Comprehensive Plan Committee - Regular Meeting

Is anyone joining us by Zoom? I don't think so. Not that I know of. We haven't heard anything. I think sometimes Shashana has a conflict, but she usually lets us know. So, she might be on her way. Oh, did she do the minutes last time? Yes. And I sent them out. Yes, they were nice. Today, shouting from my office. I know I sent the minutes feel like I went to the dark side of the moon my email. It was a while ago you sent it. It was shortly sent them with the um their agenda and all that but I could be wrong. I think No, the most recent one didn't I don't think it

right after sent them to us. We for them to everybody else. Oh, okay. It was quite a while ago. Y my pile I Oh, well, Heather's not going to be here today. Uh she sent me a message about a half hour ago. So um you guys want to get started? Yes. And I don't know if there was a vice chair, but want to just go for it. Well, let's call the meeting to order. Uh and the first thing on the agenda was to approve minutes from the last meeting. Do we want to do that or do we want to table it until the next time? Table it.

Second. Second. All in favor of tableing the minutes. I wasn't here. So, we'll table the minutes. Till next time. Um, who's taking minutes tonight? Since Shauna is not here yet, we do need someone to do that. Remember, they don't have to be exhaustive. Um, it can be bullet points of different sort of segments of our meeting or if we Your

honor. Okay, that's Thank you. Um, no public comments tonight, I don't think. So, we'll skip right into it. Uh, the agenda. So, tonight, um, three things we're going to try to get to tonight were the back to the vision statement. So, maybe we'll spend the next 20 minutes or so just reviewing, uh, the edits to the vision statement. Um, after that, we had left off with, um, I think there were three or four village areas that we hadn't talked about last time, which we wanted to talk about this time. uh and then um hopefully spending the majority of the time the bulk of the time on the uh economic policy section. Sound good?

Great. All right, let's dive into it. So, I believe uh Suzanne had sent around an updated vision statement um based on the good discussion we had at the last meeting uh incorporating um suggestions and changes. So, here we are with an updated draft prefacing the discussion around the vision statement. Um, that this doesn't need mean that tonight is the last time that we're ever going to talk about the vision statement. Um, perhaps we don't need to spend the entire time trying to wordsmith it until it's 100% perfect. Um, but we want to make sure that we're really capturing the sentiment um the the key points of of what we're thinking about. And again, Gail, you weren't here last time, but just to throw this out there, the vision statement is aspirational. Um, and I think the ver this version um is more like here's where here's what we are as a community and then also has some elements of and as we look to the future, this is what we want to be.

And you passed out copies or No, I have copies of the decision right here.

I'm going to bring it up to you and copy. I think the goal for the discussion this evening is again like not to word smith as much as um continue to look at it say what's missing. I will take notes um like I did last time in the comments. So when we revise this we just went through every single comment that everybody made and then sort of incorporated those changes in. So, I can um share my screen also, I think. And uh that way it'll be up on the screen. I wish there's a way to just bring it up on the screen, not through the Zoom. I don't think anyone is. Um but it's like a little small. Is there a way to make that window bigger? Do you think?

Good size. that I have it pretty zoomed in on my screen. So, let's see if we can just expand it a little bit. That's as good as it is. That's good.

All right. The one thing I took note of and sort of circled down here was in the third paragraph, the town of Mount Desert supports innovation and economic opportunity. That's a visionary statement. How do we do that? That's what we have to figure out when we write our goals and policies. It is visionary statement because it's the vision. It's not doing it now necessarily.

Yeah. So, this is not a what's happening now description. This is a description of like the aspirational like this is what we want to be or strive towards in the future. um and kind I don't know this like sort of you know not a super sophisticated diagram but the idea is that all these things point back to the vision statement. So when we get into talking about our economic goals and policies tonight, we start to unpack that and say, "Okay, what does that mean in terms of like actual concrete work plan items for the town?"

That answer to help. Yes.

Yeah. I haven't drafted anything, but I wonder if in these times that we're in, we shouldn't have something in here that roots our commitment to process and community in fundamental tenants and democratic small D principles, adhering to the rule of law, and you know, in a in a in a strong local political process that consistent with our with our with our with our tra with our values. I I I'd have to word it, thought about it, but I just this idea that we can at this point in time build something that doesn't acknowledge the greater context within which all of this may or may not be even possible. I I think would be a mistake. But

we um added this part um the end. Second to last sentence, yearround and seasonal residents engage in the life and future of the town are committed to confronting shared challenges and respect to diversity of opinions. I wonder if we could um expand that part to get more at what you're saying. Right. Right. Um I'm speaking specifically about how our government operates, not just not just how we have Well, no. our our local government, our town. Okay. I mean, got it. Got it. And I could think about that and figure out I I do agree that that's sort of somewhere in there that would be, but it's not maybe as explicit as what you're imagining,

right? Because I think we need to have we need to always have a local government that respects what we might have previously thought was a matter of course, and it was respected everywhere. Um, and I'll just say that's one of the reasons I'm engaged in these processes because this is a place in which you can still do that in those ways that respect the rule of law and that it's about laws and not individuals with power and so on so forth. I I think that's and I think that happens at every level of not just and should should be a given but it's not

great. Um without beating the horse I mean I don't I think we can work on adding that. I just get the flavor from the other committee members. Does that seem like something worth adding? Great. Yeah. I think we have civic engagement mentioned and then we have contribute to a small town community. It sounds like engaging in the process is something we're trying to put into the vision and that means being involved right in the process. So knowing the process or respecting it is

right right and and that we're raising Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um I I I'll I could spend a few minutes on it too and send you my thoughts. Sure. that you can do with it what you want. Okay. Thank you. Great. All my things are little words smmithy things, you know. Those those are important and and send them to you. Yeah. Send them for sure. Send them um in anything we do. You know, we obviously expect they're closely reading everything, but um it helps us as we thought can glaze over. Yeah. One thing I'm looking at right now, maybe somebody has an idea for it. We have this sentences different village village centers that anchor the town.

And that sounded really strange to me because I think of an anchor as one point and then we have different centers that anchor the one thing and it just I think there's a better way. Yeah. Storm anchors one off the vow stretching. Yes, me. It was never a good one. That's for sure. I'm just putting myself in the perspective of somebody that doesn't know the town reading this. So that's the right way to because this is for people in the town. So we all kind of know. But you came up to this blank and just started reading. Wow, this place that's got different centers that the center of town.

Yeah. So if I can reflect on what that means a little bit, then we can we can take this offline and work on it a little bit more. The intent there I believe was to um recognize the importance of all these villages that we're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. And that they are sort of like in and of themselves important places rather than just having one.

If you compared Mount Desert to Southwest Harbor, for example, where there's there are villages in Southwest Harbor, but they're really just villages because they used to be places where there was a post office or something. And here it seems like the villages are actually like there's a real identity around villages which is kind of makes you know which is one of the things. So, is there a better way to talk about it that like that? Is that that's what you're getting at? Right. Okay. That's a two-edged sword, you know. Yeah, it is. We're not that big. They're definitely not.

We start talking about Sound Village and I mean, I'm sorry. They want them to get our sign. I said, "Well, just keep calm. Carry on and we'll get it somehow to make them or not." It's on the list of villages to talk about tonight. So there we go. Okay. Text they get on Zoom. Yeah. Mary Gary the town of our desert community. I think it's important that when someone reads this initially, they understand that we're on an island. So if you just took out the word within and put on the word on

and dropped the word community. Uhhuh. The town of Mount Dazert is a welcoming and resilient yearround town. There you go. That's correct. And then my next one is the first paragraph, the second paragraph, the first line. Um, in Mount Dert, children are able to grow up safely, independently. And I don't understand what and outdoors means. I, you know, we throw them outside when we're tired of them. What is what is

I just thought you hope they are growing up but so I just said um children are able to grow up safely independently and I didn't understand the next slide you can take that out because you you talk about supported by strong education shared spaces exceptional access to water and open spaces yeah so it's kind of redundant that you don't even really need to do it is funny you take out go to your outdoors and out mountains. I didn't know what that meant. I thought there's a word missing here, but I can't even like pick one.

We don't How about just say exceptional access to the outdoors or something? I mean, we can water, open spaces, mountains, streams. I mean, it's just like the point because it's really what we are in a nutshell. Yeah. Which is what it's supposed to be, right? Yes. It's like to be where we like to be. Yeah. That's in my happy place. We're there. The drugs come in. That's okay. Any other feedback? This isn't the last time that we have the opportunity to, you know, this. So,

yeah. And during this whole process, we're going to be taking sections of this and sharing it in other community meetings, right? So, we'll get feedback from those for sure. Yeah. I mean, when we were talking about this meeting a little bit today, too, at the end, like the point of where we are now is to have a draft that you guys are all comfortable saying this is our this is our vision statement that we want to share with people and get some feedback on capturing like we'll have a we can have a similar sort of public feedback process. Yeah. But I I know we talked about this before. Uh the we have the word affordable as referring to housing in there and there was another word that you attainable.

Yes. I was just wondering if we should stick to using that because affordable just has that

legal connotation there. Well, in the in the subdivision ordinance that we're going to be proposing people act on at the town meeting, those two concepts are used. And what they really are, well, it's a reflection that we're actually not going to be able to build affordable housing because the definition of that of the income that people have to qualify for property that you can build where you only use 30% of your income is really not going to happen that often here. And the idea is that you want to be able to also allow for greater density for properties for people who make a bit more income for people in more like I think of it as middle class public housing right that that because we don't even we don't you know affordable is we actually have poor people in desert which we do not have and we probably never will unfortunately not in any meaningful way

um it's all relative um so there are two I mean they have they mean different things and they have precise definitions in that proposed uh ordinance. Um so attainable is something like 250% of your of the annual Hancock County um average income. You could be up to that amount and you still and you wouldn't have to spend more than 30% of your income on housing. Housing on housing. I think it's a little different for rental.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um versus 80% of the Hancock County average income which is affordable housing. So that's that's so behind it there's like this techy stuff that is trying to accommodate a broader range of possibilities. I'm going to change it here if you guys are okay with it to say um housing for a range of incomes because attainable Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And affordable are both sort of these, like you're saying, buzzwords that relate to definitions. They're all relative. Something affordable to you might not be affordable to someone else, right? So, yeah.

Um, and we're not getting into, we're not trying to like signal anything by the use of those words, just the idea that people can find homes. Hopefully. available too that and get up and go to work in the neighborhood. What a concept. Range of incomes could find a home here. Yeah, that could simplify it. I also would make a pitch for simply removing different village centers that anchor the town. I just we have them and it's great, but why?

Well, you could get rid of the word centers. We have different villages that anchor the town. Or you could just say different. I mean the anchor thing was an issue and I think that's that's correct. Well down the road when we start looking at zoning issues and any changes we might want to make for instance Sville losing commercial areas. So we couldn't have a little market there anymore. That's that is a village center and it is it should be an anchor to the village and it will have an impact later on I think if we you know if we change things

I don't but we have but right this way we have a business district a commercial district right from Sville as opposed to trying to figure out where you going to put cars in front of what used to be AV Higgins store I mean that just isn't viable at this point in time So I mean how would you do that? Well, so I think that the rules we have in place at least for that village are Mhm. if it changes out of village into residential, it's never coming back to excuse me commercial to residential like the Higgins store. It's not going to go back, but

that that's an inhibitor. I think that some people had not that purpose been in place, which is now commercial. It's a short-term rental place, which is a whole another conversation. Yes.

But, you know, having having Higgins store there was a was valuable to the community to a degree and it doesn't and we've we've wiped it away because now it's residential. So, so I mean that's something that we're going to get to down the road is do we have do we continue to allow commercial operations in village centers? And I think that's why I think that considering a village center as an anchor to that neighborhood, there's value in that.

I was looking it was in here too because people talked about a lot of this comes from your discussions but also the survey, right? And so people talked about what makes this town particularly unique even though you know Seal Harbor that little stretch there is so small and then Otter Creek you know it's a little more dispersed and low density but you do have these like you have the bones commercial operations

right of a village center in multiple places unlike some of the other communities on the island or nearby. So part of what I'm hearing is again the the the the reason why this is in the vision statement is because we're reflecting on the value that people are placing of the you know the fact that there are villages different villages in the town and you know we I think we can sort of maybe brainstorm like what is really meant by the word anchor versus something else. So we I think that's one thing and I would like to just add to your discussion your good discussion about um you know some place like SSville like we I think we will get to that and when we're looking at future land use or some of these other things a question really could be like what and we'll use Ssville as a good example like what SSville was in the past isn't necessarily what SSville is or could be in the future and so what was like the historic part of SSville versus where is current day SSville like we should be thinking about those things not just for Sville but I'm using that as an example you know so

I think that discussion sort of combines your thinking and what what Gail was saying about like well here's the reality of where we are today in this in that particular area but I think that's an important thing to keep in our you know our parking lot but that's why it's important to also think about the villages because you know there's a there's a some important transitions that have happened. But we just because it was that way, you know, 100 years ago isn't mean it's going to exactly be that way today or the boundaries of that village are maybe a little different, right? Or how we think about it. Anyway, I'm I actually look forward to that conversation. I I really think

Sville is a really really interesting part of your town if you think about it. It is really like the center of your town. Physically, you mean geographically? I think one one of the things that um it's the historical piece if you start looking at you know we had there was all kinds of there's a tea house right next to sure um where we live it wasn't always open all the time but it was there and so there were lots of in the quarry and there were farming and there was bars and there was a drugstore I mean there were stuff all along and it's like that in other places and you're kind of like really yep

it's pretty amazing. So the history piece which I always like right sorry but and that history sort of has created an identity that people think about but that doesn't mean that the identity needs to reflect the the moving forward the vision part and where you're thinking doesn't mean that that has to be 100% reflective of what was happening in the past. So you can take the history and feel the identity, but then look toward the future for how that area really needs to be as it relates to the whole town. Yes.

Does that make sense? I'm not sure I'm describing that well, but you know what you when you're there, that's what makes it so cool. Like when I drive through Manset, I'm like, well, Manset's huge, but where's Manet? Is it by the Ingley Company? Is it over by Seaw Wall? But when you're in, you know, parts of like Swell, I think we all I I think that's an interesting one because we might be thinking about the boundaries of Swell a little differently than the history, but you know, when you're in um Sail Harbor, you're in Sale Harbor. Yeah. And so that's what's that's I think what we're kind of getting at with that like the feeling part of it. But that doesn't mean it has to be exactly how it was

back in the old days. It just means that we value that that feeling of place. And then we need to think about what can what we can do in the future to keep that feeling of place alive. So we can't get the back. Or if we are so wedded to what we perceive as the history which is a very narrow version of what history has been in that community. How are we constraining the future us? Yep.

And how are we serving those folks by saying it always has to be the way it has been? Or because there used to be a store, we got to have a store there versus down there or or whatever. I mean, we don't Yeah. I think I think we can be tied to the history is important and we do need to respect that but it should only be one piece of the information not

Yeah. Yeah. And I think the point I was trying to make was that we leave things you don't have to have a store there but if somebody wanted to have a store there they could have a store there. that we don't limit the possibilities because thinking in the future and thinking of environmental things. It's like, wouldn't it be great if you had a little pub or a tea house in your neighborhood that you could go a short distance to rather than going to Bar Harbor or Townill or Sail Harbor or someplace else that it helps to bring the neighbors together in an environmental way so we're not driving all over the place because that's the only place we can go to a grocery store or that's the only place we can go to a pub or that. So that it doesn't have to be there, but if it was there, there are advantages to it that might be useful for community building, environmental things, economic things, etc.

Sure. You'd have to convince me to want to walk on that sidewalk to get me, which I do not want to do. Let's put a parking lot in this this particular conversation because I think that it's um taking where the anchors out gonna get anchors away. getting back to the vision statement just because I want to kind of wrap up this piece of the conversation. But my my the bigger question the biggest question is are we pretty much there? Like is there any glaring

things that we're missing from that? And yes, we can continue to kind of like fine-tune some of the language and if you have some particular wordsmithing edits, I'd say just send them to me and Susan and we'll try to integrate everybody's edits into one cohesive thing. But is are we at a point where we can we've captured u the sentiments of a vision statement as we've talked about and then we can kind of put a bow on this particular part of it and then move on. Can you add the word return in the last sentence? Yeah. Because if you stay grow contribute and return that's last sentence of the pro thing. Yeah. Place where people want to stay. Oh, somehow say, you know, people come back here. Mhm. Done.

Thank you. Yeah. Great. You simply say people want to live and contribute to an inclusive and thriving small town community. Right. So, I would say what we're going to do then if there's no big things, do you have edits? Well, we can fine-tune this one. We can send you this draft with the strikethroughs on it if you want. and then get it back to me and Suzanne. We can try to polish it up if necessary. But right now, we're just like changing words and comments and stuff like that. But it's the faith stuff we want to capture tonight. So, but I'm seeking confirmation around the room and everybody's looking at me and saying great.

Yes, it covers all the points. Good. All good. Thank you. Well, let's move on to the next uh agenda topic if we can. Um Suz. Yeah. All right. So, the next thing on the agenda, um we were going to talk Finnish villages. So, let me just remember where we were. Oh, sinkies. So last time we talked about Otter Creek, Sail Harbor, Pretty Marsh, and Haw Quarry and then we were going to get back to Zonesville, Northeast Harbor, Beach Hill we added, and sound we added. And I think this

I don't know how Chills won, but I guess so. That's what we're talking about. So um last time we framed this conversation as what are the characteristics and then what's the potential for anything it can be change large or small or anything there is there anything like when we talked about pretty marsh um I think Shashana said could there be more year round people or safer ways to walk but there were like fewer items in that category. Does that make sense? So, we want to be able to kind of describe have a discussion where we're describing the characteristics that make it distinct. Maybe be chill is debatable or um but anyway, so characteristics and potential that sort of

well, isn't it the only farmland in the in the inactive? Well, or in geologically in fact, you guys want to start with beach hills? Yes, let's start with beach. Yeah. The only thing on the map that's circled with viable soil for farmland if you remember look at it. Yeah. So these are characteristics viable farmland soil y because that's very practical these days

the gateway to beach mountain. Yeah I was going to say hiking trails. What's that? Hiking trails. um access to both um land and water, Echo Lake and Long Pond. Um just as someone who's still like newer in this area, I mean that driving down that road, my kids would go to Camp Beach Club, especially the last week of the um camp season because it's the only camp still offering camp before school starts and it's like just extraordinarily beautiful. Yes.

Looking in both directions, but there aren't really views like that on roads and other places where you're like elevated up and you're able to see 360 hill and Yeah. But then it's also like so pastoral. It used to be the main road um up the up the hill and then down the hill.

Route 102 it wasn't there and the main road was up Beach Hill and down there. So that that must have been connected to my road at some point originally. Balswam Lane was 10 was before 102 and then went up through the woods or something up through I don't know who owns it now. But and the only thing I'll say is I always notice when I'm like really conscientious about the speed in there. I've been passed by visitors

with out of state plates who like I'm driving the speed limit. There's a lot of kids and then there's like tons of people walking older people walking, you know, out for their walk and um I've been passed by cars who are like going off to some. Don't you feel sorry for them because they don't enjoy how pretty it is? I look at I'm like driving along going little old lady speed limit speed and I'm thinking you're missing why you're here. And like if you roll down the windows on those particular days in August, it's just all like, you know, crickets and like the sun is oh my god, it's so lovely.

So one of the things that you notice when you're driving up there is that it has not been there. It's largely seasonal up at that end, but it is it's been the way it is for a long time. It has not been grant it hasn't been mansioned gentrified. Yeah. Well, it's pretty gentle, but it hasn't been it hasn't been ostentatiously overbuilt. No, but somebody there has been a bunch of clearing up there before you get to beach camp beach cliff on the right hand side. There is a clearing up there and there's a lot that I know about that. Do you know what is it?

Is that a tree growth reason? I I live off of Beach Hill Crossroad and I walk to Camp Beach Cliff. So I've basically daily. Yeah. And that land I believe was bought by the Kellogg family and put in conservation easement. Somebody did want to develop it and the Kelloggs next door bought it for $500,000 even though they're asking 1.6 and immediately slapped all sorts of conservation needs all over it. Thank you. Hello family. And that was uh my partner Megan's dream lot. Sorry. Until we found out it was asking 1.6. Yeah. Besides the breeze that would be up there. Yeah. But

Oh, yeah. We we walk up and down the road to the camp beach club. Every So it's now protected. It's now protected. Yes. We went up and stood on that lot, too. We're like, "Oh, well, this would be nice." Yeah, I've shown and this it would be nice for one person privacy for one owned land on the island. Owned it. The highest elevation privately owned land on the island. Yeah, that's interesting. That's interesting. Now it's there's an old quarry up there. I've I've trampled around up there. I haven't seen it, but it's called Carter Quarry. Yeah, you would know. Yep. I have a piece. It is very very pretty up there.

You want to start mining again? Have you all been to find the um Beach Hill Farm like market store constantly? My better half Megan volunteers there also neighborhood works in the fields and that's why he loves it. That's why I think that something like that and it being farmland is very important because it is a place where food can be grown for it's largely sold to summer people but right it's important to have places where good food can be can and should be grown. I mean the only other places are like off the crooked road where double check farm triple check. Yeah.

There's also those aren't private cemetery up there on the left. Mhm. What was the second question related to the religious that we were asking kind of the characteristics and the potential hill farm on the left it would be the Carter family cemetery. I've been up there. We basically have the characteristics sort of like the rurally more farmland hiking trails echo lake pond to be used that's not overbuilt. What if what is the potential for is that similar to you know building on the farmland stuff. It's the potential to continue to have important places for locally grown food. And that is a that is that actual little village up there in the summer.

Yeah. They have all the the farm help. Yeah. That quite often are not COA students. Sure. Oh, I guess I I will retract my statement that there is no beachill village. I think a place for locally grown food is very very important. Yeah. And we've maintained as farmland. Yeah. Protect it. Having the farm stand plus the farm is like a really nice offering. The town owns an awful lot of land on Beach Hill Road itself. Uh just south of Barnham's Way. Y

I don't know if the town is going to let that come up for development, right, for housing, but that could increase that whole Beach Hill community. Yep. Well, there are some more houses are going to be built up in there. Yes. I I' I've heard that on the planning board. Yes. Yes. There you go. A lot of dynamite go blasting going on. What about the potential? Not that the town has a lot of control over the college of the Atlantic farm stand, but I know they have done the college has done a couple little events there, smallcale events like as a community gathering space there. They had a bring your bowl type evening. Sort of a harvest dinner in the fall.

A Mayday thing or two, right, with the coal and grab. Oh, I know they did that. That's I don't think I need that. Yeah. So much. Sorry. So Ruby Higgins, that's what I did it. Yeah, it's I mean having a space like that is really really amazing. Visual been doing a lot of nice things. They have concerts there and everything.

Yeah, I think that the the college has been a real contributor to the community with that facility. I think anybody who drives up and we do all appreciate the view in both directions and if you have a whole string of houses up there destroy all of that for everybody. So keeping public access and visual accessibility the importance of the views. Yeah. Yeah. There are an awful lot of people drive up there, park their car, walk up and down the road. Yeah. Pretty. Yep. It's a great breeze in the summertime when it's 100° all year long. Yeah.

Right. Anything else for Beach Chill? Where is Where do you think or where do we place the whole um Farnum's Way, Sydney's Way? Is that Sville? Is that Beach Hill? Is that its own community? Great question. Five one village. No, I mean how do you define what the boundaries are? I would think everything from the pretty marsh road up and going down to the pond and you know the other side of the pond where what's the name of that road that goes in uh neck narrows ripple northern neck no northern neck

you know that part is that is that pretty marsh is that sville is that pretty marsh well we have the definition for the that's the definition that's been created by the landing cooperation what I was going to And that has that defines Ssville pretty clearly clearly. But I mean it doesn't matter and that gets up to like the Northwood the Woods Road, right? But I think somehow we have to acknowledge either in Sville or in Beach Hill the whole Farnum's Way. So Farnum's Way is here. I brought it up. This is the area that you guys are talking mostly.

Yes. I would say that was Beach Hill. I don't know why this matters. Farum's way here. No, you said you said Farnum's Way is the red thing there, right? That's the re that's the V that just part of Beach Hill. I think Farnum's way is Beach Hill. You make a left off the pretty much I agree. Anything that's along Beach Hill Road. Yeah. So I think or Ripple or the roads that come off from it or beach crossroad. Yeah, I think that's a pretty important greater downtown beach hill. Yeah, the farm. I don't think we need to bring SS Landing up to our

right our barrier. But they say on the other side on one side of Beach Hill Road, you can use the landing. And if you're on the other side of Beach Hill crossroad, you cannot use the landing. Really? You have to be north of Beach Hill Crossroad and east of Well, and that's just that's just the grtors of that land decided that with their lawyers a jillion years ago. That's just the way it is. So, it doesn't really affect anything else. But, um, I do think it's worth pointing out though that what we want to talk about on the in the Beach Hill area, if that's what it's fine for me to call it that, is the possibility for year- round housing, affordable year, affordable or attainable.

Yeah. Year-round housing. Um, especially if the town does own additional land there. Um, near Farnum's Way. Near Farm's Way. Yeah. Yeah. That that area. Yes. Maybe north of the crossroad comes in sewer system already. Yes, it's north of uh Barnm's Way development uh all the way up to Beach Hill crossroad where Beach Hill crossroad hits Beach Hill. Holy cow. Well, that would be south. And there are nice trails in there.

That would be which if you're going towards the farm stand up that road, you're going south, right? If you want to check. Yes. Can you do that? So, right up here. That so this is where So is this farm's way in here? Yes. Okay. So where's the town land up this side? This okay that's more land. So that's south of approximately. Yeah. Can you go this way a little bit with it? Can you drag it? You want me to go north or south? The other way.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. So, this is Beachfield Crossroad right there. So, it's pretty much this whole big thing almost all the way over here. It's It's a pretty big thing they have there, you know. Yeah, that's a lot of land. Right now, that's a lot of granite. Does not recognize Beach Hill. Now in the villages of not dessert be chill is actually part of sville though but it has a poster on the wall over there guys the village of dessert there was a school there positive of anything there was a school other than people's warm and fuzzy feelings about what's right around it

I don't mean to be rude but that's all it is just pointing out there's not like consensus around I know and I think I think it's just we're either one town or we're not okay Any other potentials? We talked about maintaining the farmland, maintaining the views. Um the farm stand is a great gathering space. Um the town owns this land. Potential for additional housing. Any other village? I don't know if we should call it a farm stand. It's really a store.

I think they technically call it a farm stand, but we can put it in our notes however we want. Yeah. I think if you call it a farm stand, it makes you think of of it makes me think of a more rural farm to table organ, you know, all those things. Farm. Yeah. If you said it's a store, it's like going to the Hannerford. Yeah, you good point. Farm stands. Can we move on to Sville? Yes. All right. Characteristics. Yes. Or local characters. traffic. Traffic world

national historic district. Yes. Yes. White. Except for some of us. I mean white house. Oh, I tell what we used to call if she put the trees up there at Hydra's place in shade. I just want inshane for sure. Right. Here's Sville. This is the little church. It's it's small village church in the center. But you're missing the traffic. But you're missing the traffic. It was 11 o'clock at night. I know.

Best point is that SSville is an artery. Yeah. And at this point in time and it's it it impacts the livability quite sit in my backyard all summer long and think can we just have EVs for everybody electric vehicles so I don't have to listen to them the noise is constant constant constant bad that's why I have triple pane windows is the theater open I haven't been to the theater there for years is it doing things they run summer programs they have rep theater all summer long. The reporatory rep theater. Okay. Station and ambulance.

The ambulance, right? And then I never realized how many calls they go on until that started there. It's like every day all summer working by harbor. Oh my god. They're like wild. They've gone all all day long. I know. It's amazing. Several times a day. Every fender bender. Every I don't know what they do. Everything. They're busy taking care of things. Yeah. The Stonesville landing is a key attribute. Yes. Central. Now, where is Landing? Yeah, it is private. That's um Do you want to point it out on the map, Kathy? That little thing there probably is. And that's private. So, there's It is private. Private.

Uh so, it's for the people of Stonesville. Um, and there's a a pier, you know, there's a a dock there. It was established originally, but that's it right there. That's Yeah. Yeah, you're right. There. No. Yeah, but that's the field next to the gallery. Yeah, you're right. He's right. Gallery is here. Yeah. Okay. All right. There's a pier. Okay. In there. Yes. So Judy, if you had a boat in the Stonesville Harbor and you lived in Northeast Harbor and your boat were on a mooring in the Stonesville Harbor, you could not access that pier nor that parking area to get to your boat,

right? because you can only access the pier and the parking area if you live within this very limited area of you or you could chill or you could go to able if you live if you live no you live outside the boundary just have your boat over at Abels and you can walk to somebody told me maybe there's another place across from Foster that's it no that's it that's it

so here's the thing this was a tiny piece of land and it and the ab budding property owners and others decided at some point that people in that area didn't have the ability to get to their boats and they wanted to have a spot where people who live they they set it up at that point in time when there were far fewer people. They set up with a rad with a specific radius to donate that land so that people could access their boats. It wasn't a place to go necessarily perceived as a place to go picnic or or whatever. It was a place to be able to get access to the water for people who lived in that area. I believe do I remember was there not at some point a possibility that the town could have it and they didn't want it? It was one of those things or was that Bart list? John John McCully told me back in the 60s

there was an opportunity for the town and the town Yeah. said no because there's really no parking. If it was public it would it'd be a zoo. There's there's not enough room there and that's the problem. It's it's like this it's this tiny post stamp of land anyway to get to the last three. Other characteristics National Historic District I wrote quintessential New England village as you showed us your picture with the church sidewalks that are not as good as they could be.

Historically it is where the town center was to start with for the town of Mount Desert. So the little selectman's building by the bridge that was the selectman's building. So that's where things started. It is the artery for the entire I east west side of the island. I mean, we need to understand that it's the traffic has increased exponentially since I've been there. I've been in that area about 25 years now. It's probably the most photographed area between the white houses and the bridge and the brides. Yeah.

And that and the price of rice is not going to build a community, but um I it's bounded on one end now by a by a commercial district on you know north of the intersection. Do you guys think of that as part of Sville? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Great. I walked to the post office. Um, and it would be nice if there were more things up there, but you're not going to be able to do it and survive on that little narrow strip unless you widen that road and or you don't want to do that. You know, there is land um above next to the bank. There's that big above that

that's like well we've talked about that there's like what 15 acres or something fair amount of land but it again it's all rock and it doesn't have access to sewer so we don't so

continue to say in this context we don't need to be bound by the the physical limitations of what we think is possible today because there are so many things that are possible that we don't know about what we're going to be trying to do with this when we talk about Ssville or any other area like what would we want that area to be like we're going to actually have this question because part that part of Sville is already zoned village commercial so should it stay village commercial should you mean that northern part not not the main street not like on your side of the but like so and we don't need to get into that today but like we don't I I think don't be constrained by saying

yeah this is a commercial area and it could be more commercial areas and you don't need to at this point preface it by saying but it'll never happen that way. We just just say it. We'll write it down and we can think about it. Gail in any of the thoughts regarding and I know this is a hot topic the school consolidation mash you know moving it around. Is there any thought about putting a school in soil seeing how it is such a center point of the island? I am not part of the reorganization planning committee but I have not heard any suggestion that they have thought big like that. Yeah. You mean like moving the that the middle school to

their consensus is we want to maintain what's special about our all our little scattered elementary schools. In my perfect world there would be three schools and one of them would be K through prek through eight for the island. But would it be someplace in greater SSville? I mean, that's another thing. What is Greater Sville? How how does it how does it expand back from that narrow little street? I mean, what's how far back off that little road does SSville go? Um, if I Yeah. On this, right? Yeah. And that's sort of the dividing point, Whitney. And is that currently growth area?

Uh, nope. Because I have real problems, you know, I have real problems with that town still being with the in the current climate with the current definitions of growth and the expectations that the state has set for growth and with no water and no apparent ability to provide water within the life of this next comprehensive plan. I think it's a inappropriate idea to continue to label SSville as a growth area as that's as that term is meant by law. Yeah. Let's again I don't I think that's a really good comment Gail and we ought to make sure we keep that into context like what we're talking about and we we talked about this last time a little bit that because of the new rules

we have to start thinking about the terminology that we're using but the ter I think we can figure out growth area versus how we call something else. Yep. by building on the conversation that we're having now like what is the what and now we've got the characteristics of SSville which I think it is in a really interesting kind of juosition from that you know sort of historic small village you know photographed thing to the actual fact that it's a major road network going we should also say it's a major road where almost every house that gets sold now is going to a yes seasonal yes owner yes and those are challenges major transformation So would you say I'm trying to make a less of potential. There's a potential to make it more year round.

No, not with the there's a potential that it becomes all seasonal. But that's all over the When I sell my house or somebody sells my house, do you think it's going to go to a year round person? The point is like we can change that. Like there's things you can do to change policies. My point is let's put it then let's do it. That's the ch like it seems inevitable but then there's a potential to change, right?

Yes. I mean, we had a conversation at the schoolboard meeting last night at up here that somebody said, "Well, there they heard Brian said he heard that there might be a bunch more kids ending up in the farmer's way development when you get it built out." And I said, and they talked about how there used to be a bunch of kids coming out of that place. And I said, "Hey, there used to be a whole lot of bus stops happening in Sville." They all grew up. They all grew up and their houses went so other people That's true in every village. Yeah. Yeah, it is. But um but I'm just saying yes, that would be fabulous. Okay. Do you want to add community school? Thank you. Y that's really important to

They have a lot of land. You sure do. And um at one point we're talking about, you know, ways to use it at in public benefit purposes. Yeah. And I think it's interesting to to look at SSville and say, well, we basically have taken out, you know, each hill. So, we have now to think about and then then we're going to sort of think about how Sound Village sort of fits into the context of this conversation. But like

when we get into it, okay, here's Sville. Now, we can we're going to define it a little bit better than what's on this map. But when I think about potential, so this is what we think about when we think about Sville. When you think about potential, you think about things like there is more area for development somewhere. Is it going to be where it used to be? No, that's that the challenge of the historic part of the village is, you know, it's all going to turn into seasonal rentals or whatever, you know. So, we I'm thinking about it in layers. So, we need to like

layer it up and this is what we'd like it to be. We'd like to add more housing there year round and here's where we here's where we think it's going to go. And so this is how these this conversation sort of builds on like co this is what we're thinking about in this conversation versus like the reality of the growth areas versus the reality of where the village boundaries are that kind of thing. And there is a development area back there. uh drawing blanks on names. But um Margaret Blanks, not brother-in-law anymore, but lives up behind like the bank up in there where white um Richards used to live. And there are houses.

Well, I was thinking out Oill Road. You take a right and then another right. And there's a place called My Way that is a development over there. It's Ed Hamer. Yeah, that's they have land still available I think for sales. the birth statist. So the boundary between three marsh that's a Whitney farm road we're looking at. So and we don't need to define the boundaries tonight. I'm just saying like in terms of why think about it.

Yeah. And why is it important for us to be thinking about potential and then we're going to get back to like the feature land use map when we say okay well this was the Swilville village area that we're talking about. Here's the here are the things that we thought about. boy, soil has some potential for these things and these characteristics that we want to try to, you know, really think about when we're when we're fine-tuned and, you know, what's actually a growth area versus what we're going to call something else. You know what I mean? Like the orange and the the red and the orange are the growth areas in your current plan. Yeah. Do you

The orange and the red might not we might call them something different or have them be smaller or a little bigger depending on where we are. You know, if you look at this map and you look at the water, you look at SS Pond, you look at Long Pond and you think relatively speaking, it wouldn't be that hard to do what? To provide water. Sure. Absolutely. There's potential. I think there is potential. But it's the car before. That's the horse. That's the horse that has to happen to Southwest River uses a south end to long. Yeah. Sure.

Yeah. Water. You know, we have a well and we've for forever we had the best tasting water. There was like one month in March when it tasted terrible because of all the road salt getting in. Yeah. Now then it went bad all the time. So we have a major filtration system in our in our water. Yep. Yeah. But there is potential to bring water and sewer to sewer does. Yes. Sewer is just on the main road. Yeah. But there and there is potential but it would have to be built out to other places as well. That's go upill. So let's I want to I think that when you're thinking about potential like maybe infrastructure is something that needs to happen in order for this potential to be realized. Yes.

And so if you're thinking about it in that context, it's not a limiting conversation. It's oh how would we do this? We need to do these things first. Talk about that in other committees. Yes. We need infrastructure. Sure. But that's the only limiting the only the technical capacity is there. We need to be committed to actually public works director has some thoughts about that. Let's move on to the next village. Yeah. Yeah. Dville. Now we are in uh we didn't do we haven't done northeast or sound. Just walk our way around. We did hope for let's talk about sound working. Pretty it's pretty small but but very important but very important. It's got a lot of land and people are

You have a boat shop. You have a couple boat shops and a restaurant. Yeah. and a ref. Yes. The historical society there. So there's history and a restaurant basically like Yeah. So then is going to be like super small I guess. Is that boatyard still the same? Beach Hill and the sound would be offshoots of Ssville suburbs. Yeah. Yeah. Suburbs. Yes. Looks like you did it pretty much. There's greater pretty much and downtown pretty marsh. They're far enough. What else? We got the boatyard. We got a restaurant. We got historical society.

Was that historical there? Trails, right? Trails. Lot of trails. Access gateway. Trail east. Where is town garage? Where is Northeast Harbor? Is that the town garage? It's got garage. That's the two. That's greater town down south. Do you guys claim the dump or no? The old dump. Sim Simsby Park. Summons. Summons Park. Yeah. Yeah. That's part of a Is that part of the inound? I don't I don't know. Yeah. Why not? Is it Northeast Harbor? It's over here, right?

I think of Northeast Harbor focused around the Harbor of Northeast. Everything on that hill sound. Wow. It's a really unutilized little park potential. Oh, it is not. It depends. No, people there all the time. There's so many people. That's Yeah, volleyball. It's a little scary sometimes. You can't even get your car parked. Okay. So maybe potential for site management or rethinking how to we did a um public access water study upgraded. Yeah. Also the the boat access Sunday afternoon difficult always down there for a picnic and then there's dodgy

going to off that's usually the volleyball players sound. We got so the town garage is part of so sound village. Oh my goodness. It is now. Yeah. The trash. You know, all the trash. Historical society, school. Yep. Yeah, we got that. Y you said lots of land. There's lots of land. Undeveloped land. It's a place where you can meet neighbors you don't know who existed in the woods. That's right. You're walking down my street. Well, I'm I'm So the sweet So the dividing line is because we were

Yeah, I get it wrong all the time. You know more about it than I do. No, but the divide Where is exactly the dividing line? It's where north of Sergeant Drive entrance think of it. South of it. It's It's timber. There's timber. This where the sweet. Yeah. And then there's a little stream there. I thought it was that stream for what? to south. Uh, it's south of it's just it's just uh Are you trying to define the southern boundary of the town of Pound? Yeah. Because we were I had to change my post office box from Northeast Harbor that we'd had for years to

Thsville. Thail it Judy is what it's closer for you. You wouldn't say that this is the boundary and the boundaries basically everything in Brown that isn't we don't call Sville. Yeah. I mean I'd put the community school in Sville feels like those like five driveways up from Sville intersect from RA corner I would say. Although although Caroline and Dave Caroline Prior David McDonald who live on RA corner they consider themselves in the village of sound. Really? Yes. campground and they said actually it's very active. They there's a lot of people there and they do get together.

Campground's important and and that's in sound, right? Is that in no because they are on the water on the harbors harbor like the Richardsons and there's a whole crew of people that I never met when we all got together. You all have neighborhood parties in Sound. We've had a couple. We've had and we're going to have more but move to Sound. Sounds awesome. You have the art. The problem is it's this thoroughare that goes and it the speed limit goes up to 50. This is don't mess with them.

So, well, so before they before they finish striping this spring, I want to lobby somebody. I got to figure out how to go about doing that to have it a double stripe lines all the way through from Well, you know, there's a whole crew of people that will do that. That we are they're I'm holding them back because they're like foaming at the mouth. Yeah. But a double It's a town. It's a state road. So, it'll be the state and it'll take care. But there's, you know, we do it one night. There are two boatyards. No, there's drag racing and stuff. Thank you. That's kind of a problem, too. I don't know how you as long as straight. Yeah, I know. You get down the hill and go. Yep.

Yeah. I'm gonna cut I'm cutting sound off for time. Yes. I can see there's a lot of passion around the building. Well, there two people that, you know, they stack the committee. All right, let's take uh five minutes or less. 10 minutes or less on Mount on Northeast Harbor. Okay. So, we're talking care and then commercial and municipal center of the town. Yes. Marina school library. Biggest library. Tennis. Oh, we forgot that in Sville. Can I do the library? Community. Tennis courts. Ice rink. Library. Ice skating rink. Yes.

Tennis courts. Yeah. You put that in already, right? There's also trails. the golf clubs. Oh yeah, that's wonderful. The private clubs of swimming, tennis, le like everybody place else increasingly transformed into a seasonal community. Yep. But the trails are fabulous. They really are. Yeah. Are wonderful. And a hidden treasure. Don't tell anybody about them. Great. This is cool gardens. Oh, yeah. Big hotels. Couple hotels. How's that working out? Yeah, network. I don't know. Couple lawsuits there.

Pay back all their debts. Uh, but the Kimble Terrace is still there. They're being sued. So, restaurants, no restaurants. Yeah. Gas station. No more hardware store. Gardens has ocean access. You can come there by boat. Clifton Dock. Clifton Dock. Clifton Dock. Yeah. Clifton Dock. You can get fuel. Clifton Dock. One of two places on the island you can get fuel. What about some other like these are all really important but more like general characteristics like um walkable. It's walkable. Very safe. You walk around certain neighborhoods

issues. Okay. What about um community gathering spaces, neighborhood house, library? Yeah, I agree. Marinas, art conference room. We have classes there all the time. Library nursery school. There's a nursery school. Yep. What's the address of what? That building. Using six old fire hustling. Yeah. Biggest fire department. Please. Yeah. Um, real estate offices. A whole lot of

We have a museum. Santa visits every every Santa visits. Great harbor museum. Great. Northeast Harbor. What? This is where we could put similar to your This is on Main Street. Yeah, I don't care where they are. That's a potential. We got We got empty spaces. Yep. How about a computer tech person would be good to have uh more housing in um you know apartments on Main Street and on other land that's available for

buildings. Doesn't Northeast Harbor have affordable senior housing? Yeah, Northeast Harbor is not senior housing, not senior. It's considered um pardon me. H blessed. No, is it? No, it's not. It's um government subsidized actually. It's public housing. It's public housing. It's income eligible public housing. But that that's something. So, it's a place where you could age to try to encourage a walkable, livable, yearround, Got it. community.

Um, did you guys ever hear that um what was it called? Like 10 minute living or 15-inute living that like do everything from trying to promote and then it got sort of like politicized and you know criticized or whatever. Um, but that idea that you could potentially get trashed by right-wing zones, right? So, you could It was a perfectly anodine proposal for a walkable. Yes. But you could like get a lot of the things you need. There's a hairdresser within a short, right? A hairdresser. Can you somehow put um grocery store um question mark?

No. Well, affordability regarding um products aired thing would be yeah affordable food. Yeah. On a year round basis like basic retail or like essential retail. So where's the hampers going to go? In Sville we have a wine and cheese. I mean well that was tried up in town hill and people lost their minds. Yeah they did. Oh my god. That was ridiculous. Although it was a horrible corner. It is a horrible corner. So, what would we like to have a restaurant that's open year round? So, you have to have you have to have the box. We have the potential and then that chicken and egg problem. Yeah. Okay. Yep. I think that's good. There there are restaurants.

Yep. Just not open, right? Yes. Yeah. You want year round year round businesses. So, what I think about when I'm hearing what you're saying is there potential for year- round businesses. There's a main street which adds potential for a lot of the things that you're talking about. There's potential for upper level apartments or a a variety of um living situations. Living situations. Yep. There's the income issue with the housing authority. It's a walkable, livable year-round community. Um there's potential for a greater grocery access with more variety and affordability. Very nicely done. Can you add um on the other thing that what we have? We have a medical center. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah. Yes. Um, why did I do anything? And we also have churches a lot of church. We wanted to return to what was recently in the not just like it's not just a future dream. It was like not that long ago. Yeah. Certain in my lifetime. Right. Yeah. Well, in our kids lifetime. Kids li friends here. Waterfront. I think do you think that Northeast is sort of like um maybe I don't know Seal Harbor but like you have the greatest concentration of like summer wealth in Northeast Harbor. I don't think so. You think it's not? It's in Sil Harbor.

Well, you got pretty marsh, too. You got a lot of money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Pretty marsh. And that's very quiet. Yeah. Yeah. Old money. I don't know how you actually write that on your Yeah, I wrote seasonal community, but also like, you know, affluent. No, I I I don't you got issues there, but Well, this isn't being published. What's interesting is a lot of the people who are buying up houses in Northeast Harbor who are summer residents are grew up here in different areas as summer kids and now they're buying their own houses. So, generational summer residents.

Well, that happens in a lot of places. That's I know. I mean you're looking have in-laws in Woodsole in the Cape same thing. Oh and it's the same result. You don't have places for you around people to live. Okay. All right. Okay. It's the same good exercise everyone. Thank you. What's your question in the last 30 40 minutes here to um economic about the economic economy? Yes. Yeah. And this is the original one. Yeah, that's an example here. Let me pass out. Okay. Does everybody have Did we pass up the original? I don't know if I have I have that.

I think Okay. This one says the following text comes from the existing town. Yep. I have a paper copy for folks who's going to pass around. So, as we're just set the table here for because we're now getting ready to dive into these sections. And so the last time we talked about this, we talked about using econ using economy as the starting one. And I think the next one we're going to get to was housing. There's a lot of them. So let's spend a little bit of time talking about process of how we're going to get through all this and then also structure of how this is going to look.

So Wel says there are a lot of them. I think there are nine topic areas and we'll go through this exercise essentially with each of them and we'll look at what the existing plan says and then we'll try to um evaluate it according to a bunch of different questions we'll talk about but just keeping in mind like if we talked about one topic at each meeting that's nine months we meet more often that is a discuss three weeks rather than before.

It's also just to say like this is a sort of a balancing act of trying to be thorough and really, you know, get into it. This I think the most fun part of this process where you get to really talk about like what are the policies you want to have to meet that like vision statement. Um but then also being mindful of just the volume of things to get through and some of the topics they'll be more you know um intensive than others right but if we don't take the time to do this why are we bothering because it'll just collect dust for them just like the 2009 one.

Yeah. So it's kind of figuring out and and we'll we'll find that kind of balance as we go which is this is y

kind of the start of this part of the process. And I think when we first started this again envisioning that this is an update and so there are certain sections of this plan which are very much updated worthy like it's a if we've got a good document we're just going to reformat it so it's consistent and then go through it maybe more quickly. But then there's some sections that really warrant spending the time on to get them right. And that's the ones that we're starting with now. But we also have very much want to be mindful of the fact that we could spend another 12 months talking about just this part. So anyway, the the process I think that we're going to try to go through if everybody agrees is that um we're going to try to get through a section with comments and some questions and some thoughts and then we'll take those notes and we'll put them into the new structure and then send it back out to everybody. And then your job is to review it and make comments offline back to us individually. It's not a good idea to like just CC everybody because then we're having and we get into the situation that we're having a meeting that we're haven't advertised or anything. So you can if we miss something, you have some additional thoughts that didn't get brought up in the meeting, send them to me and Suzanne and then we'll there we'll be able to integrate them or bring them up at the next meeting. or if it's just like here's some editorial comments and we'll just try to make those edits. And so that way we're not and so at a certain point um hopefully each one of these if your silence means that you've agreed with whatever we just wrote down for now until we can get it out and and chop it uh to the public and but if you have some comments, we'll have to decide, you know, how we're going to talk about it at the next meeting. But we can't, you know, we have to like make progress. So we're not trying to shut off conversation about it, but we just need

to sort of facilitate it in a way that allows us to actually get through topics. Yeah. Can I just say with respect to the economy? And you just say what? With respect to the economy and economic issues, we are like 17 years since the last comprehensive plan. Yeah. An extraordinary amount has changed in the overall economic conditions in which we function. And we cannot meaningfully talk about economic issues if all we talk about is tinkering with zoning ordinances. Yeah. Because that is not going to be an accurate understanding of what the economic forces are that are putting us in the position that we're in now. Y

so we have to find a way to talk about what are the drivers that are creating a seasonal a community that's out of balance and one of them the biggest bear on the bus it seems to me is widening economic inequality widening and I know that we in this town do not have the levers of power to change that but we are citizens

and we have responsibility to understand accurately what the nature of the problem is and advocates for better policies and better laws that would in the long run, even if indirectly, would most meaningfully impact our ability to maintain a year-round community, which we're going to come up again, like housing, housing, housing. Um I also think that we need to understand I mean we we get into the density issue but I but I I think unless we encourage our community to understand the drivers and to and to understand the ways in which we can use our leverage whether it's at the state or national level or whatever we can do locally. Can we can we advocate for example for a local variation a v the the power for towns to vary what the tax rates are depending upon whether which happens in Massachusetts and other other places. Um can we could we should we be advocating to our state representatives that we have state laws that change how that happen how we distribute property taxes? Um, and so I think I think just tinkering with with what we've got here isn't going to allow us to propose anything that's going to change in any

there's no magic wand. I'll say this too. We're jumping ahead where we were already going to give. So what we're what we're suggesting here isn't um just sticking with what is there. I think again I it's so I I just heard tinkering and lost those things. I appreciate I so what I'm what I struggle with is like um so we've worked on a lot of comprehensive plans and it's really easy for like Suzanne and I to like be way out here.

And so sometimes what I've observed in this group and in other groups is that we actually have to take a step back sometimes and say this is how we're organizing this conversation. even though you want to be out here, you actually have to like take a deep breath and be like, "Okay, because everything that we're talking about actually does build on all of those things. And so there really is a time and a place for exactly what you're talking about. But the first thing we need to agree on is the process that we're going to go through because we don't have all the time in the world to go over." Oh, we do. I mean, it's really your plan. So, we could just kick the can. We can dive in as much as you want, but I think what our job is is to try to keep this thing moving productively. So, there'll be plenty of opportunity for us to say, you know what, we didn't quite we're not going to finish economy now because we've done some other important things, but we really need to be like, we're going to talk about economy and then we're going to put a pin in it and then we're going to maybe tackle it again at the next meeting or everybody's good with where we are. Like, we can't just keep flip-flopping back and forth between one topic. we actually have to like get through topics. So that's the process we're trying to establish. If everybody's okay with that, then we'll, you know, we can always revisit it. So it's not it's a guide to how we can have these conversations.

I guess I thought I was proposing a metaanalysis of the subject of economy.

We and which we are and I think that's what we are going to do. Okay. And so I would say um so I have a series of questions like here's the goals for where we are right now which is this is not the final language of what we're going to be talking about. This is the starting point of what was discussed in 2009. That doesn't mean it is the end point of where we're going to be for 2026 or 20 whenever we adopt the plan. So we need to get back to our inventory and recall like this is what we learned from the data. Do we all remember that? And then we need to think about goals and we need to think about objectives and we need to think about strategies to achieve the goals and objectives. So that's what we're going to do. Yeah.

Part of what you're saying, Gail, I think is really interesting because that is something to start to describe, you know, what's part of the economy? What are the things that are influencing the economy? What are some goals related to those things? What are some objectives that that relate to those things? So let's let's, you know, that's how we're going to work through the process. Does that work? Yes, Kathy. Uh just a question on you know as we go through these goals and we did it with housing as well. These are all great goals. They're all still there. What I would love to know is how many of these were ever achieved? What was actually done on this? And how how do we hold ourselves as a town accountable to achieving these goals? So where are we? What's our measure? So what's the measure exactly?

Want to approach it? The questions we're asking ourselves are taking what is written now currently in the plan and what um you know what's still relevant like does this still apply and make sense? Um is this something that's been completed like this project is done or this new like state of being is achieved or whatever. Um and then what's missing right given that it has been so much time. So thinking about it that way, like if you were to just, you know, use this again in your in the new plan, would it make sense? Probably not, right? So kind of some of it. Yeah. Some of it is a good idea. Sorry, we didn't get Absolutely. But not just like copy and paste, you know?

Yeah. And I think it's the accountability side. How do we hold ourselves as a town accountable to achieving these things, right? But my point behind my diet tribe was that if we do not accurately understand and acknowledge the survivors, I get that. I mean, we were at a meeting 10 years ago at the neighborhood house and I said, "This is great. We're talking about this stuff, but until we deal with income and asset inequality, we're not actually going to change anything and we need to think about that when we vote and blah blah blah blah." And so, when you're looking at why some of this stuff hasn't been done, well, we're being hit with a tsunami. and we're and you're trying to keep it we're trying to keep afloat with making planning board changes.

But so can I just say to get like really nuts and bolts about it, we can I think we should keep those discussed and keep those things in mind, those drivers as we're talking about what that goal language should be and what those actions should be. And each of these sections, we brought examples from other plans that we've done. um they like will have a paragraph to introduce the policy items. We can put that language into there as well. So, I just want to say like there's definitely a place for that. Yeah. Yes. Yes. So, let's talk about structure a little bit because I do think it's important the way that we're thinking about it. And again, it's

these are just examples from a couple other plans that we've done. And so there, like we talked about with the vision statement, there's not like one way to organize this, but generally a policy, we call it a policy guide or a policy chapter will have some sort of narrative text to introduce the ideas. Then um a list of goals, um the objectives or in the case of Carbessa Valley, um we decide goals and strategies. Will you send those out to us?

Yeah, absolutely. Um there's a couple more copies of this one, but um and in Belfast and Rockland, I think we also had the like key findings were listed as well. So if you look at the way the current mount dessert plan is set up, there's a goal, there's a description of what sort of the idea is behind that. And then there's individual objectives and strategies that are nested under each of those objectives. So for example, the first objective in the town of M desert one support efforts to provide more year round and higher paying employment options etc. And then there's a bunch of strategies that are the ideas that they you know work towards meeting that objective. And then we always say who's the suggested responsibility and you know what's the time frame suggest. Yep.

Good question. Yeah. What is the Coastal Acadia Development Corporation? Is it I I underline the same thing. It's like what is this is that is it something that was that's no longer do you think? And I would like to point out because I was thinking about that earlier when we were looking at our inventory chapters and we mentioned some organizations and my my opinion is we should not name Down East transportation because they might not exist. It's great, but it should just be transportation providers and not the company because if it's changed lands, we're going to be looking at say who's the coastal? Yeah, they're done. Yeah, they were a thing. So just to make it a cleaner document

other quickly about Belfast language does not say anything about the underlying drivers of the I don't I don't think you is that you're making your point that you're trying to make what we're saying is there are locations in the plan such as where the introductory part is that that is where you can start to have that where you where you do address things like that. So what I think I hear you saying is if you can't if we don't understand the the the levers of the economy in the big sense the big L's then how are we making decisions about how we're going to be successful on some of these other goals that

right so where I would suggest that we address that is at the very beginning these this is how we understand our economy you know you could talk about it like um these are the economic sectors that were are really uh important and influential in the town of Mount Desert and these are the things that influence our economy something and I haven't like I'm reacting to you in real time by which that's how I would start to think about that and I do I think it's important it's like the principles by which we're thinking about the economy right and then you can start to ask yourself well

great so one of our goals is to have a sustainable year-round economy or whatever it is so how did uh how do we think about those levers in relation to that goal and what actions do we need to achie to go for that are going to help us um push the lever in the direction that we want to help to achieve the goal. Does that make sense? I think I'm getting I think um there's definitely a place for it is I think the point and yes because you don't see it in Belfast like when they went through this process that wasn't how they characterized the the most pressing issues that they were thinking about whereas here it's more acute in the

where the examples that we're giving you aren't like hey we're going to take Belfast and turn it into Mount Dessert it is here's a format for organizing this section that is different and more comprehensive than the format that you currently have. Correct. And I think that would be good because I looked at this and I thought, yeah, it'll never work. Didn't work.

Well, it's I mean, and again, and this is what I'm saying when I'm saying like tinkering with things like but the reality is there are good things in this plan and our job is to take those to ask we're asking like three questions of the current plan right now. One is what are the good things from this current plan that we want to take now and and let's not worry about final wording but this is a really good idea. We want to make sure we capture this in econom either or we don't need to carry forward and then what's missing those three things with each section. So if we do you want us to like just start with objective one and so

well the first thing go ahead go ahead. The first thing I would like you to start with is the goal, which is a one-s sentence goal. Is that a goal? Should there be more to the goal? Like we don't want to get into like what's a goal versus what's an objective? Like Suzanne and I can dive into that a little bit more because we're, you know, dorky planners and we love to do stuff like that, but like it just says it's just a one-s sentence goal. Do you think we should have more than one goal? Could we break that goal into its component parts and make it a little more um straightforward? So that's what I would like to start with. I would support the goal generally and I think the first sentence of the description is the telling statement

is the crux of the problem that the economy is closely tied to the current housing issues. Here we are 17 years later and that's still the case. Only on steroids. Yeah. Exactly. I had actually written out like six different goals from that one sentence that I left in my office. I'm going to get to housing another day.

You will see like sometimes um some towns will have one goal or they'll have you know several goals and again there's no like one correct way to do it. Um the state also adds suggested policies for economy. Um support the type that these are so big support the type of uh economic development activity the community desires reflecting the community's role in the region to make a financial commitment if necessary to support desired economic development including needed public improvements and to coordinate with regional development corporations surrounding towns as necessary. What's that problem I'm sorry the state requirements?

It could be more descriptive. Okay. Um, you know, it expanded a little bit to say we want to attract and retain businesses that the community wants, needs, and would support on a year- round basis that is affordable to the year-round population. That's the crux of it. We have beautiful shops here, but they're not they're not the places you go to every day for what you actually need to live. Buy presence for other people at those places, right? You know, once or twice a year and they're starting to close down because we're not their we're not their market. So, we're left with nothing.

You know, reading this, it's almost 20 years old. Yep. And the first sentence, you know, says it all. is closely tied the current housing issues. Some of these other ones we have addressed the highspeed internet and the marina is continuously updating but the g the gist of it is it's housing and I don't think the town has done much to address that. There's you know some there's you know a couple of Kathy Millers running around but other than that you got far away so they did do something. Yes. Yes. They did but it's but in order to bend the curve but

and actually educational yeah I don't know that the town wants to get into the business of being a developer right so I would challenge you to think that I when I react to this I think there's a whole section on housing that we're going to deal with the importance of housing and I think that by tying housing and you can take my opinion for what it's worth. I'm trying not to be overly opinionated on this one, but I like there's so much more to the economy than just housing.

And if we get bogged down in we can't do anything with the economy if we don't have housing, then we're not talking actually about the economy. Even though you can recognize that housing and all the varieties that we've talked about is really important for the economy. Does that make you know like you have there's other parts of your economy that you should be thinking about.

Yes. But if our goal is to establish a viable balanced community, which necessitates the creation at this point in time, necessitates the creation of many more opportunities for people to live here year round and shop and engage in commerce in the community. What's h how does if you don't it's a chicken and egg question and how do you just do you want to build more of a an economy where people aren't living here it doesn't benefit people who are living here because that's what you got now I think that's the question do you want to have like if I I guess I would ask that question you don't have to have housing that is affordable for people to live on Mount Desert Island to still have other aspects of your economy be year round.

I could we could have a really some exact I'm wondering why don't we just start with housing instead of the economy? You guys decided you want we decided to do first. That's what your decision was. Was it? Yep. But let's you continue. My point is like if the town of Bar Harbor the the the federal government gave the town of Bar Harbor a bunch of land to build um attainable housing in Townill. So theoretically that's part of this island's community where people are going to live and have year-round homes that might need year-round jobs but they don't have to be in Bar Harbor. They could be in Northeast Harbor or they could be in SSville or they could be in the town of Mount Dert in general

and that is still a benefit. And there are other aspects of your economy that you might want to think about that are year round opportunities that just because you don't live here doesn't mean you can't take advantage of it. That's all that's all I'm saying. But the reality if you're on route three anytime from 6:00 in the morning on Yep. is that we have thousands of people who every day Sure. pack that road coming onto this island to work. Y and the problem that causes that is that nobody can afford to live here. Absolutely. that that doesn't

so sure there's economic activity taking place but I would argue that other than like the schools and the hospital and the lab and I mean those and that it's not building a yearround community in terms of commerce and sure um and so I I your point's taken but the bigger issue is that it's not just a few people in Bah harour it's like the thousands of people who are excluded from living here. And I would argue that we're one town isn't going to solve that problem. Yeah.

I have no problem with that. But if but shouldn't that be our goal that we want to encourage yearround economic activity, not not not just like economic activity that makes somebody a lot of money. Yeah. I mean, I don't see why that wouldn't be the goal. Right. Our current goal is to expand local yearround economy. Mhm. And then we should probably add that it prioritizes the year- round citizens because right now it just says for the citizens, seasonal residents and visitors. So you could assume that oh let's do it year round economy just for the visitors.

That's not what we want to do. So we need to prioritize year-round residents as part of that goal. And then I think that goal should I don't know that's a goal I want to tuck in there like an action item of like through reducing the restrictions on what you can do in the town because and that's the first strategy. That's the first strategy, right? So what was done? Yeah, they said they made it so it's not overly restrictive. It's still restrictive. Well, so when I look at that strategy, I say and it says, you know, review the table of uses to do this. Well, let's be maybe as we're getting into it, we could be a little more specific.

Is it possible to go through these things and say, "Has this been done?" And what was the result of that? Because this is, as you said, 17 years old. Yep. Sometime some of it I've actually tried to do that, but it's not that I mean, they're so broad. There are a lot of broad actions that Yes. You know what the planning board and the luzo committee has gone through the table of permitted and conditional uses to to to think about that. Could but we still need could it continue to be better far from done. They fiddled with it. They didn't rip the page

and or have we updated the and clarified the land use ordinance definitions for commercial and home occupations? Yes. Have we provided DSL blah blah you know? Sure. We've done some of that. the town did do the uh internet. I think it's almost at 100%. You were on that committee. I was on the broadband committee and we made agreements with Spectrum that every street, every property should have access and we paid a boatload of money and we got money from the county to do that as well. And we pay a boatload of money every month to them for it. Exactly. We do. Yeah. And it's not fiber optic. It's still cable. Yes.

It's not fiber optic. So, we're all waiting for lithium fiber to get over here. Um, so I'm intrigued by what you're proposing should we should be looking to do to enhance economic opportunity. I'm just trying to think as as a business, you want to start a business. Where do you go? You go to Texas because it's got low taxes, got lots of land, cheap. Like that's why people go there, right? Or to tax policy in Tennessee is really good. So people pumping businesses there. Why aren't they pumping businesses here? Cost of energy is really high. Taxes taxes are really high. There's no land. There's no land. Well, there's there's no land. What businesses can you attract? Uh tech businesses.

Tech businesses people can do from home. Can you do businesses in your house? Uh very restrictively. There's a lot of state policies. You can't do this, you can't do that. It's like so it's not attractive to start a business. So what can the town do on their part? We can lobby the state to reduce home occupation licensing, whatnot, but as a town, we can remove a bunch of the restrictions on what you can do. Uh there's that whole list. Who had that list? Um oh, at our community meeting, I think um

Walls, uh Kevin Walls brought in the list of everything that you're not allowed to do, right? In residential one, you can't do hardly anything but sleep. You know, residential then you get you get to rural woodland five and all of a sudden you can do anything anything, right? And so why can't you do anything in town? You know, it's like commercial and rural woodland have it suite and everybody else is restricted. So if I wanted to start a business, I can't do it. Well, you got all these one or two acre lots just outside the towns and you can't do anything on those either.

Yeah. So, there's a lot of land that's underused. But we but we do I mean I'd be hardressed to want to use I get what you're saying about the economic miracle of Texas and Tennessee, but there is a cost to that sort of thing if depending on what kind of oil or gas production facility you want on your neighbor's property. I mean, you do have to think about I think the bigger point is that to what are the ways to make it easier to start or establish businesses in town slash in residential areas what what businesses are allowed right you're not just saying residential areas like you're that's a poor example

yeah I I just see residential as the most restrictive and I think my neighbors down the street if they wanted to start a hair salon they can't because there's parking requirements ments. How many customers are they going to have? They're going to have two customers. It's not a problem. You can park two street, two cars on the street. It's fine. And when they get two more employees and they upscale, they're probably going to move somewhere else. They're going to move to downtown Northeast. They're going to move to Bar Harbor. They're going to move to somewhere. They're not going to say, "Why don't you drive all the way out to S Harbor to get your haircut?" So, I don't worry about that. businesses expand in a middle of a residential area. Is that's unfair to the residents of that area?

I think it depends on the business. Yeah. I think F's point was like it was that example was like that would stay pretty small until the point at which it wasn't appropriate there anymore, right? You can't fit a Walmart in a quarter acre lot. So, it's never gonna happen, right? You're not going to have But you could have a daycare. But you could have a daycare. You know, there's a there's a mechanic in Otter Creek that works on cars. He's got his little thing. You you don't have VIP auto service there. It wouldn't fit, right? But you can have a guy that works on one car at a time. Is that a permitted business? No. In residential zone, you can't work on cars, you can't work on boats, you can't

you can't have your traps. Abby crops you hike. So I just wrote and this is not necessarily and I'm typing stuff out and stuff on the screen for you guys to see. This is not necessarily meant to be like the end all beall goal language, but I'm just trying we're brainstorming right now, right? So I'm just trying to note down the things that you guys are um saying. So making it easier to start and establish businesses particularly in residential areas. Um I think the other thing is increase mobile phone coverage. We've done really well with um you know TSL and everything else, but the dead zones and the seasonal dead zones Yes. are detrimental. Yes.

And dangerous. Dead dead zones. You can't get cell coverage. You mean you can't get cell coverage? you ever try to use your I guess if the town could designate possible commercial areas for the future that could help with you know more businesses you know we may put you know this section here as a possible not I don't want to say business park but business park an area where commercial activity could be brought in where there is not housing Now,

and I guess the question you're trying to raise is what can you do in your own home? Because you already live there and without renting a different commercial space, something that you can do at home, what what would li What would be an imposition on your neighbors if you were to do that? Is it smells? Is it noise? Is it lights? Is it commotion? What What impacts the neighbors? Commotion's a good word. Commotion. Okay. What impacts the neighbors that say, "Sorry, you can't do that work at your home." I think it's already very interesting since co that we have so many people doing work from their homes and it's just like under the radar. Like Lauren does computational genetics. Exactly. From our house.

She's working at a computer. Yes. Mouse lab going in her. Correct. And there's not traffic and there's stuff like that. But very But there's a ton of that going that's going on. But it's just a different technology based. Yes. my my better half uh the person that lives right next door to her built a bread oven, a bread business, and he has a woodf fired bread oven and he's making bread all summer long and the smoke goes and fills her house 30 ft away

and you know, so there's it's hard to have a business in the middle of a residential area. That's why they're residential. Well, what I'm saying is so that but she's got a business and she's got a business. So what are the conditions of a business that that make it an imposition on neighbors? Yes. What are the appropriate types of smoke would be one of them that may not be appropriate. And where do short-term rentals fit into this concept of business? because we've already got lots of people who are monetizing residential areas and running them essentially as businesses. Mhm. And are we happy with that? Yeah, that's a noise traffic condition. Yeah. Well, it's also just taking away from

Yes. from residents. It becomes non-residential. So, that's another thing. How do you how do you allow businesses in a residential area that doesn't create a situation in which they're no longer residential? I mean, how do you set that up so that that actually one doesn't def you don't defeat the underlying purpose of being able to afford to live here and do stuff? I'm just amazed at the addition of you have the neighborhood house and then what was the only electrical business

and it now is this very attractive building that's got two businesses and a renter upstairs and there there are yeah one short term isn't it two renters upstairs two renters upstairs okay but It's very attractive. They're very quiet. They've improved the view from the medical center down and because we have given them we have right of way. So I keep my eye on that.

But those are the kinds of things that I think need to be could be replicated. There are other businesses that you know, especially like on Main Street. They were down hidden away where you couldn't find them. Um, well, the surveyors. The surveyors. They're above the ground. The wheelhouse. Yeah, they were the wheelhouse. I was going to say the drugstore, but you can call it the wheelhouse if you want. Spelled out what what you can and cannot do. It is spelled out. Yes. So, is it something to be reviewed? Yes. Yes.

I think that's what Vince is suggesting as a I don't want to put too many words, but as a strategy, we could refine the first strategy and say we need to I think there's a some fine-tuning of the first Yeah. strategy. Is this a good time for me to mention that we could really use some good minds on the on the land use advisory committee because we're really thin and we really need to have people who are willing to d I'm all ready to do a overview of the table of uses but we don't have the bodies and we don't have the people who are like willing to dig in and do that. We just don't have it. Bill and I have tried and it just sort of always dies. If I join that, that would be committee number six.

Well, you left already. Yeah, you're you're disqualified. Let's move on to page two. At the top of page two, it says, I'm chill, but participate in regional efforts to diversify and strengthen the Hancock County um economy. Defense of success is a reference to Coastalia. So, we want to take that out. Um where I'm sorry, where are you? Oh, here objective one, two, three, fourth episode. Fourth strategy. The first objective. Sorry. focusing plan. It says participate in regional efforts. Sorry, I'm tracking changes. It may have changed the page number. Um, so we need to take out that reference to Coastal Acadia Development Court.

Please. Yes. Yeah. And then, um, supporting endeavors of other state and regional organizations to promote this goal. So, one thing the state does ask for is to show a commitment towards like regional collaboration. There'll be an whole section. We sort of brainstormed that. If that makes them happy, that's fine. Yeah. On on the objective itself, I think the word particularly kind of sticks in my car a little bit. Support efforts to provide more year-round and higher paying employment options for residents that will sustain a viable year-round community, including those supporting homebased businesses and occupations.

Okay, great. Um in in terms of regional efforts I mean I think again this is like N was saying this is very general right and it is sort of an ongoing um but that seems to be the only thing that doesn't apply anymore the coastalia development court part was the league of towns in existence when this was written did they become was yes did I miss it is it missing in here was it was never mentioned so maybe that could be added to the responsibility ities column, right? Partnering with the League of

And you also might want to say strengthen the Mount Dessert Island and Hanok County. I mean, there's there's kind of two things that we spent a lot of time talking on the on the Well, the League of Includes what? Trenton, is it include Trenton? Yes. Elsewhere else, it doesn't. Oh, okay. And the park. Yes. Um, can I ask the the fifth strategy? Yeah. Was create incentives. Um, was that ever done? No. No. What even exactly what kinds of incentive could the town do? A tax incentive. That's all limited by state law. Yes.

So, we should switch that goal to lobby the state for autonomy in in tax usage, tax allocation, and tax. Harry Freriedman is trying hard to local option tax a local option tax. I don't know if that would impact like local property taxes. So you can say if you're a new business and you and we've all agree that you want you here you can pay lower property taxes. Is that that would be an incentive

in this situation like such as would be a good way to say you know incentives we might not be able to think of all the incentives right now but giving some examples of what those incentives might be such as lobbying the the state for local option sales tax such as uh tax breaks for certain types of business such as you know and I don't know what the the state rules are if property taxes all have to be the same regardless of it Can the town refund some tax money? You have to you you look into this. I've looked into it. I've looked into

Massachusetts. They passed a state law that gives town voters the authority. I think it's up to 50% differential in year round resident tax property taxes versus and you can't use it you can't use it to just increase taxes in and of itself but you can shift the burden from year round residences to seasonal property use which would be and you can vary I mean sometime you can do 3% or you can do 20% or you can do 50% or whatever something the home um what is it the homestead Stead exemption. Homestead exemption that could be increased. Is there some could be increased for Yes.

I know has taken away some of our homestead exemption. A homestead exemption is $25,000 and they've taken $2,000 of that away from us year- round residents. So now it's 20 up to 23,000 instead. Mhm.

You said now it's 23,000 you can take away. The homestead exemption is 25,000, but the town is allowed to dip into that if they don't assess you at 100% of your rate. And this is coming straight from Kyle to me when I complained that my homestead exemption is 25,000, not 23. And he said, "We are allowed to dip into that." I've had discussions with John McCully and other people. But in any event, 25,000 is not going to that 25,000 homestead exemption should have been keyed to the rate of inflation 25 years ago, right? Yeah. But I wonder if for businesses

houses were that. But I'm getting off topic. Yes. We're dipping into fiscal capacity and those kinds of questions. But right what we're talking about right now is going through this list and thinking about like you know building on this strategy a little bit more. Can I say with respect to I like what's written on here too creating incentives to establish you around businesses. Why are we saying in designated areas for example in traditional village centers why don't we just say create incentives to establish you around businesses and be more open about the possibility of it location.

Yes. Yeah. Sure. Um we don't want those anchors to track. Do they have infrastructure improvements? Because they want to divert, you want to direct that type of business development in areas where you determine that type of growth really should be. Well, use beach farm as your example. You don't want a huge amount of the appropriate kind of businesses there, right? Yeah. Um the next one is invest in infrastructure improvements that will support the fishing and shell fishing industries.

I invest in infrastructure improvements that will support viable yearround economic activity. So why do you think that was called out specifically in this plan? And what do we what do we honestly think the future of fishing and shellfishing is making major investments in the in the marina. I mean between when this was written and now major investments were made. It's happening in Michigan. Could you have said yeah I don't know what's happened at Bartletts whether there's been a portaotti no but they have floats and peers and people turn on the harbor there truck harbor committee has

no only places some uh some buyers to have trucks down at Bartletts because there's not enough room in Northeast Arbor and so uh some people we've told them you know you can't get in here, but you can go here. So, do you feel like maybe we don't need to be specifically calling out fishing and shell fishing in this one? Keep the idea of investing in infrastructure improvements, support industries that will support year-round economic activity.

Are there two separate things? Could you could you have two separate actions? You want to have infrastructure improvements that support year- round economic growth or whatever econom the year- round economy. But if you're talk specifically, this is dealing with really the marine economy. So, do you want to have a strategy that is continue to invest in infrastructure improvements that support the working economy? Could we just park that for when we get to marine economy? Yeah. Yes. even though it's still part of the economy. I like all the stuff that's written on here. It's our challenge is to get the town to do a lot of it, right?

Yeah. Well, let's worry about the challenges later. We're going to get to the ideas now. All this stuff written here is very good. There's a couple little things, but this contract zone one establish a contract zoning option for uses not normally permitted but may be otherwise suited for a particular example. has not been the zone would be you'd have to add spot zoning for a business or something

kind of but you'd have to add a provision into the ordinance that allows for a contract zone to be created specific to and so contract zones have to be also consistent with a comprehensive plan. So it would allow you to go in and then say hey in this area um it is right now it's currently used for these kinds of things but we'll want to do we've got this great idea it really belongs here's a process for making that happen. I feel like these are rare. They should be like there's some somewhat rare circumstances like N was saying for some reason it really makes sense to me like why doesn't the zoning already anyway change this I'm not I don't know

or I I'm not a big fan of this but you know we had a situation in we have a town meeting for government former government we had a situation in which we needed to create a new zone for the ESC which we thought was going to be the be all and end all and so that happened right there's a separate zone that got created So why if somebody comes along with a a whisbang idea that they think should be in a place where all the people in that area aren't expecting something like that, what's wrong with saying, "Can we change the zoning ordinance and we go to town meeting or something like that and do that?" So the community is engaged in that process of change, not just allowing it to happen at the planning board level or something like that.

In a contract zone, you'd still have to go to town meeting like that. But I think that's what Suzanne was saying, which is like why not just go through the full zoning process, right? Eliminate this is what you're saying. I think Yeah. Yeah. And I think you want to avoid like having a bar harbor zoning ordinance, but there's like 27 different types of zone. You know what I mean? Like having all these little sort of Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. In fact, zoning sort of lends itself to you're a favored person. You what you want, you don't. Yeah. So, go through the regular process because we have that available to us. Yep. I I

I think this town is small enough too and like thoughtful and engaged that you can, you know, make those changes through the normal process. Okay. Um it is seven. So just to be mindful of people's time. Yep. Um how many more do we have left? Like 800. Well, that's the first objective. The economy. You want to pick the list? But we're getting we're getting into it. Yeah. This, you know, we're going to get into a rhythm with this, right? And so there will be some topics we talk about too where like not a lot's changed maybe or like um

I don't know it isn't as complex perhaps as economy and housing. Um so any questions about this process that we're going through in terms of kind of again we sort of look at what exists now since it is an update which is our starting point. Does this still make sense? Is it already been done? what's missing, you know, is there a different way to word it? Things like that. Yeah, that's sort of the questions we're going to keep asking ourselves as we go through this. And I think what's important for us to do is focus on not just focus on the strategies like we are, but the objectives. Do we have the right objectives here? Yes. And so part of me thinks um you know we we put this together kind of how it looks in the current plan but

if you look at the examples of other plans we've done we tend to like more bullets right and I do like that these strategies are nested under the objectives um but we can lay it out differently if it makes it easier. So maybe our homework for the next meeting is we're going to pick up with this. Go back through, spend some time asking yourself that question. Are these the right objectives? If we're going to get really um nitpicky about strategic planning, objectives are typically measurable like increase, decrease, expand,

um inf, you know, uh not inventory, that's more of an action, but like thinking about um can you measure this over time? And then the actions or strategies or like a project that you're going to do as a town or committee is going to work on. Um, can you send us links to some of these other towns? Yeah,

I also encourage you I'll pull it up right now just to show you. And um this is probably um the municipal planning assistance program where all the information is about comprehensive planning. They list um all the towns comprehensive plans. Yep. Did it go Did it click on it? Right there. I think you scroll down more. You'll get to the table.

Yes. So there's a chart here. These are the ones that are currently in for review. So we just submitted care bass at Valley. Um so that's these are all in for review and then you can see um these ones have been some of them have not been found consistent. That means they have things they still need to change. Um that's consistent with like the state regulations. But you can kind of go in here and just see all of these towns do it differently, right? And like um a lot of them are the committees are doing it themselves with no, you know, outside facilitator coming in. So, um, yeah, it's kind of interesting to see, you know, like what they look like.

We I think it's I mean, if you really want to get into it, but it's sometimes really helpful just to say, "Hey, you know what? Um, Sarrento had a really good idea that we think might work here and then we can figure out like we don't need to reinvent the wheel if other towns are and other people are thinking." This is a ton of work to see. Thank you very much. I that's why I'd like to know some about the ones that you may be intimately familiar with. start with those because I am not going to sit down and just start reading through I think might be helpful is if we were able to take the format of the these drafts and like just even without going into a lot of detail like change the format to be closer to what we think might

be how how we're going to talk through it rather than just say here's what's I don't know it's one way to the visually if you saw something differently laid out differently like what Suzanne was just saying if we goals with the strategies underneath them, you might be easier to talk through. So, I guess that's what I'm saying. So, if you like you've presented us a couple here, if you if you think there's some worth looking at, if you could just give us links to Yeah. those documents and then we could Yep. Absolutely. Just breeze through them and and yeah, ultimately it's up you could give us a quiz next time. Yeah. Right. It's up to you guys to decide what makes sense, what like communicates the ideas. They're all, you know, um nested together. So, how do you how does it make sense to communicate those individual pieces?

Y um yeah, we can send that to you. You got it. And those examples slightly differently for each town because based on the committees. Yeah, I sometimes like the here's all the goals listed out. Here's the objectives. Here's the actions. Great. Great. Thank you. So, it seems like our homework is to look through the rest of this. Should we also look through housing? Yes. Yeah. We'll send you as much thoughtful footwork as possible. So when we meet, let's just go around the table. Residentials.

So again, those three questions like I don't know if you need to be super hung up on let's make sure we go through and say, has this already been done? But yes, we should be asking that as far as we know. Has this been done or not? But like yes, it's is this still a good idea? Do we want to tweak that idea? or has this already been done and we don't really need it here anymore or in the case of the the one we just talked about for the contract zone, that's just not an idea we want to do, right? And like what's missing, you know, since it was so long ago that this thing was done.

Can I ask a random question about housing? We have statistics about the current so-called vacant housing rate. Do we know what it was like in 2009? Um, we can go back and look. The census does, you know, have historical data sets. It would be good like when we last did this comprehensive plan and we said housing housing housing housing. Where's what were the what was the data and bad? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I think it's important to be

What's interesting now is that they I think they do it through like the um American Community Survey which is sort of the intermediary survey. It's not a count. It's like a survey in between the dennial census. But they now um also break down if it is vacant for what reason. Is it um vacant because it's for sale? Is it vacant because it's for rent and hasn't been rented or is it for seasonal use? And so you'll see that pie chart in our area is like you know because they're for seasonal use because they're just like you know it's a a community that's fallen on hard times. So in 2009 it would have been the the real estate market would have been bad.

Yes. So that those that that relationship might be different than it is. It might even be worth looking at like 2000, you know, because they're writing that plan in like five. Yeah. So, Megan Bailey, who lives in the town here and works for the state financial department, has offered that there's somebody in her office who can enter a lot of like town data for us. So, if you want, I can reach out to her and see what we can join.

I love that idea as a great lover of data. We've already done our data analysis and inventory. you know, if we feel like there's something incomplete, we can always add to that, but I don't want to necessarily derail our policy setting part of the plan with like more data. But it's if you think there's something missing, but you think we have we need to think we all can sit down probably and figure out a lot of what needs to be done policy-wise. Yeah. This is the challenge with data. It's like how much more data do you need to get? Are you the same exact answer? It's bad. Problems. We already know it. Yeah.

And yes, it was bad enough back in 2009 for them to actually put high on the list. So nothing's really changed since then. So then maybe your question next question might be, so what do we need to do? What's what's preventing us from making the change? I mentioned a possible correct need to adjourn. Yes. Second that. Hi nobody on stop everybody. Who is our noteaker? shooting me that would be how you doing