Planning Board - Regular Meeting

There's no echo and we have sound and video.

That's great. I've been practicing.

There's probably nobody online yet.

As of now, there's nobody. I'll try to keep an eye on it.

We already have attendance. It's huge today.

Yeah, I'm sorry about that.

Did you throw it back out?

No, I don't know. We did something to her back.

Something to her back, yeah.

Oh, next year.

All the meaning to owner is 605.

Motion to accept the meeting minutes through August 6th. I second.

All in favor?

Anything new in the permit review of permit law? I should just put that up. The last one we had talked about was a 20 by 20 deck on, oh, 20 by 20 deck, Don Crosby.

Yep.

That's the new one. What is that?

It's a deck. It's just no addition to the main existing deck.

Speak address. What's that? 494 Jewett Hill.

The deck itself is actually 10 by 20. There's a roof on the front side of it, so it's a little confusing without seeing a picture. The deck part is only 10 by 20, though. It's got a lean-to roof on the front of it.

Cool. I think we've got to be in a party business.

Oh, yeah. It's all for the dog, anyways.

So I do see an error in the agenda for today. Under what needs updating, that paragraph should look the same as the one under the August 6th meeting minutes. So junkyard nuisance. Underneath that should be the bullets of cluster housing, housing minimum lot size, subdivision ordinance for housing legislation compliance. I'll just make sure that's in this bucket. And comprehensive plan, or just what needs updating.

Say that again cluster.

So we have cluster housing, housing and minimum lot size and subdivision ordinances only to be reviewed for housing legislation compliance. It's on the minutes of the last meeting, but that should have been on the agenda for this one.

Okay. Did everybody get their postcards?

I did. I didn't have any issues.

I have not seen mine. So if we had 8 to 10 people who had responded as of today,

hopefully we'll start to get more people yeah we have uh 10 responses as of today all right well i sent out last week 50 emails with that your poster kind of link in it that had yeah that stuff in it that went to 50 different people who did comment that they've seen it i'm like great so what else okay so we'll see start putting up reminders right yep maybe um

I don't know. Are we jumping the comp plan?

Is that what we're going to do? I would like to suggest that we set a separate working session date for going through the civil ordinance feedback, the cemetery ordinance feedback. That's going to be a lot of wordsmithing. I just feel like that's something we can just do as a separate meeting. What are you planning on

I'm sorry.

So everybody got a copy of the, should have got a copy from Kathy of both the solo ordinance that now has feedback. Yeah, I saw some markups. And the cemetery ordinance feedback from the select board. So I just think we should have a word session to go through and wordsmith these pieces in more detail and review what the Yeah, I took a look at it this afternoon. Yeah, I didn't see. Kathy was reading something. It sounded like it was the Towns Attorney comments, but I don't see it. Oh, there it is.

Okay, so you're suggesting a working session?

I think so.

Okay. That's okay. That's fine.

I feel like we're on a time deadline for the comp plan at this point. I think it's going to happen with this until town meeting. Yeah. Unless we... or something else.

I would rather have town's folks come to the comp plan sessions than come to a special meeting about ordinances. We're going to ask them to give us their time.

I agree. So I'm going to make a motion that we set these aside for a special working session and we'll figure out a date for that. And then we can wordsmith And that's the solar and cemetery. So I made a motion. Does anybody want to second that? I second that.

All in favor?

I'm trying to remember what feedback we got last week on the Planning board and sewer. I don't think we got anything. I think maybe those went to legal. Do you know that for sure?

The sewer one. Sewer and planning board. Planning board. They should have sent me some notes on that one too. I don't think we did that.

All we got was cemetery and sewer.

I think the planning board one was good to go, but I didn't want to say it.

So good to go in what way? I think they agree with most of the content. Right. Does that mean it's going to go to legal review or it doesn't need legal review and it's going to go on the next town meeting warrant?

Because we did make some changes on that one.

Mostly that was to accommodate our... Alternate. Alternate.

Yeah. That was most of it. Yeah, we only got the cemetery ordinance. And then today, when you asked for it, we got the summer ordinance.

Right. Okay, so I'll keep this on your planning board and sewer ordinance status with a question mark. If I can find out where that stands, that'd be great. I didn't know if you guys were coming early to do file cleanup or if we just said no because of all the furniture. Yeah, I came in at like 5.

Got another half a drawer done it looks like.

Half a drawer still to go?

Do we keep I can't think of what it's called the appeals board do we keep stuff on that I do believe you have to keep appeals board because I got a stack of appeals board stuff yeah the one time that the appeals board met in my lifetime that I remember it was never their final finding

With all the rationale?

It was from the 70s.

No, there was one. There was one from the 90s.

Okay, there were some 90s.

There was actually one from the 2000s, but I don't know where the documentation is of the final finding. They're supposed to have all the rationale behind it and all that kind of stuff. I don't know what ever happened there. I know they voted in the meeting to not grant the appeal, but there's supposed to be a closing document that says why they voted the way they did. That's like the legal summary of that. I've never seen it. I don't know if that exists. But if you find it, it would be good to know. I'm wondering also if we're going to keep this meeting focused on comp plan because that's really up in front of us for the next couple months. If you have a working session on solar and cemetery, do we want to have a working session on the housing? impact, just dive into those in great detail. I don't know if that's the best use of this particular forum to wordsmith off three of those ordinances for compliance, or if we do some pre-work and bring it here, or if we do it as a separate session. I don't know. I'm asking for direction and thoughts.

Yeah, that's going to take a little bit of time.

We have a deadline on those, don't we? Well, July of next year. I mean, those also have to go to town meeting. So they have to be done by first quarter so that they can go to public hearing, legal review, and the state wants to review them. So they've all got to be done by January as well.

Yeah, we should have a working session for those as well.

Yep, okay.

Don't you think?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's, that's, that's a lot of, a lot of stuff to go through. Yeah. I don't think we're going to get it done in an hour. It's not going to happen.

We said it for three hours. It's just a lot of, I really think group work. Yeah. And it's just, I would, I don't mind.

I think we should work on those together and maybe just to re-up the documents.

Yeah. All right.

Okay, so this we're also going to set up a support fee session for.

Now where you have a grant for those, is that something here that goes through the legal or AFCOG?

The state planning office uses those.

Okay, so you're going to involve AFCOG.

Well, Robin and Don attended an AFCOG workshop already where they gave us direction on how to apply That's the legislation in the ordinances. So we've got EpcoG's input and direction and advice. So they don't review the ordinances when they're done.

Did they review a foreign ordinance on that?

No, they don't really do an ordinance review. MMA will do some of that. I said in last week I went to an MMA lunch and learn on Wednesday. It was all about ordinances. It was pretty interesting. They said it'd be about a week before the slides are made available, but when they are, I'll give everybody a copy of those. Oh, great. Because it was some nice, nice inputs. They are more about the process than the content.

Right.

So if you have a question about process, MMA will help us with that. But under the MOCA planning grant, any rewrites of these ordinances, they want to review them. So the main office of community assistance will take a look at that. I'm sure they're going to be inundated also, so you may want to make a date in September between all the other 42 things we're doing. Did that time.

Specific rationale for going after those two or if the state changes? The state

shifted legislation. Those are the three ordinances, cluster housing, housing minimum lot size, subdivision ordinances. We just want to make sure that they're compliant. And if they're not compliant, that we recommend changes that now make us compliant with the state laws.

Does that affect shoreline zoning at all?

We talked about that.

Yeah, we looked at that last week. Shoreline zoning. It's a zone.

Yeah.

But that has minimum lot sizes and stuff in it.

That's more restrictive, I believe, than what the state's offering. We can certainly take a look at that.

As I recall, most of them said, except shoreland.

Except shoreland zoning was their power point. Except shoreland.

Well, that's right, because you don't want to allow any additional structures.

Right. They want to encourage additional structures everywhere else because of the housing problem. Except shoreland. Not on shoreland zoning. Yeah. It seems like there was something else. Charlene and something else. That's in there.

I don't know if it was farmland or tree groves or something like that. Something agricultural. Except that. Except these two things, right?

I know there was some feedback at the slide floor meeting about going after those ornaments. That's just kind of wild. in them. That's why.

Well, I went back and listened. I started listening to last week's meeting because of the comment from the select board that they did not give us direction to update cluster housing. And I didn't, I took the transcripts from that meeting and I did not see anywhere in there that it was said the select board directly asked us to update its ordinances. So I'm not quite sure what the problem was, but Doesn't matter. It's off the table.

Moving on.

Yeah. So Josh is going to double check the feedback. And I can go back to meeting with that too. Status of access to the town's digital storage drive. I did send a note to Kathy asking for information on how we get that and then how we can migrate our files over to that. And I have not heard back yet on that.

Did she direct that? Did Erin do?

I have no idea. She said, I'll talk to Erin about it and get back to you. At some point, we can do that. So we're down to a half a dorsal to go in the files. Yay. Why don't we set a Verkey session for perhaps the first of those housing ordinances. Because challenges are so tough to come by. I know I'm traveling a little bit next month.

So you want to do them one at a time? Is that what you said?

I think it'll take that long. Let me type on good.

Okay.

To give it a little bit review.

I'm pretty free. Yeah.

Do you want to do one on September 9th? Well, that's going to be right before our comp plan. Our first comp plan session, right?

We had identified two working sessions in this meeting, one for ComPlan, right? And one for this.

Well, we had, oh, I see what you're saying. So on my September calendar, I have September 13th, Sunday, September 13th as a possible ComPlan meeting. I promise you to put that in there.

Because I haven't put those in my calendar because we don't know which day it's going to be.

I've blocked them all off as possible.

I've got the 13th.

And the 27th. Sunday, September 13th.

Sunday, September 13th, November 16th.

OK.

Were those for the charrette?

Yes.

Yeah, that's first session one.

And one was the 27th, and one was the 30th, right?

Mm-hmm.

OK. So why don't we hold a work session on the 9th? And that could be either, let's do one ordinance and finalize the process plan for the charrettes. Anything to tell you tonight?

Does that work for you, Jamie?

Say that again? It's Wednesday the 9th. Whatever time. We could do it 6 to 8 if we needed to. Or we could do it earlier, whatever works for your schedule.

6 to 8, probably better.

So finalized comp plan for sure number one. Now we're going to try to do charrette one and two, working session one and two, because that's also in September.

Yep.

So on the 9th, was that for the charrettes?

Well, let's see if we can get the process plans for the charrettes. We're going to talk about those tonight. So if we had any fine tuning, we can do it that night.

Okay.

But we'll try to go through one ordinance for housing.

For the housing?

Yeah. Okay. Do you want to do that here?

Yeah.

Okay. I'll check in the office and it will be good.

If they can't, we can do it at my house. Okay.

Which housing ordinances are you going through if we can get to them?

Well, let's do one. So we're either going cluster housing, housing, a minimum lot size or subdivision.

Let's do the housing minimum.

Yeah, let's start with that one.

So the 9th from 6 to 8, that's what I heard, right?

Yeah. Cool.

So we're going to try and finalize the first charrette and do the housing minimum block size on that 9th.

Well, yeah, we were talking about the first charrette today as well. So we should be just fine-tuning. And I guess we have to decide how long are we going to wait for people to answer the call of the postcard before we say, hey, we need to know your answer by this date.

Now, I can put that on social media and offer to give them... Well, technically, those polls stay open until the date of the first. So, like, poll number one will be open until the 13th, but I don't think...

Right, but we have to decide the date before then and tell them which date.

How about, well, Labor Day is the weekend of the 4th, right?

Yeah.

So how about the 8th? Is that enough time?

Yeah.

In advance.

Well, it gives us five days, so yeah. People said they could make it on the 13th.

Okay. I mean, if that ends up being the date. Do we know any of the results? Oh, I have the dates. We just want to do the first one, right? Or do we want to do all of them?

I think you'll need to know probably the first two.

Okay.

Because they're only a couple weeks apart.

So the poll for the first two by September 8th.

Josh, can you encourage the select board to actually answer that request for dates? On the charrettes, these public meetings for the comprehensive plan? We gave people four meetings, two options for each meeting. I don't think any select board members actually answered that. Yeah, I think that earlier today.

I see what you guys were sharing with the town office stuff, but I haven't gone along with anything.

Did you see your postcard in your mail today?

I have not checked my mail. I pretty much got over the shower and came here.

Yeah, no, I don't

I didn't see any. And it's going to be, it's important to have.

Hello, encouraging. You can't see the dates they showed.

No, I don't see any select board members have.

So you can see who showed.

Yeah, you can see the names. So if we pick what dates. So what I'll do is put on social media the Tuesday, September 8th.

For session one and session two, land use and housing.

Yep. Okay. I was wondering, for people who don't have smartphones, and I don't know who that is, but I know we have some people in town that are not smartphone users. Do we want to just make a paper? The website's also on there, though. Right. We still had to get to the link. Use your computer. You have to get to a link to do it. Check those links. They all work fine. I used those to check today. But if you're not on a computer, which we do have some people on down in parts.

Like give a ballot option?

Yeah. Yeah. I was wondering if we could do that and make sure it's in the front office. Yeah. That would be great. How are they going to know that? That is a great question.

Are they going to do that if they don't have a smartphone? We didn't put it on the postcard.

It should have been on the postcard. It says stop in the town office, but I don't know that we've given the town office the just paper ballot option. It's going to be down on the smartphone. That's all.

I was trying to think of some of our older people who don't. No, it's a great idea.

When I was 90, she knew how to use the internet to get stuff done.

Yeah. But Put it on the sign.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I hear it for a message, like, stop in and vote for your choice of public moving dates.

We said we didn't want to vote. We used the word vote. Right. For sure, we will. Let us know when you're available for public meeting dates. I don't know.

All right. I started a few hours ago going back through the first four chapters that we want to use at the first charrette. Are those on your laptop? No, I was doing them on the... Okay. I made some changes. Okay. I made some blanks that still need to get filled in. And I only started with agriculture and forest. I will get through the rest of them this weekend.

We're going to go through the first four, right?

Yeah. Do you want to? We can put those up on the screen.

Let me get to the Zoom maybe and I can share.

Yeah, do you want to share on Zoom?

Let me see if I can do that. Oh, please.

Or I can plug the HDMI drive into the computer here, and we can put them up through this computer. Or we have to turn on that one.

I think I'm almost there. No, this is not. Oh, here it is. I should find the link. Where do I find the link?

If you do that, it will show up on this laptop here, and your laptop, but nobody else can see it.

Well, because it won't view on here. Okay, well, we can huddle.

It might, but.

We don't see you in that. I'm still trying to find a link. I don't know where to find the link. Yeah, let me turn that.

I did get a copy of the sewer map this week. FedEx Hinko's office will copy that onto transparency. However, in Auburn right now, the only site they have is 8.5 by 11. Portland can do a bigger one. She said, if you can bring me the like 10 by 14 physical transparency, she can do it. But she doesn't have the sheet. No. Can I invite you? Should I just invite you?

Yes, please.

Which email should I use? Either one.

How about the town one?

Oh, I've got an email. I can't actually email Thomas. I'm so sorry. You're not allowed to be a group list. Let's see if I can just get there.

Thank you.

I don't think I did it. I'm not seeing.

So I have people going right now up on the screen. So I went to the agriculture and forest resources chapter. Let's figure it out. Well, can you let me in?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

OK. You want to share? No, I hope it's back over here. We're down to page 67, which is the Agriculture and Forest Services.

Do you want to sit on that side?

Yeah, I can't read that. I don't think we're helping all there either.

So the only thing that I thought was missing from these, these are the inventory chapters, right? These have to have data in them, and we have a lot of words and not a lot of data. So I started making spots to put the data in.

What kind of data should we get?

For example, on the third slide down, which is now slide 69, I think we need to look at the percent of Kent's acreage that's considered agricultural, right? And I can do that by looking at the those town lot maps, and looking at the acreage that goes into those lots, add them up and say, okay, 12% of Kansas acreage is either under cultivation or rotational cultivation or grazing. So I think that's a pretty easy thing to do. I think, in terms of the Kansas tax recovery, they come from agricultural operations. Good to know. I'm not sure yet what else, because I did go to the state,

Does the spreadsheet say?

Well, I went to this, yeah, I went to the state's comprehensive plan data corridor mapping services and it says for agriculture we need to have a web soil survey, which is done by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Services and it should be available online. Now I've been playing with their online data set to get to our county and our town and I haven't got there yet. So I think we can get there. This municipal evaluation return statistical summary, that I believe that's also online from Maine Revenue Services. So that's, I think Ross, see if I can find that tax data. And there's a summary of timber harvest information by town that is available from the Maine Forest Services, but you have to contact the Maine Planning Import all people to get it. It's not online. So those three things are required as part of the comp plan. And they need to go in this section. This is a minimum required data for chapter one rule. So those three things have to go into this section. So I will get those for that first chapter. So I did the same thing for spreading out forestry. It'd be nice to know what percentage of the town of Total Acreage is in forest, whether it's tree growth, perpetual non-development like land trusts, or whether it's the town's forests that we are choosing to just harvest and not develop.

I'm listening and waiting now.

So those are just three bullet points. I don't think it's that hard to get them, but I can play around with getting those pieces of data. You're in the requirements for the, right? So what other actual data-oriented agriculture? Yeah.

Because you covered...

I wondered if we wanted to, so we can look at that. If you go down to slide 72, there's active farms in Canton. I think I put a note there to add the acreage. I think under each of those, it's a relative thing. And it's tricky because sometimes like Crane Brothers doesn't own all the land that it put potatoes on. It leases that land from somebody else. Same thing, I think with Cone and Acres, they don't necessarily own all the fields that they harvest hay from. They just And I know Rocky Ridge Harvest Hay from a friend of ours who has a huge front yard. But they don't really own it. They just lease it. So we have to figure out how we're going to.

Yeah, but it's still used for agriculture. No matter who owns it.

I do also believe that we should have a second page. Maybe call this page on page 72, active large farms in Canton. And maybe another page that says active. smaller farm in kansas because i feel like some people would be very hurt if their farm wasn't listed here yeah um okay so how do we go about gathering all of those uh well we had we had a farm tour last fall um so people there's a listing of those is there yeah now we do people should be getting commercial ordinances for those smaller farms and i don't believe they are I know Freedom Hill Farm on Staplesville Road got a commercial ordinance. I don't know that any of the other ones have. But... So I'm going to say, I think we take slide 72 as the... I'm pasting it in here as slide 73. Okay. I'm just going to make it active in larger farms, and then we'll make it in smaller farms. I think we've got a little farm to be in. That's what people type, isn't it? And maybe they're boutique farms or we find that a way of categorizing them.

Self-employed farms.

Well, we thought you called them something else in this chapter earlier. And maybe this page is probably going to get gets resubmitted. But I'm just going to leave these blanks right now.

Did you add a farm to the front page, Ferris Farm?

Yes.

OK. We probably should update that slide then, because it only has three of the four.

Well, that was, I was wondering, or is that what you're saying is a potential to take it off that, that particular then, but, um, you haven't included in, I don't know if that's the official name of it, but I do just keep it as three active, larger farms.

When you Google, that's what you find. If you Google Show Me Top Farms in Canton, it's those three that come up. Yeah.

Well, in our contact kit, main farmer in press was let go a few weeks ago. She sent me a note. We passed you on the long of your contact. They were downsizing. Maybe we'll just add another bullet on that page that says numerous boutique farms. Yeah. Because I thought the narratives were all good here.

They just were not inclusive enough.

I don't think so.

Do we want to take those three blocks out and just say something broader or list the types of farms? There's people who farm honey and have bees and

Well, to add a copy of that page over, I mean, smaller farms, where to contribute, so we can. I would just change that formatting on the smaller farms, active smaller farms, and just maybe just list them. I think people feel really strongly about seeing themselves.

Where do, where do I get the last, where do we get from this?

Let me look. There was a event on Facebook that had a farm tour and it listed all of them. Yeah. That was in the summer, early in the summer, spring.

Okay. Yeah. It was just a couple of weeks ago. It was like a, this is a whole weeks ago.

There's some people that do just maple syrup. Right. Right. That's what I mean. Like, So that's why boutique, I think maybe boutique barns are.

Okay, yeah, boutique sounds bougie and fun. Yeah, I did, I did throw those pictures in there just because, you know, me, I love the boutique side, besides the boutique.

So forestry, I think we can get from either the annual town report or a number of town report to look at how much revenue the towns had in the last three to five years. We could look at our trended revenue from our forest lands, because we harvest every year.

Why are we so often just copying different town report? OK. So I'm going to add under forestry revenue.

And I think we maybe used the same forester for quite a few years, too. I just think that's always good to put in there. It lets people know what's going on. So I put forestry data right after agricultural data as part of the introduction. We did introduce the two topics. We talked about that. We could split out. I don't know if I did.

So add a slide in after slide 77 here. About revenue or add something.

I put that in on slide 70, which is forestry data. It talks about, you know, percent of the towns with the numbers that I can say.

OK, but there's a forestry section lower, Diane.

Right, right. I just want to show that slide 70 sits at the front or goes down by the intersection.

I don't know if it matters. I think we should put it down here in this section. OK. Closer to 75, 76, 77. Yeah. I can hear something.

I thought the narrative here was great because it did set the stage in a really nice way for why you know, forestry is important, but if we could put, also if we can slide that slide down, but if it says, you know, 25% of Canton's acreage is all in forest lands, like that's good to know. And I was, I did go to one of these maps and I was having trouble. USDA, Natural Resource Conservation Association, Department of Agriculture has this sort of survey that we're supposed to have here that's required as part of the state requirements for the Trump plan. I couldn't get to it, but I will try to get to it again. You can also put it here.

Does that make sense? Forestry in Canton, forestry data. Perfect.

Perfect. So those are the three things I think we need the Web Soil Survey, the Municipal Evaluation Return, which they say is online, and then the Summary of Timber Harvest Information, which we can get.

Web Soil Survey. Say that again.

Web Soil Survey, Municipal Evaluation Return, Statistical Summary and the Summary of Timber Harvest Information.

And you know where to get these? The web survey and the municipal?

Yeah, there's links here. And what I can do is, if I can't get through it all, there's numbers.

Was that on the MMA?

No, this was on the... I started out at Maine Farmland Trust, which did not really have what I wanted.

The comp plan assistance? Yes.

Yeah, the government site. The main planning.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I have that link. I started that. Very well.

What do they call it?

Yeah.

Yeah. Main company of the plan data portal and mapping services. Okay. So I just looked at... I just pulled up the municipal... statistical data stuff for 2024, which is the latest they've got. And this is a big thing. Mind the red candy.

Oh, that's good. It's going to carry me. Hmm.

It tells me the whole Oxford County summer summaries. We don't have some of the data, but we have... We don't keep taxable machinery and equipment. Taxable to other taxable personal property. I don't know if this is just for farms. Or I don't know if this is farms or if this is total valuation in town. So we'll have to look at this chart and see what it tells us. It might be just the farm. It's telling us $2 million. And I'm sure the whole town valued it much more than that. I assume so. And I know Conant Acres makes their money from selling cow semen. It's not the haying. It's not the corn they sell. It's really the cows. So somewhere in there, I made a note about how dairy herd propagation is really the foundation of their business. The other one we could talk to is the woman who's also our school board representative. I can see her face. She's does a lot of the bookkeeping for that end of the business. So she will be able to maybe tell us if these numbers are true. Okay.

Do we need any maps for the, because that's one of the things I'm going to try to look on. Do we have a base map of Canton that's just smaller?

We do. Okay. It doesn't have individual lots.

That's okay.

Yeah, it's on the front page of the O'Donnell. Okay.

So from an agriculture or forestry perspective, is there any maps that we want within this document?

I mean, I think it'd be great to be able to take that bigger map of the whole town and highlight These are the forest. Light green are agriculture, and dark green are forests. So this is areas that you can't, or shouldn't, or you're choosing not to develop. Now the sewer maps I got, which were nice and visible, they are one inch was 500 feet was the scale. So I thought I'd call Don and say, hey, can you print me out all of your maps on one inches? 500 feet. So we can get them all on the same scale, at least. And then maybe there's a way to...

Shrink them.

Condense those down. Because the sewer maps are obviously right here in downtown, because that's where the sewer is. So I thought even if we just got a little bit bigger than that to show down to the air in the other end, say, here's the main areas, that certainly could give us some ears for development. Because somebody said to me, Canton has no possible growth areas. Like that is not true.

It's not true at all.

So USDA also has a census of agriculture website that I just started going to and I looked up and went, oh, it's 10 minutes to 6.

Is this one in our first? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Because I put out your list. So these are the first. I'm going to write that word in my way right now.

Yeah. Okay. So ag and forestry. What else was in that list?

Natural resources. Public facilities.

Okay, so same question on those two. Let me go to natural resources.

Which I did love having your links and the type of contents right to the slides.

That's nice, isn't it? Brilliant. I do love links. Okay, here we are, natural resources. Natural resources. So something that shows these?

Yeah. Now, we can take that overall map of the town and put circles, just clear circles along, whatever, to highlight where these areas are. But here, you've got some data on that key findings page, which is very hard to read from here.

This page.

Right, it just talks about 18% of Cairns land area, floodplains cover 18% of Cairns land area. So there's some factual data here that's super important. We do have that right up front. I love the conservation third use model. We've got the water resources. We've got data on all those water places. That's all perfect.

So good. We have data.

Now, all this wildlife habitat, this is all the stuff that was in that prior natural resources document that had, I think this is all there. It's got the natural plants, the wild plants,

Yes. So good.

So good. Thank you. Thank you.

I'm asking, so I'm going to ask to get some photographs for these first four.

There were some in that original document that we don't use. Yeah.

So yeah, I'm going to ask for, I'm going to start working on that part for the first two sessions so we can get some of these. green spaces filled in with pretty pictures of Canaan.

So I'm looking at places where there's like some wrapping that doesn't need to be, right? If you just expand the box a little bit, it doesn't have to wrap. So it just reads a little smoother, like on page 65. I just made all those one line, those titles. They were, some of those were wrapped around.

Yeah.

Okay. So just to me, that's just a little dinky stuff, but it, And that leads right into agricultural forest areas. I did put in a cow, a forest, and some potatoes. I think we want to make sure that we also, in the natural resources section, that we make sure we have a reference to the, oh, you've got consulting habitat maps for all development. I don't know that we have to do much more with that one.

Yay. We've got some pretty pictures. We've got pretty pictures on it. I got somebody. I got a guy.

The association has some nice ones too on their website. Yeah. So the other chapter we want to look at, public facilities and service. Slide 99. 99.

I don't have to go back up to the top.

So regarding the sewer system, which is on there, when I went to get the drawing, I spent some time with Josh. Okay, great. I got him a tool. Years ago, I sized sludge presses for a pole mill. I'm like, let's talk sludge. It makes me sad. I said, how many more users do you think we can put on the sewer with the existing capacity? And he said, 100. I'm like, that's it. You can't put more than 100 more users. And I don't know if that means households, or individual people contributing humanly. Assuming that means households.

Yeah, I'm assuming it means household. Okay.

When we look at our people growth numbers, some of that growth, I mean, if you want to center growth in the area that's going to be accessible or easy extension of facilities, Yeah, I think we just have a little questions about how that's happening, right? So, I mean, apartments that are only one or two people, you can probably assume that a little bit. There's a household of four people or whatever. But... Volunteer fire department is at risk. Can't work as straight, needs more subscribers. So there's some undersupply lies with Asian infrastructure leaving a near-term view. So some of those transfer station upgrades have already happened. Compactor, the concrete that went on the bathroom, I don't know about the concrete pad, but I think it was something that was in there.

Are you sure? I don't think a concrete pad was added.

Oh, underneath the metal pile. Yeah. That's where they did it.

OK. And so I'd have to scrap it. I heard Robin say it was being done, I think, even while the budget committee was doing their thing. They were working on it. I don't know.

I'm the kid who lives with us. I had to take something to the metal pile yesterday. But I didn't say, check out this pattern.

We're sending these first four sections to the Slack board, right?

Yeah, I think certainly by our next meeting. I'll take the latest. So I want to get some of those numbers in there. So I don't know if some of these trucks have been replaced in the last.

I couldn't get answers from people. So that's what I mean. It's going to have to go.

Okay. I mean, we can take this, I can take this page over to Andy Tonant, or we can ask our liaison.

One of the plow trucks did.

The what?

One of the plow trucks did. Right.

And just update.

Yeah, because it needed to.

Yeah, because the other one was crashed.

Yep.

That's good. And fire protection, I do like the way that's all laid out, too. Yeah, that's the best data I could get. Let's put it that way.

Yeah, let me talk to Sean Goodyear. I'll see if we can get a little bit more about water district and maybe the same kind of map that we now have for the sewer, which shows exactly where it runs, which is very simple. Do you have a picture of it?

What are you looking for? It's right behind you.

This looks like old. Is this? This looks pretty old. 2020?

So just FYI, here's the map of the sewer system, which we have in a bigger sheet now. Which one are you looking at?

106.

You're welcome to. I don't know if you can read that or not.

Yeah, they should be getting updated.

So let's make a note to update 25 cents.

I accidentally added one.

So without upgrading, he can only add another 100 households on this system. Right. That's going to become an issue.

Well, yeah, I mean, it might take 10 years, but it's the kind of thing that if we start as you planning for growth, at some point you have to say, do we need a different sewer system? Did you want to check that out?

Back to the sewer system? Yeah, yeah. Because there's more room for more than 100 people in that area that's going to allow them

overwhelm the sewer system well i mean 100 households a lot i don't know that you have to put that many you don't have to but i'm just saying right there's more room than 100 on there so we're going to have an issue right at some point as you're upgrading right now it's the seven pools yeah It's only so much capacity in those. So you need to completely change the technology if you're going to be expecting more.

Yeah, exactly.

Now people said, wow, we're adding another 100 households. That's...

In 10 years, that's not a lot.

It's not a lot at all. People-wise, we've added several hundred people in the last...

The existing city has just done... I've just done this with that.

I did ask Josh if he had any of those. Josh had a whole set of paper documents. The scan, those at Kinko's is like 250 bucks. The scan and digitize them. A DEP should have the original set, the same set he's got. And it also had the name on the document of who the original engineer was. They should have a set. So hopefully we can get a digital set of them for free.

Hmm.

I was convinced now because the lady said to me, I can only probably 10 by 14. So I folded it down to 10 by 14 to fit on her thing. And she's like, oh, wait a minute. I should only do it now.

Besides sewer and water, is there any other map we need for public?

Well, I mean, we've got the town fire protection, and we've got highway departments. And I guess we could maybe add a piece in there about we pay a huge amount of money every year for ambulance services in our town budget.

We can just talk about it at the end.

Do we want to put in this section something that the very last page here we want to talk about within Canton's budget, the last three years. I don't know if you want to go back and further than that. Here's how much we paid for maintenance, service personnel, fire departments, any kind of budgeting items. And there was, at one point, Like the fire department reports every year how many calls they went on, which is important. We know how many miles of roads the highway department maintains.

What? Sorry. Well, we have that in the transportation section too.

Oh yeah, that belongs in transit.

Right, but the cost to maintain- Okay, yeah, no, the budget part. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you can add a slide on the cost of public services. The last one, the last one is . That was down towards the bottom. Yeah, slide 154.

This is a good looking document, if I don't say so myself.

It is a nice looking document.

I'm glad we're down to fine tuning.

So this has got, on slide number 56, you have that roughly 70% is working farmland and forestry. So that's 70, 80, 15% is low density residential.

This feels right, doesn't it?

Yeah, where do those numbers come from?

I don't remember. We'll have to go back to the source documents, the source word documents. Because that's how all this got generated. It just got printed out, you know.

Cool. So that could be. So now we know the answer to the other question. Yeah.

I've got to look it up. I'll just go look over there.

No trouble repeating because I think reinforcing.

Yeah. I agree. Yeah.

Yeah.

Are we on the same page? We're looking at 157. Where are you looking at, Diane?

Oh, 159.

You're ahead of me.

Thinking about order. I don't know if we want to, like, if I'm reading this, do I want to... We want to lead people down a story, right? By giving them a certain piece of data, and then you give them a little more data, a little more data, and they get to this natural conclusion at the end, right? Or, I don't know, I just want to think about what's the best way to help people internalize all this information. So some of this, like 159, I would maybe add some data in there. Like we know how much seasonal housing we've got and we know like the valuation of those houses that are seasonal and how much, because they're a significant portion of our tax base. I know in the past we've had some people who've been very dismissive of people who are not year round residents. And there was a bit of a us and them with people who had waterfront property, for example, that weren't here all year round. And I feel like if we knew, if we understood the contribution to the total economy of the town, then we'd stop voting.

Okay, so seasonal housing data.

Did we have a housing chapter? It was just under the population demographics. I thought we had a housing chapter. It should be on the next one. We do have a housing chapter. I would put that under session two as well.

That is under session two, isn't it?

No, I just have population demographics and transportation. Okay.

Yes, please.

So how many chapters do we have?

We have 16. We must have missed that in our working session because I thought we had divvied all of these out to the different working sessions. It didn't land in a different one, did it?

Nope, we're missing one more. Population demographics, check. Housing, check. Economic development, check. Natural resources, check. Agriculture and forests, check. Public facilities and services, check. Fiscal capacity, check. Recreation, check. Oh, history and archaeology.

That should be in session three.

I agree.

We are going to get speakers. For that. So I got a beat.

So public input and evaluation is more of a documentation.

Yeah, that's not a chapter. So, yeah, I thought we were going to, we should think about that too. What speakers we're going to ask. come and talk a little bit. I think the club president and somebody from the historical society, maybe somebody from L.A. Because session three was community driven and we wanted to talk about those chapters and we thought it would be a good idea to augment the chapters with.

I think if you're going to be the center of a historical society, we have to be pretty careful to give them a really straightforward arc.

Yes.

Because hey, you know, we've always been agricultural. Like we started with a sawmill, right? Is how the town originally got started. And then, you know, grew along this way. At one point we had a lot of tourism. We had hotels and an opera house and fairgrounds. We had all this stuff that then faded away. And we're in this spot now where we built. I just feel like you, if you can give that kind of an arc, give some interesting pictures, you know, but you want to lead people to the story of we need to start planning for growth rather than spending a huge amount of time talking about what we used to have. Let me talk to a couple of people from historical society and see who might be willing to do that and could follow the plan. I know Rob Marshall has a ton of pictures. It's pretty good.

I think we're good. We're good with historical chapter pictures.

Right.

If you jump to that section, we're all good.

We don't need it anymore.

It's like a picture of the fairgrounds or a picture of the opera house or hotels that people go. I've heard people say to me, we never had hotels here. I'm like, we had three hotels in town. You know what I mean? And right now we have none. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, how do you lose it all?

Why did it all have to disappear?

Well, because people began migrating out of state. I mean, the mills started shutting down. The more highways changed, people, it's a three-hour drive to Boston. There's been big deals, like, basically. You know what I mean? And jobs left the area.

Okay. Okay. One, two, three. What was the last one on session one?

Existing land use, public facilities, natural resources.

Okay, it was existing land use. So we just talked about that one.

Yep. So let's look at the calendar. Do we want to try to meet, say, Monday or Tuesday of next week? And make sure you can get these four chapters to the point where you'd like to see them at the select board. Now, it will be on next week's select board agenda because they had to have those by tonight, and they're not going to get them tonight.

However, they could have them in time for review on the 10th.

And it's really not. We're not asking for...

I'm just, it's more of a heads up.

Yes.

Get engaged. It's the vision for the town for the next 10 years. So I'm assuming you're interested. Well, they've asked for them because they've had access to the drive the whole time. Send them a link again.

Well, they would like us to move all of this over to the town drive at some point.

I thought that was the town drive. Weren't we given that drive?

No.

Okay.

Well, what happened was we kept pushing the town to put ordinances on the website.

Yeah, it doesn't matter. I thought this was the town drive. So, yeah, that's fine. Let's get a drive. As long as we all have author access. We do. I know we do right now. I'm talking about whenever they set up. We need to have author access. Okay.

Send another note to Kathy and copy Aaron.

I don't know who will. That'll suck if we can't author our own documents. So when did you want to meet?

for the next week, Monday or Tuesday?

Then fine. Either day. And this is to finish these four.

Yeah, how about Wednesday?

Wednesday's fine. Is that the 26th? It is. Yes.

Okay.

And I'm making sure to call these inventory chapters because I just want to make sure these are couched in the idea that this is a look at kind of where we are today and where we've been. It's kind of setting the stage for where we want to go. It's not proposing any specific actions going forward yet.

Meet here unless we can't. Then we can use my house. How's that? Five, six, what time? Six would be better for me. How about five? Because my brain doesn't work so good after six and you come at six.

Okay.

Not that I don't want you there right at the beginning, but seriously, I start going a little brain dead later at night.

That's okay. I need to have my brain working.

Yep. OK, so 26 to fine tune these first, at least the first four.

Yeah.

And finish those. OK. And then on the 9th, just start working on the ordinances. And any last minute stuff we have to do for the charrettes. deadline for the eight that's the deadline for the polls yeah yeah yeah the ninth is a working session yeah okay i got it oh thank you it's all these dates too and if you need help with anything look and stuff up i'm more free now diane and i don't have family and I know. Marching in and out. We've been here for a year with no guests.

Last summer we had people almost every week all summer. I know. I'm just exhausted. I've been doing this since April. I'm just so glad.

I love everybody coming up and visiting, but I'm glad to have a break now. So if you need help pulling information or...

I'm going to see if I can get that data and double check what we need for those particular four chapters to meet the state comp plan. Yeah, okay. Checkboxes?

Yeah.

Because they're going to look at that.

Okay, I have time to start working on this more.

Okay, I'm not going to move any of these order in the table of contents because you've got them all linked and everything else. If I need them, I'll ask you.

Yeah, it's pretty easy to do. But that's handy, isn't it? The jump tos. Okay, what else?

I think that's it for now.

I think we covered just about everything.

Any comments, Josh? Motion to adjourn, please.

Well, I just want to make sure, I'm sorry, one item under new business that was there. So sorry. We Oh, the grant management stuff. Yeah. So we're still waiting for, I don't know that we're going to get any additional paperwork. Everybody's like, we can't do anything for the paperwork. I'm like, they sent it out. They asked for us affirmation. We received the note and they were committed to the deliverables, which I sent them back on email. And they said, you're going to get the check in four weeks or whatever.

Yeah. Two to three weeks. Yeah.

So I don't know that there's any additional authorization documents coming, but we'll find out.

Okay.

And I do have a phone number I can call and ask if there's any other stuff.

So with that being said, does that mean you already accepted the grant?

They just asked for confirmation that we understood the deliverables and that we knew that at the end of the grant, we have to provide an accounting with the normal grant management processes. But there was no signature required. There was no formal accepting. So I don't know. I know they're trying to speed up the process. So it may be this is a slightly different process. Don't know. We'll find out when that paperwork comes in a week or two.

You said you already attached a copy of that letter to the meeting minutes? Yes. Okay.

Will the paperwork be going to the town office? Yeah, it'll go to the town office. We'll just have to keep checking with Kathy because sometimes I know a main municipal and EFCOG sends stuff to the code enforcement officer all the time and it's supposed to come to us as well and we don't see it. So I've got asked to be put on that list now so that we're getting the emails directly from them. It doesn't come to the CEO and stop them. So we will just double check. Also before last week's meeting, two weeks ago, I put together a spreadsheet for tracking And that's on the Town of Canton Google Drive as well. It's there. So we'll keep putting stuff in there as we need to. And I know we've used that reimbursement sheet many times. That's not a new thing. So when the grant comes in, we will submit the reimbursement and see what happens there.

I don't see it. Where is it? In the same place?

Yeah. It's an Excel, like a Google Sheet.

Is it a completed folder or which folder is it? Yeah, there it is.

So it put in a total balance, kind of documented the request, what it was used for, who the vendor was, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so on the right-hand side, it's submitted to town for reimbursement. So once that form's filled out and submitted, we'll have a record of that as well. And that's something that, as you and I talked about, Dan, you know, we've done it. I don't think we've done it since you've been chairman.

No, probably not. No, it's the first time.

Yeah, but we've done that many times in the past, at least. Whatever. But different things. It used to be we paid for our own, out of our own budget, paper and ink through the printer. And so every time we'd run out of ink, I'd just buy more ink, submit it to the town. And now they're like, oh, you don't have to pay for it, and we'll take care of it. OK. But we didn't use that printer that much. At some point, I might be able to get it.

At that session on the 9th, when we talk about It's just how things will go at the meeting, refreshments, who's going to be there early, you know, just like meeting management. Meeting management. Who's coming early to set up chairs? What kind of tools do we need there? Are we going to need flip charts, sticky notes, pens?

How about if I draft the process plan?

That would be great. That'd be great.

I have a template. I'll just do that.

You probably already have a meeting process plan that you use. So I don't want to have to invent one. That's great. Let's use yours. And can we review it at the next working session to see if we need to modify or start having to do so we're all kind of organized.

So we only have people for two hours, which is really a small amount. That's okay.

We're going to make all of the treats for everyone.

Fast. Do we have them for three or two?

Then we're too loud.

Five to eight? I think you might have asked them for three. Indeed. Hold on. September. Possible plan, two to five.

Yeah.

Yeah, because really, it's very hard to get people in there, sit down, focus, doing a task, coming to some kind of a consensual task in two hours. You can do it, but you've got to be a slave driver. And three is sketchy. I run these sessions for three days at a time, not three hours.

Can you please bring that stuff on the counter down to the tiny office for a little bit? We're a mess to adjourn, so yeah, could you bring that down?

Okay.

Thanks, bye.

Bye.

My zucchini bread for all of you, and I left it in the kitchen. We must get rid of it. I started thinking about treats and I'm like, oh my God, I have treats for these people.

I've been sending zucchini recipes to my best friend in Pennsylvania whose garden is overproduced. I'm sorry. I just ate zucchini.

So you're all getting chocolate chip banana zucchini bread today. So please don't leave until I give it to you.

She sent me a picture of zucchini pancakes. I'm stopping at her house in Pennsylvania in a few weeks. I'm going to be down there. Sorry. Well, they just put them in a waffle maker and made it into like a savory.

Okay.

Anything else we got to do? No.

So yeah, let's plan just like meeting planning. So we're effective.

I bet you have. Agitating the back of my mind.

Okay. Let's just get on it because it'll be here before we know it. All right.

This is good. I'm picking up three 10-year-old girls at 8 o'clock. We're going at 5.30 in the morning to see the hot air balloons in Lewiston. Anybody want to come?

No. No.

Oh, that's a cool thing.

I'd rather stay away from Lewiston.

Me too. I move to adjourn.

Second. All in favor?

I'm going to put Lynn as the second. Yeah. So 7.35. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Okay.