Economic Development Commission - Regular Meeting

So, we shall call to order our regular meeting of the Economic Development Commission. This is Joe Cameian here, Jeff Hartman, Gene Wolzinski, Mona Cwell, and Cheryl Former. Uh, we have two excused absences. Uh, Wendy Russell and Scott Smith are excused for reasons that they could not make it. U, so, welcome. Do we have any members of the public online? Hearing none, um we shall proceed with with our discussion. So for public comment, I I hear none and unless uh somebody comes on the line, um we shall reserve that for if it wakes up. Uh has everyone reviewed the June 4th meeting minutes?

Yes. Yes. Do I have a motion to approve June 4th meeting minutes? I'll make a motion. I'll second it. Cher second. Any discussion? We shall vote to approve. Say I. I. Unanimously approved. Okay. the uh going through our agenda, the Midsummer Festival is Saturday, July 26th, and we need to make sure we we support the EDC tent uh erection and staffing. Um I can I'm willing to help erect the tent on Friday and I can attend Saturday morning for me uh but I can't do Saturday afternoon.

So what are the shifts? I'll I'll volunteer so we have coverage. So I can relieve you. Yeah, you can relieve me. I'll be I'm willing to go in the morning. I I I don't know how many people are able to do it. This is a unique year for me. Normally, I've been able to have That's right. Where That's true. I was out of town. So, that's We're out of town this weekend. You're out of town this weekend. What are the hours? Yes. So, we've definitely done We start at 9 and we go till 3, right? And we've usually done two and a half or three hour two and a half hour shifts and overlapping each other. Two people.

So, well, we've tried to do two people. Not always, but um but we always had the benefit of you were there all day. I I'll come 11 to 3. Okay. I'll I'll do 9 to 12. So, plug myself in for that. So, that's July 26, Saturday. 11. I can probably Oh, I did an exploding pan. So, you said 9 to 12. 9 to 12 on Saturday. And then to to erect the tent, uh I think like I don't know what works 5:00 p.m. 6:00 p.m. uh on Friday before.

So, you'll have to ask whoever's work that out with whoever you're going to put it up with. Um, I'll ask Scott volunteered to be signed up for whatever. Oh, yeah. He'll probably take a shift as well. Yeah. So, I'll I'll I know he helped us take tear down last year, right? Yeah. And it's quick work taking it down. Um, a few prep items. I will need to get to everyone. The tent, I have my own table, folding table, and tablecloth if you want that. I have some lawn signs um that go along with the tent. Okay.

Um we also will ask businesses to drop off any brochures or business cards or menus here. We usually have a box under that um table in the foyer here. And Joe, I can talk to you over the next couple of days about putting out an email from the EDC. Okay. Yes. address asking businesses and then we could promote that on Facebook or something as well. Okay.

And then um the last two years we've also had a couple of hydrangeanger from hydranger which really do draw attention. Yeah. Looked beautiful. He will have I think he's going to have his own booth. I'm not sure if he's having his own booth or doing something with someone else. So, um So, should we ask if he'll help supplement our booth with hydrangeanger? Sure. Um Yeah. Who can contact him? You have a good relationship with him, right? Yeah. And but I don't have his email address anywhere because I don't have the EDC email. I If I dropped an email for you, will you send it from that?

I'll send it forward. Yeah. And um and I want to make sure he put some little business cards or something in those hydrangeas because I really want him to get credit. And that was really nice last. That is a really great point because we had so many people who wanted to know where they could get them and to be able to hand a card would be super. Okay. So, and he's much more visible this year too with the place on Hell's Road, right? And it's beautiful. It's more beautiful than he described it would be. Yeah. I wasn't I couldn't really envision it from his description, but driving by looks far enough.

Okay. Okay. So, I think we're sort of pretty much there. We'll we'll regroup in advance. Oh, look at look at this. That's what I usually do. I know that faster. So, um I guess we'll ultimately give this to Jen who will uh No, you you should hang on to it so you'll know. All right. Hang on to it. Okay. Um okay. Uh next item is the strategic plan which Jeff has put tremendous effort into. I trust you have your copy. I do with notes as well. Thank you.

So this is the Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is the uh

culmination of everything that we started under Michelle's leadership and we're trying to finish here from our mission statement, the vision statement, our seven initiatives, um you know, some followups, there's some measurements. So, you know, it's kind of big picture. If we could review this tonight, if we could have a comment period where we could, you know, mark it up, email comments back to general, myself, and then maybe, you know, I'm not going to be here in August, so if you had questions, I'm will be I will be away on holiday, but we could vote upon it in September with changes and adjustments. So there's a nice comment period review period that basically it takes Charles Excel document which was the byproduct of swan analysis that we spent a number of months on if you don't mind I'll go through. So it's handwritten draft so it's in draft form. Um so it starts with our our mission our our three statements and I you know I'll won't read them all but we have the mission and then our vision you know there are four points that we worked on under Charles's leadership on the vision helping our business owners thrive the light industrial district housing market you know diverse and strong and talks about economic base that's kind of the overarching document Second page talks about committee members that participated, you know, as as of what it is today in July. And then after that, you know, we build a chart that shows for each initiative, who's the lead on it, who's the supporting. So Simone, last month on the initiative floor, I believe that you signed up to say, "Okay, I'll take the

lead. I'll be the lead commissioner for the uh uh planning zoning land use leaison. So we would go through and and um you know assign you know pick what we want to do and who wants to back up and you know maybe Wendy will since she's not here we'll get her in the marketing no and and but just go through this process and then you'll see when we go through each initiatives there's milestones and and starting points and things like that. So um maybe at the end we can come back and say who who has some interest in each of the initiatives and who wants to support the lead commissioner. So the first one is you know promotion of marketing the goal is to support the times economic strength promote online is a great place to live visit and work under you had that second column on the Excel task and actions that we were going to do and this basically took the Excel schedule and kind of laid it out in this format. So, um I don't know if we want to read everyone. How do you want to review these? I'm open to, you know, we have a lot on the agenda. So, it just it it lays out everything on the Excel. It's just in a different format, right?

I would just say I myself would probably push out some of these dates that I originally came up with because um Yeah. We're just Yeah.

Yeah. So, it's all the marketing, you know, pursue marketing ideas to attract visitors, but it's important, you know, we talk about event outreach, you know, mid make music day, midsummer festival. It's just kind of memorializing stuff that we were already doing. And um, you know, it talks about a new business welcome page, you know, maybe some enhancements to the EDC town website, welcome new business. You know, we want to support tourism. We want to have a bill local campaign. You know, create a promotional calendar around key holidays for Bloal and then maybe develop a business directory and you know, marketing document for our online businesses. Um some website analytics. Um I don't know who do that. We have to figure that out. And and um maybe a visitor survey program. So the under task one there's two different things that we had um on the on the last document that's on a different format. Second initiative was the wayfinding strategy improve the visitor experience. You know the next page of tasks and actions. You know what was the municipal best practices research you know who are the stakeholders and create a subcommittee to kind of build consensus around this because I imagine you know there'll be a lot of people that want to weigh in on the wayfinding strategy in town. Um, you know, I think first we have to kind of scope the signs that we want to cover in the area. So, it's just not, you know, so scope it. How much is this going to cost for design and production costs? You know, what's the timing of all this? So, I think the way finding goes into a number of months. Are there grants

available to fund for signage programs? Um if if we can't find grants, we have to put them in the budget. And how we if we find the funding, then we have to design everything plan. Some of the other issues are community input sessions. I'm sure people want to weigh in on the design of the signs

and things like that. So that's you can read the rest of it. The third initiative was under business location support property owners and attracting businesses that will thrive in location create online materials and resources to help businesses choose the right location in online. So the first thing I think we talked about you know what what is an up-to-date commercial space inventory where where where spaces available online you know what clarify the process and documentation you know the we had a number of people no we had the one the hydrangeasia business that came in and he found you know process maybe wasn't as transparent as he hoped so how do improve that permitting process. Should we build a doing business guide and online? We talked about, you know, from our commercial real estate analysis, where are the vacancies? What businesses do we want to target? You know, they're, you know, on an outreach, they'll align with what we have here in town, and should we make this business guide online and interactive? Could we have a new business mentorship program? That's under initiative three. Initiative four was the ensure economic development perspectives considering the land use decision making assigning EDC commissioner as our zoning lays on to track commercial activity going forward before the land use commissioners and organize EDC's participation of upcoming regulation review process. So establish that layers on role with the commissioner. One of the things I was you we talked about is tracking commercial development activities. You know what's coming in

town so we have an understanding from our EDP perspectives. Should we participate in the regulation review process that's coming up or it's ongoing you know working on building intercommission relationships and then some actions you know appoint a zoning leaison which Mona I think that would you sign up for that you know schedule regular land use coordination meetings with the planning and zoning and and you know you can read the last one um development process review build environment encourages and supports businesses and property owners of all life. Here goes the two tasks. Um we had some actions. We had four actions. Conduct comprehensive regulatory review regulatory analysis. Create business development process guide. establish a business concier program and implement process improvement regulations potentially with the land use department

for Oakland. Thanks.

Yes. Next one was the um Halls Road after the thing. So create an actual plan to encourage responsive economic investment halls Rome area following any updated district regulations by zoning. create future oriented online materials that current or future property owners can assist or can utilize in investment decisions. You know, I think you had on there developed the Halls Road investment strategy, create a Halls Road business directory, marketing materials, facilitate property owner roundts. You want to do that and is there grant funding like we did for sidewalks? So that's P road and the last one is furon gatewayation to task again similar to zoning. Should we put an EDC lay on on uh Gate Shoreline Gateway?

We already have Joe's Joe's already that. Yes. So, we'll just fill that. Yes, they're done. We'll edit that out. We're done on that, but there's other things still there.

Yeah. So the blight remediation strategy for redevelopment plan you know pursuit funding market to gateway investment opportunities and then I tried to after that what's the timeline what on a quarterly basis what should we be working on if we adopt this plan how do we kind of manage the task initiative so I think we we pulled pull it together by quarter based on the timeline which could change based on the edits and then you can see it just kind of beats it down and then the last two pages have plan review and update schedule. So like take a look at this annual each January you know what are quarterly reviews what are our milestones achievement adjust the timeline needed

how do we ask how to staff how do we measure success so probably taking more than my time but

yeah that's okay no this is great it's it's jelling into so what I'm going to um suggest is that maybe we allow some time for all of us to read, drill into it, make comments, and maybe, excuse me, and maybe we um our next we've sorry, we've agreed that we'll we'll consider this, you know, completed on September 3rd at our meeting in September where we can vote on confirming it. So maybe mid August we we give as a uh a deadline for getting cont.

So I don't know if uh August 15th makes sense which is a Friday or pick a day anybody how about August 15th going once. Sounds good. Sounds good. So we'll we all comments will be submitted to the co-chairs by August 15th. Uh we will get this into final form. and bring it to the September 3rd meeting to and we'll we'll send an advanced copy before that. Send it advanced. So maybe if we let's say we get it by August 15th, we can have an advanced copy by I'll just pick Wednesday, September I'm sorry, August 27th. How's that? So

it's really great, Jeff. Yeah, this really is no very professional. Not your first rodeo, but you know what? Moto is the one that said we should do it ourselves. It's uh you know kind of the hometown versus the consultant. So hopefully you know everyone feels good about it. It's taking a lot of time.

Yeah. The the key is going to be that we all need to buy in and each of us has to you know abide by what we buy into. And I mean that's kind of like managerally for me in running my engineering faces unless the people that are going to do the work buy in. So can you know what I want to ask for a few can we is there any from the folks here are there any of these initiatives that people would like to work on? So Joe Joe you're on the shoreline gateway I'm already the rep for that right. How do you want us to walk through it? The the detail pages like starting on page three or something. Yeah, the chart. Do you have any feel for the people what they want on the initiatives?

Yeah. Um I know we want Wendy on initiative one. I'd like to work on initiative one as well. And I already have some of those website analytics. That's not a hard lift. I I I'll sign up for the way finding.

Okay. So, we have um Cheryl is the lead commissioner for promotion and marketing for initiative one. Okay. Jeff for initiative two. Um I just observed something as we're going through this. Um caught my interest. I wrote it down. Where the heck did I write it down? Uh okay. So, um, initiative three, the the new business mentorship program part of that, uh, I'll talk about going forward about the Eastern Connecticut Workforce Investment Board,

uh, which is who I'm trying to hook up the high school with. So, I'm I'm willing to be the second on initiative three. Okay. All right. I'm also going to mention um, it states in here SCORE, which is a great organization. We also have I always I'm trying to think of their Oh god. name. Yes. They meet here on Fridays. Um they're uh retired professionals. They do have a group in old line. Yeah. And um they assist businesses and organizations as well. I'm drawing a blank on their name. Mm or something. Yeah. Jean, anything strike your fancy that you want to sign to?

No, not really. None of these are in my areas of expertise at all. Well, the development process, isn't that kind of like like how does it go? What is Emily? You ever hear that term? Developers. I have no idea. New York developers talk about Emily. I have no idea what you're talking today. Ever heard that? Nope. Emily, early money is like yeast. It's like you want to make something happen, bring money. So, Binance. So, the developer, that's what I do. All right, I'm finished. Thank you.

All right, so we have we basically for right now we have uh for initiative one, Cheryl is lead commissioner. No second unless somebody wants a pipe. Well, Wendy's probably doing that. We'll say we'll put in Wendy with a question mark as a potential. the wayfinding Jeff will be the lead commissioner and we have anybody that wants to be a supporting commissioner that's going to be a multi-commission committee of some sort. So I I don't know that we need more than one EDC member on that. It's probably going to be EDC with Bear in mind we have to recruit two new members.

Right. Exactly. That's the other thing which is another reason this is a great document because you can only do so much say this is what we do you know when people want to understand what the EDC is about we can now say to them these are the action you know the initiatives that we're taking on and it's it will excite some people um all right so initiative three I've I'm coming on as supporting commissioner I don't know if anybody has a

I I have in I um things I want to get done myself that business guide I would like to get the first draft of that done under initiative three. So there are things under initiative three that I'm happy to so you basically you'll come in as supporting. All right. So we'll put Cheryl in as supporting initiative four land use leazison. That's Mona. That's Mona as lead. Okay. Does anybody going to support Mona? No. So, we're going to leave that one open. Uh, initiative five, development process improvement. Why don't we leave We should leave a couple for Wendy and Scott.

Yeah. Not only that, but the development, it all talks about working with land use. So, it's sort of like similar in a way. That's that's after the zoning red does all of their zoning check, right? And and it's also working with um the plan of conservation development. You know, I worked on that. You know, I will I'll take which that's initiative five, right? So supporting Jeff or I'll I'll support as well.

All right. So So Jeff and Cheryl as support then initiative six walls road commercial district. I would leave that open for a new me. You know we have two members coming in. I think we Yeah. Okay. And then Shoreline Gateway. I'm leading that. If anybody has a burning desire to contribute to process step. we had any applications?

Uh, I don't think there's any applications in right now. People were waiting to see where things fell in the spring with Hall's Road and um I think using this guide can help your proof. Okay. Um, also early in this whole process, Scott and I discussed metrics and some metrics that he could, you know, pull together for us and present to us. Um, so as Jeff we get to metrics, I think Scott could play a role in that. He's been looking into that over the last year. What's out there for us?

Okay. So I think we taken this as far as we can for for this this this point in time.

Yeah. I mean Jeff I compliment your well Cheryl and Jeff because Cheryl was the the root initiator of this and did a her usual her usual herculean amount of work to make it go. Um okay. Uh grant funding status new and pending. Um, I I am trying to reawaken the Connecticut Riverway Trail, which was something that I did many years ago and it died for inability to find any kind of funding. And this is the greenway blueway from the old Baldwin Bridge abutment running all the way down to um the Smith Neck boat launch, the Great Island State Boat Launch. And actually because of the Amtrak project right now, there's a big opportunity there maybe to get some funding from Amtrak. It's along the lines. Have you gone to the Niantic boardwalk?

Amtrak paid for most of that. There's billions at play on this bridge project. So, we'll see what happens with that. I'm But I I actually have an engineer colleague who is also retired in town that I'm leaning on heavily to become a champion and work with this project. So, and that would be heavily involved with trying to figure out how do we get funding to make it happen. Are you working yet with Harbor Management? No, it's also on there. Yeah, you got to start with them. Yeah. Um, so the the um you know, that's one channel. Has anybody got any new or or any ideas on how to access funding that would benefit our initiatives?

Yeah. All right, I'll start. open. Yep. Yeah. So, I think it's just something we need to always think about because we're a volunteer commission. We have limited resources and if we can get access to funding that that that supports the initiatives we're trying to do, at least we can start making some headway. Um, okay. Real estate, we we don't have a real estate representative on the commission. Did I forward to everyone an email from Terry Lewis that had the stats? It had some status. Yeah. Yeah. I I think until we um have someone on the commission who wants to take care of that, we can we can rely on that sort of thing.

So, that one kind of gets that's as far as we can go in terms of being informed. Um businesses, any knowledge of any new businesses coming to town, anybody interested in the town? I I did get from having gone to the Yale Innovation Summit and I appealed to pharmaceutical research type companies, you know, like, hey, set up shop here. We're a wonderful place to live. And and you know, the right environment and the right population of talent to support that type of work. And I only only followup I had was from a law firm probably trying to offer their services. Oh well, I tried. At the last zoning meeting, there was an applicant who is a doctor trying to open up an office

over um next to all pro in the commercial building. Pediatrician I think was pediatrician, right? And I guess nobody has used that space yet for the last three years since they It's been longer than that. No. God, no. Well, I guess their elevator was put in in three years. Yeah, because we when we looked at it in 2018 that no elevator was a big no. Thank you, Cheryl. Yep. Um, so three years ago they put it elevator, but they still didn't have anybody on that second floor and it cruised through zoning. So, Oh, good.

Good. So, that's a positive. Um, anything else on business? Well, I would add, um, thank you for celebrating the carousel carousel's 100th anniversary. Thank you for going to that. Was wonderful.

Um, so congratulations to them. And then also two retire businesses closing due to retirement. Patricia Sprat for the home on line street. I don't know that we've talked about that yet, but she's having her final kind of warehouse sale during the White Elephant sale this coming weekend. And also Old Line Landscape on Route 156. Uh they are retiring and that uh property will uh not be seeking out a commercial use um after it's closed. going to be residential.

Uh, not commercial. That's what I know. There is I saw on Route 156 that dilapitated building that was for sale. Somebody's doing something there, but I don't know what. That's the old Italian American club. And that will be a residence. It was purchased by by an owner that will make it into a residence. And I'm just happy it's getting fixed up. Okay. All right. Marketing and outreach efforts. Um,

okay. Um, in June and July, our Explore Old Lime website gets a lot of traffic because of Make Music Old Lime and Midsummer Festival. So, that's nice because people do bounce around in the website. I can tell. You need a shade cold as well. Um, so that's one thing. Um, I want to bring up social media because that's in the plan. And I just want to say that as we're going ahead with that, that can be under the Town of Old website. I mean, Facebook page. I know that you were concerned about that. That doesn't have to be an independent effort. Um, and then the brochure. It's just that I'm I just don't like us to take on more than we can continue with. And right, it's one of those things where it's

Yeah, it's a good because there's always a maintenance challenge involved and that's you know, you can't initiate without being able to maintain or sustain maybe the word. Okay. Um it's time uh explore old line. Thank you. Um has been updated. The way you know, let me pounce that down. The way you know you have the most recent copy is that if you open up Y this page and look at the bottom 051025. That's May 10th, 2025. So that's how you know you have the current edition because the design hasn't changed much right here. Yeah, the bottom

um on the other right there. Um, I want to thank Jean for seeking out the CCM printing information for us. It We had a really good price on these and I don't have it off the top of my head. No, it was it was a great price. It was an amazing price. So, we got plenty. I think we'll have some for the Big E Connecticut building which is a big deal to every year we're asked to have these for that and we don't have the stock for it. We found out about that printing option when we did that commission meeting, right? The spring commission. bring into action or something like that. They handed out little cards and flyers for it and we're like, "Oh, we should look into it."

Yeah. I mean, if you're a perfectionist, there's a little bit of off with the folding and stuff, but I think we got more than what we paid for. So, I'm really happy with this. Um, and I put some back out on the table out there and at the front desk and you'll have it for Midsummer Festival. Um, so that's moving forward and I think that's it for marketing and outreach. We'd already talked about Midsummer Festival, so that's good.

Okay. Um, just looking Shoreline Gateway Committee, uh, an RFP was out for the second time and it appears that nobody has bid again for a municipal planning consultant. I So in the RFP, what were we looking for? looking at um if you will planning you know architectural firms that do planning and I think it has to be redirected clearly because we're not getting anybody's attention. Okay. I'm all right. Maybe it's from that one. I'm Oh, thank you. And what's your budget? $10,000 to That's why you're not getting any attention.

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. People are busy these days. Oh, people are busy and that's what's happened. Now, the question is, you know, I I I will be attending the next meeting of the shoreline shoreline gateway committee and I'm going to suggest that we probably have to expand the scope to make it more worthwhile. I don't know what else to do with it. Maybe you could go to a master's real estate program in university and and maybe they have a capstone class and yeah that's happened in the past that was used years ago at Sound View. It was the Yale Architectural School

and it didn't really work according to plan so but I I agree it's a good suggestion Jeff so it's something that I'll take into consideration. Um, so anyway, that's that's kind of where things are at. The the blight ordinance is moving along. Um, I'm hoping maybe a little optimistically, maybe not this meeting, this month, but maybe next month's meeting, it probably could be voted on by the committee and sent to the select persons to be considered to be part of the new zoning ordinances to have a blight ordinance in there. Yeah. Just for Jen. So it's the proposed blame order proposed right

uh which you know which would be submitted to the select persons for consideration. Okay. uh, Chamber of Commerce. Well, Cheryl, as always, is a spark plug. And Cheryl and I met with Andrew Surprise, who's the new executive director, and uh, he issued a follow-up um, you know, you know, shall we say, an energetic young fellow who was who was really on the job. So, he followed up with a kind of a memorialization of of what we discussed. and Cheryl had some tasks and I had some tasks. So, um, and by the way, he reported that he's going to be looking to Jeff to get on to his greater Old Sabbrook Chamber of Commerce. So, be warned.

I'm already a member. Board. I'm already a member of Mon and I met him at the Stumble In, right, for the ribbon cutting over there. Yeah, he seemed like a nice He's from Windsor, Connecticut. Yeah, he was from up up north. Yeah. And I I like the guy. I think he's he's energetic. I think he's gonna do his best to do a good job with it. And have you had an interaction with a Jean? I haven't. I haven't. No. In fact, um, as as Joe knows, the Friday morning event was cancelled. Yeah, I found that the hard way. Oh, why was it cancelled?

I don't know. Okay. I just got an email Thursday night and I and just FYI, you do need to register for chamber events because if you're not registered, you don't find out that it was cancelled, which an email went out to any all registrants, but they didn't really say why. Wasn't there something last Friday? It was supposed to be last Friday. Yeah, it was canceled in the evening though. No, no, morning breakfast meeting. Oh, I thought there was something because I I went to the old line in and where is it? I mean, and maybe the inn canceled. Who knows? It's un locked up. Yeah. So, it was clear that it wasn't happening. And I didn't see Joe's email till halfway through the day. So,

it's all right. Um, one of the items that I I you know, uh, Andrew was looking for things we can collaborate on that would be, you know, of value. And uh I threw out that well, you know, we have the common ground of the Connecticut River and that maybe some kind of a boat event might be a good thing. And I I was thinking in terms of the Harvard Yale regata on the themes, which is a big deal. It's been going on for a century and a half or more. And uh so I reached I reached out to the um uh rowing association in town. My neighbor is a past president. And I said, you know, could we do something like that? You know, is could we get a old lime, old Sabbrook, you know, riotta going? And the big concern is with anything on the river because we're so close to the sound that weather becomes a big concern. And um so I thought about it and I'm like, well, maybe we can do something with craft that are that are seaorthy enough to tolerate a little bit of, you know, you're in a protected area. You're not out in the ocean. So anyway, so I'm working on that and uh I I've gone back and forth with a number of members of the rowing association and uh right now I'm I'm I'm leaning towards something that's done in Venice, Italy, and I want to knock off the name. Uh in in Venice, Italy, they have this uh free-for-all called the V Bo Vogalonga where all kinds of personal watercraft go out onto the, you know, onto the greater canals and stuff. Mhm.

And I'm thinking, okay, you know, and again, as Cheryl mentioned, the harbor master needs to be a party to this discussion for both sides, but um if everybody thinks it's a good idea, I'm going to come back to Andrew with some thoughts on sort of this completely open, maybe not so not so competitive, but rather just a fun day. And I'm thinking in terms of having viewing stations for this flotillaa uh the de on our side and the uh the scenic overview and for Sabbrook the Sabbrook point in to the north that park is a big area there. So I was thinking we can develop a course and have people and you know kayaks, paddle boards, canoes, dragon boats, uh Irish caras. Um, I found I found a group of people in China doing a dugout canoe between I don't know what islands. It's probably the communist body probably wants to invade Taiwan. But but anyway, so uh if everybody thinks it's a good idea, I'm going to come back to Andrew and suggest that maybe something like this might work and see if there's interest in the Sabbrook side. If there is, then we can figure out how to get this.

You certainly ask Antra to sponsor it, right? With their Yeah. Right. Oh, Jeff. Good one. Good one. Yeah, it might be a nice icebreaker to get something going. I think that's the kind of thing that really benefits from a timeline to see how long it would take to put together. And that's the key. I for myself, I feel like this is a really full We're we're busy. Yeah. So,

well, no, I think they're we need a force multiplier. like if I could get the rowing association to buy in and because I I I told them ultimately I'd love to see a shell competition like is done on the things. Why not? And and we punch above our weight. So here's this little town here. We could invite people to come and I think we would look pretty good. So I think it'd be cool. you know, that could be a competitive thing, but for now, so anyway, if I can get uh resources to do the heavy lifting then good, right? So, it's a force multiplier. So, I'm going to try and do that, but I'm going to bounce it off of Andrew and see if there's an equivalent amount of interest because these guy I got them all fired up. They're like dragon boats, whatever. Uh there's actually a type of racing sh they're not shells, they're skulls, I guess, with two or uh I forget. They call them coastal shells. And they they do it as like a a race down the beach. You know, you literally start at a starting point. The the rowers pick up their craft, run for the beach, launch, go out, and they race a course and and come back, and they're they're clocked from when they depart to when they return or whatever. So anyway, so I I just thought it might be some fun and it's something that could certainly be a and also we would do it sort of in the fall because in the fall the river is still relatively warm and um you know we we've the traffic also on the river would be reduced greatly. So it also could extend the tourism season which is one of our big issues. You look at you know Sound View for example, you know as soon as Labor Day comes it all dries up. So, this might be So, anyway, I'm gonna see what I can do to get Andrew if he's interested in that.

Um, Eastern Regional Tourism District. Anybody have any That's Wendy. So, we'll have to wait for Wendy to come back. Um, regional economic development committee, the Rivercog. So, so the regional economic development committee did not meet in June. However, we had a joint meeting with the regional housing committee and it was quite interesting. The presentations were from groups in Clinton and Middletown and very focused on redeveloping schools into housing. So, the Clinton project,

they have a an elementary school that's been closed for a number of years. the town owns it, which if you know, most towns own their schools, right? As opposed to here where we have the regional school district. So, they own the property. It would it from what they described, it would be similar to if old lime owned center school and center school closed. So, they are working with a nonprofit and a development group that works with the nonprofit. That nonprofit is hope. Oh, yeah. and I can't remember the name of the for-profit, but they're working together and the town will retain ownership. I think

it's a long-term lease. Yeah, maybe they don't they're maintaining. So, essentially the historic building is right in there. They don't have a town center, a town green really. And that build that school has functioned as that they're retaining the front part of the building and make it's going to be a senior center and the gym will be accessible to the senior center. So it will be retained as a gym of an activity room. So is it senior housing? It will be it's not only senior, it's lowinccome slant senior, but it's not required to be. So it's a little flexible.

And did the same thing with one of their schools. So, but it's pretty interesting because they're also maintaining the library as which has I guess more windows and oh, in the school the school library school. So, so it and because they aren't they're using the classrooms essentially as the apartments. They aren't having to really go in and maybe find out that there's like things like asbestous which you would find in an old building and even some not so old. I mean, when we redid windows at Mile Creek, that was there was lead clogging.

There was all kinds of stuff that people didn't expect, right? And makes the project take longer and be more expensive. But so anyway, that project and then in Middletown is actually a former Catholic school. And so the town is obtaining they have to split a property because the school is adjacent to a church which is still active but the school is not being used and it also has a nice historic um facade. So they want to maintain that but it's not going to be a necessarily affordable. They're trying to work with the developer to have a couple some affordable housing, but Middletown unlike most of the towns in our river in the Rivercog doesn't have they've met their affordable housing, so they don't have that issue of needing more affordable housing. So anyway, it was just sort of interesting and they're having to um work with their zoning, their planning and zoning and which is in both of these towns it's one commission planning and zoning commission. So it's a little easier on some fronts, but their their issue is working out some details on parking because the parking lot is the church's parking lot and will there be enough parking for the housing? So, you know, working through some of those zoning requirements and getting some variances is was it was a really interesting presentation. Obviously, we don't have any school buildings in old limes, so that isn't a factor, but you could envision other properties perhaps being and and in the both cases, the town acquires the property and then either leases or, you

know, long-term lease, various concepts. So, it was pretty interesting. Um, our July meeting is next Tuesday and I just got the agenda. So, it is. So, we are going to have an overview of Connecticut State Community College programs and opportunities to partner with businesses seeking employees with specific skills.

Um, pretty interesting. That's been a topic a couple of times on the group. I know a couple months ago we had a person from the marine industries marinas and such where they were having a real challenge with finding qualified people to work on boat engines and they actually partnered with um the Middle Sex um I don't know what they're called now. They're not called it's all one college now Joe. are not individual community colleges. Connecticut State University system or whatever.

Yeah. At Middle Sex. So, they had a special program there where they've worked and and provided some some on the job training and such to help maintain their um workforce essentially. So, anyway, that's our next talk topic next week. That's interesting. That's good. Thank you. Um our next thing is retention of in town tal talent. the school to career and this is right on the heels of what you just discovered there chief right well the other thing is when I go to these Rivercog meetings for those of you don't so we're sort of in a weird position because a lot of things are

we're not with the rivercog on the workforce we there's the eastern region and then there's a central region so we've had presentations by the central and people are like oh this this and I'm like that doesn't apply to lime and old lime and they're like no you're with the group in Norwich are yeah on that workforce. Yeah. So there's a couple of entities like that.

So what I did is and this goes back to having met with the high school's uh engineering and technology lab and the instructors that you know they're really challenged to get funded to buy equipment and materials and and so on. So this is an offshoot of that Yale innovation summit. So, the president of the Eastern Connecticut Workforce Ind investment board, clearly they go by the acronym, you know, EWIB, whatever. Um, you know, I met with him. I followed up with an email to him and we've corresponded. And of course, you know, I was looking to see if they could assist our program with funding of equipment and such. And um, you I'll read to you what he came back to me with. He said, "Thanks for saying hello at the Ale Innovation Summit." Uh EWIB's youth manufacturing pipeline initiative supports high schools to integrate the adult MPI I guess manufacturing pipeline initiative 150 hour introduction to manufacturing curriculum into the academic program of juniors and seniors. The YMPI is typically unable to directly support lab space and equipment. Of course, everything has to nothing is easy. But anyway, he's interested to do a presentation to the high school specifically to talk with the principal. So, um I'm going to facilitate that communication um with the principles uh away until next week. So, next week I'm going to see if I can get them together and find out what maybe what benefit can come of that. So, that kind of is everything I've have on the agenda other than new and other business. Anybody have any new or other business?

Well, I'm I'm going to mention something. I don't know if you guys have seen this, but there is um it's circulating on social media about 12 sites being sprayed, the water being sprayed for the hydrillaa. Yes. The lakes and stuff, right? The lakes. And there's a lot of concern over this. Have you guys heard about this?

I saw the title just this afternoon. I haven't read the article yet. I assume it's talking about Connecticut River or somewhere else. 12 sites on the Connecticut River that have been picked up to be sprayed with Daquad. And some people feel like it's innocuous, others feel like it's like Agent Orange. So, you know, there's no um and I think the people who think it's highly toxic and are concerned are winning the battle because I've never seen something pick up such social media so quickly.

Like super effective. Like some somebody posted something and within less than two days had over a million.2 two views and and he was somebody who's very concerned. So, there's a couple of different ways that people are reaching out. The the original post was here are all the people involved. You can send emails, make phone calls because it's supposed to happen sometime after the 4th of July. and um two other entities or people or group I think they're individual people have made um those like voter voice type things where you can sign on to a petition and it so so it's got a lot of it it's it's receiving a lot of attention and it does directly affect us because one of the areas to be sprayed is Hamburg Cove

and it's um that's the closest to us and they're talking about spraying like 238 acres. So the people who are for spraying it believe that if we don't get rid of this invasive plant, it's going to choke out the water and the wildlife. The ones who are against it are saying what else is going to die in the process. So I did send, you know, I definitely sent it out to some people. It's been there's a rally tonight in Hartford against it. Um that I I just saw that and um you know I've signed the petition myself and I'm going to send some emails. I I think that you know there's got to be something more um advantageous for our environment than spraying something that is a known carcinogen into all these waterways. So I'll forward you all the information if you're interested in reading about it. Like I said, it's there's two sides, you know, there's two sides to it. So,

um I think for for people who are on the water, it definitely says it's going to be toxic for 10 days and they're planning on spraying this starting like after the 4th of July. So, are they going to tell people like get your boats, get your bodies, get your pets out of the water? Right. It's It seems Well, and to Cheryl's point about groundwater, I mean, it's one thing, okay, it's in the water, but how where will it end up, right?

And then somebody who thought I was being a little over the top, a friend thought, you know, Mona, you're being, you know, crazy about this. It it it breaks down in the soil. It's not going to be toxic. and I just went right over to a report provided by the government that said it it stays in the ground. It doesn't break down. So, I don't know. I think it's concerning. I think it would be interesting to know if the Ovine Conservation Commission is taking a stand on this. I think they probably are in alignment with what you're saying. Um, and I'd be happy

people know because the report came out June 10 and I'm guessing they would know that and I'm happy to write to um someone I know in lime who would be following this um and I'm happy to share with you all what I hear from them because they should be acting on it as well. I can share with you what I shared with some of my people. Um, and it's got links in it. I can find it and I'll email it to you all.

So, while you're doing that, I'll email conservation commission and then um the town contact I have for line and if I hear back from them, I will forward that to you all. Yeah. I mean, know it's a it's a it's a concern. There's no question. on under the other business heading. I I haven't been staying close to it, but has anybody heard what's going on in our industrial park where there's a there's a property owner who's was intending to build hundreds of apartments there.

What about it? Is is anything happening with it? Does anybody know? I I'm just curious because it's like it's it's been very quiet. My um well I have I may have outdated information so I want to say that I think they uh still needed to go back to before planning and zoning because they moved from the septic from the sewer idea to the septic. Correct. And they bought additional land. So the town hasn't last I knew the town hadn't heard back from them.

Okay. Yeah. because that that's something that is significant in terms of you know town economy if a couple of hundred units get built over there. This is in the industrial park by four mile river behind where the Kobe Luck um there's a there's a an office building that I believe is Kobe Luck's office. It's like a blue tinted building. Mhm. I believe it's to the south of of that as attractive land. Mhm.

That is potentially going to, you know, get developed. That's that's the only thing I've got for other business. I was just curious if anything was happening with that. Anybody have anything else under new or other business? So, take a motion to adjurnn. So, moved. I'll second or second. All right. Thank you. Very I'm sorry. We have to any discussion about adjournment. No discussion hearing none. Everybody vote to adjourn. I I unanimous vote. We are adjourned. We held the meeting down to an hour.

That's my goal is to try to keep these to an hour.