City Council - Regular Meeting

City council workshops are intended to provide an opportunity for informal working discussions between city councilors and staff in advance of regular city council meetings in order to allow for high levels of transparency about progress concerning priority policies of Ellsworth. No votes or formal decisions are made at a workshop. Workshops are live streamed at YouTube and the public is welcome to attend in person. However, due to the workshop format and time constraints, Opportunities for public comments may be limited, are at discretion of the city council chair or the designated workshop chair. Formal opportunities for public input on council items may be provided through the city's established public hearing and comment process. Those items brought forward to the city council meetings for action. There are also emails are an excellent way to provide public comment to the city councilors and staff. So with that, we're going to start the agenda by discussing the city seal.

Yeah, sure you are. I've got an email as to Sarah. Ask Devlin out.

Do you want to flip it around? We can go to affordable housing?

Keep it on the city seal. We'll give it for a couple seconds. I do want to just note, you know, it's... I'm so glad a lot of folks are out here tonight. I think we just heard the last person on just how surprised they were. How did the people of Ellsworth really come out for these tax-exempt lease administrators? I'm interested to see what her conversations are at the dinner table. I know the conversations at my dinner table and a lot of the staff's dinner table have been extraordinarily difficult. I'd say on the border of heart-wrenching and fearful, to be perfectly frank. I think some very brave people in the staff came forward previously, including the deputy, on some unprofessional conduct that they'd seen and felt that it was important to move that forward. I don't like how the process has played out on this as all walking into tonight's workshop. Love to have a bunch of people here and wish there'd been more on but to see signs saying I support city council and city staff and then just walk in to see recall petitions of other. Into that to be the driving focus of things. I think it's been enormous distraction for staff enormous time on something that none of us were expecting to have to realign things towards I know staff have reported to me on feeling uncomfortable and feeling like in the future they're not gonna speak up on things because they have very good evidence now what that means and you know social media attacks on people claims or comparisons that Gestapo staff members pictures being and put on social media you know real personal attacks that have real effects on everybody's lives I'm hopeful you know that's the world we live in nowadays in many ways, but there's so many great things in this city. I know I, when I first became city manager, I went to the chamber dinner and all anybody wanted to talk to me, my wife thought like, oh my God, what a disaster Ellsworth is and what you're walking into and blah, blah, blah. And I was just, my wife commented afterwards saying, oh, what is going on? This place is doing great. And then last year, New Hilton home to suites gets announced. Ellsworth's time is now, new growth. And to me, that is our Ellsworth still. We just heard about $6 million purchase of a mill mall and that they're going to rehab it to remain a mall. How many places in America have malls that they're buying, rehabbing to remain malls? We heard about the Tinker Hill Apartments expansion, that Hilton Home of Suites is almost built, dozens and dozens of housing units, other big businesses coming into town, huge valuation increases. There's two articles in the Maine Business Journal this week, in addition to the Maine Mill Mall, just throwing about the downtown and how it's full and thriving. These are the things that Ellsworth is known for, too, as being the fastest growing city in Maine. Before I became city manager, I talked to somebody who does this work in cities and towns across Maine, and he gave me that kind of warning. He kind of drops into places when they have staff turnover, and there's a really interesting article about city manager turnover in the Portland Press-Herald this week. And he said, yeah, the reason this usually happens is when the council it starts to become drama all the time, and it kind of factionalizes the community, and avoiding that is pretty key, and I was kind of like, how do you, like, it's not your role, it's my role to avoid that type of thing, but it's happening. It's why there's a ton of people behind me for a workshop, so, you know, I don't know how to deal with that. I do feel like the process for if there are complaints against the city council in the future needs to be very much specified in the charter or the personnel ordinance or the ethics ordinance going forward. Because I know in our internal process and procedures, the idea of any of these steps involving naming staff members or the situation behind what they complained about being brought forward in the public and then to have them risk having their name and credibility in their families and their communities. you know, is very much protected in the process and nothing except for the disciplinary record is released. So, you know, I think we need to work on that so that in the future this can be much easier on staff and hopefully never has to happen again. But, you know, I think in June, as much as I don't want to, that we need to have a more serious conversation about the process side of things. And with that, do we have the city seal?

Great.

Are you going to continue to move furniture or not go? speaking now to you I have put on my historic commissioner chair hat instead of council perspective and I want to give you background this is a kind of a saga that's been going on now for almost three years I want to start with a little background because I have no idea how much everybody knows about the saga Most of my information from this comes directly from Hildreth Haw's Maine emergency relief activities, which was a report done in 35 on all the construction that the CWP was doing in Maine during the Depression. So the 33 fire was certainly a disaster. And if you're going to have your town burned down, You would think in the middle of a depression would be the worst time to have it burn down. There was no money to replace anything. Banks were failing. Unemployment was about 25%. It was a very bad time. Luckily, this was in May of 33, in the fall of 33, FDR's program started to kick in. And they were able to get labor from the Civil Works Administration, administered from Maine Emergency Relief Corporation. And they were able to get a loan from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. And that's what made this building possible. And just a little bit about the building, and bear with me, I do have a point. Edmund Gilchrist from Philadelphia. Designed in St. George and Revival style, which was very unusual at the time. Kind of a contrast to Maine's rural architecture. And he tasked his son with design of the seal. This was in the cards from the get-go. This wasn't something that was thought about after, let's do a carving in the ceiling, pop it up there. This was part of the construction process. And it appears as a line item in the adornment phase of the city hall construction logs. So we don't know who carved it. Could be a local, could be a non-local. As far as I can see, we don't know who carved it. There's a good possibility that somebody in E. L. Shay's cabinetry and millwork shop may have done it. But we don't have any way of telling. It's highly stylized. The seal on the building is highly stylized, kind of folk art like when you, primitive art like you associate with Grandma Moses paintings. And they added, they stylized to fit the space, to make this triangle space done on purpose. What we think, what we have always thought was gold leaf, My research tells me it probably wasn't. It was probably Dutch metal. Because in the middle of a depression, I can't see these folks. I can't imagine them spending thousands and thousands of dollars on gilt gold, which was what it cost back then to them. But that's neither here nor there. Built on 13 pieces of Atlantic white cedar. 13 colonies, 13 pieces of Atlantic white cedar. And it is the focal point of our front-facing gable. It's the largest depiction of the Maine seal, Maine state seal. And from my research, it's probably unique nationwide. I can find plenty of Depression-era municipal buildings with adornments in that space, but none like this. None like this. It's unique. So they dedicated it in 1935, and there it hung for half a century with only minor repairs until 1985 when the building was nominated the first time for the National Registry of Historic And in Section 7 of that application, to be on the Federal Register, under Section 7, architectural description, character-defining feature, carved wooden pediment, Maine State seal. The implication of this, the reality of this is that in federal preservation regulations, a character defining feature is a physical attribute to a building, a structure, that must be retained to maintain the building's historic integrity. If you remove it or replace it with non-historic material, what you're doing is effectively delisting that portion of the building. So keep that in mind. I'm going to skip over the 1999 major repair, because it's not really germane here. There was concern about rot. It got taken down. What they did to it, I'm gathering. I'm still gathering information. I need to search the detailed records, because I have to have those records to define future efforts for this scene. Now, here's where the saga begins. In the fall of 2023, under a previous city manager and a previous historic preservation chair and a previous facilities manager, it was mentioned by the facilities manager to the chairman of historic preservation that a piece of the seal of the carving had fallen off. It was also conveyed at that time to the chair by the facilities manager that it was too damaged to repair and that he recommended scanning the original and replacing it with a composite replica from UMaine's 3D printing facilities. He set up a Zoom meeting with UMaine. The chair and I attended this Zoom meeting, but it became very quickly obvious to us that historic preservation's input was not being looked for, that this was being presented to UMaine as a done deal, that they were going to take it down and replace it with a machine-made plastic one, basically. The end of that meeting was that UMaine strongly recommended that the carving be taken down to be accurately scanned. And what happened then was about a year of historic preservation trying to get the seal taken down. And it was no one's priority. I understand that everything can't be tops. Everything can't be top priority. But it was for us, and we couldn't make any headway whatsoever. The reasoning behind this is we didn't know how damaged it was. But if a piece had fallen off, it was not a good sign. A morgue could fall off and hit somebody and leave us liable. It's just sitting up there rotting as we speak. So we wanted to get it taken down. We couldn't do it. Nobody listened. I also don't know what happened to the broken piece. which I would love to try and track down, because you are never supposed to discard things like that. So I assumed the chair of historic preservation in the summer of 2025. And the commission was not fully functioning. It still isn't. The members that were there and I had to talk about this because I couldn't let it lie. As a historian, I could not let it lie. And in the fall of 2025, also Roddy Ellenback of Parks and Rec took over or was handed responsibility for the seal. And he came to a historic preservation committee and It had been conveyed to him, too, that this was a done deal. Take it down, replace it with something plastic or fake. So then I got elected to city council and I realized I could ask questions. And I just started putting my research back together. And basically, the bottom line from this background is that we cannot make any decisions based on the seal because it's part of city hall. And we need to reframe our thinking. So... Because the city hall is on the National Register of Historic Places, we have to abide, or at least try very, very hard to abide by the Secretary of Interior's standards for historical preservation. It defines several different kinds of treatment, conservation. They consider technical methodology, which can be worked into any one of those.

There's four, though. Go ahead.

Here's the three, a comparison. Preservation, yes, keeps all the historic layers, and it retains the existing fabric. Restoration is reinterpretation. It removes later additions. That's why I need to know what they did in 1999. And conservation is the physical science of what are you going to use in the material to make it safe and timely. This is the fourth option that the Secretary of the Interior offers, reconstruction. And they don't like it. It's not preferred. And that would happen. Under very extenuating circumstances would they smile on that. Let's say our seal was built of South American ebony. We couldn't possibly get a South American ebony wood to fix it. And they would understand that. But Atlantic white cedar is still very prevalent. So that's an example. A scanned 3D replacement would be a reconstruction. It would not meet the standards. So other thoughts on this plan. Loss of historic integrity due to craftsmanship and the material. There are tool marks on that seal from those craftsmen who carved it in 1935 or 1934. That's part of its history. The embellishments, the time they put into it, whatever they were feeling when they carved it in the middle of this horrendous depression, that's in the craftsmanship. And as far as the material, It's replaced like kind, and that's Atlantic white cedar. Now the white cedar has done pretty well, if you think about it. It's only come down once for major repairs, and if it had come down a little sooner than 1999, those repairs probably wouldn't have had to have been so extensive. Do I have another slide? Yeah, one more. This is that one. Okay. So here's the path. If we conserve it, we maintain national register eligibility. How might that be jeopardized if we don't follow the guidelines? Well, I'm not going to lie to you. The federal police don't come to our door and say, you didn't do what you were supposed to do. We're taking you off the registry. But what happens is, most often in municipal buildings, when they do something out of necessity or desire that doesn't meet the standards is it opens a door for future generations to do the same. And eventually, you have a cumulative effect. And eventually, a lot of these buildings do get delisted from historic places. Like I said, longevity. The Cedars held up amazingly well. I don't know what kind of shape it's in now. Everybody keeps telling me that it's very damaged and too badly damaged to repair, but nobody's ever looked at it since 1999. Composite would be unknown. I'm certainly sure that UMaine has great faith in it, but none of it has been outside in a main window for 50 or 80 years. The philosophy in conserving it is protecting the real thing. It's the real thing. It's the emotion. It's the determination. It's the rebirth from that fire up there on the wall versus creating fake history because a composite will have no historical value whatsoever, none. And then cost. It's going to cost a ton of money. I'm not going to lie to you. Historic conservation costs a lot of money, more than normal maintenance, because it has to be to certain standards. So can I tell you how much? Not a clue. Not a clue. We need to get it down and look at it. As far as the cost of UMaine's scanning and milling, we don't have a price on that either. At the meeting, I did ask the question, where were we talking, how many figures? And I was told, mid-five figures, what that means. But anyway, that is the comparison. Go ahead, another slide. So what's the plan? Go ahead. I don't have one. yes purpose of the workshop being to discuss what I will be asking the council for when we meet this is too big for the Historical Commission to handle on its own I would ask for the appointment of a task force Historic preservation can provide the history. It doesn't know anything about funding or logistics or cranes or permits or anything like that. So we need a diverse task force. And I would ask that their first goal be to get that seal off the building by November and into a temperature controlled environment where it can dry. Because in answering your question, that has to be the next step. Absolutely. It has to go somewhere dry, somewhere that doesn't get too hot or too cold, so that it can dry out. Once it's dry, we can have a professional come in and appraise its condition. And then we will be better suited to make decisions about how we want to proceed. So all I can tell you, it's going to be wicked expensive.

Now, the question is, who's going to pay for it?

I can't tell you that either. I might not even be here.

That's where we are right now.

There you go. Carol, can you address the council? Sorry. Again, there's no public comment during the workshop. I appreciate everyone's patience. Thank you.

There is one thing to consider. When you follow the rules, there are more opportunities for help with this kind of thing. Now, it depends on the commission coming back to life and completing the process for certified local government. If we can do that, then we become privy to grant money that could pay for up to 60% of the conservation of the seal. We certainly can't get a grant to have humane mill one. I have absolutely no idea how much this would cost. So here's another option. Do nothing. I mean, how important is it to the community? I don't know. That's why I wanted to give this presentation. Do nothing. Leave it up there. Eventually it will decay and fall down on its own. And maybe it doesn't mean anything to people. I don't know. See, it's not really my history because I haven't lived here. But I can identify with it because my history is in Willamette, Connecticut, and it consists of two huge bronze frogs that the city fathers keep putting Christmas hats on at Christmas. But just about every New England community has something like this. This is something really special. And I think we need to jettison that idea of a milled fake and not even reconsider it until we know what the condition of it is. Or we can just do nothing if people think it's going to be too expensive and don't want to pay for it or help pay for it. That's an option, too. Great. Okay.

Yeah, no, I think that's great. I mean, this workshop council, you guys have questions for Carol?

Well, Carol teaches history. I'm kind of like, I like history. So I kind of dabble and reach into stuff. And I really agree with you. You can't replace it with anything but what the original material was made of. And we have plenty of cedar. We're in Maine, okay? Well, I wish I could give you an answer on, you know, and have bragging rights that a bunch of my grandfather's craftsmen carved it out. Sorry, I can't give you that. I don't know.

A lot of people have looked at information.

At one time, I found actual blueprints of the building. Where they are at now, I wish I could tell you, okay? But I'm pretty sure it spelled out where that seal was supposed to go and how it was fastened on there. Like I said when I was running for office, I'm tired of kicking the can down the road. If we keep passing things down the road, it's going to cost you more and more and more. And this is the taxpayer's house, you know. We need to fix the windows in the cupola. We need to make sure the outside of this building is preserved, and that needs to be repaired and done right. Is it going to cost a lot of money? Oh, heck yeah. But there's ways of getting funding for that. You know, very, very important funding. Okay? This is a piece of history. It's a piece of your history. Someday I'm going to be gone, and it's going to be your kids' history. Yours. The great grandkids. You know what I mean? Look, obviously other city councils and other city managers have kicked the can down the road. Like Cecile, that planning motion, get the windows fixed so we don't have tarps inside our attic, which is disgusting, and save the building. You're not going to build another building like this. Not going to be like this.

Pat, is this you volunteering to be on the task force?

Everybody needs to be part of the cog on that gear. Councillor White?

How hard is it for us? How long will the process be? How hard do you think it would be to become this certified government?

Carol, can you get to the mic?

First thing that has to happen is we have to get membership up. We're missing three members.

So you have to have a full membership in order to... And then it's not... Okay. It's a pretty quick process after that.

Yeah, that's the only reason that the membership application didn't get sent. OK.

Any other questions for Carol from council or staff? Thank you, Carol. That was very informative.

I have a few more. Just to thank Carol for, you know, we had a great meeting in my office, I don't know, two months ago, three months ago now. We had to kick it back a few times. I think we tried to have this conversation, but other things got in the way. I think the history you just gave of, is another just kind of the inertia that's been on this project. And in some ways, trying to figure that out. We have a great facilities director here now. And we have, but he's only been here six months. And we've got our parks and rec directors also in the same facilities. I know, and I think in general, it's kind of been, there's been some inertia here. It's to your point, it's like, This humane, they'll scan it. They'll do a polymer. It's kind of like, OK, one of those pieces is there. There's been turnover at humane. And I just got a text from Roddy on this. He had a family function that he was previously at. And we're following up on the actual broken piece. But yeah, it kind of was in that category. And as you mentioned, all the sills on all these buildings are rotted out. And the pointing on all the bricks needs to be done. We did a little bit of repairs on the cupola because it was literally like an MMA finding of a leak in the building from six years ago. And then they reached out last year and said, how did that leak go? You said you were going to fix it. I was like, that was six years ago. Nothing has been done. So I think we came to this council. We are perfect. And that's leaking in from the top. It's gone. The tarps are... They're open, yeah, but... And they're not as needed as much. I used to go up there all the time, and the buckets were full. Right, right. The buckets are less full, but, you know, Carol and I were talking, and she said to me, and I hope you don't mind me saying to the coach, she said, the powers that be, they're just against this. And I looked at her, and I said, you're a city councilor. I'm the city manager. Like, we're the powers that be. So, like, let's... How do we figure this out? Like, there's... Well, there's a will.

There's a way. We'll... We've got to take care of our buildings. We've got to take care of the stuff that was entrusted to us.

And I do think this task force, which is Councilor Martinow's idea, I think could help. And oftentimes in committees and task forces, kind of another government to use for, well, we'll make the task force do it. But something project specific I have seen in a lot of communities and towns and been a part of things like this, where it's, hey, we have to do X. This piece is important. And with a focus of great members of the community and historic commission and others, I think that will help kind of get the rapidity we need to be super laser focused on this piece. I did talk to Woodlawn. You know, they do have a kind of a storage facility that's climate controlled to handle their historic archives. They're not terribly interested in just acquiring because if they become, if it's not relative to them, but they did say, you know, if we did bring it down and needed a place to store it and, you know, and there'd be some compensation for that, it would be an excellent potential storage place. And that's not, But that to me is one of the key inflection points both for this task force and the council is like seems like we're migrating away from let's get the full scan, swap it out, you know, once there's a full plan in place because it's degrading. We haven't had a piece fall down in the last couple of years, but I know putting some mesh on there to make sure no more falls down. To your point of the historic nature of this, it really could be, and maybe it will nearly disintegrate if not taken down carefully, but the Woodlawn Executive Director, who's incredible.

Eventually, it will reach a point where it can't be repaired. I mean, if it had been, like I said, if it had been taken down, like... maybe 1990, then whatever they did in 1999 wouldn't have had to have been so extensive. And then it probably needed to come down 10 years ago. So maybe some kind of legacy has to be adopted where every generation has to take it down or have some way to inspect it while it's up there. I don't know. This is the process of having to find out.

Yeah, and they mentioned the main preservation. I don't know if they've been reached out to yet on this. Yes.

Yes, and they have whole lists of people that can be consulted on these issues.

Because that's one of my big things. If it comes down and we don't have a plan to swap it back out. Police department, thank you. They did take their drone and do a 3D scan. So if worst really does come to worst, that's not enough for these coming to composites. But it seems like we might be migrating away from that anyways. It's also on the capital improvement plan list. To your point, one of the- So we're going to continue that discussion. There's $20 million in basically cans that have been kicked out of the road that we have to decide. Pumphouse Point is deteriorating. But I think this is a good process to move forward on.

I think the thing to remember is this kind of conservation takes years, not months. I mean, ideally, it would be nice if we could find somewhere that the city owns to put it, you know, That would be ideal, mainly because we don't want it to get lost along the way. Somebody eventually buys an unclaimed storage unit and they find an 18-foot seal of Maine in it. We wouldn't want that to happen. But, yes, it needs to come down.

Oh, it's going to come down for us to take any next steps.

Yes, it's a logical plan for whatever we're going to do.

And I think that is in the SIPP and just working with the, or who's done something like that before, taking down, because it feels like that's not just, you know, send the IT department up in the bucket truck to start figuring it out. We want somebody with some substantial preservation skills to make sure that it's, you know, everything's done to, If it really is, I think our last facilities director, yeah, that was his guidance was this thing, if you try to take it down, it's just going to fall apart. So really just from his perspective, the scan had to happen. You have to have that other piece. um but we need to have a preservation uh expert kind of go in there that could be more expensive in the near term too but that will let the task force come to that piece on what the recommendation is there probably in the first piece and do we take it down right now um and what's the plan and what's the timeline to get it swapped out um with something either rehabilitated or historically replicated to the standards it would need to be so thank you counselor martin Great.

I think this is an opportunity for two things. Excuse me. I know that you've been actively trying to get the word out for the Historic Preservation Commission, but with this heightened interest and knowing that getting members on board, if you want to talk about what the commission is looking for in membership. And then secondarily, if we're talking about this The seal coming down, one of the concerns has been that gaping blank space that we're all just used to taking for granted, this beautiful seal. Just an open thing for all of us to think about when you're awake at 3 o'clock in the morning. What would we fill that with? Is there anything? It'll be down for an extended . Yes, it will. It's just to toss out the idea. What would we do? Leave it blank is an option, but just tossing that out for people to consider. So what are you looking at?

I wrote you a picture of my dog.

I think that would be, I think July would look good there.

what are you looking for in commission members what are the requirements i mean obviously we're looking for people who are interested in history you don't have to be an expert in history but you have to be interested in and but probably more important is there is a learning curve because historic preservation is um different i have a phd in history but i'm not a preservationist you know um so there needs to be a little reading done um But we handle the certificates of appropriateness when a building in one of our historic districts wants to make changes. They submit their application to code enforcement, which comes to us, then we look at what do and see if it meets the criteria. Now, that said, homeowners have to be given more latitude. What's important to the city as far as our antique homes is concerned is what they look like from the street. That street view, we want to preserve that because that's what speaks out in the city. But if they want to paint their dining room purple, that's certainly their prerogative. And sometimes, sometimes there are things that are recommended to be done to old homes that people simply cannot afford. And a good example of that is Bangor and the slate roof. Bangor came down very hard. on a man who just couldn't afford $300,000 for a slate roof, and they told him that he had to, and eventually they walked it back. And that's, yes, that's too bad, but it's reality. So we do that. We haven't been engaged in any other projects. I think this is going to be a big one. The one thing I will say is this building and the library, the two city-owned buildings, they need to have administrative histories drawn up and added to constantly. That's so that when 100 years from now, when we're all dust and people are sitting in this chamber, they're not going, what the hell were these people doing? Administrative history on maintenance and historic changes and preservation and what did you do and how did you do it. I did work on one for the Mark Twain House when I was in grad school. I did a whole administrative history on their petunias. You're not kidding. They've planted a lot of different kind of petunias over the years. But, yeah, so that's another thing that I would like the commission to take on. So research and writing and going through archives. There's a lot of city archives I've got to try to locate.

Great. Thank you, Carol. Great. I learned a lot about the seal and very important things. Okay. Well, I think we're on to the next agenda item, affordable housing.

Yeah. So, you know, working on the titling of this too, um, we, is it affordable? Is it workforce housing? Is it, I think attainable housing is something, uh, that, uh, councilor Smith was telling me is one of the newer terms that folks, uh, in this space are, are, um, are prioritizing and Ellsworth has mentioned before with new units coming up, we've got a fair amount of housing growth. in the city of, you know, it's not in the attainable category, unfortunately, for more and more people. So that is a, we discussed that I think two council meetings ago was supporting a grant application for the Department of Economic and Community Development for the Beals Avenue project, which is around 35, 36 housing units that, you know, I'll get some of the numbers wrong here, but essentially they're building 400-plus thousand and trying to sell for like 280 for a set of them through a whole series of federal, state grants that they've already put together so that people can own those properties. And then there'd be a covenant on those homes for a certain amount of time so they can't just get it for under market rate, kind of leave, swap it, sell it. That goes back to market rate that it would... that it would stay in that covenant. But they're having a tough time making the financing pencil over. They were denied for that infrastructure grant from DECD. But DECD also said, hey, we'd be interested if you come back to us in the next round in the spring, is they're really looking for kind of the shovel-ready aspect, and then to potentially help with like the down payments for these folks. Because if you're making, I think it's 80% of area medium income, right, which was 70, what was that?

It's between 80 and 120, so it would take a range of folks in different... Hey, Toyla, can you pull the mic a little closer? Yeah. No, it was a range of 80 to 120, so that it would be able to accept, you know, someone maybe a little higher, and then some on the lower end. Yeah.

Right. So that still leaves them short of the infrastructure side of things, where we're looking at some other grant opportunities. This has been a project that's been with the city for two years now, and to me, it's kind of like a microcosm for... can attainable housing, even with state, federal, a developer who really this is a passion project for them so that it can be built as sort of a proof of concept for moving forward on these pieces.

But they've had trouble along the way.

They went to the planning board. incredible planning board that's extremely detailed. There was a line of sight variance that they gave at the intersection of Beals. That went to the Zoning Board of Appeals. The appeals overruled the planning board on approving the project, but then that later got overturned because the Zoning Board of Appeals shouldn't have even heard the project because it wasn't a timely appeal. so they had to come back to invalidate their own decision and this is like years of you know and as we all know inflation has increased a lot during that time frame so we're really thinking out as a city if we're going to prioritize attainable workforce housing we need tools in our tool belt to be able to make these processes work smoother but also what is the temperature of the council for not just the tool of supporting a grant application for something. But like other cities and towns in Maine, to potentially design the new TIF districts or add affordable housing TIF districts that can incentivize this type of work. And that could kind of take a few forms with this project. We could consider something similar to if you're trying to get senior housing here, they've offered the infrastructure so you can donate a variety of things. And then that gives the developer the break. I think we do this with the Leonard Lake senior housing to some extent. We have a debt service and some things there. So do we want to prioritize affordable housing where I think it was a $15 million or so project. So the 15.66 mill rate, which is, by the way, one of the lowest of any service center in Maine. I think it's the second lowest, third lowest. And 15.66 of a $15 million project that doesn't happen is zero tax dollars for the city. But the problem with a project like this is they're trying to let people buy their homes. So giving a tax credit on the future doesn't really help them. The developer who's building the project, it would help the the owner. But should we look into infrastructure investments that could be financed with the tax revenue from the project itself to finance the initial infrastructure investment to get this to pencil over. The other piece is there's like the 150 units behind the bowling alley that's gone through and is in a similar sort of, hasn't penciled over and is also, Twyla, did they say they're interested in a TIF as well?

In an affordable housing TIF, yes.

So that would be a different story. You could, if a certain amount of their units were affordable housing and had income restrictions on them so that they are affordable rents, with the developer on that project owning those units for a longer period of time, you'd potentially give them a tax break for a certain amount of years on that project so it makes it more affordable for them. to build the project but then also the city gets workforce and attainable housing so people can live and work in this community and there's kids in school the community so the housing stock is protected from becoming short-term rentals that don't have people living here year-round so that's another area would you say there's one other developer that also reached out recently yeah i don't know how much i can say about that right now because he's still kind of looking um in the area and considering ellsworth as a location but the um

requests with our staff when we met with him was that it would only make sense if he could also have an affordable housing tip.

So to me, this is something that I think we should spend time on. I don't think it's good for anybody if the kids and grandkids of the folks here can't come back to afford a home to live here. If more and more of the housing stock, I think we're down a third grade We told you the budget presentations from the schools recently. If we don't keep having kids come into our schools, that's going to be a big issue for this community over a 10-, 20-, 30-year horizon. So continuing to prioritize affordable housing seems to be something I really wanted to start working on. But we oftentimes spend our time on other things, really important things like the city seal and affordable housing, attainable housing, workforce housing. just gets put in the back burner because it's too conceptual and it's going to take a ton of time. Twilight did an insane amount of work to get the new TIF districts put together. That's going to take time to work on for the valuations in those areas to kick off more increment. Same thing with the downtown. But also there's the 120-odd acres kind of in the growth area around the courthouse that could also be a really prime location right in our urban growth center, right in our water and sewer lines to really prioritize workforce and attainable housing. But at the same time, if this isn't a big priority for the council or they're not interested in these types of tools being brought forward, I don't want to spend a ton of time on it. We've got a lot of other things. To me, it kind of comes to the top of the list in terms of how we need to prioritize offerings and toolkits. And I'd also note for the community, there's no staff. We're going to do this, and then there'll be a backroom deal with a developer, and it all comes to fruition. Any TIFFs, any... Any credit enhancement agreements, they have to come through the council, and they have a very large process that they would have to go through with lots of public input and dialogue. So this will be a long-form process, and it doesn't just happen tomorrow. Anything else to add, Twyla?

Just a reminder that when the new TIF districts or the proposed ones were approved by council, along with that was the creation of a TIF task force or a TIF committee, and so that provides another layer not only for public comment, when the TIF committee meets and goes through these applications and talks about the capital stack analysis, which is part of my role, right, of sitting down with each developer and figuring out what capital they have to work with, what they still need, how, you know, if and how the city can help through a credit enhancement agreement with an affordable housing TIF. But again, that all comes kind of as a first accountability step, if you will, to this TIF task force. And then it would come to council on the recommendation of the task force. A lot of work being done ahead of time in the vein of increased transparency and just like talk, being able to have the public attend meetings around it because that's just how we believe it should work when it comes to to new housing units and anything that would affect some of the money captured in those TIFs going to the developer, which would be in both cases. Probably in all three cases, the credit enhancement agreement could be anything from 50% for 10 years to 100% for a couple of years to whatever. the task force would bring to the council and whatever the council would decide. I don't know if that makes sense. I know TIF is still like a lot of... Councilor Smith?

To that point, I was going to add, I still have up in my browser, there is the page on the city website which has an outline of what a tax increment financing is and a link to a recording of a presentation you did. As we move forward with this, credit enhancement agreements, I need a refresher on with how they're different from. So I'd be supportive of your efforts going into looking at, is this what it takes to have more families be able to live in Ellsworth? I need to better understand what the credit enhancement agreement is different from the TIF. So I'd make that a short list for in the future.

Okay. That's not for now. I mean, just really briefly, though, it's not that it's, like, different from the TIF. It's just the way the TIF, the increment The tax increment is split. So instead of it going into, like, an econ-dev fund, for example, it's...

I've drafted credit enhancement agreement for work, and they're basically an agreement between the city and the developer for that specific TIF project. And it outlines... Potentially, yeah, how the TIF revenue, tax revenues are allocated, and they're either over like a 20 or 30-year time horizon, and oftentimes the way they're designed is upfront. The tax revenue that that project creates goes back to the developer. for some percentage. And then over time, you can phase it out, because in theory, you know, they need the capital more up front. And then over time, it phases out, and then all those tax dollars just come to the city. And so, I mean, communities do it all over the state. I did one for Skowhegan for affordable housing, and the new Balance Shoe Factory has a credit enhancement agreement, the new one, and we drafted that. So it's pretty common for communities to use. Question I have is, am I correct that the, you know, we have a limit on how many acres in the city can be under a TIF district, but is an affordable housing separate from that calculation for kind of the standard TIF district, do you know? Like, we can have upwards of, I think, what, 5% total in TIF, but I think affordable housing might be a separate bucket. I can't remember.

I do believe it is a separate bucket because the application does not go to DECD. It goes to main housing. Yeah.

Yeah. So this is like a separate type of TIF, separate from the districts we've just created. That's correct. And it's specific to attainable workforce housing.

Attainable. Yeah, I apologize. I go back to what they call it at that level technically. Yeah, they call it affordable housing at the state level. In my head, that's always on you too. I apologize. Yeah.

Yeah, if my memory serves me correct, the affordable housing TIF districts are areas that don't count against your acreage limits on the other TIFs, the economic development. MTIFs is what I think they call them. That's correct. So there's also another kind of sub... piece of this to keep in mind which i know we're keeping in mind and for the eventual tiff committee to really look at which is in 2030 the beckwith tiff beckwith hill tiff district expires um so you know we've done some good work on establishing new tiff districts uh And downtown TIF district, with a two-year look back, which will give the opportunity for some more economic development initiatives to move forward if the council so chooses to let that TIF district expire, will lose some of the 59 cents on the dollar you know, reasons that you do shelter that tax increment in those districts. That would be a big loss to the city if it just all went back into the general fund and we didn't utilize because we'd get offsets from the state. Well, they'll stop reimbursing us as much for our schools. They'll stop reimbursing us as much for revenue sharing because we've let the TIF district sunset. There is, I think, a new... a new option which i know is more of a long term on i think it's 75 of the tiff district if it's for uh affordable housing or housing initiatives then you can extend that tiff district and keep that um that uh that funding 20 years for 20 more years so you know we could kind of do some more short term credit enhancement agreements and is a long form housing policy because I don't think this housing issue is going to be, I hope, in three years and five months. But it feels like that could be a really excellent tool for the city future city councils in 2030 to have a, you know, an affordable housing sort of tool kit to move forward on to also help in this category. So so we'll be looking at that as well. Is there any other questions about TIFs and affordable housing?

I think I'm just, I'm in support of it, and I know if you're trying to get, you know, a sense of where the council's at, I'll just say I'm in support of pursuing affordable TIF districts. It helps incentivize this type of development, which we drastically, desperately need, and that was worth it. So I think it's worth our time and effort to see if we can't work on that.

Yeah, not necessarily looking for a show of hands or anything like that. It's more of a, you know, I'll probably start coming back and maybe we'll start with some of the individual credit enhancement agreements to Twilight so we can say, hey, this would be what it would be for this project and what it would be for this project. And that way you all can have maybe at a workshop really dive into the details. I think there'd need to be, you know, a lot more public engagement, too, on that. and information campaigns. I know we did a lot of that. Thank you, Twatla, for setting up the websites on the TIF district expansion project, what they mean, do's and don'ts, and FAQ. But to me, I'm kind of like former Councilor Beal, generally opposed to credit enhancement agreements, especially when business is booming to the way it is in Ellsworth. So to offer a credit enhancement agreement to get a hotel Probably doesn't make a lot of sense. We're having hotels be built without credit grants. But for affordable housing, attainable workforce housing, that's like a missing middle of the housing market. Rentals are extremely tough around here. And it affects not having employees to work. It affects people not being able to go to school here. And so it seems like we should really do what we can as a city to make us as... Friendly to that aspect as we are to all the other businesses that are coming here and investing in Ellsworth so So we'll probably come back at a later time with a little bit more data on what those TIFs would look like. And, yep.

I just want, how is the task force committee coming? Have you started looking for people? Have you got any interest? What's the timeline on that?

Hopefully in June. Oh, after approval? Yeah, I mean, no, I think either way we should have it in place for our existing TIFs. So the plan was to kind of get... to where we did with the budget and then start reaching out to folks and meet in June.

Great. Yeah, we received some edits back from the state on, but they seemed to be mostly administrative. They were all kind of like, you need to add this or delete this language from all this, all these items to be in line with things. So fingers crossed that they, Approve, but we will see. Great.

Any other questions from council or staff? Great. Thank you.

There's no public comment. I didn't know if it might have time.

Yeah.

There is no public comment. There's no public comment, sir. There may be limited, and we have a full agenda that we need to get through. So I'm going to ask that we now take up the next agenda item, which is the data center discussion. There's certain, there's many ways for the public to participate. Yes, so there's, you can email. So Twyla's our economic development director. If you have questions, you're free to email her. We have a email address that can go to all the city councilors, I believe, so you can email. questions to the city council. There's numerous ways for the public to participate in all these matters. We're going to have follow-up meetings in that as well. I think we're going to have a focused workshop. We're getting more public engagement. But, you know, for these general workshops, we have a very tight agenda. We do them in two hours so people can get home to their families. So if there is any time at the end for public comment on any of these issues, we'll get to it. If not, again, there's numerous ways for the public to engage with the city on these issues and there will be further discussions on these matters.

So I'm going to just, should we get the data center discussion, which is next in the item? I think we're already running a little bit behind.

Yeah. So, yeah. So are there any questions folks have on any of these specific issues? You feel free to email the people that are talking about them, the staff or the city council, and we'll be able to get, we'll get back to you as soon as we can and we'll put that information under advisement.

you know this one was i think brought to me originally by counselor uh smith m smith but then separately i got a very similar sounding email from uh counselor white um and so it's you know seemed like a good opportunity to bring it in a workshop to discuss um more in general maybe i'll kind of give a little bit of landscaping and then open it up to the council on their questions and concerns i think a lot of the discussions on does the city of ellsworth need a moratorium on data centers and you know i know the state was considering a moratorium as well which ended up not passing, I believe the governor vetoed it, and it didn't have enough to override that veto. So in a lot of concern, I was like, hey, what if a data center pops up in the backyard if we don't have something here right now? I would say, unless it's under 4,000 square feet, which would be a GameStop, not a data center, it would have to go through planning board. So I think there are some cities or towns, you see these things, where there's some kind of deal that's and it's put under some weird name, and nobody knows about it in the community until the thing is already getting built, and it's like, what in the world's going on? That would be not possible here in Ellsworth. I have talked to our attorney about this, that if it did come through planning board, you'd still have the opportunity at that point in time. If something did come to the city's attention, it would have to go through that. At that point in time, could put a moratorium on the data centers to figure out what type of regulatory environment they would want to put forward. I'm a little bit in the we need to do a lot of public outreach, that there's no surprise data center that's going to come to Ellsworth, that it would have community engagement, council engagement, the opportunity to put a moratorium so that the regulations on where, what the requirements, all those pieces would be. So I'm not as inclined to sort of pre-regulate data center which to my knowledge hasn't come come through yet um but at the same time you know i understand that um there are a lot of concerns with these parcels coming through and um you know is there you know so if and if we are going to pursue a moratorium like i do also feel like we need to to do that right, to put forward the regulations so on where it would need to be. And then that would be its own set of rules and tasks. But that's a ton of time. Or do we want to spend that on the seal? Or do we want to spend it on takeable housing? you know that there always is a kind of zero-sum aspect to some of these pieces so my kind of guidance right now is let's you know we don't need a moratorium as of yet but you know I there's a great great op-ed from Senator Gretzky in the Ellsworth American today on the what the state is pursuing Relative to this and I can also see as a signal from the council if you know if the council really Doesn't want you know wants to have a very restrictive regulatory environment for data centers You know that could also be like we can have that discussion too on if we need a moratorium now and then we really start pursuing like this these are the very restrictive circumstances you want or not or the You know, we'll have to have a whole process for that, but that I wouldn't necessarily feel comfortable just kind of moratoriuming it, and then not, you know, that's... Did you see the picture of the drinking water in Utah the day after that data center went online? I did not, no.

That was quite interesting. It went online, and the next morning their drinking water was like mud. It was pulling so much power out through the river, or their reservoir, whatever they were using. Yeah, that's bad business.

Has anyone in the city staff looked much into impacts of data centers as far as how it would impact municipal resources? I mean, I'll admit I don't know a lot about it. I just know they're very big and they use a lot of water and energy. So I just don't, you know, it would be helpful to know, like, what are we looking at as far as what does that take and what does Ellsworth have as capacity? I guess, and if the answer is not yet, then that's fine.

You know, we can all do our own research and all the free time we have.

But I would, but also, has any, are we aware of anyone that's come knocking on any doors saying, hey, we're thinking about doing a data center in Ellsworth?

No, that's kind of why I'm in the, you know.

We can't get much power out of solar panels. They need a lot of electricity. A lot of, yeah. A lot of electricity. And a lot of water.

Let's let each other, let's not talk over each other, please.

And a lot of water because of the cooling, because electronics. and the power usage. and have to be feeding into the facility. So, yeah. There's a lot of resources that would be impacted. Yeah. You see what I mean?

Yeah, no, I mean, the pictures I've seen and the limited information I've read, it's no, yeah, we're not putting in an arcade.

I think the reason... There's areas in Maine, like up towards Skowhegan, Farmington, that area there, you've got hydroelectric power, Chang, hydroelectric power, plus the paper mill has a biomass boiler that generates electricity, which right now the paper mill is closed. That's one of the things about Paper mills, they generate their own electricity, and what they don't use, they put back out onto the grid. You see what I mean? Thank you, Bob.

Councillor Smith. Thanks, Pat.

I have done some research, and just trying to get very oriented, and a lot of these admittedly more bigger centers, they do rely upon, they currently really don't use renewables. They rely upon a lot of the fossil fuels. And I do recall that you mentioned during, it was feedback for High Street, You mentioned, I believe you mentioned that there are times that you had asked Jackson Lab to stop pulling as much water, and that is one of my core concerns with... I do understand that it would take, we do have a good planning board, we do have a good process, but I want to make sure that the conversation around data centers if one were to be proposed, actually stays at a manageable temperature, because as he talked about, this will take a lot of resources, and we need to have a proper discussion before any decision on this. And I do have concern in that that things could get too hot if we don't have time to get regulation or make a proper decision. Because we're kind of seeing this already with what's happening with even all the hard work that went into the cannabis licensing we're still encountering hiccups and with something this intricate I think it would be good to at least have the time to have that discussion and properly communicate we want to do this right regardless of whatever policy decision is made I'm going to stop right now because I need to make sure I have a voice

I wanted to have this discussion in the open because I have many concerns about a data center coming into Ellsworth and specifically for the environmental impacts as I am the tree hugger of the group here. I'm glad that we're talking about this. Thank you for following up with the lawyer to find out that Even if we are approached, we do have the ability to put a moratorium in place at that point. I agree with you that this needs to be a broader discussion with the community and with Pat that we have to protect our resources for our community and not give it all away to an outside organization with a data center. Nancy?

Nancy?

Three points come to mind. With what's happened in other towns, often it has gone so far along the line because of nondisclosure agreements with either their council or their planning board. Not a question to be answered today, but one of the questions raised is how do we ensure that it doesn't get so far down the road with these nondisclosure agreements that we're in a position where suddenly We're getting pushback because the moratorium is happening after the project has gone through a certain amount of development. The advantage of doing a moratorium before there's a project is it's happening before there's a project that people have already invested money in. Bangor passed their moratorium. They did not have anyone coming to ask about putting a moratorium in. They just wanted to get their ducks in a row ahead of time, as I'm hearing from other counselors. The other thing I want to mention, rather than doing our own research, you all know I work for Grow Smart Maine during my day job. There's a webinar this Thursday at 4 o'clock on data centers and what communities can do. And there's someone from Excuse me, once find the webinar there, and you can register at no cost. So there's no barrier for cost. There's no financial incentive for me sitting here talking about access at no cost. It's an hour. If you aren't available at 4 o'clock this Thursday, it'll be recorded, and you can find it on Grow Smart Maine's YouTube channel afterwards. And I'll work. I struggle with my Outlook. my google folders but can share the information with anyone who's interested so it's another resource we'll be having another um webinar probably in july maybe august with actual with tools and resources and a toolkit for communities so there are a lot of communities are concerned about this whether one is coming or not the communities that didn't know was coming and suddenly they've got all of the conflict that comes with something so this is in front of it i don't know if we need a moratorium here i don't know if we have the assets that they're looking for that's the point i think that's what i heard is raising the concerns as we don't know i think we could um they just built a 55 million dollar electric substation in versant here in ellsworth um so we are a energy hub and we're about to resize a 20 million dollar plus water treatment plant

because we're reaching our thresholds.

And we have a river, which is, is it enough for this? I don't know. And like where it would be.

Now we have a lot of land mass too, so we'd probably want to make sure as part of this regulatory environment that obviously it's nowhere near downtown and to really put in regulations so that it would be, even though it might pull water, it would have to be farther out. I think that's one of the likely things that we're going to be confronted in this scenario is, you know, what Jay has, it's a $550 million project facility so that kicks off if you have a 1566 mill rate 7.8 million dollars in tax revenue that's like 75 percent of the city side of the budget school is like 16 million i believe to the city's 11 million um in local so you'd basically be offsetting so that would be your tough decision but how much is that going to drain down branch lake um and is you know uh The planning folks, just to your point, Patrick, we've looked in general. We've shared some research and some articles on some of these issues that you mentioned as well. This would take up a lot of time to put this forward to do it right as well.

The other thing I was thinking, another reason to get it in place proactively is because these kinds of enterprises have good public relations firms. And if they have an idea that they want to come in somewhere, and I'm not talking about just data centers, but big box stores, anything, that starts spinning their business,

presence as something good and positive and then you get a whole mess then you get controversy over it it's kind of sad in some ways because you're never going to have to pay taxes again with our data center it's one of the largest construction initiatives probably in infrastructure wise in the country in decades and decades i wish we were doing this with affordable housing um i was talking to actually Somebody worked on Jackson Lab in their engineering when he was there, and their firm would do more than 30% of all their construction as data centers. They're like, we're not going to do any more than that. He's like, you probably could do 70% of data centers. So it is a massive growth piece, and there could be a ton of tax revenue associated with it, but with environmental and other concerns that are extremely important. i'm hearing kind of enough um discussion where i think i'll talk to the planning board on you know what that moratorium might mean and um thinking about it with the project management team on um you know getting ahead of some of these issues um to see if you know the water treatment plant could be sized to um how's this to i know eastport They had a very weird headline on that there's an underwater data center being built in East Fort. I thought it was like, is this the Lake Law City of Atlantis down there? But I think it's just that they're using the tidal energy to potentially power a data center. I don't think they're... Maybe they built it underground.

I would just add one other aspect to look at is decommissioning. When you have a massive facility, what happens? And decommissioning may be the wrong word, but what do you do with the facility if they decide to just leave?

I was thinking about that. Solar panels is one of those things, and the decommissioning, the wind, too. This, though, can you really decommission data without the second, or do you need it unless the internet needs to leave sometime? So I don't know. Those are questions I'll probably be learning more about.

We all use data centers. If you've got a phone, you're using a data center. So it's not being against the data centers, but let's make sure if there's interest in coming to Ellsworth, is there a place in a way that it would make sense and add to our tax base?

I think if the AI bots start trying to take over, then we're probably going to have to decommission them real quick.

Well, I'm just full of all kinds of fun things today. The damn relicensing as well. You cut that.

You know, this is one that I've started to look into more. I think this is, gosh, talking about the history of Ellsworth here, that dam as well. I think it's a historic landmark, too.

Yes, it is. It is, right? It's on the National Historic Register as well as the state.

Is it the tallest dam in Maine as well? I think it might be.

I'm not really sure about that. I know the dam was originally started construction was in 1907. And my grandfather, and this is talking with my cousin Ken. My grandfather was born in 1895. So when they started working on a dam, he was a young boy. Him and a bunch of the neighborhood guys would go over behind where Ruth Foster's place sat on the ledge. They did not have a lot of, you know, it was all hand labor stuff. And horses, yeah. And it was built in stages. There's a lot of dance... I'm pretty suspicious that there's a few dams that are still underwater up in here, as well as the equipment. Kind of like Flagstaff Lake. There's a whole community still underwater. I mean, that dam's been there for a long time, along with several other all the way up through. One relic that's still there between this dam and Graham Lake is up on the corner of Shore Road. Used to be Mill Street, Shore Road. Right there, you look, see all the rocks there. Yeah, that was a sawmill. There used to be piles of sawdust in there when I was a kid.

So I think to wind folks up who may be new to this, a few groups came in maybe three or four months ago to present an economic study of the Union River that I believe was sponsored by Downey Salmon Federation, Harder Ellsworth, the Frenchman's Bay Conservancy was on there as well, maybe a couple other groups. into their kind of analysis on some feasibility studies on if the dams stay there, but also if the removal of just the Leonard Lake Dam were to occur, what sort of economic impact, increased recreational potential access, increased potential for keeping Graham Lake levels higher was kind of presented. I would say at the time as well, as I noted, one of the big negatives too would be a loss of $110,000 a year taxpayer from the dam owner, which is how much that facility kicks off in tax revenues, so it would be an immediate drop. Tax space, I think, you know, there, you know, there's not an enormous amount of residential development around Leonard Lake, but for the folks that have been there for generations and the folks that overlook it, like, that's, you know, that would be a big deal, and I feel like I kind of at the time was, okay, well, this has been a 10-year process of relicensing and Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Interesting study. But when the license was denied by DEP, it was like, OK, are we going to have to consider this? And just seeing the response from Brookfield, it's very generic. We're looking into this. And I don't know. And the city doesn't necessarily have a role to play here, a formal run anyways. But I kind of feel similar with the courthouse, that we may not have a formal role in there. But if it happens, and if they do decide not to pursue relicensing, You know, the city may have to, just similar happened in Bucksport and other places to save their dams, both the Leonard Lake Dam in addition to the Graham Lake Dam. And right now the process as I see it is, you know, DEPs issued a denial of the permit because they didn't think that their fish passage mitigation was up to snuff. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission requires that water quality certification permit in order for them to be re-licensed, so it seems as though Brookfield's kind of waiting to see how they're going to determine this. One of my concerns is just my preference, if I have any, and it's really up to the council and the community here, is I'm just hoping for the status quo for another 30, 40 years. dam can continue to generate electricity. I know a lot of folks say it's not a lot, but it's something. And with second highest energy cost in the nation, I really feel like we need to keep those pieces. And Leonard Lake and the Graham Lakes, I don't think there's any discussion of Graham, but that obviously has been mentioned. That's it.

If you think about it, if they don't get re-licensed, and somebody else doesn't buy it and get it licensed to produce power. Decommissioning. This is the worst case scenario, all right? The dam's sole purpose is to generate electricity. So you take this dam out or lower it or take the generating assets out of it and you decommission that, all right? You really think anybody's going to, they buy this dam, they also buy Graham Lake. To me, and it makes perfect, this is common sense saying, that one doesn't let me generate power out of this dam here. And you're telling me now I've got to take it out. I'm not making any power with that one there. Why should I maintain that one? Yeah, I think that's one of the... And that's what got a lot of people worked up about. And I'm worked up about it also for the fact that we keep saying we need more electricity. We need more energy. Okay? Now, when you take hydro... It worked great before we did... the politicians allowed this deregulation, and Bangor Hydro became a distributor instead of generating assets, and then this, and now we're in Deversant, and CMP is the same deal, you know, and now we've got Brookfield running it for Black Bear. Well. I think it would be very, very bad economically for the city of Ellsworth and the surrounding towns around Graham Lake and all of the watersheds that feed into the Union River, okay? Because right now, since 1907, thereabouts, There hasn't been migration of certain species of fish and other aquatic life. All right? We take that out, the other consequence is that what kind of other creatures and plants are going to now migrate up through, let's say, to our drinking water? And other, you know, the largest aquifer feeds down under Grand Lake all the way down through towards the water.

And I should note, I think you're absolutely right. You know, I said before, I hope that the status quo gets to be able to be maintained. And I am looking for a bit of council guidance on if we just kind of want to let this process play out and

I have a question. What's the status of the license right now?

It's denied from a quality permit. And this is where it gets like you'd need, there's probably a ton of lawyers from big organizations. And it's really in Brookfield's side to say, hey, what's the next step? Do they want to appeal this latest denial? Do they want to prove what they could say? We're going to meet all of these requirements from the DEP on this type of fish ladder to be created. To me, that's the hard thing. Carol's like, I don't know, and I'm not privy to any of these internal conversations. With the state, there's not a special energy regulator for the state, so it's really the DEP's denied the water permit, and then it's between them, you know, and they, you know, rightly so, care about the fish. And this business, rightly so, cares about, like, is this economically viable over 30 years with these new environmental regulatory requirements, which were not placed on them previously. So that's probably the decision that Brookfield, which is like a massive company, Black Bear Hydro is a subsidiary of Brookfield. So I'm sure just like, and they did own the dams on the Kennebec, so that is a You know, a potential similar case where the Kennebec dams were decommissioned, and the Nature Conservancy came in and is basically helping with the decommissioning of that. So I think it worked for the field. I would assume so. That's why they did it here. That's not as clear, and there's not a role, really, for the city in this process. I thought about maybe reaching out to Senator Grahowski. There could be a last-minute role. Maybe Representative White to get more information, but...

Okay, so by status quo, you mean we don't have to build a fish ladder?

No, and I think if Brookfield decided not to move forward, it would then be a question of how do they want to decommission the dams. To your point, maybe they would like the Nature Conservancy and the Kennebec. Maybe they would work. And it seems like there are some groups based on that economics that would work with them in that. To your point, Councillor Shea, and I also don't want to be alarmist here. I think I mentioned to somebody, I don't know if I'm like chicken little on this and the sky really could be falling or if I'm just crying wolf and it's like, hey, that's not going to happen. It's going to be relicensed, status quo maintained. Because there's not great information here. There's, you know... But your point on Graham, like, you know, Leonard, I prefer the status quo. I don't, you know, there's houses that have been there for a long time. I would love to see that maintain and continue electricity generation. Graham Lake, that's like an unmitigated financial disaster for the city. The equivalent of like six mills. Like we need to work to make that a non. non-energy producing part of this dam and a fish ladder and working with local environmental groups to make this fish ladder work, working with the DEP without massively cutting city services or changing the tax burden on wealthier homes on the lakes to, you know, less wealthy homes that are not on lakes, which is, you know, I would never want to consider that. We would have to do something enormous to make sure that's there.

Is it logical to believe that it's going to get to a point where the state says, build a fish ladder or take the dam down? Is that...

I think that is their regulation. The fish letters are requirements. Now obviously, Leonard is a much taller dam than the Graham Lake, so expense-wise. And I should also note for the conservation organizations that sponsored the Union River study, none of them were about taking down the Graham Lake Dam. In fact, they were quite adamant that they would want to work to save that dam, fish ladder passage, maintaining the flow levels in Graham. So in some ways, I think they were arguing that that piece could help Graham Lake's levels not have to go down as much. So, again, I haven't done our own independent analysis of this. This is, in many ways, like the city is just sort of a bystander on this process.

That was my impression. We don't really have much control over this. It's kind of events happening around us.

Yeah. And if there is a decision from Brookfield to... or from that study and what we would need to do would come to the front of the mix. And I want to make sure folks know that not just for the folks on Graham Lake, while that is the bigger environmental issue, the folks on Leonard Lake deserve a seat at the table on what happens here and do we have to consider operating the Leonard Lake Dam as a non-hydro-producing, electricity-producing dam for its historic preservational piece for the preservation of Leonard Lake and still working on Graham Lake flows to be better now that we don't have to run that for electricity. I would still want to prep that scenario and would really want a large public engagement process that it's not just a fait accompli for Leonard Lake.

So my understanding is Brookfield walks, they could walk away. They can say, we're not going to do this, and they can abandon the dam. And then the question becomes, who takes ownership of the dam? Is that the thinking?

I believe in this, they would have to decommission those dams.

They would have to decommission them?

Yeah, I don't think it would necessarily, and I did have a few conversations relative to that, that it's not like the other... There's kind of a gray area in those non-hydro. Non-hydro, right.

Is Graham also hydro? It's hydroelectric dam, yeah. They both are. Oh, sorry, not Graham.

No, Graham, but I think they're kind of part and parcel because you need one to do the other, right? So it's not producing electricity there, but it's...

But it's controlling the water levels.

But in theory, if, you know... Graham Lake's an earthen dam with concrete sluice ways.

Yeah.

And it's been fixed up some, all right? And... Route 180 used to go over the top of the bridge. Well, you know, that's not really... The bridge was failing. And the other thing, the federal regulations and stuff, it's like, no, you really shouldn't allow vehicle traffic over your dams because if something happens, you mess up the water. And the last time that dam, there was a huge issue with the Graham Lake Dam. I think it was like 1923, 1924, and it was in the spring, and there was a lot of rain, a lot of snow that winter, and Graham Lake failed. And it come down through, and it took out parts of the Route 1 bridge, Route 1A bridge, which was at the time called the Bangor Road, And Infant Street, it lifted it up and took that right down and it come over the top of this DM and flooded downtown Main Street. And there was, I got a picture somewhere of a steel trestle bridge where the current bridge is now. Yeah, that all went down to the spindle.

We don't want that.

I believe if you do the Riverwalk Trail, you can probably see the foundation of one of the buildings right to your left. I got to see a side-by-side of what that street used to look like, and buildings were right on the water, if I understand the flood right.

So back to the Leonard Lake Dam, if Brookfield walks away from it, it's decommissioned. Decommissioned means getting rid of the dam.

Or it could mean it being taken over as a non-hydroelectric dam. producing dam, but the requirements would still hold.

I can't imagine anyone's going to voluntarily take over a dam that has no value but only liability.

I was going to say, you have bragging rights, so I own a dam.

I own the most expensive dam that doesn't make any money. The reason I ask is because if Graham Lake is not hydro-producing... It's just storage. I think it could be that kind of dam. I may be wrong, but those are the types of dams that can be abandoned. And that's what's been going on in Bucksport and Orland. And in those situations, the towns last year, they voted to create these quasi-governmental entities that, in essence, now regulate those dams and have a way of... collecting revenues both from the folks that live on the lake and the towns to pay for them. And we'll see how that works out. So it may be a, you know, a blueprint that the city can follow. But yeah, no, this is helpful. I didn't, but again, at the end of the day, we're kind of just waiting to see what happens. And then we have to go from there.

Currently there is, what they do is they trap fish, mainly L-wise, but whatever gets in the traps, there's a crew of men, they have a contract to truck the fish upstream right to Graham Lake and let them go. There is a fish ladder at Graham Lake. Oh, there is? Some people tell me it's substandard. I don't know, I'm not a fish.

You ever tried to swim up at that?

No, I try to avoid, I've worked on a lot of dams, you know, and I also unfortunately had to go help find people that had gone through, and it's not, yeah, yeah. You know, it's a resource that we have. And it does, this one here does produce electricity. A lot of others could be a little bit better if they weren't using it to make up so much power because of the demand. The water quality could be better. But then again, you've got to look at the water quality coming from upstream. And the tributaries feeding into it.

I believe this would also, the latter requirements might also be on Green Lake as well. And again, there's a fish hatchery there, a much easier dam to get over. But it really is, it seems like the DEPs, and I've read some news articles on this too, on what they've been doing on the Kennebec. They're really trying to introduce some of these species back in a much more aggressive way than they have previously. So I think you're right, Councilor Lyons, You know if that decommissioning were to happen that is kind of the most likely scenario Lake Dam is that's a very big and expensive fish ladder and you're probably not gonna have Groups who are hoping to restore the river above that be looking to put the bill of the you know however tall that dam is. However, the Graham Lake one is one that, in their previous presentations, it did seem like they would be very interested in working with the city and others to figure out some sort of quasi-municipal group partnership, citizens, folks on Graham Lake to have it there. But at the same time, too, I do feel like the folks that live on Leonard Lake, while there not going to be a ton of them, even if that were to happen, I would want to prep the scenario on what a non-operable dam their take in terms of maintenance and levels and timelines because there's going to be, gosh, this will make, you know, a data center licensing. Yeah, this is going to be a big time for all of us because, you know, especially in Graham Lake, we want to make sure those folks know that we're doing everything possible to give them tons of information and tons of community engagement projects. I saw that with the Bucksport. It was just a really nervous time for a lot of people. And just seeing some of these pieces now, I'm hopeful that the status quo will be maintained. But if it's not, we'll probably have to circle up really quick as a council and figure out a good process moving forward. I might still just reach out to some of our state representatives who would probably be involved in any of that work if that were to happen.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments, council? Okay. Good discussion. Yeah, good discussion.

Thank you. On to, you know, I'm going to table the... retail caregiver cannabis regulations. I will note I had a really great meeting with the owner of Bosley Genetics just to talk about, you know, I know we had a motion to approve the license with some conditions last time around, but, you know, I get some kind of initial information that I'm gonna keep her and the council and the public updated as we go forward with this on, you know, a lot of the things that I put last time around in sort of this gray area of a retail, caregiver cannabis versus a medical dispensary. There's a lot of ins and outs here. I have a meeting with our lawyer tomorrow on this subject. So I just want a little bit more information. There was a lot happening over the last week, and I wasn't able to fully prep on this piece yet. So I'm just going to table that discussion and go to another one. Downtown Russians. Amanda and Brian and Mike. Wow, we've got the whole game here tonight. I guess we can also come up. Yeah, maybe.

You want me to jump in?

Yeah, if you can kind of maybe, yeah, just.

Yeah. First of all, it's nice to be with you in person and talk about this, because it was no fun not being able to be here and trying to go through a PowerPoint that I pre-recorded. But thank you for, I just want to thank the council for being willing to table this so we can have a little more conversation around it. And I want to make sure we're answering any questions you have tonight before going back to the full council meeting. it this time has given me a little bit since I was away I'm also to talk more with Public Works since this is kind of an inter-department collaboration figuring out how to do this and so I just want I don't know about the utilities installation but just being able to talk through that was helpful so Mike Harris for the course director

um just a couple clarifying points i know it came up in the last discussion and there was some talk about um the highway department public works building the bathrooms and installing the power and stuff like that we would not install the power we don't do that obviously that piece we would reach out to the electrician that we typically use for city installations to handle the the um power piece of that you know really Really, for us, you know, we're talking about, you know, constructing the building, installing the sewer line, and connecting water. The power will be left to somebody else. And really, it was framed to you guys that if it's something that the city was going to want to do, We were just offering an alternative to help with costs rather than trying to spend money on a prefab unit that costs a lot more money or hiring a contractor. The thought process, one of the discussions I had with Brian and I and the rest of the group is that we're not talking about a really complicated building here and we're not talking about something that needs to be really fancy, it just seems to be practical. You know, and then it's up to the city and the council how they want to manage it. But I think most of the concerns that people were talking about in terms of having a public bathroom and some of the horror stories you hear from other towns and cities when they put in public bathrooms, I think a lot of that's solved by your management style and how you handle your bathroom. We've had public bathrooms at the harbor for years, and we haven't had any issues down there. Really, you just need to have your bathroom set up, constructed right. You need to control the hours. You need to have locks on it. And you need to build it with floor drains and material that you can use a hose in it if you really need to. And then it's just really, you know, one of the reasons that this location was selected is because it's highly visible with a lot of eyes on it it's not tucked away somewhere where people can try to engage in the various activities around it so So my feeling is I think it would benefit the city to have a public restaurant. I think if we manage it correctly and do our due diligence, I think it could be a successful collaboration with us and the downtown businesses. And I'd rather look at the positives than the negatives when we look at projects. I think we spend a lot of time looking at the negatives all the time and not enough time looking at the positives. So that's where I stand on it.

And I think we had talked to kind of Caro, and I've got some alternative, too, on this talk about. But on the note, we know Caro mentioned on downtown business owners and that this is a big importance, something they've been stressing for a decade now, and how they have to deal with the growing tourism and folks using their facilities and the pressures it puts on them. Were you up for this, or did you want to speak on this? I mean, I

I know you have a whole thing set up, but I am excited that you're talking about it.

Okay. I didn't know if to...

I'm happy you're talking about it. I think it's really going to be beneficial. We use the restroom in our store.

Oh, if we're going to have a business owner speak, maybe you could approach the microphone and identify yourself. You don't have to. Your choice, but if you were.

Hi, I'm Molly Delina, and I own Union River Book and Toy downtown, and also now Delina Properties tomorrow will close on the building. So we're also the new building owners, which is awesome. Congratulations. And we've owned the store for four years and the restrooms is constantly discussion among the downtown businesses, owners, people having trouble with sewage and having trouble with just like constantly needing to either keep them locked and walk people in or it's not really, we have a lot that we need to pay for downtown to have the businesses and to have our really awesome downtown. And so we would take any help that we can get on the things that we really can't do ourselves. It's not possible.

Sorry to put you on the spot like that. Now, I'd go to some of the cons, too, is the cost. I think this was around $40,000. Yes, it would be with tax increment financing from the economic development TIF, which we have around $200,000 or so in surplus for this next fiscal year. That's restricted to economic development-related activities. But there are other economic development related activities and there are specific infrastructure type projects. The Courthouse Road could be eligible for this type of funding. So that might not even be one year on a debt service. It definitely wouldn't be on a project of that magnitude and this has been a 10-year kind of request from the business owners. I definitely think, you know, cities with this much growth and this much tourism and this full of a downtown, having a downtown bathroom, I think, makes a lot of sense. And Twyla, I would say, did it in, like, incredible amount of work in addition to the TIF districts on not just this project. I think we kind of did an after-action report with our project management team after the last meeting. I was like, hey, there's some really good questions asked that we weren't prepared enough for, and also we didn't do probably enough of, hey, here's the other prep work on here are the three other options that Twilight came out with that were going to be three times more expensive, six times more expensive. And, you know, one of the The great things about this crew that we have is this could be something that they could really felt like it was a cost savings for the city. But also we need to do that whenever we use public works to do a project that could be a cost savings by doing it internally. There's an infinite amount of backlog of ditching and road repairs. And mowing, I mean, they're net negative one employee this year. Two have been spun off to help with the Parks and Rec Department. There's a lot of cross-collaboration on these things, but they're already So while we would have a cost savings by having the team do this, there would also be that cost of things that we wouldn't be doing. And in this case, it would be substantial, $50,000, $60,000 in savings to having a facility. But having our teams do it, it might really be valuable. But we need to be a little bit more upfront about the opportunity cost there.

On that note, I can't recall if Twiley provided it last meeting, but do you have a sense of how many city employees and how long that it would take to build at Soup to Nuts?

Probably a question from... Well, just so we're clear, part of it would not be built just by highway because the sewer guys, our sewer guys would... Yeah, so it would be highway and sewer guys. So sewer would participate in installing the service, which is not very difficult. And then our water... The crew would help do the water hookups and stuff. So it wouldn't solely be on the highway department. The construction would be on the highway department.

And the highway department would be, like, putting up the physical building itself? Yes. Okay.

But how many?

Do you not have a sense of how long?

It would be probably a week, week and a half, putting the water and the sewer in, trying to get that all back filled and put the pavement back, stuff like that. Pull the slab, pull the building up. Interior. It wouldn't be the whole crew. I'd have like three guys on it, four guys on it, and you'd probably be two to three weeks. Okay. You're going to be a week on the slab by the time you get it framed up for it and get it prepped on the outside, let it cure, then you can start building on it.

Okay.

Great.

Thank you. Have you guys checked where the propping lines are?

Yes.

positive where they're at?

We asked Rob. Rob gave us the information.

We saw Larry and what we can do by the GS map. So, indeed.

As far as everything, all the information we gathered that that property is city property.

Yeah, but see, the thing is, as far as I know, is price and then maintenance of it. And usually, you know, if you're going to do this, you might as well do a bid, just like we do a bid for a private contractor. And I know you guys are really, really, really busy. There's a lot of work out there that still has to be done.

Yeah, I mean, just so we're clear, Pat, I don't disagree with you. Yeah. I think you should bid it. I'm just saying that we're an alternative to it.

Yeah, yeah. And honestly, you know, I have a problem with having restrooms down here. You look at a lot of main communities around, yeah, people, Harvard's got one. Oh, yeah, well, it's down by the waterfront. Camden's got one. Oh, yeah, it's down by the waterfront. Rockland's got one. Yeah, it's down by the waterfront. Yeah. Look. And then we have, I know of three storefronts that aren't even being utilized, and they're owned by non-profits. You see what I mean? I just, like I said, I'm not a fan of putting bathrooms down here in the parking lot, tying up valuable parking spots. The other thing is...

There's no parking spot. There's a building there.

It wouldn't take away from any parking spots.

That's where that white shed is right there.

Currently, there is a Port-A-John taking up a parking spot.

And that leads to another issue. I don't like the looks of Port-A-Johns. I think they're disgusting. I work construction. I do everything in my power not to go into the nasty things because lunch times I go into them and somebody's camping out in them. Or they've thrown bottles and other debris down in there. Or they missed the hole completely. I don't know about you women, but I'm sorry. It's just totally disgusting.

I think we've all witnessed an unfun portage.

So, you know, like I said, public toilets. The restrooms are a good place to dump a lot of taxpayers' money. We have how many facilities right now that we take care of?

We have the public restrooms. We have the harbor, which is what I would envision we would have, not a port-a-potty. And the harbor has operated fine for years. We don't have people sleeping in them. We don't have people throwing stuff in them. What about Nolten Park? Nolten Park has been operating for quite a while, and that's been fine.

Is there another one anywhere else?

This building.

I'd say the library as well.

And honestly, the library talked to a bit like they get a ton of traffic in there similar to our and just that is a main focal point. I would note that I think we'll also come back. We have this is unfinished business for the council meeting. I do want to we have Robert up here kind of to get to your point. We do have like essentially what the temporary solution was last year, which I think was supported. So we didn't have too many issues with that last year, which was the port-a-john that's in the parking lot. I've just got this... So we're kind of just holding the status quo for what was done last year. The Hart Ellsworth, thank you very much, is paying that for the first month out here while we table that motion for further discussion. And we'll come back again. But again, I had some great dialogue with Councilor Shea on just, hey, you know that might not be legal you're only allowed to have them for seven days there needs to be a certified plumbing inspector that was one of the things that we were talking about last year and robert was issuing kind of guidance and so um i started looking it up with the code team and came across this august 20 24 notice which is like the most confusing maine cdc drinking water guidance it spends four paragraphs talking about how you're not allowed to have them for more than seven days you need a certified public inspector or And then at the bottom, actually the legislature passed a rule saying you are allowed to have them longer than seven days. You don't need a certified plumbing inspector as long as it's well maintained and it's not like part of a restaurant or very like specific use cases. So that is in compliance. Although I think Robert, you said that CDC is still like, we'd like you to- The DHHS.

In their rules, they make no mention of this. So in their book, it still shows all of the rules as we enforced them last year where the LPI has to give approval for anything longer than seven days, which is what we did last year. But the legislature has made a moot point on the porta potty. As long as they have a contract to maintain the porta potty, they can have it.

So it is in compliance. At the same time, the council thought that that's an eyesore. I think it's kind of an eyesore, but it's kind of a compromise. So at least there's some level of facility, and similar to last year, we could make it more restrictive so that those requirements would be in place. And Twyla surfaced that there's a facility in Blue Hill where it's like public restrooms where there's They kind of build like a privacy shelter of wood and then put two port-a-johns in there, so at least it's not, you know, this flagrant port-a-john. It's more aesthetically pleasing. Yeah.

It's a classy port-a-john. It's a classy port-a-john.

I think it's the modifier more aesthetically pleasing. Aesthetically pleasing might not be, but definitely more than just.

Less offensive. A little porch, a little gate. Like DOT does. Yeah.

so i think we might try to just change on water somewhat general with water cleaning um that we could have that there as well we could think about the i think there's i can see mike it's it's not exactly uh the most aesthetically pleasing obviously a real facility and that we should consider that but that could also be a middle option here probably be much much cheaper just to you know, buy more time, still have, you know, double the capacity of two Porter Johns out there, same location, make it a little bit more aesthetically pleasing, but want to try to, just seeing how Blue Hill's doing it, and I'm not a huge fan of that, but it might be another option to consider as we think whether to move forward with this more permanent option, to think about a temporary Porter-Johns option that's a little more aesthetically pleasing, or to not pursue this altogether and say we don't really want these kind of restroom facilities in our downtown. I think, obviously, that's worthy of discussion as well.

Purely theoretical question. Theoretical. I'm not advocating for this. I'm just curious. Could you fit two there?

The two. Two restrooms. Oh, it would be two restrooms.

It would be two.

Yeah, it was two. Okay, all right.

Yeah, it would be two.

Changing tables?

We could, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, really what you need to look at is, we already talked about moving the pole.

Yeah.

You can move the pole out of the area, because really what you've got to look at is ADA compliance and things like that as well. If there's ADA compliance, it's going to be enough for them to put a change of table on the wall. But one, you know, two individual restrooms for people to use, connected to the city sewer, connected to city water, and then... built in such a way that maintenance doesn't become a huge thing. Very practical. Just what you need. That's the concept that I'm looking at. We're looking at. We're looking at.

So are you anticipating at the next council meeting we would have options to look at, to consider, with this temporary...

white picket fence around port bodies versus yeah i think we'll have gender figures for that that would be pretty easy to scope yeah but i think what you should understand at this point is it's probably not going to happen to summer no matter what you want as far as the building goes so i'm we would talk more about it but you know my thought process is that this is a project that you think you want to move forward with the better time frame would be the shoulder season in the fall before winter gets here. When summer's pretty much slowed down, then we could dedicate the time to build it and bring it into service the following spring.

So if we can, you're looking at having those options for us.

Yeah, I think it's like direct, it's really kind of directional in some ways too, because I think in some ways the, you know, the more permanent option with this group is kind of gone for the summer. I mean, we could move forward with it over the materials and, you know, if we really wanted to move forward, but to bid it out, that's going to be, if we're going to put it in the RFP process, you know, that's, you know, a full month for the full RFP process to move forward. And then depending on where it lines up with, And it is over 15,000, so we need a public hearing, depending on if we get any bidders on doing the work. So we're looking at September. And at the same time, there is still a lot more tourism activity. Gosh, October was crazy here last year. um so if we wanted to consider the other option directionally is like that's just too expensive um we're not really interested in moving forward than this now um even for the late fall and we want to consider more of the temporary we can kind of get you some directional but um you know really consider that like a two-year process as we you know that yeah if i wouldn't want to do that unless it's going to be for a couple years just leave it there We might be able to do that a little sooner than the other one. It would be well under $15,000. So we could do the bidding process a lot faster in that case and see if we want to put that in Public Works' schedule and probably save a pretty substantial amount of funds. But in that scenario, I'd say we should be on hold for at least two years and just see how that plays out there for this late summer and fall, next summer. how it's going with those two restrooms there that are in a privacy area. I wouldn't want to do the other restroom option until we actually just had that kind of there for a while.

The other point I want to add, Pat gave a good inventory of some of the restrooms, but Bar Harbor also has one in the downtown, as does Dan Mascotta. I mean, there is... president for these, not just as we have in Harbor Park, but in downtowns to serve customers who are not all just visitors, but those of us who live here as well.

Yeah, Dan Riscotta, I think, is probably the most analogous to us and a lot of the traffic we see. And yeah, that was a long process. They did a really nice job on that.

that facility kind of a nice brick building that kind of matches their downtown a lot more expensive than what we would be considering but I think for the money we were trying to find something that would be not and I'm not bashing Bangor and what happened there but like just we know that the feedback from that has not been positive so we could go a route like that for cheaper and I think there's maybe 18,000 apiece or something like that. But just kind of anticipating the outcome we want from this, we thought it would be wise, if we're going to do it, to do it well and to have something that we feel good about and it's not unsightly, right, in our parking lot out there. But it comes with a cost.

I appreciate the work that you put into the deputy options.

But again, if this is something council is saying, We don't want to see here. It's not time. And that's, you know, I think we're trying to respond to everything we've heard from the public. And Cara did a wonderful job, I think, with the council meeting of really putting forth a lot of information that Heart of Ellsworth has gathered over the past 10 years, feedback from the downtown businesses. So, you know, not wanting to turn a deaf ear to that, but also understanding the cost and the restrictions around it and how we're trying to be fiscally responsible. And, you know, so how do we... find a middle ground and this felt like it could be a good could middle ground that way and not spend so so much money but again council says not now then it's not now we'll find another solution any other questions from council it's time to build it or get off the pod

With that, we're at the end of the workshop. I've been waiting for that one. And I thank everyone for participation, and thank you. Have a good night.