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Expanding the word affordable housing to say expanding access to a range of housing opportunities. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Because I think yeah affordable housing is a hot button and people. think that means low-income housing, which is not what it means, but that's the... That's with their belief. If you talk about a range of housing opportunities, then you might talk about apartment buildings or single-family homes or... Managed ADUs. Managed ADUs, right.

I mean, yeah, it covers everything that way.

Yeah. Encouraging sustainable development that supports residents of all ages. Good. Working collaboratively. And I put working collaboratively and creatively... Because I feel like we just kind of have to subtly throughout this document, push people to think outside the box. Because the reaction we're hearing from some people is like, that's not the way we've ever done it. Or we've never done it that way before. And that's a pushback. The more we can push creativity, innovation, doing something differently, we'll start to get people.

Do you really want small scale businesses? I mean, Do you want to limit yourself to small scale, or do you just want to put and grow local business?

I mean, we're not going to put... At one point, we had factories in town, several factories.

So the only thing that didn't come over under the mission statement, down at the bottom where it says, do transparent decision-making, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's a sentence after that that says... We strive to create a welcoming, resilient, and forward-looking community where families can put down roots, seniors can age with dignity, and future generations can thrive. So that part did not come out. It should. It should.

Well, a piece of that is in the vision statement.

When we take out a space in between and bring it up.

Well, that last sentence, that through responsible decision-making, to me, I hated that sentence. I don't know where that came from. It felt like that's a select board description. Yeah. And it felt dull. Yeah. And it wasn't take it out and very exciting. I hate, I don't know. You're saying like, take it out.

Well, I would say take it out and put what that one say, read that last sentence again.

The entire paragraph at the bottom says through transparent decision-making and responsible budgeting, we are committed to delivering high quality services to while honoring the town's physical realities. That sounds very select board-y. We strive to create a welcoming, resilient, and forward-looking community where families can put down roots, seniors can age with dignity, and future generations can thrive. So do you want me to replace this with that last sentence? So it'll just say, we strive to create a working, resilient, Is that better? I think so.

Yeah. I do too.

That's weird that you didn't come over.

Well, no. You know, because I told Claude to simplify things. To not make things as wordy. And he pretty much does what I ask him to do. But you have to check it. Because he's, you know. It's a guy thing, I guess. Yeah. it just felt really we're already responsible in our budgeting we already have to face fiscal realities I felt like that those are the downers right and we know that we already know that and that that other sentence is the upper okay got it all right what page you this one they don't have page numbers no I know but I'm just yeah you know I tried to put the page numbers in but it I got to mess with it some more because I think the blocks that are on here, like when you put add page number, the page number is behind the block. So I have to figure out how to say, no, put the block. Oh, you can put the page number on top of the block, not behind the block.

You can put it in a footer below this because this felt like not using up the full page.

Yeah, it needs to go page numbers. Yeah, for sure.

Guiding principles. I only had two changes there. Under the community for all ages, I know that when we put up the town signs, there were quite a few people in town who were very strongly supportive of the small town with the big heart. So I just wanted to add that. We are the small town with the big heart. Okay. Under community for all ages.

So put it like that.

We are a small town with a big heart. A small town with a big heart.

Yeah. So we can take out what's there? Nope. Nope. Just add it. Yeah. Before? Before.

No, at the end. I'm putting it at the end. Under fiscal responsibility, I wanted to say something about we take selective or we take managed risk in support of our objectives. Because I think it's easy to be risk averse and not do anything, right? Because, oh my God, what if something goes wrong with this thing? And we couldn't possibly do that because we might lose something. So I have 20 meetings about it to talk about it before you do something.

I just think we stop.

We stop a lot of potential things because we are risk averse. I don't, I'm not saying be foolish, but I think we should add a sentence under fiscal responsibility that says we take selective risk or managed risk in support of our objectives.

Take managed risk.

I was actually having so much fun doing this. I was actually listening to another meeting that I didn't have to participate in when I was doing this. Oh, this is so much fun. Strategic priorities. Because there's a lot of white space on there, maybe I would be happy to come up with some icons to put in there too.

On priority two, encourage partnerships with regional economic organizations. take out the end and promote training, comma, and job opportunities. What do you think? Where are we?

She's on the next strategic priorities, priority two. Encourage partnership with regional economic organizations, comma, promote training and job opportunities for all ages. I have another one I want to add in. Okay. I feel like we need to add something in there about... Innovative use of tax policy to promote growth.

Under fiscal responsibility?

No, it's still under strategic priorities under local business workforce. I just want to add something in that box about innovative use of tax policy in support of growth. Under priority one? Innovative, I've said it. Innovative use of tax policy.

Okay.

And supportive growth.

We will utilize. You know how I go to take a word smith.

I would just pull up my fingernails without anesthesia. Word smithing as a green.

Innovative tax policy. Right.

To encourage growth. And these I want to think about because these feel like it's a little bit premature. I mean, I think it's okay for us to have this sheet of paper, but I feel like we haven't done the charrettes. We haven't done a strategic plan. I feel like this is premature.

But I could put at the top to be refined after communities or something.

You can do those like one by one after shorter. But it felt like we were giving the end state and we haven't done all that stuff yet. So that felt a little.

This next chapter just seems like it's going to be from the Chouettes.

Yes. You can't see it on your copy, but that's in light blue.

Okay.

And on the pages that are in light blue online that you see, those are to be done. Okay. To be filled out. So all the community goals we didn't know.

And I feel like that previous page we just did, that should be the summary of these. Which we don't have yet. But those are great stuff. Good placeholders. Yes. All right. To the food. Do you want to come on and post that one? You are welcome to do that.

How do we like the print? You've got the double-sided color. And thank you. Did anything bleed through that you were noticing, like you could read everything?

It was very abstract. I could stand with one that came out in 4.1, talking to me as an adult. Yeah, and it was like, oh, this isn't going to work. It was not moving back and forth. It's going to fix this something. It's going to do something else. It allows people, this will be, this is the plan. It's going to be the purpose, the process, and the time. I love the good alliteration. We ordered a table of contents. That's what we just talked through. And then the summer is. So there will be specific goals and actions. I think we don't have those yet. Anything in blue is still in development. These are going to come out of public hearings that we're doing, public breakout sessions. We'll be around to see. What we've been working on for the last nine months is inventory. So there's a huge amount of inventory. I only got through the first 38 pages. So that's all I... I just put in those because I thought...

I feel like the big deal with the inventory chapters is pulling up the old Word document. Because some of the, like I said, some of the things, which I love, right? Claude took a very icky looking, you know, chart or whatever and turned it into a beautiful graph for us. Like this is prettier to me than trying to look at a graph, right? But is this data right? That's what you got to go back. We got to go back. I said many labels on some of these. Right. That's what we got to go back and look at. It's like, did he accurately bring over our data, right?

So I do like the, I feel like people in community, do we want to make sure that the open page.

So anytime there's a green box there, then this is perfect.

So I will go through before 24th and get year 25 and update it. Don't we want to update to year 25? This is all the way to 24th.

Those are available, yes. Oh, you don't think they are?

I don't know. I mean, I've lived in the population data. Okay, sure. But I don't think they're always right at least one year. There's some stuff in there that was still 2020. I felt like these key findings on people in community just need a little bit of reflection because we want, again, those key findings to tell the story and lead people down a specific path. The fact that we grew 50% from 70 to 2000 is kind of irrelevant because we're now in 2026. We're 20 years later than that. Like that to me is a useless piece of data.

So take it out.

Yeah. I feel like there's more impactful bullets you could put there. And I want to go back to those. 20, 39 population numbers as well. Because the state has projections for growth and they get pretty small. I think they didn't reflect what we're actually seeing, which is people want to come to our town. And so I know that in there that you guys talk about, here's a state reflection or a state estimation of growth. Here's the town's estimation of growth. Just want to make sure we have the right approach. This was basically saying, if we just do organic growth, we do nothing to promote the town except word of mouth. People find us and decide they like us and they want to stay here. We do nothing. We're about 1,100 people now. We'll go to 1,350. We'll go up by another 250 people in the next 13 years. That's pretty hefty growth. Great. So that's just, I think those are good. I just think they're practically through 50%. Who projected that? Well, there's two things. Right. The state has its own projection numbers, which are in here somewhere.

And then the last- As we leave that in, we should put a reference to it. Yeah.

Well, it's in the body. As well, yeah. So, depending on what that leads in there, because I looked at it later. This is for pictures. I'm not really seeing it.

Just being a realist.

Yeah, 13 years of considered kids. I need something projected. It's this page. It was, that's right here.

2,000. Well, I can't plan . And if you look at this number, you'll see it right there. That's where we lost people. And then we come back to basically that number. So I want to go back and read more of this. But I felt like I do appreciate that it was simplified and was a little bit more visual.

Oh, it definitely needs fine tuning. I was brain dead by that. Yeah. Right. Like, yeah, I can both do that and do that right now.

Just getting everything into a deck was good enough. Yeah. So, I mean, is that, I mean, we, between 1970 and 2000, we had really unprecedented growth as a town. I mean, we just went, you know, that was like the 50% increase in population. So we doubled. Wow. huge increase in population in a very short amount of time. From 600, well, 650 to like 1200, that's almost 100% increase actually. That's a lot. And so was that all new housing? Was that more family? Anyway, that doesn't really matter. But at the same time, between 70 and 2000, we lost the corn cannery, the leather tannery. I mean, we lost a lot of industries. And now we've got people. No industry. The infrastructure is Interesting, but let's see how important this is. Neighboring towns, I think we're... So we're kind of doing a working session.

Yeah, I know.

Well, I just think we have to double check those numbers because we were at, in 2020, I think we were a little bit higher than... I feel like we went up and then went down again. I don't know. I'll double check. And they took out all that. We've got some percent throw stuff in here, but I think we'll get those out.

Okay. No, not yet.

All right. So I don't know what this big blank one was. That's for pictures.

Anything with a light green space is for pictures. Cool.

So does all this have to be part of the planning board meeting?

No. That's what I was wondering.

Well, it

I mean, we're not going to meet for another two weeks.

Yeah.

So everybody. No, I don't mind going over the work. I don't know if anybody else has taken a look at this or not.

Right. Yeah. But it doesn't have to be part of the planning board meeting, though. I mean, we can end the meeting and still continue going on with this.

I don't care. What do you want to do?

Let's see if we can have the booth. So, yeah. Yeah.

I don't want to offer that. It's important.

You're going to end the agenda.

The new timesheet.

Right, we have to do that.

So Mr. Wu is no longer here. I don't know who Anson Wu was, who had signed into this meeting.

Is there any other new business?

Well, we were talking comprehensive plan of progress against work.

Right.

Any other new business?

I think we kind of went over the process and documentation. You're going to dig out some of the old stuff that we had and the filing cabinets to go over. But beyond that, cluster housing, commercial ordinance, I don't think there was anything new.

Well, do you think our time would be better spent, like, 20 minutes with the file cabinet? Because there's not that much stuff in there, really. You can decide pretty quickly what to do with that.

Oh, it doesn't matter.

Yeah, sure. Okay. Because we already have a working session to do what we're doing right here.

Yeah. So we make a promise.

It is. I wouldn't want to stop. It's like, oh.

So first working session at my house, the other two in the afternoon, four or five, we'll be here. Okay. I don't know. Okay.

While we go through the file cabinet, if you'd like me to stop recording. Is that what you're doing? Yeah, we can. Motion to adjourn. Seconded.