Comprehensive Plan Committee - Regular Meeting

All right, seeing as there's no public about that gosh, do you have stuff to update? Um, yeah. Well, we can find some time to kill here. Um, I think that I think we had a couple of questions for the committee. um just in terms of process um that we're really do want to try to finish up a lot of the work that we're doing like with goals and strategies by you know summertime so that we can then take that part of it on the road and really um wrap it up. Yay.

Okay. When you say summertime by the end of the June meeting or the July meeting? Um, well, I think we Let's shoot for June. Finishing in June. No, I wish. No. Goals and strategies. But I think that what that means is um Can you hear us, Suzanne? Nope. Can you hear me now? Hear you? Can you hear us? Yes. Thank you. Hi, everybody. Sorry I'm not there in person.

So, we were just getting started. And I was going to going over just a couple of quick questions um for the group, but we were talking about um meeting schedule, something to consider because that we do have a bunch of this stuff to try to do and not that we need to try to pack on any more meetings to everybody's meeting schedule, but we may want to consider getting to that two meetings a month thing. Um, and that sort of relates to how fast we can get through these sections and still give them the time that they need a good conversation. And also if there are meetings or a meeting where we want to invite, you know, some outside experts too, you know, that's that meeting would take away from sort of work. So, we might want to build that into

into the uh into the mix a little bit. So Katrina suggested the other day, can we just find a Saturday someday and just like work for four hours and uh that also could be an option just throwing that out there. Every day is Saturday for me. Awesome. You're lucky. Say it's just another Saturday is a work day for null. Saturday is the new Monday. Um, can you somebody just articulate clearly where we're at? Yep.

Where we need to get to and when you say things like take it on the road, like in terms of this, what do we mean? What are we shooting for? Just refresh my recollection about

so just sort of breaking the project down into different phases. We are we had that first phase was let's gather it's update the inventory the required inventory sections and also engage the community to try to help us um figure out what our vision values were that gives us the the background for all this stuff. Now, now we're into the um the goals, objectives, and strategies section of the comprehensive plan. And we had agreed as a group that we were going to focus heavily on the priority group. The priority um topic areas were going to be economy, housing, and um neutral land use, I think, was the other one, but I can't remember. There were three that we were going to focus on and those are the first three that we're going to be working through.

So, right now we what we've done is we've finished the vision statement draft. We're where we we had some discussion last time about the economy section. We're going to hopefully finish that section today and maybe introduce the housing section and then we need to kind of work through the rest of the sections of the of the comprehensive plan. So we have to do transportation, natural resources um of public um facilities and fiscal capacity all the other ones. And again this is an update but these top these priority sections will probably be the ones that we we'll try to spend more time

saying look we maybe we need to rejigger this or we've got to spend some more time thinking about you know the goals and strategies that are already in there. So, we're still going to be building on goals and strategies that were are existing, but and and so you anticipate that at the end of this process, we will have what might you might think of as a rough draft of an amended comp of of a new comprehensive plan, and that's what we'd quote unquote take on the road,

right? What I would like to do is by this summer when we have people in town that we want to engage with like we have the whole summer community that we need to try to engage with then we are starting that conversation back with them to say like here's where we here's the direction that we think we're heading and get some feedback from the community in that way. It doesn't mean we're not going to be continuing to work on some of these things and maybe we maybe we want to think about um you know for sure by this summer we're going to want to have like these hot button topics wrapped up and a good plan because that's the stuff that we really want to talk to people about.

And I will just say with respect to the summer my experience has been that everybody who's here year round who are going to be the people who vote on this are too busy taking care of the needs of those summer people. and so they don't have the bandwidth to spend a lot of time during the summer focusing on that. So, so I would answer that by saying that we also are cognizant of like we're we're going to start building back from when the warrant articles need to get created and that would be like by now. Yeah. Or even January of

seven. We're going to want to have like the draft plan that we're going to be going around. So, in the fall, I I think that we're going to then circle back around with people that haven't had the chance to to review before we, you know, finalize the draft that's going to get discussed at the town meeting. We'll need a planning board meeting. And yeah, in finalizing the draft looks like what? It's just small changes based on our conversations that we've had over the summer. Um I think that yeah unless something major comes up we'll be in a good position you know by the end of this year say December time frame to like then start working on you know formatting and Okay.

Suzanne were you going to say add something? Yeah, I mean I think that uh this summer too there's a chance to also just kind of engage people in the sense that um and who are here only in the summer, you know, we can um talk about the workshop that happened in the fall. We can share the vision statement and then we can share a list of goals even if all the strategies haven't been fine-tuned yet, but sort of the higher level policy framework that will be developed and get reactions. and it's just sort of a um a great chance to bring people in to the fold and collect more ideas and input. I also have a chart I can bring up too if it helps in terms of like the scope of work and the tasks and kind of where we are in the process, but I don't know if we want to get into that.

Kathy had a question. Let me go ahead and bring it up. Well, yeah. thinking about the summer community and how might that work in practical terms about who do we engage and how and is that just through the like the summer residents association? Yeah, it could be several different ways. I mean, you can do like a very direct kind of intentional why are you laughing? Debating hitting an X, but he's afraid it's going to close you out. If I close you out, then we're going to be messed up. forget what she has to say.

Um, yeah, you can do direct kind of I mean, I think we would probably want to do it multiple ways, right? And so we can put stuff up at the library, make a poster. It's like here's a this plan is happening. Go to the website to learn more, take a flyer. We can go to the summer residence association um and do a presentation or we can do an openhouse at the library. They've offered this in the past. you know, set up some materials kind of the way we did at the workshop um for people to react to and be there for two hours, drop in, learn more, ask questions, whatever. We can think of some ways to make it um you know, so that we can attempt to capture more people

and like make it make them want to come and learn more. Yeah, I think that's fine. I'm going to be the person who pushes to make sure we focus on the people who are living here. The people who actually vote on it or the people who of course. Yeah. But I think we would do this anyway. Yeah. It wouldn't be just summer people. We've had a lot of public meetings already.

Yeah. I think we've had a lot of public meetings to talk about some high level stuff and so we need to and this is the way we set it up. them. Now you you guys as the committee need the time to work through the details and then then you can bring those details back to people to react to and we are not going to be able to finish those things coincidentally until the start of the summer if we can do that. It's a lot there's a bunch to do. So maybe we should get to economic policies. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. I'll stop sharing. The goal would really be to try to finish a chap a section each meeting, each time we meet.

I guess it'd be nice to have an outline to show when our end goal will be met and so we can make sure we stay on track. Yep, we think we do already have an outline. Oh, sorry. I stopped sharing because Gail had mentioned she wanted to get to it. Should I bring it back up? I'm happy I'm happy to bring it. It doesn't have dates assigned to it, but it sort of like just shows you the scope and where we are in the process. So, um I can also share it out another time to us. Sure. We can email you a copy. Yeah. Yeah. We actually have a work plan, believe it or not.

Right. But so the idea of the summer sharing to the whole community and taking advantage of summer people being there is that like we now have some pretty like concrete things for people to respond to, right? Like I mentioned the vision statement and like we'll have a set of goals at a minimum. So that's great.

So that all that being said, we've had a work plan and then we have some discussions at meetings that take a little bit longer than the work plan. And so the idea is, you know, let's we don't want to short change the conversation. And so we just need to like feel that out a little bit. And so leading into economic development or the economy section, I'd like to um just kind of frame the conversation a little bit before we jump in and then maybe ask a couple of questions because I think it might help um us in terms of how we prepare best for you guys for these meetings. So when when we think about the economic chapter, um I think it's helpful to think about how recognizing, you know, the town as we've talked about and what Mount Desert is and that it includes, you know, tourism, it includes year-round life, it includes visitors and residents, it includes housing and workforce availability and all these different things. And so the goal, our goal as a committee isn't really to think about and some of those are have a little bit of tension to them. And our goal as we think about it isn't necessarily to to solve or eliminate all those tensions. It's to help us think about how we balance out how the town can help balance out some of those things. And so we we've acknowledged them and and then we have to think about how we work through them. I'd like to propose like two kind of lenses for the economy that that we think about in this chapter and then really it's just a framework for how we go through what what's already existing in there and see if we need to add anything. But the first lens um is really about jobs or livelihoods. So those are things like um what job what economic sectors are there um you know is it tourism and hospitality? Is it the marine economy? Is it construction and trades? Like those are the jobs, how people make a live a living.

And then there's the other part that we talk quite a bit about which is I'll call it community services. So how does the economy provide services for the people that live here? Is it grocery stores? Is it a pharmacy? Is it whatever? And so in our economics discussion, is it worth thinking about those two lenses as we start to think about objectives and whether or not we have all the objectives we want and strategies to try to achieve those things those objectives. So just sort of framing the those two things that we have to deal with because there's a difference between

you know that those sectors of the econom those lenses of the economy. Well, one of my initial reactions is that if we frame the economy as it is versus how we'd like to encourage it to be, then I think we don't do anything about what everybody kind of understands is a great imbalance that's causing great pressure on the anybody's ability of ordinary means, anybody's ability to continue to live here or become a resident here. And so, and so you get the email that we got earlier today from from Vince.

Yep.

Um, which is one approach. It's not one that I overly endorse, but it's one approach about allowing land use changes that will allow much greater use of one's own dooryard to conduct the individual small businesses. Um and but if we don't if all we talk about is the existing economy is tourism and building mansions and stuff like that. I don't see that as a way to actually bend the curve on the problem that we have as a dying as a as a diminishing year round community.

Yes. I I let me uh rephrase the framework which is those things are all val I was using those as examples of parts of the economy. So when you look when you think about an economics chapter you're asking the question how people earn a living

it doesn't mean they have to earn the same they don't the how doesn't need need to be the same in the future as it is today but we have to have some objectives around how people earn a living and then we also have to think about how the economy supports everyday community life or life in the and it could be um in some cases it's uh year round you know do we have enough? Do we have a store? Do we have the services that we want? Does this does this does our economy provide those things for the people that live here? And also, does it provide the things for the people that visit here? Like those are all questions that we could be asking. So, I guess what I'm suggesting is as we go through economy, we can start to or to ask ourselves, okay, have we addressed the objectives to think about jobs and have we addressed that to think about um services? I guess just to make them really simple. Kathy,

something else. um as a municipality other than requiring to have staff who work for the town and that creation of jobs. Mh. And the town doesn't really play a role in job creation or services necessarily. But what the town does have a role in and and this is the struggle every year is how do you make living here affordable for people? And that just keeps coming back to what are we offering, what services are we offering, and how much are we collecting from people to have them live here.

So I would say the town actually does play a role in all of those things. It it sets the table for those things to act for the the economy to succeed in in its land use policies and then the direction of where those are. Um there are um tax implicate tax benefits. How active does the town want to be in partnering with with certain things? Um what's what infrastructure does the town support to allow, you know, the economy to thrive in the way that you want it to thrive? Um, just to take the marine economy for example, like if you're on the working waterfront and the town has a, you know, world-class marina down there and they're willing to invest money in, you know, making sure that boats can access it or people are um, you know, the the the equipment is there for um, you know, goods and services to get taken from trucks and put on a ferry and taken out to the island. like th that's those are all ways that the town contributes to and and there are other ways too which I sure we could brainstorm but so the town does play a role in those things I think

yeah it builds infrastructure and has provides jobs that then spin off to other jobs should we get into the document oh sorry go ahead I do agree I do agree with that um that that government plays an important role in either facilitating or hindering or creating or ameliating problems. Um, and that's I I I found Vince's comments in his email very I wish you were here because I would love to engage with him on it. I found them very interesting. Y I hear what he's saying about people needing to be able to use their own

like their like their dooryard to be able to do businesses but I hear in what he's saying and I don't mean to label things but it's kind of a libertarian approach and one of our problems as with government policy is the kind of let everybody just make do all that they can with what they've got has led us into like the gross inequality that we have now. And so while I think it's worth looking as a matter of town policy into how we can facilitate, we're not going to probably ever agree that we ought to let people work on other people's cars and doors. Um not at I mean there's and that was something we specifically discussed at the last meeting. I you know stuff like that carries big implications and so all that stuff needs to be thought about very carefully. But if there are ways to I mean we just we have on the on the on the on the town warrant this year the ability of the code enforcement officer rather than the planning board to allow someone to use an existing structure for a home occupation and rather than having to go through the planning board. stuff like that is something that might help someone. I don't I don't know if it will or it won't, but

yeah, I mean I think again a comprehensive plan is like um you know it's a roadmap. It's a gu it's the guard rails for discussion of future things, right? So you're going to kind of bump around in the guardrails to get to that common goal. So we've already set a vision. Mhm. You know, we're all hopefully rowing in the same direction on that vision and then the guardrails to get to your vision or how what sort of policy choices you get to make along the way, right? And the comprehensive plan sort of just sets the tone for those discussions, right?

Yeah. and how and then you know again and one of one tone could be like we want to be um I don't know this may be getting way into the weeds and not exactly it may may not be what I should say but anyway you you're going to the town as we're writing this comprehensive plan in certain sections of it like how we talk about like the town will you know will explore opportunities to do x y and z you know or the town how you write it or how you think about it is um it sets it it sets like Yeah, like a tone for how the town should be working in the future. It could be in some places it's very like we're not going to do any of that. In some places it's like yeah, we want to be open to these these things.

Well, I think with affordability as as as as the problem that everybody has talked about and will talk about, um, the town ought to be encouraging economic and probably housing policies too that will encourage a sustainable mix of uses. Sure. Mhm. And that's includes resident residences and I don't think you can and so what so what with with under that broad statement what what can we do or what can we recommend? Yep. And uh so let's open up the document.

All right. I'll bring that up. This version, I think the one Suzanne's going to pull up is um the version that we sent you guys is the reformatted version of the existing comprehensive plan with some notes from the last meeting. So, you know, Gail's good comments at the last meeting about um you know, we should add some context to what's happening, you know, on a on a higher level to the economic you know, introduction and that kind of stuff. We haven't added that language yet, but we will. Can you guys see this? Okay. Do I need to zoom in at all? Sorry to interrupt you. I I never know how it looks on your end. So, can you

a little light? It's a little um small, Suzanne, but I think everybody has a paper copy and or a computer. Okay. Great. We do. Y great. Sorry. Go ahead. And so, um then we had the goals that we talked about. We haven't spent a lot of time like just tweaking the goals to make them make sure they're like goals statements. And and your comment at the beginning of this was the following text comes from the existing comp plan from 2009. Yep. How far down does that go? Are these economy goals what was in the 2009? Yep.

Yeah. And also what you guys brainstormed at the last meeting. So there was like one larger goal and actually this is our third meeting I think where we've been talking about economy correct me if I'm wrong. So the first meeting when we really uh dug in the existing plan had I think it was like a statement a multi-part statement goal and so we looked at that together and then started to add to it and so this is a combination that list is a combination of the existing plan and then the comments that you all made in that conversation and this is not these are a list of ideas right for goals it's not like a finalized lesser like N was saying kind of a formalized goal type language. Does that make sense?

So that's the document that you guys have. Now I do have a question. So because what we've done is taking um past conversations and some other experience that we have as part of the thing that we might go through tonight and actually done like a redline version. So you can actually see like here's what was written and this was strike through with underlined new words that might make more sense or not. And I'm my what I'm actually kind of curious about is um some I'm really sensitive Suzanne and I are very sensitive to going to places especially Mount Dessert where we have a lot of experience and work of just saying here's what you got to do

and but I think I'm wondering if there's an opportunity for us to like say hey we've heard what you said we've created a draft that we can all react to where you can see strikethroughs and underlines and we can actually have a conversation about like those things. So, you're actually reacting to ideas instead of me just saying, "So, under this, what do you think? What do you think we should be adding? You know, do you think we should be adding blah blah blah?" I'm just That's how we're approaching what we're going to do tonight. If it doesn't work, then we will

Well, I like the idea from the perspective, too, that it's going to give us something to react to and we might be able to have some more meaningful conversations versus it's just sort of putting out, okay, what's your thought here? And because there are a lot of similar repeat themes. Yeah.

Housing, like when we get to housing, like I've already had a meeting with Tim. we already kind of know like here's the things that have already been done and we can kind of take those off the list or these are the things that are in the works and we can kind of we can start to um add that level of detail to this plus other things that we might want to consider based on all the other work that we've done you know around housing and and conversations we've had as a community about those things

on our first page here opportunity for small businesses I think you know being on the planning board we're always open to people who want to have businesses and I know personally that sometimes having businesses in residential areas are not are not good. Y and you know I as planning board people come up to us and it's very rare that we say oh no you can't do that. We're always open to everything. Sure. But I know one time that we had a uh a bread oven right next door to a house and all summer long the smoke from the woodfired bread oven went in the house next door. Yep.

And so I have to be careful with you know residential zoning is residential zoning. Yeah. I would say that the mission of our planning board is for us to in try to faithfully interpret the existing law and apply it whether we're enthusiastic for a particular idea or not. Mhm. Well, I would say comp plan is setting the tone for the policy discussion. The policy actually gets decided at a different level and then the planning board actually interpret thing that the policy related to to ordinance changes and I think we're pretty liberal as it is now. Yeah. All right. Okay. Let's go to objective one.

Can I ask something about Chris Gold? Yeah. expand a local year-round economy to enhance the quality of life for Mount Deser. There's a word missing there, right? That prioritizes year-round residents, seasonal residents, and visitors. That's everybody. Exactly. Exactly. That's prioritizing. That's just include everybody. Are are we trying to get to prioritizes year-round residents because that's needs help. Yep. That's what we should prioritize, not visitors. So, I'd like to strike the last two of those three. You're here.

Okay. Other thoughts? Anyone else? I second. It seems like there's good consensus around that. At least around this table. They take it to the summer meeting association. I will say we spent more time on the goals I not the goals and more time on the objectives and actions than than actually the right and I'm wondering what word did you mean to have in there mount desserts just to take off the sess quality of life for mount dessert that prioritizes your yeah sorry I'll go back and check it's from the existing plan I think there's just a copy and paste here prioritizes the needs around residents.

How about the next one? Unmet needs. Yep. That was great. Yeah. And a a viable balanced community that allows people to live and shop here. Perfect. Um make it easier to start and establish businesses particularly in residential areas. That's what this is related to the one below. Can I just ask, don't you want them to be able to live, work, and shop here for the economy part of it? Don't you want them to work here? Yes. Mhm. So, for the third one, you're adding in the word work to live and work here and shop here,

right? Yeah. Because we all need to know that everybody who lives here works out almost everybody works elsewhere. So, and people who work here don't live here. And that's unfortunate. Um, I'll just remind people this is sort of a list of ideas that we brainstormed, but like this next one, increase mobile phone coverage. Um, that could be a strategy that it could be an idea that makes more sense as a strategy under one of the other objectives. Well, I don't think we can say it often enough. Okay.

I'm not sure that we are necessarily in agreement on make it easier to establish that that phrase in me make it easier to start and start and establish businesses period. Um I'm not necessarily in favor of saying particularly in residential areas. That's my Yeah, these were just but we don't say no but yeah I think we're getting into the notes part. You know if you recall the existing comp plan there the goal statement is one line. It's just one goal. This one. Yeah. that one. Yeah. Great. And so these can be combined.

Yes. Just not a goal. Okay. Objective one in there for that. Oh, did you want to talk about the other one? Identify new areas for commercial activity. Does that sit well with people? I I would I would suggest that these last bullets are actually covered in some of the objectives that we're going to talk about later. So maybe we don't need time on it, but that's happy to discuss with all of you if you want to do that. Great. That's what I was. Okay.

So in the in this version, we're you know, you've got the version that is what the plan was. And then up here, what Suzanne is showing you is, hey, can we maybe think about something different that we can talk about? Okay. And then so next time we send you something it'll be the marked out version. Okay. So in this one um perhaps you know this is an objective that was from the existing plan. Perhaps we could reward it to say something more like support efforts to provide more year- round and higher paying employment options period. Yeah.

Sure. And then um if we think now as we're going through the strategies for this section, let's start to think about okay to achieve that objective are there regulations that need to get changed? Are there uh workforce changes that need to be suggested or supported? Are there local business supports that we need to think about? What about tourism management? Because we can't think about all of those things in this area without those things. So those are just prompts for how we might organize, how we might think about it and ask ourselves, hey, have we addressed all these important things under this? Have we added a strategy under each of these topics that's important for those things?

Can can I ask there's some like grammatical stuff here? Are we going to leave that? Not for today. Not for today. Okay. Yep. If we can if it's like preventing us from getting past them, then let's dive in. I'll try to constrain myself. You know, Gail, you can always send grammatical changes to us. Yeah, we can make notes and hand them into the teacher.

Yeah. And so, also, none of this is like this is all your all stuff that we're suggesting and you guys can say this is wrong. Hopefully, we know each other well enough that you know that, but I have to say it out loud so everybody recognizes I no pride of authorship in any of this. Then can I ask the last objective here number seven was to ensure that the recommendations from that plan in 2009 were addressed in a timely and effective manner. Has that ever been done? Is anybody and I'm thinking let's structure it so we actually do update when we've made changes and recommendations. Should we go through these in order? Yeah. And I make a just as we start in the beginning. Yeah. Right. I what I would suggest test it.

Yeah. I've I've actually thought about this too. Um so a I think that number seven objective actually belongs in a whole different section of the of the comp plan and not in this film. Yeah.

And b um I think one thing that would be really interesting to challenge ourselves were to be to say look in a in a comp plan you actually have to break out like an implementation process. And so a lot of times and like in this plan there's like ongoing strategies there's short-term strategies medium-term long-term whatever. I think it would be really interesting to say, okay, we know the and actually we tried this with another town in the state, made us do it differently, but I'd love to think about it is like we have short-term strategies and we have all other strategies because the short-term ones are the ones that you really want to focus on. So as we're going through this, if we could come up with a implement like thinking about okay, what is it that we realistically want to try to do in five years and make that a short-term strategy and then we can figure out how to categorize the other strategies so that it meets state

state planning planning requirements. But like those things don't lose let's lose all the ideas, but let's like take the opportunity now to think about how are we going to actually bite off how are we going to implement realistically some of these things have this I don't know if that answers your question Kathy but I think the other thing with um as we're going through this we we have and this is why I was meeting with Kim like tracked like these things are done so we can check them off the list so we're just not carrying it forward okay that's that's what I was kind of going to get at is is this done

yes so we've done that for this and we've also start we've done it for housing and we'll integrate that into the next And what we want to do is have a process that's meaningful. I'm in another board I'm on, we've got these newly minted, which are a lot like the old ones, goals and priorities. And I'm constantly hearing those goals and priorities. And it sounds fairly nonsubstantial to me. So we want to have a process that says, "Oh, we can put not that we can put this in that box, but that we actually have a dynamic plan." So yeah. Yeah. So

I mean I I asked those questions to to build on that by saying like as we're going through this, if we're like, "Oh, you know what? if we added this level of detail and this really is important to us, let's add a layer of detail that makes it a more specific short-term strategy as opposed to consider um you know blah blah blah. Like there's certain words you can use to make it a little more meaningful, but not just a mission. The trick with a comp plan is sometimes specifics mean people get hung up on things and it doesn't make it through town meeting. So there's a balancing act that we have to go. Yep.

All right. So the first one is uh under the first strategy under objective one we would maybe suggest revising it to say periodically review the land use ordinance to ensure that small-cale businesses, home occupations and remote work businesses can operate without unnecessary barriers while maintaining neighborhood character. So I think based on the conversation we had, this would be an interesting one for everybody to react to, but what we heard was some conversation about not just homebased home occupations, but maybe smallcale businesses and um I think remote work has been something that we've talked about and that sort of like the reason why we just drafted this up, but it may based on the conversations we just had, we might have to polish that up a little bit more. What do you think? Well, I think your language more accurately reflects where we should probably be heading.

Yeah. And I would think on in this one, the original language was very specific to homebased businesses, but in this objective, we're actually like a broader economic context. So, I was we're just trying to broaden it out a little bit.

Does that make sense? Yes, it does. Yeah. Great. Good. Should we move on? Yep.

So, the next one we have a strikethrough or my version I have a strike through. I think it's strike through there. But I think um in my conversations with Kim about something similar to this when we're talking about smallcale businesses. She brought up, well, you really should define smallcale businesses. And we don't necessarily want to get to that level of detail in a comprehensive plan, but we um we may want to uh put something either combine it with the objective above to like and you know and define smallcale businesses or whatever or use some examples like such as to help provide some context of what we're talking about when we say smallcale businesses within neighborhood context. Does that make sense? This is like fun planning in the weed stuff. Okay. Anything there?

Good. All right. Next one. Uh, continue to participate in regional economic development efforts with neighboring um, Mount Desert Island communities and Hancock County. Hi. And Hancohawk County. What was that? When you say Mount Desert and Hancock County, Mount Desert Island, Desert and Hancock, I guess because Hancock County encompasses all of us. Yeah, I'm saying neighboring Mount Desert Island communities and Hancock County. Say Hancock County Planning Commission and stuff like that that would be helpful.

You're talking about basically anything that's off of Mount Desert Island. I think yeah and we could split it up and this maybe the the idea is um in economic in our as we're thinking about our economy you could say neighboring communities. There we go. Yeah. Period. Okay. And then we just kept the support endeavors of other state and regional organizations to promote regional economic development. Yeah,

I'd suggest we take league of hands off that though. Um the other thing we haven't done is said um there is an economic development committee in town and you know we should probably start shuffling some stuff away from the planning board and right yeah committee is having some or not maybe not um I just don't see towns as an organization that's going to be able to push stuff forward in that sense.

Okay. Also, League of Towns would be something I would say work with League of Talents to do this and then put that on to the select board like that's an entity that you would not it's not like a committee from the town. So, I I think you're regional economic development office with neighboring communities. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Um, the next one is create incentives to establish year-round businesses. Um, this one actually here and I'm not exactly sure this was from the old plan. I think it's interesting but I don't know what

that means.

That actually means so thought we might talk about that a little bit. My suggestion was to revise it to say research and propose incentives to establish year- round businesses and that this would be a better task assigned to the economic development committee. It's a slightly less vague and a little bit more actionoriented like if you think of some of these strategies should then inform the work plan of a committee. It's like you know or you can even be specific to say um you know give some sort of specific direction for that committee like create a um facilitate opportunities to establish and maintain your own businesses.

I think that community could use some guidelines. Right now, I think we operate that committee. That committee. Yes, that committee. We're a sounding board. We hear what's going on, but we're not taking any action. We know it's group. We don't have any authority to do anything, but we don't do anything,

right? So this could say like create a set of case studies or something where it's like the committee is going to you know create a product like here's a report of you know case studies of um incentives and then present it to whomever and then decide like this one or maybe they uh learn in that process these are two that make a lot of sense for the town amount dessert we should pursue those. That's just an example. It's not you necessarily like verbatim the suggestion but how you can use a strategy to suggest a very discreet sort of project or product.

I'm not sure.

Right. So you could have a strategy here that says um and my initial suggestion was more vague. Right. Research and propose incentives to establish year-round businesses. assigned to the economic development committee. So they would meet and say, "Okay, the comp plan, you know, we all participated in this, but the comp plan is directing us to come up with um a list of possible incentives we could use to help either establish new businesses or, you know, sustain existing year-round businesses." And so they would have a project they need to work on together. That's how I'm imagining it. Does that make sense? It's just like more concrete, like a task. Not only do you want to establish businesses, but you want to retain those that are

Have you let Stephanie into the meeting? She's Everybody's in the meeting. Stephanie is Yeah. Okay. I just was gonna Yes, I'm here. I'm here. I didn't want you to be left. No, no, no. I'm here. it. Um, well, I don't understand why we just don't eliminate create incentives. Say the next thing, encourage small scale commercial activity that provides goods and services needed by year-round residents, particularly within village areas. Although, I guess when I say that out loud, it's too limited perhaps because it could be a small scale commercial business that does remote work that employs somebody. But

come back to what Katrina was saying. You were talking about continuing, right? Like retaining retaining. Yeah. Okay. You know, think of the hardware store, right? Your old business to establish. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To establish and retain. Yeah. Yep. Um, so do you want to keep the ver the verb there, the create? Is that what you had suggested, Suzanne? And then well people said they weren't sure what that meant exactly. So I don't I don't want to force anything but you guys tell me what makes sense.

What what you initially said was research and propose and propose incentives from other communities that might Yeah. And you could be more specific. I think one thing we've struggled with in these this process is like it's easy to say something that's a little bit undefined and then especially if you um assign it to the select board which has quite a few things right um on their plate

that is e this is an easy one that would get sort of like you know not maybe addressed but I think if you describe it as a more discreet task or project um like in a plan we did recently. Um, this is a different topic, but it was like develop a list of blah blah blah. You know what I mean? It's like a just there's a output. If you're doing research and propose incentives incentives to establish and retain yearround businesses and assign it to the economic development committee, that's pretty much all they can do anyway. They they can't actually establish it. So, they would have to bring it forward to the the voting be creating. They would be researching and proposing. Yeah. Okay. So, you feel like that's specific enough?

Yes. Great. Okay. Great. That's all I want to know. Great. And assign it to the committee rather than the select board. Yeah. Yeah. That's over here.

Great. Okay. Thanks. Create Yes. Yes. Yep. Thank you. Okay. How about the next one? Encourage small-cale commercial activity that provides goods and services needed by year-round residents, particularly within village areas. I think the way that was meant was those um small-cale commercial activities should be within village areas not providing the service you know to only village are only to village areas I don't know why that's not covered by the one before but

I one one is be talking any business the other is specifically sure and if if that's what I think one is to establish and retain create incentives to establish and retain versus one that is encouraging you could do it through zoning or other ways. So what committee would have that kind of assignment? Good question. zoning through your well that's got to be ordinance land use of land use or e economic development or it's everybody I would say planning board economic development committee

select board everybody

all right um the next one was uh from the old plan invest in infrastructure improvements that will support year-round economic activity. That's good and it that's where it belongs to and then um underneath that I think from building on that we're sort of asking our question what kind of infrastructure are we talking about? Um so this is support improvements to broadband and cellular coverage throughout town to enable remote work business operations and reliable communication. I think the town did broadband. Yes, we did. Don't we have 100% coverage now? Should we say

and cellular coverage? You know, unless we put on every hill, we're going to have dead zones here. It'd be nice not to, but that's a tough one. Are there specific dead zones still in this town that I'm missing? Seal Harbor in general. Yeah. Yeah. Seal Harbor's bad. My house Well, and it's also getting bad. I mean you have no control over the carriers. I mean right the control the town does have is to allow or not allow more towers. Correct.

Well we have an a long ordinance for that that we on my tenure on the planning board so far I haven't had a chance to use it but it was hot at one point. So that's why we have that ages of ordinance about cell towers. Yes. So for this one, I think it's just in supporting improvements or, you know, should we take out broadband and just leave it as cellular? So I'm not as familiar with broadband as you, so I guess support improvements throughout the town. Can broadband coverage. Can broadband continue to be improved? Oh, I mean if fidelity or ifidium ifidium gets fired through that um

should it be should it be support continued improvements too? Sure. Um yeah yeah not keeping it up but ongoing anyway changing technology and who would this be assigned to? So when the town did broadband, was there like a broadband committee and how you've done the sub it was a spin-off of the economic development committee? Got it. So this would be the economic development again economic development or and and planning board isn't it? Cell towers.

Cell towers. What role? This is where I always get complaints. It's like the select board at the end of the day are the decision makers on all this stuff anyway. So do we how much do we really need to acknowledge that in the plan? So because technically it would be the select board starting committing in there. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely starting because at the end of the day select board isn't going to be doing meetings like this, right? Like efficiency wise they would be like okay we want this is great. We're gonna assign this to you guys. Yeah. Tell us what we what you think there is they're the deciding body. Yeah.

And with respect to the improvements of revenue cellular coverage unless you're proposing that the existing cellular tower ordinance is not adequate then it's just a matter of the planning board handling processing applications according to the ordinance the way it is. I assume a lot of work went into that ordinance when people when we went through a period of people wanted to put towers everywhere. Yes, that's probably a model from the state at that point and I believe towers went up. It's just that they had to follow certain Yeah, they did.

Y the one up above me. Thank you. All right. So the next one is um encourage econ ongoing. Yep. Okay.

The next one is encouraging economic activities that extend employment into this shoulder season. And this is just like a stab at getting people to talk about, you know, the tourism season management kind of thing like recognizing that tourism is part of the economy and how do we want to deal with that in global health. Yeah. Or I mean so this the objective would be to extend the job opportunities longer than you know year round. That's the objective, right? Yes. Year round. So yeah, that seems a little bit scrulous, but I would think that would come back to the economic development committee.

And also like what is it specifically? What does encourage mean? And like I think when we go through this and develop these ideas, it's sort of like that first kind of um pass that like this is a good thing to talk about, but what does it mean more specifically? Well, and and maybe we don't need it because if if several things up there, we said the economic development committee was going to research and propose incentives that would create yearround employment. Yes. Mhm. Maybe we don't need to extend the shoulder season.

Could we include including uh like up above you could include including extending the tourism you know the season blah blah blah like as an example. The other thing we don't need to talk about this right this minute but I do think it would be really interesting to have a conversation about like what is tourism mean to us? like there's a larger conversation to be had about tourism and sustainability and all that good stuff, but already it's a really tricky one because the reality is our harbor's shoulder seasons have gotten quite long, right? Yes. November. Yes. Yes.

But that hasn't extended over to the town of Mount Dert necessarily to the same extent, but I don't know that we'd necessarily get agreement within this town as to whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. Um, so that's a tricky one. Yep. You just want a restaurant that's open year round. Tell me about it. Right. And so maybe in the context of Mount Dessert, it doesn't really matter. You know, we recognize that tourism is part of it, but having businesses open year round could either serve tourists or locals. Right. Right. Or maybe Alex, I think we get a hand. I mean, I hearken back to Belfast. You can go to Belfast and on any day in the year you can get a nice lunch

and doesn't matter that you're a tourist. You can Yeah. So Suzanne on the note here maybe write uh combine with explore combining with something up above. I think there's a there's a research and propose. Yeah. Okay, so before we move off this one, I just want to ask the follow-up question. Have we covered everything regulation wise or workforce development wise or local business supportwise that we want to cover under this objective. Good for now.

For now. And you may think of something if you see when you see a cleaned up version. Um something that was on the old plan. Invest in infrastructure improvements. Have we changed that over? Is that the broadband and communications? No, we kept the invest in infrastructure improvements that will support year-round economic activity. Okay, that's totally

also it's kind of like tied into some other ones later on. Kathy. All right, we're good for that. Yep. All right, let's move on to objective two. Infrastructure improvement just like that coming in. Perfect. Yeah. Um so the next one is this. this the original objective was related to the um working waterfront and very focused on commercial fishing

um and some other water dependent uses. Um part of the conversation we've had in the past is to think about the marine economy and a broader so commercial fishing is part of the larger marine economy which makes up a good part of the town of Mount Dert. So the idea here would be to change the object to rephrase the objective to be more inclusive of the entire marine economy as opposed to just commercial fishing. I like your proposed status. So do you want me to read it or can you see it?

I just switched it. Sometimes it's, you know, easier to just look at it. We want to show the changes, but ensure preservation of the town's marine economy, including working waterfront, commercial fishing, marine services, recreational boating, and other water dependent businesses. Got it. Good. Got it. Right. Does that include working waterfront? No. What they're proposing in short is not is not that. Um, well, I'm just thinking of the town's marine economy. What about anything that goes on on the like on Long Pont, kayak rentals, paddle board rentals? That's not necessarily the marine economy, but it is water-based.

Yeah. Is that covered somewhere else? Well, this says other water dependent businesses. Also talks about recreational boating and other water dependent. So, it's covered. So, it says in short preservation of the town's marina or a pot. Yeah, technically I think that's a good thought and it's covered. Okay, I would make that more into a tourism question, but yeah. And when we get in our head the subject of marine activity, we do need to remember we have other harbors in this town other than just Yes, absolutely.

So, one other thing sort of the the framing of this one as well. So I we start to think about um you know okay under that goal are there regulations that we want to um suggest under that objective. Are there regulations? Are there harbor infrastructure things uh strategies? Are there um strategies for supporting marine trades and services? Are there harbor access strategies or coordinating a harbor plan um harbor not just a harbor plan but a coordinated harbors plan kind of approach. are there um focusing on different marine industry trends kind of um strategies that would help support that. So those are all kind of things that when we were thinking about this start swirling around in our peds. So dive in the first revision uh might be instead of revisit the table of permitted uses. I still think rather than be so specific to the land to section of the land use ordinance, you really just want to continue to review and adjust as needed the land use ordinance to ensure that regulations do not unnecessarily limit water dependent businesses rather than unfairly limit activities.

Does that mean that they would cover whether people are allowed to have traps on their boot or not? Whether that's allowed. Sure. That part of the discussion could be that I don't know if we need collaboration with Yes. Ranberry Island Cooperative and the main lobsterman's association. Agree with you. Yep. I did not see why those have to be there. We did not pay attention to the suggested responsibility. So that's a good one. I think you know years ago you've had the islands there parking and you had a lot going on then.

Yeah. But I would take that out and say, you know, collaborate with Cranberry Island Cooperative and the main lobsterman's association to do something. And then who's going to do that would be like the marine the harbor committee. I mean, the other thing is that right now our zone ordinance allows people to have to build residences in commercial waterfront zones. And that's not a strategy. It's more of a detail thing, but

yeah, but in the commercial waterfront zones, you're like here in Northeast Harbor, you're not allowed to have commercial I mean like you couldn't have lobster traps or and I mean that was Northeast Harbor. I don't know if it's going to be a little bit different in some of the other locations based on the zoning, but I feel like there's a discrepancy there. Say that again. can't remember real est you you can't have a commercial you can't have traps you can have probably some types of commercial businesses but like you cannot have lobster traps you can't have a a business like that on a commercial property that's zoned for commercial marine whatever commercial

it's not commercial marine it's commercial what's allowed in at Bartlets I see traps stacked up there most of that's conditional plan. That's it's I don't think anybody's supposed to store traps at any at harbors themselves and from their own residences and there's a lot of places that do not allow that. It's use permit. It really stinks bad. Yeah. If you live next door to it, it's a nightmare.

Yeah. And that's why a lot of places have said you can't store these here. If they were all cleaned, then it would be all right. But that's not said or done. And then there's a fine line between storing traps and storing rope because rope can just be as off closing as traps. Yeah. Or bait barrels or they have to get a whole new permit. You have to get a whole new permission. Yeah. Bait shed. That's something different. But yeah, I mean I haven't looked at it in a long time, but I mean I don't remember what what falls under lobstering anymore. I don't think it delineated that it was traps, ropes, you know, trailers, whatever. Just gear gear.

So I just wrote down two things uh to sort of like as this this strategy evolves a little bit. One would be to think about it in kind of the neighborhood context. So this is a pretty broad um strategy and then the other one I wrote down was um maybe creating some wording around another strategy I think in line with what you were talking about G which is to review the commercial marine maritime activ whatever I'm having a brain cramp on the zone the commercial fishing districts right that actually may need to be improved in order to actually keep them actually keep them right yeah right because that is thing. Yeah. To worry about. Yeah,

it is. But it's and it's to create some flexibility but also maintain them. Like there's there's conversations to be had there, right? So if we don't allow fishing gear in those districts, what have we got left to support? Um yacht maintenance yards. Right. Right. But what that's weird. What? Yeah. I have to look into that one because it's weird that in commercial fishing maritime activities districts you wouldn't be able to store traps,

but that's not the zone. It's it's commercial and and again I haven't looked in a while, but it's it's the commercial zone in Northeast Harbor. You could not you Lobster is considered a commercial business. you could not get you couldn't um you could you couldn't store them and I don't think you can get a conditional use permit on it either. Okay. It was a while but I think it's probably still it's changed. I don't think that's chang. So where are you allowed to store traps? It's it's on residential and it's conditional use permit in some village commercial. Some village some village commercial. Yeah. It was village commercial here. You couldn't

Yeah. So they might not have said in like the downtown commercial district they they didn't want you to store traffic. All right. So we also added um this is more of like I think we can rephrase this one a little bit Suzanne at some point but collaborate with Cranberry Island Cooperative and main lobster association. This is more of like a regional just you know same back same thing back to the regional discussions like participate with your neighbors in marine economy. And that one should probably leave. That was that to collaborate with blah blah. I I don't know why we have to collaborate. This is

or or have it be an objective to accomplish your other objectives. You may want to collaborate with this organization or that organization. It'll either be those organizations. So they added in as a strategy under that. They removed it as um Y took it out of responsibility. Yeah. But I think it should also come out of strategy. Okay. Should it be like no collaboration, take out the idea all together or collaborate? Just encourage marine trades blah blah blah. Right.

So they don't those two organizations do not have to be spelled out. No is what you're saying as a strategy. That's what I'm saying is that it could be a broader collaborative strate, you know, collaborate with neighboring communities and um state and local trade groups on enhancing the marine economy or something like that. That also be economic development. Yep. It's already Yes, there is a I don't know. There's some of these groups that have got become really specifically political and I think we want to be careful about that. Yep. That's Gail's making a point of um Yeah. Some groups that are less very partisan.

Yeah. So is this should we take this part out for now and get back to it later or assume it's somewhere else? Well, unless we can define what do we want to collaborate about? Yes. Yep. It feels kind of unnecessary. Let's take it out. Perfect. Good. All right. So, the next one is encourage marine trades and services such as boat maintenance, repair, storage, and related activities that support the harbor economy. And now in that situation, we might want to add fishing. Just put fishing in there. Right. Yep. But it's not just fishing, right? No, but it's fishing. Marine trades and services such as

marine trades. We could say boat maintenance, repair, storage, related activity. Um, repair storage, uh, fishing and related activities. Does the next one capture that a little bit more, Gail? Maintain adequate access to Well, it's access to rivers. Yeah, it's a little bit different. Yeah. Yeah.

Who do you want to assign the responsibility to? I don't know if we need fishing up there because it talks about it. Two of them down. Operational needs for commercial fishing and water dependent businesses. Well, except that you see what we're getting into is those are specific tasks down there and we need to be broad. No, we don't need to get too technical. Well, they do it does say such as boat maintenance for example.

Is is encourage the wrong word for this? Yeah, it's going to be encouraging somebody. Yes. Support. Not support. Those people with checkbooks. Yes. No. Are we really trying to do we're trying to do something more than just encourage trying to create structures that we want to make sure they stay here facilitate. Right. So how do you do that? and you give them money probably. I mean let's be real

facilitate like facilitate we could facilitate but it could be um you know I'm also thinking of through such you know I don't know the end of this but it could be facilitate marine trades and services or encourage or support or retain through such things as and then have some examples

you expand and retain or do you not want to expand Or you could say maintain I mean so sometimes like it helps if there's a measurable component and it's very general but like if it said maintain existing marine trades and services or expand then it's measurable and you could say you know if this is revisited in three or four years after it's passed and for some reason like things are disappearing. It's like, okay, the plan said to increase. I'm just giving an example. I don't think we should say either increase or retain.

I mean, we don't Okay. Um, would it be helpful to How about if we said support? Yeah. Yeah. I think support's always come back. Yeah. Can you put um at the end Suzanne just dot dot dot and through such things as and then we can up some examples uh really for discussion well isn't isn't that these next two things

um I would think maybe maybe this gets combined as in a different way at some point I don't think we want to be overly are we assigning this to our committee Some of it can be harbor or some of it can be economic development. Yeah. Yeah. Don't know if we need to get too hung up on who gets assigned to it tonight. Good to have a placeholder. A lot of work for the poor harbor committee. Oh, you can have some of them some of them are going to be short-term goals or strategies, right? Or prioritized. Just joking. Oh, okay.

How about the next one? Yeah. Yeah, next one's good. Yeah. How about the one after that? Who's going to maintain adequate facilities? That's really the master. And it's the town. Yeah, it's the whole town. But but the parking right down here at the harbor is a very big contentious issue ongoing. I think the hover master's fine for now, Suzanne. Yeah. Yes. Very good. Uh the next one, Alan, is that what you're talking about? Yes.

It's it's fine the way it is, but that is a an ongoing contentious thing that takes an awful lot of the Harbor Committee's time. Yeah. And what's the planning board got to do with that? That's from the last plan. Yeah, I take that out. Yeah. What we do usually goes right to the select board. What the harbor committee does goes Yeah. the select board. Put the select board in there. Well, again, that they're the end result of it. So, you don't really need to

Is this still an ongo? This is ongoing in the last plan. Would you consider it still ongoing or is it something that is a more immediate need? Oh, ongoing. Yeah, we have too many people that want to use Harper to have enough space for it. Could I in this one sort of becomes one of those questions like if we had some since this is a big deal, is there a shortterm kind of goal or objective or strategy action, sorry? No. That we should be I think we should hear. I mean, you know, is it um is it uh you know,

there is no short term or well, it could be um we can get kicked out to Granberry Isles undertake feasibility analysis to develop a parking garage uh next to the town office. That's a great idea. I know that's already to say that it's already been brought up so many times. Yes, exactly. Missed opportunities. I'm just, you know, not saying that we should put it in there, but I just think about this one might be like because you brought up parking seems to be a continuous thing. Are there, as we're going through this, are there specific things that we could put here? I would say no. I'd say no.

I mean, we can bring up a parking garage within the context of this discussion when you're actually talking about the issue and decide whether or not the town wants to pursue it. But to but to decide that the comp plan is is endorsing that as a specific objective. I think it's at all suggesting that parking garage was the thing to put in there. I'm just using it as an example. No, just if Okay, new public docking and parking facilities. So, it's in there in a way. Yep. I guess fine the way it is. All right. Moving on. Why do we have objective three at all? We

still have a couple and two. Couple more and two. Yeah. So, if you look at the screen, there's some additions. We could have those on my own just for my vision problems. We could. Yeah. So, these ones are just ones for consideration. So, consider climate change and storm impacts when planning harbor infrastructure, which of course we do do that anyway. So, that's kind of ongoing. And isn't that anyway? Yeah. Um, sometimes

it's okay to put stuff that already happens now in there. Sometimes the state, you know, one of the um examples in I can't remember public facility, I don't know, is like make sure you have a code enforcement officer. You know what I mean? So, the next one is coordinate harbor management, infrastructure investments, and land use planning to support long-term viability of Northeast Harbor and other working waterfront areas. So, we could actually list We could list the other areas, too, if you wanted. What does that mean? I feel like we've covered this with that statement already. Yes. I just worry if we only mention Northeast Harbor. Yes.

Oh, yeah. Just not the rest of the town. That's a lot of us. Viability of the harbors of the town of Mount Dazert. Yeah. And I think Alex just mentioned it's kind of redundant to the one above where we talk about other ones. So maybe we just delete that one. Right. And then monitor changes in the marine economy, including commercial fishing, recreational boating, and marine tourism, and adjust policies as needed to support sustainable harbor activity. I think it's it's good practice to be monitoring and paying attention.

Yep. I mean, if anything, if there's discussion about it, it's only going to help direct the next one in 10 years or 20 years. Yep. That would be a lot of the Harbor Committee, too. I would add Harbor Committee there. Yeah. Maybe the one above that, not the one that's crossed out.

Harbor Committee takes that in consideration. We're doing stuff with that right now. Well, and let me look at that one up above first. That the the climate change one. Can't see it. Thank you. Um, I don't suppose that's a Luzo machine. Uh, I would say it will eventually be a Luzo. Yes, I would put Luzo in their committee. Yep. Is that what you meant, Gail? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know whether we also put planning board as it's ultimate. They have regulations that any new build will have to be at some height. Yep.

Do you want to put planning board in there too? Yeah. Because the lo committee doesn't have any power. It's the planning board that that you you do work on behalf of. Does Se Harbor Yach Club get approved? Yes. All right. Let's go to number three or four. Three. Objective three. Why is this here?

So, we were we were sort of thinking about this one as well. And um I think that there are some state goals related to working farms and forests. Um I think this one that says encourage farms and forest to use the farmland in Texas program was a this is from the old plan. I don't know if you want to keep something like that in there. I mean, people are already using growth program for whatever and I don't know how many farms actually have are in the farm program, but

so the state requires we group together the state requires like marine resources um agricultural and forest resources as a separate section. We kind of grouped them into a larger natural resources umbrella. But this statement about, you know, making sure people know about participation in these tax programs is is one of the state strategies. So there's no reason why we can't have this here and in that section or we could have it Absolutely. Yeah.

I'm all in favor of us proposing encouraging the production the local production of food. Yeah. So I mean absolutely and there is but we need more correct. So that I think we had had some good conversations about this topic when we were going over the village areas and that's part of the discussion here is you know this is the economic section

and we had some good conversations about um you know working farms and do we want to create some more specific strategies under that that objective. I do think we want to encourage the production of local food that is accessible to the local community because if you I shop a couple several times a week all summer at Beach Hill Farm and I rarely recognize any of the other people I'm shopping with because it's very expensive. It's very expensive. So about a how about proposing a community garden on town own land. also closes at 4 pm, which is one of my big pet peeves. So,

not for working folks. We have a community garden in downtown Stonesville. Yep. It's limping along across from uh Pinkost Heritage. But are there other places where it could happen? Not in my backyard. Ain't got no sunshine. That but that would be but that would be an something town could do on town land that would be helpful to community to grow food locally about saying something like explore locations on town land for community garden

for a community garden or parentheses gardens. Do you want to go back to the marina part and because that too is local food. We didn't mention anything about that there. Say that uh explain that a little. Lobster. Well, um encourage the production of local food. So it's not just fruits and vegetables, but it could be losters, clams, crab, muscles. I mean we get food from the ocean as well. I take all four of those. How about again increasingly little of it is affordable. Could we broaden the objective here and see

instead of saying promote the economic viability of working farms and forests? Could we like I'm not sure what a working forest is in the town of Mount Desert. So that's kind of thing firewood but it's more promote the economic viability and getting back to the sentiment of encouraging food production. Yes. Locally in in this objective maybe that Yeah, I can say like and marine, you know. Yeah, we can add that. Does that meet the needs of the state criteria? They just want you to say tell people about the true growth program. Yeah, for sure. The strategies within that

and I think it actually will be probably more appropriately in this section that we deal with natural resources. Yeah. So we would say forestry and you know tree growth program and farms that's going to get repeated in that section. Yeah. And that's totally okay because they're so interrelated. Don't we have a um oyster farm off bartlets? What do we have offlets? Muscles. Musles. We have something. It used to be muscles. Yeah. Yeah. Aquaculture is a good point.

That's not anything that we regulate. So, so you can't say the planning we need zoning ordinances that allow more work to solve the state, right? Um, so the town provides input into aquaculture leases. They get to talk to the harbor master and the harbor committee and the support for successful aquaculture would come from accessible facilities.

You want to be careful about that third rail and just saying a blanket statement that the town should support. No, I said the support of a successful aquaculture. You have to have a place for the the people. You have to have a land base. You have to have access to to aquaculture from the land. That's what the town provides. So support in the sense that it's a physical support not necessarily like a policy support. I think that we we if this section is reworked then we can talk about responsibility but to spend time trying to figure that out right now I think is

Yep. So are we aligned on the concept of sort of broadening this to to kind of like local food production as part of the economy and supporting that as a including yeah okay so I think Suzan I added up here in local food production under the objective yeah I think you could take forests out I'm sorry which part forest the forest part can just come out Okay, got it. All right, I think we can gussy this one up a little bit more. Do you want to skip ahead or

you want to finish the the last two on here? That last one? Well, is that what this is doing with their greenhouse? Hugely important. You have Well, does Main Coast Heritage Trust still do that their farming program? Um, well, they don't it's the greenhouse isn't really about certainly those based occupations. is more about teaching individuals to become understand where their food comes from and and develop the ability to think about providing for yourself in that way.

What was the thinking when this was created last time around? Does anyone know they were limited on farms? It sounds like there was something that lost to them. I would I would say X made that create the but no education for you. The idea of keeping rural areas from being developed, let's keep for let's keep the woods there rather than mowing it down and putting in houses. That's that's what this language is by teaching them about farms and forests. So I mean I agree with that sentiment

as an effective tool for keeping rural areas from being developed. I I think if we can have that like land use discussion under the natural resources section and not under the economy and under housing. Yeah. Okay, that's a definitely a policy discussion and important but not does it really support the Oh, with this section. Okay. Yeah, it's like productive landscapes.

Um, objective four, investigate regional services to reduce expenses. So, it used to say investigate the possibility of providing additional services at a regional level as a means of reducing non-deserved expenses. So for this one, um, subscript consolidation. Well, for this one, so I' I'd say starting with objective four all the way through objective seven, like we're starting to get into objectives that might be better suited to other parts of the plan, which we can talk about. And for this one, if we are thinking about it in the context of economy, would it be better to reward it to be something different? And do you have a proposal in blue? Uh that wording. Nope.

Nope. Okay. Well, that is the proposal. Yeah. Investigate regional services to Oh, I didn't continue. Number five, too. Oh, that was number five. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. Chapter four.

I mean, but number four, we've already started talking about like regional um collaborative efforts to enhance the economy and some of those other things. And in this one, are we talking about um you know, okay, like what what I'm not sure what was meant by investigate regional miners, but like this is like a cost-saving measure like let's work with the League of Sand. Let's work with the other towns to buy sand.

Okay. I mean, that's the first one I could come up with or whatever like paper back in the day. Like let's go let's all get together and buy office supplies, right? You know. Yay. So, for this one, would it be um the things that I start to think about are what are the what are the regional initiatives like are there tourism things that the town participating in? Are there marine things that the town should be working on? Are there clusters on MDI that the town should be positioning themselves to be participating in? um let's support the airport as a regional hub for bringing in blah blah things like that. Well, that's the kind

but it's also Mount Dert has you participate in that. I guess my question here on objective poor I think objective four is actually an important objective maybe not in economic development. Um is this covered elsewhere that I just don't know about where the same thing is being said somewhere else? I think that the investigate the possibility of providing additional services as on a regional level as a means of reducing expenses would I would put that under fiscal capacity. Sure. Yeah. I also

but if you flip the question a little bit and say what are the other regional economic initiatives that we should be participating in then I would sort of want to think about it differently here. And again, I did not and so let's not pay attention to the suggested responsibilities because we did not look at that at all. But I would think about those questions a little differently

here. And what I think what you're saying, Alex, is yes, those that initiative to reduce expenses is like a fiscal capacity thing, not an economics thing. Well, let's say for instance, going back to something else, and this would the town put in a ton of money along with some money from Hancock County to get broadband service from Spectrum so we had universal coverage. But what we really want is Fidium fiber throughout and Bar Harbor has some and it goes down to Southwest Harbor. That the kind of thing where it could save the town money, improve services, would be economic if we all work together as an island and say, "Come on, Fidium, you got 10,000 people here year round. Let's do this st going town by town." Is would that be something in this level that would reduce expenses, improve services, and be a regional?

So, fitting Miss Diana was talking. I believe it is. Yes, those are you know what I think it goes to uh Aadia National Park campground where they have some services down on Seal Club right

when I look at this what I see is the kind of things where if we had different organizations around we'd be pursuing we'd be pursuing regional things like regional dispatch uh regionalizing police which hey we're doing um regional fire um Again, this is me putting on my old county hat where we did regional assessing, we did regional GA, we did a lot of those kind of regional combined services, um regional animal control. Um so to me, that's what this seems like it's speaking to, which makes it kind of I think it's something that at all times the town manager should be getting tasked with exactly that. like that's um it just feels very odd for it to be an economic estimate. That's that to me that's the part that's a little odd.

Yeah. Um but I and then I want everyone to specifically tell me to work with Hancock County on stuff. Well, we definitely want you on that buding committee, right? Yeah. But if we move it to fiscal capacity or or something, I regionalizing certain components doesn't always save money. It might be better in the long run for efficiency, public safety, all of that. So I think then the the wording has to be particularly there. Yeah. And obviously we would like to save money, but efficiency and public safety is also critical.

Would it be okay to move this part of the this conversation in the context of expenses and what the way this is phrased to the fiscal capacity section? Yes. Yes. Can I ask five as well? What's that? It's going to apply to number five. Yeah, I think there's a lot of the rest of them that probably apply in other locations, but just to pause on this objective for a second,

if we ask the question, how can the town in in the economic context? How can town of Mount Dert how should the town of Mount Dessert be thinking about its um position relationship in other areas um of the economy? And I know we have a we had a broader one earlier that we can start to think about but if I think about um just a brainstorm. So I wrote down you know uh we have to deal with tourism like as an island. We have to deal with the marine economy some ways as an island. We have to um if we think about MDI and the Aadia region as having are there economic clusters that the town wants to um understand and engage with to figure out how they how the town can position itself to participate in some of those um busters. um do we want to support for you know I'll use the airport and I'll say transportation as a as a bigger topic but you know there are um transportation through the airport um we want to support uh good road network so goods and services can actually get to the to the town we want to provide facilities for goods and services to like a um ferry or transportation we're facilitating those things to get to the island communities that that's there's economics involved in all of that stuff. So, do do we want to think about those things a little bit here? I think the question of how much the town wants to subsume its core functions under an umbrella that's managed by all towns somehow I think is an open question

and and I think it's better to focus on the efficiency and the effectiveness of these businesses. I mean from the point of view of the town um one of the big goals is is taxes and how can people afford their taxes to continue to stay here. And so one has to look and part at least in significant part at can we provide the services that we now need which are probably advant more advanced than they might have been in the past at in as efficient a way as possible. And that's um and I don't know how if we make it too broad like we need to work with Bahab on tourism like how do we actually meaningfully do that?

I'm tourism is a toughy so maybe um I'm not sure you're asking me to give you the bear on the box it seems to me. Sure. Let's think about the e I'm the way that my brain is working right now is thinking. So, first off, um I think when we talk about regional collaboration, we don't necessarily mean the town has to like give away its its ability to make decisions about what's good for the town. Like we in this context, it isn't even as as much as like we're going to um you know combine world government in other words.

Correct. We're not thinking about in this context we're not thinking about a MDI um municipality. Yeah. Right. we're talking about um I'll use the thing that sort of I I get back to is uh there are business clusters in this area.

Let's just say we we'll use um biio medical research we'll use the Jackson lab as an example. So, do you does the town as an economic development strategy want to engage with understanding um the economics of some of these clusters that we already know exist and try to figure out how it can position itself to participate appropriately in those economic clusters. What does that mean for the town of Mounturer? I don't know. But it's you have to engage in those conversations. you have to be a participant in those conversations to understand, oh, hey, we have uh some land use tools that we can put in place to uh support um X or Y for these organizations or we um we just invested a bunch of money in our um this is a crazy example, but we just invested a bunch of money in our water infrastructure and we know this business needs a bunch of water. So maybe we want to encourage that. The question I'm saying is at a high level goal I mean a high level strategy

because you're talking about the e economics do is it good? Should we not good? Should we put something in the plan that thinks about how the town participates more regionally in economic in the economics of the region because a it can benefit the town through um both of the things that were we talked about at the beginning jobs and services. We Yeah. On the other, this is probably a tangent, but on the other side of this, we probably do need to think about talking about the types of economic development we want to encourage. Sure. Because it has to be consistent with the town itself. So you don't want to encourage a big box store, right?

You don't want to encourage a data center. You don't want to encourage, you know, your problem name here. Um, so how do we frame what it is that we're trying to Yeah. So, how about considering the possibility of um the health care system on the island? The hospital needs more people to work there because we have, you know, the study they did. The biggest thing that was identified was safe and affordable housing.

Uh we know we want more medical people here. We have a nursing association. We have a medical center here. We've just lost the eye doctor who was here. He's no longer here. But we know that the hospital system needs more housing for people so that they can so does lab and so does Jackson Lab. Exactly. So in some ways providing that housing can help our local economy if we have more people living here can frequent restaurants and buy hardware stores from no here.

But it would it would benefit those institutions. Is that something that we should be looking at? Yep. I do think what's missing from the economic section is some is a is an important reference to housing. Even though we're going to have a housing section talked about more details, but yeah, even though that first language right off the bat said yep, it's all tied to housing. Well, we don't have an objective that deals with housing in economy. That's important. Yep. Not explicitly, but when you um I mean, we have to figure out Yeah. a way to interrelate it and it's okay if things overlap. I think that until we get through the housing section, we don't know if we actually need one in the economic section as well. Sure.

I mean, it need it needs to be there. Yeah. But should be referenced what you're getting at, right? We don't know what level of detail we need to make that cross reference. Yes. Yeah. I think that's fair. Does that sort of answer your where you were headed, Kathy? I mean, within housing, we could say explore possible collaborations with existing entities. Yeah. On Mount Desert Island who where housing is very have a demonstrated need for Yes. Yep. affordable housing. Can we try to zoom through the rest of these?

Yeah. So, I want to be mindful of time, but would it be okay if I took a stab at something along the lines of what I'm talking about and you guys could just say you're crazy and you know because I I heard you and I feel like there is an important there's at least the the statement to be seen and known that if something okay and so not to belabor all these other ones but I really think that they're sections that belong somewhere else and we could go through them if you want but uh So maybe we think about the objective and decide it whether or not it belongs somewhere else. So for the first one that's properly planning for future demands placed on the municipal resources. I think that belongs in the fiscal capacity section.

Y and if okay so I had another way to write it if it everybody felt strongly that it belongs here but just being care. Let's move on. All right. Number six um is ensure the town governance structure is adequate to meet the needs of the community over the next 10 years. I think we talk about that somewhere else. Although I do find the create a government's profess the bit about decide if we've got the right form of government is fascinating but yeah let's come back to it. Yeah. I wonder where that I'm really curious. Uh different times in 2009. Yeah. Uh let's see. Number seven would be ensure the recommendations to the county plan are addressed. I mean I think this is an implementation

discussion we will have an implementation section. Yeah. But I don't want to lose sight of that while we are going through these special. It should be in our opening paragraph. This is our mission. I think we're going to struggle with all the good ideas and then really honing in on okay, these are the things that we really want to focus on because that's always a struggle.

All right, so we have uh so the next steps on this one were we're going to tighten this up based on our comments and then next time we'll get into this last time and then we'll dive into housing. Okay? And everybody's okay with us taking a more um reactionary. So putting something on paper you guys can react to. Yeah, let's have a more reactionary. But again, we're both I we're just going to put ideas out there. No, I think it's more

because I just I'm very sens I don't take there's no pride in any of the things we put out there. I mean, we're very prideful of things. You're proud of them, but you don't have any um not it's not a hill you're going to die. No, no. This is your plan. You need to help us know. We need to discuss tonight or at the next meeting with a proposal of either increasing to two meetings a month or I heard you made the proposal of a 4-hour Saturday. Um I think we do need to discuss it. Yes. Okay. All right. Should we put that on the next meeting agenda or do you want to talk about it now? I'd say you're missing from this committee right now. Vincent,

Vincent. Um, Judy, you think it'd be good to meet more and finish sooner? So, it's Judy and um, three people missing. Yeah, probably next time. You know, sometimes we forget a lot month to month. Would it be helpful if Suzanne and I said, "Okay, if we are going to meet every three weeks, two or three weeks, then we just lay out the schedule a little bit." Yeah. I think if we're going to discuss it next time, we need to have some sort of a proposal in front of us. Okay. Um because we'll be April, the beginning of April. Yep. And if we want to try and get it done by the what goal of June.

Okay. It should be the committee's proposal. I'm happy to draft something. Great. Y uh any online comments or questions or thoughts? Nope. I wish I was there with you guys. I think it would be Yeah, I it's it's it's great to follow along and I've had moments where I was going to contribute but then it was said so I think it's going well but it is nicer to be in person. Great. Um, so we didn't really spend it. Uh, I think has everybody read Vincent's comments and so I just want to make sure some of those things are thought about and integrated

into the discussion. Right. Of the people that are here physically or by Zoom, is anyone opposed to doing a Saturday? Nope. Depends on which day, right? Depend. Yeah. For me, my schedule is ever changing. So I just will I I wish it was like every time I could say yes but I can't but so I wouldn't be the just say sharing that but I wouldn't be the deciding factor. Every day is a Saturday for me. It is not here though. Life is good. That's great. Keep sending the checks. Okay. Anything else? Motion to adjurnn.

Motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjurnn. Second. in favor. Great. Thanks everyone. Thank you. Um, Katrina, we both can I