Comprehensive Plan Committee - Regular Meeting

one way or another. Yes. Good. How are you? Good. Thanks. Are you going to join us to the big people table? Yes, I am. I do like my fortress of solitude. Who's going to bring the meeting to order? Just virtual. Hi, Chief. Hello. No. Hello. Um yeah. Um call the meeting to order at 502. Um and I don't remember seeing any minutes. Were there minutes with the LA with what

would I would make a motion to approve the minutes of the last meeting? They say were in the email. Okay. Um yeah, I think I sent notes since I sent out the Oh, yes. Yes. Remember? All right. So, there's a motion to approve. Is there a second? Yes. All right. Thanks, Kathy. And those in favor? I those opposed? Nay. All right, that passes. Um, is there any public in attendance? Oh, nope. All right. Public. Oh, sorry. Suzanne just pointed out. Uh, one thing that um I think you you emailed this around.

Yeah. Just we just wanted to make note of a fact that we got a letter from um a citizen or neighbor Kendall Davis about uh some concerns and comments that they wanted to make about the comprehensive plan. I think everybody has a copy, but we did bring paper copies in case anybody wants one. Do do we need to discuss that now or I don't know. We've never had public fun. I mean, I think as long as um I think we should discuss what the comment is. Yeah. We don't maybe need to like make any decisions, per se. Right. Right.

But we need to acknowledge it and Yeah. Of course. I marked it up, but I forgot to bring it with me. And Kendall Davis is not a complete stranger to the town. He um serves as the official liaison actually between the town and Acadia National Park. Great. And it um I think the gist of the comments were thinking more about uh commercial um districts in Otter Creek I believe

and um you know what some of the issues and implications around the current zoning and communises in that area are. I just thought it was interesting he has a bar repeal box. Yep. But it's probably more convenient for him than going to only because Seal Harbor is only open, you know, for 20 minutes a day kind of thing, right? Yeah. The Barber could be closer to his house. Yeah. Well, it is definitely definitely is a great cat.

I think Barber's probably the service area for for Creek and most for the most part. I really don't want to speak too much from the planning board perspective, but the planning board is always open to people trying to have a business. We just had someone downtown uh Seal Harbor, a psychiatrist, and she uh we okayed her to have a business there. But Seal Harbor has a commercial zone, right? I assume I but Otter Creek doesn't

Otter Creek has commercial stuff restaurant and you know none of it is zoned commercial. Nothing in Otter Creek is own commercial is it? No. There's um it's commercial of record. There's no down there's no like um like like Northeast Harbor commercial but there's yes in Mount Dert has mixed zoning even in its sort of residential districts. So there are commercial uses that are allowed. But I think that the general point is when we get to um you know particularly the future land use discussion, it would be would be interesting to take a look at that and see how right

we think about um you know Otter Creek and this was some we we did have some comments similar to this in our village planning meeting when we at Otter Creek too. So it's it's definitely worth the look. When I lived in Bar Harbor on Route 3, I was allowed quite a ride wide amount of commercial usage on my property because I fronted Route Three. Think about the only thing I couldn't do is have a used car lot. There are opportunities, but I I guess there's not any so-called commercial zoning up here. I mean, no, there's no uh

residential

village commercial districts in Otter Creek, which would be like the areas of your town where you theoretically want like the densest concentration of commercial development. But even in village commercial, you know, we'd have to really take a look at the allowed uses table. That's the most informative way to think about it. So when we think about a a village commercial district or even a um that most of that area is village residential 2 and village residential one like what are the things that are allowed in those districts and like I said earlier Mount Dert it's not like a just because you're in a residential district the only thing you do is residential it's like the the scale or intensity of the type of commercial use that would be allowed in those areas. So, it's kind of interesting to think about.

Well, and especially since there are a lot of businesses along there. Yep. And have been. And so, it just doesn't make sense to say it's completely non-commercial. It's only residential. So, even a store. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it would be interesting to say, well, here's what's there and if does the zoning actually reflect the things that are there,

right? and and that's sort of what you you know the the beginning part of that evaluation you know and or if those things are still there you know does it make sense that they're allowed or not allowed if if indeed they're not allowed what's the scale of that and some other things to think about there like you know this is a pretty short corridor but doesn't mean you automatically want to have you know commercial the whole corridor you just have to think about it a little differently and to build on that. Is it really our job to figure that out 100% during this comp plan process or is it our job to recommend that the town go through a review a more lengthy process to figure it out? There you go. So,

right, I think this person is raising the point that there's been a um stretching of what counts as home occupation in this area. Yep. that

um great well I think this is great we'll keep this on hand certainly as we go through each of these um areas we will be thinking about implications for future land use and then we actually start to dive into does the future land use map need to change in some way but our this you know we can certainly go back and look at our economy policies as well. Yep. Keeping this in mind. And I know Vince you had raised that in some discussions previously.

So all that said, um I think that was the extent of the public comments that we've got so far. Okay, great. Thank you. Um the reminder of the revised committee schedule. Yes. Is that just I think we again hopefully everybody got a copy of that last time around. Right. We do have committee different more than just one committee meeting a month and um I can't remember when our next one is. It is all on the town um website now though.

Yep. Yeah. And I think everybody received your the email with the with the new dates. Yes. One of you sent me a correction or a missing Katrina maybe. Yeah. Yeah. It was in June. Yeah. But hopefully we won't need it. Yeah. Right. Right. I think we sort of overbuilt the schedule for the just in case. Yeah. Let's get it done. All right.

Yeah. Moving to housing policy review. So, uh, we made edits to the housing, um, policy section and circulated that based on the comments that we had, the good, thoughtful discussions that we had last time. Um, I think today we want to spend a little bit of time just making sure we captured everything. And then um as we're doing that um just to make sure we have uh the who and the when piece and at some point um we have this column called tag and I think that's um where we might go through and say this is other areas of the comp plan where this fits in. Yeah, the tag means in in my mind it's sort of like you know when you create like a relational database or just like how are these all interrelated to each other? Eventually all the policies will end up in a big spreadsheet and we'll be kind of looking at them all together and so so many of them are interrelated. You know sometimes recreation and transportation or um economy and recreation or housing and economy for example. It's it's great to see them under their sort of respective umbrella headings, but it's also important to look at how they're deleted. So, this is a clean copy. Um, and we haven't made any edits to it really. Um, although Susan and I did start going through and made a few the who's comments, but perhaps we can just kind of take the next half hour or so and just run through it.

I'm going to bring it up on the screen also for our viewers. Just bear with me. And as you're doing that, Suzanne, I'm just going to keep talking. But as you as you everybody will recall, like we we asked the big question, which is like what is the problem that we're trying to solve for housing? And we came up with the one goal, which is housing for all incomes and life stages. Does that still resonate with everybody? Sure.

Yeah. Um and then we I think we narrowed it down to kind of three four basically um objectives to to try to get to that goal. Uh the first one was increasing the number of year- round homes to support a year-round economy. And and I wondered on that about not just economy but community. Yep. Economy and community. Yeah. Does anybody want the written version of that? by the way. It's okay. Everyone good with that? Uh addition community.

Yeah. Year around economy or year round community or both? Both.

Um I'm going to keep reading through and do please do for these ones. Please do what Kathy did and just stop. Do it yourself. Just in the effort of uh just getting through it. I'm just going to keep going until you tell me to stop. Does that work for everybody? Perfect. Great.

All right. So, decrease the conversion of year-round homes to short-term rentals. Good. Um maintain the scale of existing year-round neighborhoods to ensure housing opportunities for year-round community members. Okay. Um and last one is increase the supply of rentals attainable to year-round community at various income levels. Are we missing anything? Jeffals. So

yeah a little slow there. Sorry. If we think about um you know when we think about the data and we think about everything you know does this seem like it really captures the objectives that we want to try to get to that's really the bigger question that and do you feel like in order to achieve these are the objectives you need to pursue to achieve that goal which is so like wonderful and aspiration right and that's a good thing right um can there might be a simpler way to say number three that's like a little more accessible,

right? Not sure what it is, but yeah, I feel like it's a little bit like convoluted. I just said, right? Or maybe a little like um if I if I was less familiar with the conversations we were having, I might because I remember when we talked about it, there were some specific instances that people mentioned that this is speaking to. Yeah. like the change over of Silven Way, you know, city community changing over significantly because those parcels are so small and just maintaining that's what you mean by maintaining the scale of those small parcels. Yes. They're in upper and lower Dunar Road would be the same, right? Yeah.

And I guess the implication is that the smaller parcels means theoretically smaller homes, which means theoretically less expensive homes. somewhat hope. Yeah. Right. And I think maybe scale for sorry like young families or people who are starting out. I don't know. Sorry. Go on. Also scale depends on the neighborhood you're talking about. And so we're not making a judgment call on any particular neighborhood at at this phase. But the genesis of the conversation, the genesis of this was that conversation. Mhm. I think we're

What about something like maintain or preserve the scale of existing yearround neighborhoods to um ensure housing for yearround residents? Is that too concise? Say it again. Well, yeah. Maintain or preserve. I sort of like preserve the scale of year-round housing neighborhoods to ensure housing for year-round residents. The problem with that, that's a great idea, but Silven City has already started to switch. Can we date this back to Earth back to That's the problem already is that the summer families have already moved into

already starting to buy the neighboring properties in Teron. Yeah. Okay. Part of our discussion last time was finding the right balance and we're tipping over in one direction now and I'm not sure. So you're right maintain is it we're in a bad place to maintain. How do we reverse or is it do we need to mention and include the word balance in here somehow? What are we trying to balance the seasonal to year round population? Is it something just about like it's something about the lot sizes, right? Is that what we need to be focusing on?

No, I was not thinking of lot sizes. That's what I was taking away from it. It's good to be clarifying. Yeah. Yeah. I'm thinking balance in population. No, I know that. Yeah. But I mean, is that called redlinining? Yeah. Is it?

So, I think we're also I mean, we're kind of talking about different history. We're talking about two different things. One is trying to find goals and strategies to make sure that we have a a yearround population which really is covered by some of the other goals. And then the thing that we are also talking about is the it's really the scale of neighborhoods. And so what Katrina was talking about if I'm just reflecting is when you go to Silven City for example, it's basically it forget about who lives there. It's composed of small lots and small homes. And what's happening over time is it's becoming bigger homes and bigger lots. And so when we think about combine like neighborhood scale, the the challenge that we're having is trying to figure out which words to use to put in a comp plan that aren't things like what's currently in the like if I'm remembering the conversation right when there's standards in the ordinance that are very subjective. And so we we're just trying to like how do how do we articulate the thing that you're talking about,

right? That's how do we not make mansion a street? Yeah. Well, how do we articulate that in in a comp plan objective? I think I mean I still think you're on it because this then heads over towards planning board which is provisions against combining with lots. Correct. You have to have restrictive covenants in all the deeds or something. There's there's there's not a good way to well do they?

Yeah. I mean I think that's a really good perspective and that might be the restrictive covenants might be dimensional in some ways but they might also be who own who can own the lot if you have year-round covenants on your properties or developments. And then the town's responsibility is really to say in this area we know that this is a small lot neighborhood and we are going to create dimensional standards that um require that to stay the way it is basically. Yeah. You can't combine lots.

So one of the the first strategy under I know we're just looking at objectives on the um screen. I'll scroll down real quick. Uh the first strategy under that objective is establish where appropriate neighborhood districts with maximum lot sizes and other dimensional standards to maintain the scale of existing neighborhoods and support year-round living. And so it I guess I have a couple questions. Does that feel like it gets at what we're trying to describe? And do we want to say the scale of historically yearround neighborhoods or something? I don't know. I don't think that it's kind of Yeah.

Yeah. I would I think for this particular strategy I would like to objective. I would like to think about it as a not necessarily a year round versus seasonal use of the lot, but really it's the dimensional it's the the scale of the neighborhood, the dimensional feeling of the neighborhood that you're really getting at. Well, can I say then for for three I I did not take scale to be equivalent to lot size. Okay. So I'm wondering if that you know maybe I'm the only one um but maybe maintain the you know lot sizes existing year round neighborhoods instead of scale.

So when you think about scale what are you thinking about? I'm thinking about well because the next thing was neighborhoods. I'm thinking of neighborhood scale like so the city is that's I'm thinking that's scale not the individual lot sizes within it. So when you think about a neighborhood in terms of scale, what kinds of things are you thinking about? Are are you talking about the neighborhood as a geography? Like this neighborhood is called I don't know what you call it like dumbar upper like dumb that's a neighborhood. You're talking about the scale of the neighborhood or the scale of the

When I first read number three Uhhuh. It did not speak to me that we're talking about lot sizes, right? That's all you're thinking about the size of the neighborhood. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And but you're right that the specifics under objective three do relate to lot size. I mean it's it's more clear when you get into a strategy. Is it like to reframe it? It's like ensure housing opportunities for year-round community members by maintaining the scale of lots in existing year-round neighborhoods. Yes, like that.

I don't I just would like to ask the question like when there are other ways to think about scale. So you don't have to just say we don't have to just say lot size. So it's what I'm asking the question about is when you think about scale of a neighborhood, what kinds of things are you thinking about? You know what I mean? It's like you could build you could say the scale of the neighborhood parenthesis i.e. D you know you could have we could have a list of things that we're kind of thinking about for scale but lot size might be one thing but it could also be um like I think what Suzanne was saying was scale like the the boundaries of um the Dunbar roads are from X to Y that might be one thing I think that was just a point of confusion for Kathy

but I'm trying to figure out what is it that she thinks about when she thinks about scale because it's it's actually kind of a Well, not to um put words in Katrina's mouth, but when she brought this up at the last meeting, some of what I was thinking about with um respect to scale is um the character of the neighborhood. Um and I mean that's not really quantifiable, but um that's one component of scale. I mean, there's always the density and size, too, but um I sort of felt like the conversation was around trying to sort of preserve that character, not necessarily the characters of the neighborhood, but um just, you know, like what what Silven City has been.

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to get at. How do we otherwise describe character, quantify that? You know, I think of scale as let's take another another neighborhood. um rock and road that used to be very yearround dominant and has transformed significantly into more seasonal use.

The houses have been enlarged, upscaled, etc. That's I think that that's on a different scale than what we've seen in Silven City until the, you know, million-dollar house went in there. So that kind of that's what I'm thinking of as scale is not necessarily the dimensions of the lot size but like the whole the feeling of it. Is there a physical component to it or a lot I Okay. Yeah. It has to like lead into something that's very signable and legally defensible. I think this is why I was stopped by that. like that scale.

I guess the way I'm thinking about it and again it could be completely wrong and doesn't need to influence any of this but that's why I was trying to break it into two different things like there's there are objectives for yearround community which brings a certain scale to a neighborhood and then there are physical factors which bring certain scale to a neighborhood and they're not mutually exclusive they're al they work together. So can we have two goals? One that deals with the first goal deals with the year round side. So the objective the first objective deals with the year round community

and other objectives also. And then there's another objective that deals with the physical characters of a neighborhood that I'm not sure if I'm making sense. I might be making too much of it. Just caught up on one word. It's not worthation. I really use that one distinction. If it's not clear enough for you, it's, you know, for other people, too. Yeah, I agree. So, I think that's the struggle. Sort of like getting back to the regulatory side of it. What does character mean? Why it's so problematic in an ordinance? But our opportunity is to say this is what we're kind of thinking about.

I think that might lead to the aesthetics committee being formed. Like if we start saying character of a neighborhood, right? Yeah, Vince, we I think you're right. And that's why we had character last time and we took it out and we were like, let's not use that word. Yeah, is fair change. So, and again, I may be overthinking it a lot, which is always a possibility for me. So,

so the first one's about the number of year round homes just across the board. Second one's very specifically about trying to slow or decrease the conversion of homes to lodging. And then the third one is about um it's something about the pattern, you know what I mean? I guess when I first brought this up, I was thinking, how about since it is about lot sizes, how about maintaining the existing lot sizes of yearround neighborhoods to ensure housing opportunities? And aren't we helping to ensure we're not necessarily We can't ensure it, right?

We can't acquire it, right? We're helping. No, I don't think so. Those are called ghettos. No. Well, in the interest of time, yeah, maybe Suzanne and I could take all of this conversation and then we can go sit back and try to word smith this a little bit more just to add some detail and whether or not it makes, you know, we may come up with some other tweaks that we can get back to. But I I I really do think it's a it was a good that's why I'm ask keep asking the question because I think it's important to I hope we can

words will matter. Words matter and you know we're here talking about it tonight and then five years from now somebody's going to be like what do you mean by scale? It has to be really clear. Yeah. Makes sense. So I'm glad you asked that. And to me it's Yeah. It meant one thing and obviously to and I think it's good to think it think it through. It's interesting because I live off a street where there's a home that's relatively new in regards to the street that is totally out of scale. Mhm. physically physically out of scale with the rest of the street. Yep. Because it like has larger amount. It's covering the lot more or because the architecture is different. Yes. Yeah.

I mean they they have maximized every square inch of that parcel and then some. And it's really it stands out. So it's not just the size of the lot, it's like the cut lot coverage and the lot coverage. Yep. And also to to balance out, you know, Vince's point, which is like we don't necessarily We're not necessarily advocating for like a design review committee to make sure everybody It's a lovely home. It's just in the wrong spot. Yeah. It's in a spot that's out of character with the other homes that were there. I know. Yeah. Everything changes,

man. I just think we're going to see more and more maxed out lots. Right. Which gets to expect one right next door to lot coverage so low so we can have you know more units a lot. If you look at cutting off your nose despite your face which is why you got to do what you got to do. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Do we want to go through the Let's maybe Yep.

through these um strategies under each one. or or you know we can look at them quickly and if anyone has additional um concerns you know certainly say word. So objective one increase the number of year round homes to support a year on economy and community. First one is amend and periodically update land use regulations. Um, second one, create a committee or working group to engage with neighboring towns of the state to fill out different property taxes based on Europe versus seasonal. Susan, do you want to fill out who and the when as we're doing this or do you were you planning on going back to do that?

No, no, no. Let's do that now. So, I think we just added planning board and ongoing was already the strategy. So, yeah.

That good. And I don't know about you all if you want us to like go ahead and think about these tags, but I feel like all of the housing strategies should be also cross referenced to economy that they support economy goals. Um, and the second one, create a committee or working group to engage with neighboring towns. We have select board. Um, and this is where we would have to decide like I put up here, uh, sorry to scroll around a bunch. Uh, time frames are ongoing, which means like it's either something that's already happening and the town will continue to do it, or um, short-term, this is the typical convention that we use, but it doesn't have to be this way. Short-term 1 to 3 years, medium-term 3 to five, long-term five plus. It's a 10-year plan. Theoretically, you probably will not rewrite it again in 10 years because you'll all be like, I'm tired of planning.

Is it so good we just read? But um so is are those time frames okay with you and then keep those in mind as we go through. So for this one, create a committee or working group to engage with neighboring towns to explore sort of property or tax related ways um to increase the number of your own homes. You have a couple of question marks in that second one. Yeah. Are we going to keep question marks in there? Um

do you think this is more of a short term, a medium term? to 1 to 3 years. To me, short-term is like kind of immediate. Like you adopt the plan, the town sits down and says, "Okay, like this is what's our on our work plan coming up." And um so do we have to put a timeline on them? Yes, we do. Actually, we tried that once before and they got kicked it back. So, we definitely put ongoing on that. Yeah, that's a windmill we'll be tilting at forever and ever. Um, and then it should be done through MMA. That's that's the the group that they literally pay to do that lobbying for us. So, okay.

So, the who would be select board and MMA? Select board directing to MMA. Okay. Is there such a thing as like a um short-term and ongoing? Yes. Because I guess if we say ongoing, it feels like it may be one of those things that isn't as prioritized because there are so many ongoing. I'm not I don't feel strongly about this, but just thinking about what our system is. Yeah. If you put short-term there or like some communities will even have another category which is like immediate, right? And those are the things that are like one, but um that communicates that like it's something you haven't done yet, you need to do it and then keep doing it.

Does that make sense? So, it's totally fine to write it like that. I guess that's what I would suggest. Great. Um, ensure that public infrastructure is sufficient in growth areas to support additional housing. Right now, it says select board ongoing. Could I could we add that might be public works to that too?

Yes. Yeah. Okay. Um, evaluate and where appropriate require workforce housing components and larger residential developments to inclusionary requirements. This is one we sort of hemmed and hot over maybe didn't totally decide on last time, but we kept it in there. And I think the the idea is that we don't typically see housing development at the scale where this is this type of approach is usually used and found beneficial. So even though I mean you can still have it in there. My vote is to scrap it. I think it's too ambiguous where where it says where appropriate. Well, who decides that? And then to what level is it required?

Other thoughts? Well, it would be planning board and it would be written into the code based off of the size of the development. Right? So those would be pretty we're going generic and asking them to create something specific. But I also agree there aren't vast tracks of the town of Mountur left undeveloped um that are suddenly gonna have some monster development.

Vince, would you feel better if we got rid of the word evaluate and were appropriate if we those words were eliminated and just require workforce housing components? That wouldn't be appropriate if they didn't have enough units available, right? You're going to make them do 50% of their development or what if they're only building three houses? I don't know. It just it seemed like now you have larger in there as another subjective term. You'd have to quantify that.

Yeah. And it could be something where it's more of an instruction to the planning board to say um you know evaluate tools or something. It's something about like trying to do a little bit more thinking about this type of approach. So, I don't know like non your experience with other communities if they have like a PUD zone or like where I used to work in Montgomery County, Maryland, we developments came in through standard method or what was called optional method. And so if you were doing an optional method development, it meant like you could get density bonuses, but then in exchange you had to like I mean some some of these are humongous developments. So it was like build a new elementary school or a park or provide um you know 15% of the units are at you know 80% AMI or um you know the list goes on other public amenities. So that's a that's a very like um normal tool in places where we have development happening at a higher

volume level. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. There are some sizable tracks of land um you know off of Pretty Marsh Road or elsewhere in Ssville that um people tried to sell our organization like we're going to focus on where we are right now but um we see people coming in builders developers coming in. It's like they're interested in doing stuff. So, it's not completely out of the realm of possibilities that somebody might come in and say, "Yeah, downtown's too busy. Let's start building bigger houses in these, you know, currently wooded areas." Um, it's a it's a possibility. And if we never use it, then we never use it. But,

um, never say never. It could be something like, you know, evaluate tools, um, like inclusionary requirements, development incentives, or contributions to a housing fund or something like that.

Yeah, I would say that's what I was just writing down. Would would it be we're we're actually so the in this case, we're kind of building it backwards from the who part. And so we in this case we want to basically direct the planning board to develop ordinance tools to do the uh such as inclusionary zoning or inclusionary requirements, development incentives or contributions to a housing fund for the purpose of, you know, attainable housing.

Something like that. Is that sort of like reframe it a little bit based on who we're directing it to? We we want them we don't want to be so ambiguous here. We actually what we like the idea is having tools available like that. We want the planning board to develop those tools with more spec specificity than we're going to be able to do here. Yeah. And something that really makes sense for this area. She could be very specific. Yeah. Because we will we'll we will end up debating endlessly the what's the what's the what is a large subdivision? Yeah. That's what we want them to do. I came from that land. Really? Montgomery County, Maryland. 7,000.

Good stuff. That's a big big one. So maybe Suzanne, we can we can uh take a whack if can we take a whack at revising that. Is that all right with everybody? And then you guys can, you know, see whether or not you like it any better or less and we just at a certain point we can scrap it or not. I I don't think it's too bad because if somebody does come in with something like that and it's very possible that you know we need to have some sort of control to have a say in what they do

right so what I'm hearing is let's the the concept of having those tools available is interesting to the committee more or less but we need to add some more less ambiguity in the language and more directive toward the planning board to actually develop the tools Does the planning board currently have discretion to deny a subdivision?

If they follow the rules, you know, put that's put out, then it's we can't really deny. And that's when lawsuits come about. If you follow the law, which most people do, the way things are written, you know, sometimes planning board's hands are tied to what they can and cannot do. You know, as people say, you know, don't tell me what I can or can't do with my property. It's it's a tough one. And and like you said, you know, we need to I don't know if the planning board or who or the state could give some guidance on that. But we only have so many tools in our box to use.

Sure. Yep. There's a lot of models out there for the things that we're talking about. Great. Uh time frame time frame. Yeah. When better term, ongoing. Yes. could see that being an you know continuing. Yeah. Great.

So can I also just add as we're going through this if everybody is like I think let's not hesit let's not think too much about the wens if every if we have a bunch of short terms and medium terms or long terms. It's it's okay. We're going to like go back through this at the end and be like oh my god if everything is shortterm how are we going to do any of it? And then we're going to have to make hard choices. Mhm. But let's we don't need to get them for the future and I we just need like a first cut at it. Yeah. Okay. Support the efforts of local and regional housing coalitions in addressing uh affordable and workforce housing needs. So I did add in the tag it's this is a state required strategy. So um I feel like I don't want to speak for you all but this seems like an ongoing to me. Yep. Yep.

And I wondered about the next one because they seem quite similar. Yeah. Are we affordable or attainable or is it the same? Uh you see the music. Do we have some new names for some of that stuff or is that their new names? I know that's been here is required by the state though, right? Like pretty much everything we've gotten these four, we're saying it the way the state needs us to say it.

Yeah, it's I wish I had like a more precise answer for you. Sometimes they are really insistent about things being verbatim and then sometimes like communities are already writing strategies that essentially say the same thing and they check it off as having met that. What we tend to do is just put it in there verbatim unless you all feel like there's something some way to say it that's uh achieving the same action but it's more tailored to your community. You know what I mean? Yeah. But if that's the word they like if if the formula is the word that that works for them then I think so.

Right. I think also what you're getting at Alan is are we using attainable are we using affordable? Are we using workforce? And essentially they can mean all the same thing. But did it I feel like the committee had leaned towards attainable. Yeah. And by that we mean not just cost attainability but other factors, right? Or are we talking about cost? We just are using a friendly like a less offensive less offensive word. Um, so like maybe we're using the word attainable and try to just like sub it in wherever we have said affordable unless it feels like this is just going to be an annoying administrative thing to navigate going. I can also ask them.

So it could beable everywhere besides here easily do a find and replace the state come right right maybe they will learn something um any sense of the time frame there? So, it's ongoing. Yeah. And it's long-term and it's short. I mean, it's forever and always. Okay. Kathy, were you suggesting that these are similar and should be combined? Yes. But do they need to be discreet?

I think they do because one of them is telling because remember they're telling all the towns this. They're like, if you don't have a committee, make a committee. If you aren't currently working with your hopefully existing regional housing coalition, please do that. So, there are kind of separate things. You could have a committee that doesn't work isn't working with the regional coalition or you could have a town that's like talking to the island Housing Trust or whomever and they but then you don't have a committee working on housing.

Got it. The next one is they do really like to it to be verbatim. Seek to achieve a level of at least 10% of new residential development built or placed during the next decade be affordable. We can say maybe attainable is the word here. And what's the definition of affordable? Yeah. And to whom? Right. Is a depends on program you're talking about. They're both kind of subjective. Yeah. Um because 10% also seems so low if we're trying to achieve balance. I mean and I Yes, we'll base everything on Crookie Drive from now on.

The next one, uh designate the location in growth areas where mobile home parks are allowed pursuant to this state law. You know, I do wonder if they're talking about I mean, because they always use the word affordable and they want to make sure 10%. Are they talking about affordable for low income? Are they talking Are they being very specific about a certain population income level? Would the state have a number? Can we find that? Um, yeah. I I can find that out because even what we're trying to do isn't going to be affordable to everybody.

It's very relative, right? And so is it relative to like I I want to say it has to do with the median household income in the area, but um it's all relative to that, but are they talking about 50 to 80% of median income or 120% of median income? So it's it's not specific enough to say we're going to meet that level of 10%. Right? And you know I I could imagine them saying well if your community feels like you want to define that further for what that means to you then that makes sense and they would probably support that.

Yeah. But the reality is there's some multiple levels of what we're talking about and that's why it does get confusing. So if you're talking about main housing programs, then that's like a the level of affordability is based on a lower percentage of the area median income. And we're also talking about like where's that middle ground? Yeah. Will there be we can look into that glossery of key terms? That's a great idea because we have that like little cheat sheet on the time frames like if you That's a great idea. Like that. Thank you for that suggestion. Um, is there a location where mobile home parks are currently allowed within zones considered part of the growth area? Yes, I think they are already allowed.

That's ongoing. I think that was just been rewritten. Yeah. Great. Okay. We can't not allow them. The next one, um, decrease the conversion of yearround homes or rentals. The first strategy, monitor and evaluate the impacts of short-term rental fund availability. Um, eg rental registration programs and periodic policy review. This is one where we were like, how do we get at the need for the data, but there also recognize that there's um been discomfort, resistance,

resistance.

Yeah. to to having even just a registration not even considering you know a capping or whatever limitation. So, do people feel comfortable? Pardon me. I will encourage people to be um Oh dear, the ad block thing popped up. At my end, at least I I encourage you to be like it's okay to, you know, put stuff out there and see what reactions you receive, right? So, if you're feeling nervous about suggesting things, that's okay, right? This isn't the like obviously has to go out and be reviewed by the public and we get feedback and so on, but um does this level of detail or whatever assertiveness feel comfortable to people?

I think we it isn't but I think in a way we have to otherwise we're not going to get any information. I think we could avoid a lot of conflict if we just said voluntary in there, a voluntary rental survey program.

Um, as another, for example, as another EG. Is that what you're saying? Because that to me that's a different thing. I just think that the rental registration program phrase is going to throw up red flags to anybody that reads this and remembers what vote we went through last year. Hopefully we can try doing that again and hopefully sometime pass it.

So I think that's an important comment, right? Because it could be that there are people who their minds have changed or you know theoretically if we're we're like here's the data that we have in our inventories and here's the key findings and here's what we think we should do about it and you know if you're kind of telling that story then suggesting this doesn't seem like wildly out of left field. Yeah. I I might be insensitive or like I'm not as tuned in to the politics, but I feel like this is very reasonable and it's not stating how the monitoring or evaluation will look. So that could make somebody uneasy or it could be a positive, Alex. I'm reading your face.

This is a big one, right? I know. It's exciting because essentially Lucas, the question here to everyone and this is really think hard about the answer to this one is do does the comprehensive plan direct the town to take another stab at the short-term rental ordinance is really what we're kind of getting at here. Absolutely. just and I I think there's a majority here, although not a unanimous piece on it. I'm going to stay back because I do expect sooner or later we're going to be tasked with doing it again. It's just a matter of when. But it's a big question. This is this is

you want to hit on the one spot in all of this. I think this is it right here. Um

yep, I agree. when you get to the town meeting part of this, there'll be a few strategies that are going to cause some conversation and have implications for the whole plan. So, just yeah, I but I think it's an important discussion. I'm wondering I because I think even if you took out the eg rental registration programs, there could still be a strategy of monitoring and evaluating the impacts of this conversion. You could look back at the home sales for the last 5 years and say who owns it now and how are how's it being used? And that does not necessarily require a rental registration program,

but you would still get enough data to say this is this is what's happening. You get some data. You get some data and and it could be it could tell a story that we should all pay attention to.

Um but we could pull out rental registration program as a whole separate strategy. Well, so some communities would who are feeling, you know, super feisty, the the committee might say like the strategy is like require this or, you know, that's like an that's the like one end of the spectrum in terms of being like really direct and aggressive. Yeah. And I'm just worried because I think that the monitoring and evaluating is critical and if it was going to be shut down because of the registration program, I wouldn't want that to happen. Let's pull that out of there, but let's do the monitoring.

So, so what you're saying is this would that we're not telling you specific or even giving you an example of how to monitor and evaluate. We just want you to do that. Monitor and evaluate. Monitor and evaluate could be one thing or it could be something totally different. Monitoring. Yep. Collect data.

So you feel Go ahead. Well, I was going to say, you know, kind of to what um Alex had said, we're not directing the town to do this, but uh to um you know, bring this forth again, but we're saying monitor and evaluate so that once they do that, they might come to the conclusion that we do need to go back to the town's people with some sort of um you know, program for short-term rentals. The way I would read that, Heather, is that we're directing to the town, you know, whatever time frame that we that everybody decides to actually monitor and evaluate, but we're not telling you how to do that. So, it could very it could be

that the only way we can monitor and evaluate is to do a registration program. Okay? Required. It could be going to um take a softer touch and Alex is going to direct um somebody on town staff to to sweep the internet and figure out how many short-term rentals there are. There's like a there's a bunch of different ways to do that. And what

I think you said it more concisely and and um than what I was thinking or saying. Yeah. What I hear Kathy say is, and I don't know how other I just want to gauge how other people feel about it, is that taking that term registration out of the out of the language is better than risking this particular directive to torpedo that whole section of the ordinance? Is that just a paraphrase? Do you feel like the way it's written now would receive enough backlash?

Yes. or and or invite a com a conversation. I'm not trying to be naive about another healthy conversation about what it means. So I'm trying to imagine if there's individuals or groups of individuals that would be really triggered by this. Would they be able to join like a conversation we're having right now? So it's like okay if the registration is like a bridge too far are you know how do we do that monitoring and data collection in a way that people can live with because the end of the day like that's the problem one of the main problems you're trying to figure out or solve right um and that just look at like Bar Harbor is essentially like paying huge sums of money to subscription programs to like you know like surveillance level technology on short-term rentals like um don't quote me on that, but like you know looking at like you know scraping right scraping the internet like um you know and and doing a ton of sort of um enforcement all that kind of thing which is like you know it's an unfortunate situation to be in but they're they're they're creating these policies and then people are responding to them in a certain way and then they have to respond to how they're responding and so on. this is where it's let them. So,

does that make sense? The question I'm asking, like does does leaving it like this like invite a good conversation? I don't think it would be a healthy conversation. No, I don't either. I think it would be ugly. Yeah. And we've had it twice already. Yeah. And then people are kind of violent about it. It's scary. Yeah. I don't mind the ugly because I think we have to do something about it. It's a serious problem.

It is. But I also think that we can achieve what we need to without having the ugliness of of a formal registration program by scraping data. Look and looking at it, you know, let's look at just a time period and but but I am probably naive in terms of how much effort or how much cost that would be. Yeah, this is one of those

it's really hard. And like I I don't live here. I mean I obviously work on this topic and talk about it, but I just feel like that people are so um you know it's been it's been a a b major battle. There's some scars a lot of passion about this because you're taking away it's felt perhaps by some that you're taking away their livelihood. the way they're maintaining this home that they want to keep for their kids is so that they you know so and and Yep. It it turns into a business for a period of time but at the end of the day is it the homestead is maintained. Yeah. And retained.

Yeah. I get I I guess what I'm saying is like how do we um keep talking about it in a way where people aren't saying it was violent or scary or um you know like how do you keep having like a productive conversation about it? So, um, do you feel like taking out the EG parenthesis here is the answer? And do you feel like that there needs to be another additional strategy or is that to Well, I I think that the way to have the healthier conversation is to get the facts and present the facts. That can't be disputed, you know, um because then it's a it's a clearer issue. Here's what happened. This number of houses used to be owned by year-round people. Now those houses are, you know, seasonal use andor short-term rental. This many houses have been taken off the market for these for the yearround community. Those are facts.

What happens when the facts are like, you know, 80% of the houses are short-term rentals? I guess it's sort of like true. So, first just to add to all this, it isn't it is a tough one, but I think um there's just as in hindsight there's and having been involved in the discussions in town, there's probably some um opportunity to reboot the conversation in a more facilitative way and that's something that is a strategy to talk about. But what I would reflect on is that you're already saying in your second objective under housing that you want to decrease the conversion of year-round homes to short-term rentals. So, that's a pretty powerful statement.

And then secondly, you're saying the first thing in order to do that, the first thing you need to do is monitor and evaluate the impacts of short-term rentals on available year round homes through data collection. Even if we take out that, then thirdly, could we add it? Could we add a strategy underneath that one that says facilitate um you know I'm not going to do good with the words um but um could we just add something like facilitate uh the healthy conversation of this issue in order to achieve you know objective number two something we can word smith that but something like we need to add a what we need to do is have a strategy where we can have the healthy conversation

about this topic because it's not just about um you know your livelihood. It's also about your community and like how do we we have to have a better conversation about that and there's always going to be like some winners and losers in the perceived winners and lo losers in the conversation but like a strategy and it doesn't have to be a long-term or ongoing strategy. It could be like a short-term, you know, whatever, whatever timeline. But you know what I'm saying? Like, so maybe we need to add a strategy that um is really the conversation. So it's directing the town to facilitate the conversation once we understand what the data is. Something like that.

I I think that if we just take out the parentheses from that first one and do the monitoring and then you you can have a separate fight over what the things are going to be. Yes. make it a separate strategy, right? Whether it's whether it's explore the opportunities to set caps as Bar Harbor does or you know starting off with a registration program which is not setting caps. Yeah. Um like do the hard things separately. Maybe it's facilitate productive conversations about the tools needed to balance

blah blah blah something like that. Could you just say monitor and evaluate the impact of the loss of year round housing through data collection? Because not every house that's sold that's year round goes short-term rental. It might go seasonal, which is a whole different kettle of fish, right? So you what you're what I think we're trying to say is this house has always been lived in with a husband and wife and three kids and now they've sold they've moved away and the house has now been bought by the next family who's going to be here for Memorial Day to Columbus Day. They're only going to be here for that time period. That's not a short-term rental, right?

It's a seasonal use, which is different because it's not putting kids in the school department in the winter time. It's very different, right? It's not a hotel. I bet the I bet the parents would disagree by the end of the summer. Yeah. But and both of those things have an effect on yearround community. Yes, they do. Yeah. Because I do think we're trying to capture both of those. All right. So, let's go back to this first one. So, Gina, you're suggesting take out um monitor and evaluate the impact of the loss of yearround housing through data collection.

Oh. Uh how about the transition of year round housing to either seasonal or because then it's I think loss is subjective and I think you have to put seasonal in there so it doesn't seasonal blow up everybody. Exactly. And and yeah, taking out the word short-term rental. I thought I thought you just both of them. I thought you were going to add both of them. I was getting rid of short-term rental. Yeah, exactly. But but seasonal would capture I mean, as long as we understand how how these properties were being used, could we have a subcategory in there? Because both are happening.

Well, we talked about a definitions page. So seasonal housing I think in our housing inventory we have that. So we did our talks with Bench. She had like very uh carefully thoughtfully articulated the difference between these different scenarios. So I have monitor and evaluate the transition of year-round housing to seasonal homes or short-term rentals. Um through data collection. Through data collection. Thank you. Okay. So, can I just want to check in with everybody? Are we getting are we honing in on that one? Everybody online okay with that? We're honing in on it for the most part.

Great. Who's going to do it? I think you involved the school department on this one because you're going to lose kids. Would code enforcement be in on monitoring and evaluating? That's one reason we we got Kim an associate because of the thought of all the and the was terribly overworked. But yeah, I mean it would be involved code enforcement if there was um

registration force codes to be enforced. But if we're talking strategy, it's not really code enforcement. It's code enforcement after it becomes law. Yeah. Um which is the giant claming windmill to approach. Um right. I don't think this is going to cause people to blow up. It'll be the point in time at which the town starts to try to implement this that will cause the explosion. So is that what so to me this would be a question but again kind of back to to you as the manager like this if I if I were to put this in there I would say board of selection via you y

and then you tell somebody on staff this is one of your duties. Yeah that's that works. I agree. Yep. Yep. And then can this be farmed out to a housing housing authority or H like Mount 365 or island Housing Trust, right? Like there was an intern last summer who didn't tried to do this in Northeast Harbor that Kathy and I worked with and it's very s I mean not surprisingly but it's very challenging. Yeah.

To get to the bottom of this, right? So you're comparing uh property owner address to mailing address. You're looking at who's getting a homestead exemption tax and a lot of it's just like local knowledge and what you know like what are the categories and like how do you Yeah.

So so I I think the trend that we're going in is on this one isn't to say um you know it's going to be an in we could come up with a huge list of of who could do it. I would just say it's up to the town the select board and the town manager to say we're gonna set some money aside to h to farm this out or we're gonna try to get an intern to do this or we're gonna um get the the cl to do it. It doesn't matter who does it. It's it's Alex's job to figure it out. They staff has not healed from the last one yet. So we're going to need a little time. What's that? Staff has not healed from the last one yet. residential registration that yeah that that sting is still very fresh

I mean I wasn't here for it for it obviously but it's they physically recoil when you mention it it's not a good sign that's what I started trying to get out I was like this can't be the it can't be the way it just like it has to be more productive I don't know people can't be like afraid and wounded right it's a thing that is really affecting all of our communities. We have to deal with it and we're going to have to like figure out a way to get the information to to understand what the real effect is.

So, what what Suzanne is saying is yes, there's it's like there's some scars from the last conversations, but that's kind of why I'm getting to the next one, which is like you you know, you really need to have a good conversation about it. And there's ways to facilitate that conversation probably better than what was done in the past. and say they're not quite scars yet. Yeah, sort of what I'm getting at. Open wounds can heal, but we have still have to will eventually occur. We still have to have the conversation and it's still going to be a it's still going to be a hurtful conversation, but it's if you don't have it, it's not you're just putting your head in the sand. It's much like school consolidation. It's an issue that Yep.

it's never going to go away because it's just going to continue to be an ongoing Yep. And again, at the end of the day, As I've always say, it's like at the end of the day, like the town gets to decide whether or not it's a big deal to them or not, even whatever the data says. Right. Right. That's what I meant. Like what happens if the So you have this and like where you're monitoring and evaluating and it's it gets to like 80% of the homes like at the end of the day like you have the numbers, but then there's the question of like so what, right? And that's the harder part. What about a when for this one? yesterday.

Yes. Um, and then Alex's hair just went all white. Yeah. Oh, develop and implement programs to retain. I'm surprised that we're having to worry about any

develop and implement programs to retain existing own homes through tools such as acquisition deed restrictions, financial incentives, and partnerships with housing organizations. Um, so is that economic development? Yeah, we throw planning board of selectment in there. So, board of selectman economic development select select board whatever whatever I Yeah, whatever we just said. I'm sorry you said several things, but this

is a good time for me to mention at the most recent meeting of the economic development committee, they're actually going to put themselves on pause in part because they're down a bunch of members, but until this the comprehensive plan comes out and gives them more specific guidelines, um they felt it was best to hit pause because they were feeling like they didn't have good direction at present. Um, and I support them on that. I agree. I was struggling a little bit myself. So, so should we take them off of this or No, no, no. By all means, give them Right. And so, there isn't a housing committee, right?

Y some communities will create like a joint housing and economic development committee, which I could see being very relevant in this. Um, so sorry, could you add economic development committee there? And if this is exactly what they're looking for is give us a specific thing that we're supposed to focus on. Yeah. So ide like ideally you have this list of all these strategies. They're assigned to different uh committees or uh staff or whatever and you like can create a list of like here's our emerging orders. Yeah.

Yep. at the end. Um, encourage the conversion of seasonal and short-term rental units to year-round homes through incentives, partnerships, and programmatic support. Um, I feel like that's going to be a similar everybody good with select board and economic development committee on that one. Yep.

I think both of these uh points, the previous one and this one, maybe there's a place for advocacy or education. Like you can't force somebody to put in a deed restriction, but you need to inform them of the benefits of it or advocate that they should care about the future of their town.

Yeah. One of the things that came out of our housing solutions summits was the idea of, you know, there's no money for it, but like almost like a should there be like a marketing campaign of like why year round housing is so integral. You know, it sounds crazy, right? But when the pressures are what, they are. Um, that's a good point. We want to write a little note about adding advocacy um or education to to either of these or both. We can we just trying to put some because like they're great ideas but we can't as a town necessarily acquire properties at their current market value. We can't force deed restrictions, financial incentives until state law changes. We can't change tax law. Uh so the best we can do in the short term would be to campaign on people making a voluntary choice.

I prefer the word educating. Yeah. But I'm curious about if anybody else cares. at the beginning in instead of or in addition to the advocacy right educate such as develop and implementing programs to retain existing evidence or tools through education and tool I don't know about the advocacy such as uh or through education acquisition something like that sure y

in both places yeah great Okay. Um, objective three, which we were wrestling with earlier, um, establish where appropriate neighborhood districts with maximum lot sizes and other dimensional standards to maintain the scale of existing neighborhoods and support year-round living. Now those year- round people have to just make sure that they have had the education on the importance of selling to another year- round family. Yeah, exactly.

I'm putting planning board here. Who else? Economic development many. Sure. Given a lot of tests. Good. Yeah. In all seriousness, that's okay. Um short term. Sure. Yeah. All the housing things are short term.

Next two are state strategies. Maintain and enact maintain enact amend growth area land use regulations to increase density decrease lot size setbacks and road widths or provide incentives such as density bonuses. That's kind of what we were talking about earlier to encourage the development of affordable or attainable workforce housing. Um, seems like a planning board thing to me.

And a lot of the new state legislation is trying to, you know, make that happen short-term and ongoing as a suggestion. Sorry, you're not charged. I'm just kidding. Does everyone agree with Mel's suggestion? Uh, seek to achieve a level of at least 10% of new residential development built or placed during the next decade be affordable. Is that duplicated? Yes. It's the same objective. Yeah. He thinks it applies in both cases, but I don't know that we need to repeat it. Do you feel like it fits better here or and where it was before?

It's fine to have it in both places.

Okay, great. Um, objective four, increase the supply of rentals attainable to the year- round community at various income levels. Uh, three strategies here. One is a state strategy. Pursue partnerships with nonprofit and private developers to increase the supply of year-round attainable rental housing. Support could be in the form of capital and or operating funds, staff resources, donations of town land, services, or grant assistance sources among other things. It's a long need to unpack this one a little bit more or do people feel good about the way it's written?

One minute. Okay. Who is doing this? Code Enforcement and Planning Board and Economic Development.

When shortterm, medium-term, oh, ongoing.

Yep. Short-term and ongoing. um provide incentives from long-term rentals supporting the conversion of seasonal and underutilized units to year- round use. Um we put this one at our last meeting as medium-term and I think for kind of the point that Vince was making too where it's like, you know, you feel kind of like there's not a lot of cards on the table when you don't have these financial mechanisms. Um but this is facilitating the creation of accessory dwelling units through continued zoning updates etc. Brazil.

Okay. Yeah, that's a good that they're standing committee, right? So we could task them with things. We may want to scrub the ordinance scrub this at some point and see which ones really should be planning board and which one should be Luzo planning board or which one should be Luzo, but we don't have to worry about that now. Yeah. What's the difference between a long-term rental and a short-term rental? I think it's a year- round rental. There is a definition. Yeah. I mean, I do rentals for people that are three months. Is that considered a long-term rental or a short-term rental? That's considered a long-term rental. I think 30 days is probably less than 30 days. You should we want to use that phrase.

I think we just need to have that in the definition getting it. But I mean, is this what this strategy is getting at? Are we talking about year- round rentals? Are we talking about long-term rentals? What is this in terms of increasing the supply of rentals attainable to the year- round community at various income levels? I would think we're talking about year- round rentals. I mean, uh, if if if 30 days is a long-term rental and we're talking about that that impacts our community negatively and what we're trying to do is positively impact, I would think we're looking at year round rentals or incentivizing year- round rentals.

Is objective 4 just a subp part of objective one? I wonder that too. And is it because I like I keep coming back to that higher level and like and wanting it to be really simple and straightforward and is it really three objectives and we build in this rental focus into the year round because it feels like year round is four to both of them. Question to the committee.

What do you guys think? Yeah, I think they could be rolled together. And as far as the long-term rentals, that should probably I know we're trying to have year round people, but also workforce, which is generally seasonal for a lot of industries. So, it might be year round and workforce rentals.

I like that. Okay. So, um yearround and workforce rentals. Is that what you said?

Yeah. because workforce really has a strong tie to our economy and competes heavily for those homes that are affordable. So, if we have more of those developed, it's better for everybody. Yeah, that is an ongoing uh problem of seasonal workforce versus year round. I mean, haven't we've all seen that all over the island like hotels buying big buying homes so they can have their seasonal staff in there. Um, great. That's the end of that list. Um, the state strategy maintain, enact, and amend ordinances. That sounds like a lo one, right?

Yep. Yeah. Throw Luzo in there more. Okay. You on that committee? No, I quit. Send it their way. Gail took over. Okay, that's the end of that section. It's not the last time we'll talk about it. But I um I think we're going to transition into another section for now just to kind of scrub the the talk process a little bit. But the couple of things that sort of jumped out at me that Vince got me thinking about is are we thinking enough about the seasonal

the challenge of the seasonal workforce? Um are we thinking enough about aging population? and um they didn't we haven't really talked about you know sustainability and I will say we have a meeting with um the thrive coming up but they're working with the sustainability committee so there may be some stuff coming out of that conversation that we may want to tuck into here at some point any do you think there's any other sort of bigger topics that we're missing from housing well you're you're right about the aging population because our goal is all life stages and but none None of these objectives necessarily directly touch on that. They don't not touch on it, but they don't

specifically. Yep. Yeah. So, just things to, you know, we can ponder that a little bit more too as we're making edits, but do you put MDI housing authority into any of these of the who's? So the way that I I think we decided to handle it is not to put like an outside organization in, but we would put them in this. If we had to use like an example of who we would partner with, then they might be me. And there's one that talks about I feel like it makes references to regional coalitions. Yeah.

Um and in the inventory it certainly mentions that that's a major player. Yeah. Okay. Great. All right. Cool. This is a tough one to to get through and uh certainly worthy of many meetings. Yes, it is. Yeah. I think um we'll probably get back to this again as we go through. You want to transition into transportation? We have about 30 minutes left. Absolutely. So, does anybody need a hard copy? Yes,

I think for this one we may similarly kind of start out with instead of kind of trying to copy edit all this text. Um, just talking generally at first again about like what's the big problem we're trying to solve. you know, if you could have one goal, doesn't have to always be one, but I felt like we like came up with such a nice succinct one, housing goal, what's that problem we're trying to solve with transportation or what's the what's the goal? And then um yeah, at least five considerations. Yeah, I don't know if everybody at home can see this on the flip chart, but when we were thinking about it, basically just to kind of again set the the stage for the conversation a little bit more. You when you look through the data that we have and the conversations that we've had in the past, it seems like there's five, maybe there's some more that people um can think about of considerations that we want to like make sure we're tackling when we think about the transportation section. The first one we talked a lot about the seasonality of transportation needs um and as a peak as a sort of a related topic peak congestant congestion periods and what that means. We talked a bunch and very recently um about parking. We talked about um the different types of transportation needs. So you know uh buses and boats and bikes and whatever. We talked about um the issues of climate that was part of our data. So when you think about um storm events and other things, you know, for flooding, you know, what does that mean for culverts? What does that mean for ferry service for the island? If if we're using northeast Harbor is like a, you know, a mini transportation hub. Um and then what are what are the what is the regional context? So who are we working with? Is it Nicadia National Park? Are we working with MDOT? Are we working

with other communities on the island and just off the island to try to think about that? So when we're sort of going through this, you know, thinking about these things, are we do these resonate with everybody first of all? And then secondly, are we able to transition these ideas into those goals and strategies? Can I throw one thing on there? Um, there are a lot of people who really want the island to be much more bicycle friendly and and transportation needs. Okay, that's that. All right, good. It's astonishing with a national park that there's not bike lanes. Say that again.

It's astonishing with a national park that there aren't bike lanes. I understand it's really hard to put any of them in with the way everything has been built. Yep. Yeah. More bike units. But that that's a tough one to to do. Yeah. Especially now when they have motors on bikes. old people like me can use them. So, I I don't mean to make this the thing that we dwell on because I think Suzanne's first question was really the important one. What is the problem that we're trying to solve? But I think this maybe puts the put puts that question into a little bit of context. So, just take it.

You can still see it. I think it's a good goal. I just put it here. It's parking and congestion, which is one of the problems we're trying to solve. Yep. Yeah. And and the congestion. Yep. Which is, you know, over four million people show up in the summer. Mhm. It's hard to not have congestion. Sure is. I don't see how you're going to do anything about it. Well, that's what we're going to try to figure out right now. So, this goal, go man, go.

This goal is the language from the current plan. Yeah, we took out the cherote, but um so don't we have a side note on here? Susan and I were kind of brainstorming on this one a little bit. I wrote safe and efficient transportation systems. Um, but I don't know if that gets at the multimodality kind of aspect. We're we're always thinking about like how do we say it a little shorter but inclusive of still of all the things. I just like the word pleasurably. I just think so funny. It's just to be on the road

over at myself. But if you think that like it's sort of like people come and they're like they're driving and they're like this is so beautiful and I'm like sure pleasurably for who? Yeah. Yeah. I just drove down to DC over a long weekend and I was so happy to be back in Maine all the way through New Jersey. Everything is terrible. Isn't that pleasurable? It was really unpleasurable. We have done that drive like many times. 50 times it since we live here. And it gets worse and worse all the time and major construction going on in lots of different places and really

Yeah. And just and everything stops and then it starts and it stops again. It's like nobody knows why history everywhere. Um so okay. Do you like the way this is phrased? Do you think we should say it uh shorter? Do you think you know we're talking about aspects of safety efficiency I think the idea of like multiple modes remember it's aspirational so it's definitely hard to have this bike infrastructure for example but should we be aspiring I think it looks fine

okay yeah I think the network speaks to different modes of transportation It's it's the roads and the vehicles, whatever they are. But we should get those little scooters going all over the place. Yeah. Is there a way to make it I mean the other one was just so so short and sweet. Is there a way to make this like safe efficient transportation systems for all community members or is that too simple? Oh, I don't want to lose pleasurable. I know. I was ready to lose it. I was okay with I don't Does pleasurable mean like it? You know what's in the soul? It's not right. If it gives you pleasure, we should keep it in. But I would

pleasurable because you have the radio station that works the whole way. Pleasurable because your phone works the whole way. Pleasurable because it's really pretty. Pleasurable because there's nobody else on the road but you. It's perfect. I love that. And the cars we drive. Yeah. And pleasurable because there's no potholes. You live in a dream world. Yep. On town roads, there's not all our town roads are perfect. Okay. Manicured, washed. Sorry, I don't want to dwell on this too much, but I don't think we've got like full I don't fully understand if we've concluded that we could make it a little simpler or not. I think it's that was your suggestion. As far as written, you feel about that?

I don't care. We're not getting rid of pleasure. We can't apparently. No. Um, no, no, I don't care. But I I think it more comes down to like the format. I I'm fine with this as it is. Um, but it will be nice to have goals that have common format. So maybe it's a like zoom out later on to come back to this. Yep. And if we just stop after throughout Mount Derk period, then you cut out villages, town, island, it might make it shorter, right? And we don't have control over the other towns anyway. So yeah, but I mean we just talked about this. We're mount ice cream. We got we got pull.

We don't need the town and villages because they're the same, right? That's redundant. Say throughout mount dessert and MDI or something like that. It's not Mount Dert MDI implies maybe. Sure. It's up to you guys. Okay. I'm comfortable moving forward. Yeah, we can get back to it, too. Yeah. All right, let's hit the goals. Okay, objectives. Yes, we just did a goal.

All right, objective one, improve the design, quality, and type of safe connections, rightways, trail right away, trails, sidewalks, bike paths between our towns, villages, neighborhoods, subdivisions in a way that promotes physical activity as a part of daily life. That is the objective. One of our ways of saying it was increase multimodal connections between villages and neighborhoods and within neighborhoods. Is this objective from the existing plan? Okay, that's just exactly there. We didn't actually edit this one. Okay. But we made a

Yeah, the suggestion to like shorten it was increase multimodal connections between villages and within neighborhoods, it should say. I I personally get lost in all the words on that objective, but what we started thinking about. I think we should have Gail on the Luso take care of all that too instead of the planning board. Yeah, we'll get to that. What about that? People feel strongly about the wording of the existing objective. If you're like, it's totally fine, that's great, too. Um, we're just looking at ways to simplify it and let the strategies can certainly be more detailed.

It all looks wonderful. I like that. I like them both, but I like that the original one highlights physical activity promotion. Okay,

anybody else? So, yeah, this is not about roads or anything. This is about making it easy for people to move from one place to another on their own. The whole section is like the the the transportation section is really about like just how you move around. So it's not just roads and driving, right? It can talk about paths, um, foot paths, bike paths, fairies, delivery services, like Yeah. trains, planes, big T transportation. Yeah. And some plans they just call it the mobility chapter or section.

Okay. Is it really a within two years or is it an ongoing? So Heather, are you talking about the objective or we have we moved on to the strategy? I mean oh sorry I'm um sorry I'm reading over here so I'm in the strategy we can move on strategy for for now. Yeah.

Okay. So the first strategy improve automotive bicycle pedestrian connections throughout the town between residential neighborhoods including subdivisions, community facilities and areas with great recreation and commercial opportunity. Special attention shall be given to designs that improve pedestrian and bicycle safety trails, rights of way will be encouraged in less dense areas with sidewalks, paths, and more dense areas. So to me, it's like about and we talked about this really early on in the um plan and we were talking about some of the villages. It's like you guys talked about the trail network here in Northeast Harbor, but what if you could walk on foot between some of the villages or bicycle, you know, off you certainly can on some of the carriage roads. Um, but also it's like creating more opportunities like that or looking at where there are if you only had a connection here, you know, um, people feel like this is confusing the way it's written or Yes. Okay. Yes.

So, yeah, we didn't do a lot of words smithing on this one. And I think, you know, the way I look at objective number one is it's really about connectivity and encouraging physical activity through transportation opportunities. So we could think about this one a little bit more like break down the strategy and say what is this this particular strategy in terms of that objective is really just trying to to say um you know you it's almost the same thing as the objective. So we have to think about a little repetitive because of the word improve. So that's part of the reason why Suzanne and I were thinking about rewriting the objective to be a little morey.

A couple things I wrote at the bottom not to skip down. It's not on your printed copy, but it's like inventory and map because this is me like the person who works with maps and Excel. Inventory and map all pedestrian and cycling infrastructure. So the first thing is like what do you have? Where is it? What do you have? And then you can figure out like oh we can go from here to here maybe or identify opport and then identify opportunities for new trail or sidewalk connections within and between villages. Right? Those are just two like really concrete task type strategies. Somehow there needs to be parking in there to do an awful lot of this stuff. I think parking would be um associated with that and also Allan probably in other objectives.

Okay. Yep. Um so the those two ideas at the bottom kind of get at this first strategy which really does read like an objective and um they're kind of like projects that could be undertaken. But how is that different than um create a ped a pedestrian master plan? Yeah. So you could do that under the umbrella of a pedestrian master plan. pedestrian bicycle or bicycle. Yeah. Or like a multimodal.

I think it just simplifies the concept of the that and broadens it a little bit because pedestrian might be limiting to what we're we're talking about. So yeah, Suzanne's framing is first you have to know what you have, right? Then you have to identify opportunities through the planning process and then you implement whatever those opportunities are through regulations or investment. So these first two strategies are in the existing plans. Yep.

We know what was done. I would say I mean just my observation for the first one is nothing or continued you know I would I would say within two years is pretty or that strategy is why not remotely that's like is aggressive.

Yeah. Um to to me that first one needs to just be an ongoing because what it's essentially saying is when you get the chance take advantage of it. Yep. Um, and if you're redoing a road, improve the move or add the sidewalk and that's the time to do it. Drop everything and add a sidewalk when the road doesn't need redoing is not a wise choice. That's just not a good use of money. Um, it's almost like that's this one could be the last on the list though because the first three are create the plan and the last one is really how to go about doing it.

Yep. I feel like the way you said it though is like more helpful. It's like continue to identify opportunities or something, right? Well, take advantage of the opportunity when when you're redoing a road and there's a spot where the sidewalk can be improved. We've got a enormously challenging road working its way up right now, which is Summit Road heading down into downtown, which has all sorts of problematic intersections. I mean, that's that's a good example of it.

So, yeah, maybe it's um when we can work on wording of this, but it's when when investing in road u upgrades. um integrate um sidewalks and and or bike as appropriate, you know, as as as um not just appropriate but you know, as much as possible as possible, right? Because sometimes, right? Yeah. Okay. Something like that.

I mean, another good example would be Harbor Drive, which everyone's most upset about these days. We're not going to widen that road. That's not going to happen. So, what are we going to do? You know, okay, not Harbor Drive. Harbor side. Harbor side. I'm thinking Harbor Road. Harbor Drive is kind of wide. Um, mine's stuck there for some reason. I keep I keep doing that. Do you guys like the idea of a pedestrian or multimodal master plan? Yes. Like a mobility plan?

And there. Yeah. Sergeant Drive is much nicer to the bicycle down than route three. You're less likely to get hit by fire. Seat tails detail. Yeah.

Then I would take this out because like you said it's sort of a task of that project, right? Okay. You identify the Yes. Yeah. What did you say for the time frame of the idea of like um taking advantage of opportunities? I was like ongoing. Yeah. Ongoing. It's got to be an ongoing. You can have a short time frame on creating a plan, but then actually implementing is just when the chance arises. Yeah. We have a traffic committee. Not at this time. I actually asked that question like Yeah. Who was there ever a traffic commission? I was the chairman. Oh, you were?

Yeah. Oh, where is your building plan? Yeah, we need a traffic. But it happened a long time. Traffic and parking. Is going to be first stuff, I think. Is it going to be like an ad hoc committee or how how did the ad hoc? Yeah. So do we like that's why I asked the question because I didn't do we want to rec do we if we say traffic committee there isn't one so we really should have a strategy it's like form a traffic form a traffic

yeah that's that's a thing or or there's an existing group that already can integrate the things that we're talking about here like who should do the multimotal plan well it'll be the select board decides to hire somebody could help with a multimotal plan and then something there's got to be a group that's going to work with that or something.

So many of the trails are Aadian National Park and also VIS trails and yet we don't want to put those people on this plan. Right. So if you did like we don't uh necessarily do the these types of plans but like you know you would work with all those partners because that's how most places are. It's like especially like one land trust owns this and somebody else owns this and you would work together to inventory them all and then kind of create inventory them all. We can't let people know about them.

Yeah, that's through this. So you could have you could have another strategy that says work with you know GIS and yeah work outside agencies work with partners to such as you know improve connections between I think it's also always the public works and the code enforcement officer because there must be sidewalk rules right sidewalk rules falls more into police really building them and having building them. Sorry, that's what you're getting at. Sorry, I never meant I was

you were you were working on them and I was building them, right? Yeah, basically. Uh or enforcing people. I was thinking I was stuck on parking. Um

um can we go back to this like working with the other agencies idea? work with land owners and other agencies. This is about like looking for opportunities for connections. Remind me what you were saying to create the master plan, right? Okay. And local partners.

So, I would have said it's if I were scoping out a like a mobility plan, there's like, you know, here's first of all, here's your data. This is like a map and inventory of all of the infrastructure that we're talking about. And then secondly, we're going to use that information to come up with a mobility plan, which is then going to have something very similar to this, but that's going to be like, okay, we're going to do a connection between um this neighborhood and that neighborhood, and who's going to do that? You know, those are the and the these are opportunities or we're going to uh do the public works department is going to come as a separate thing. Public works is going to come up with their um you know, annual maintenance plan or long-term lookout. I think Brian's really good at this. So, and then in doing so, one of the other strategies that we have is like you always need to be looking at ways to um add bike lanes and sidewalks wherever possible.

That's a second thing. And then the next one, another strategy is you're continually working with the VIS or with the Kada National Parks or these regional partners to improve existing connections or or make new ones. That's the way I looked at it. Yep. Not saying that's the way you guys need to look at it, but that's where I was headed. Great. Okay. I think we can unwind this one a little bit, Suzanne, once we get back to the office a little, you know, just taking this into consideration and because even that long one, the original one in the middle is sort of like separate things. Okay.

Um, we have about 10 minutes. Why don't we look at this next one? Um objective to maintain and enhance the safety and quality of Mount's road network specifically about roads. Um develop a long range infrastructure and maintenance capital improvement program that details the level of service at which Mount Desert's roads will be maintained and for what cost? Does that did that happen? Does that exist? I think it probably the town does a great job with our roads. They're out there with toothbrushes cleaning them off. Is there a capital improvement program for those? It is. Yes. Yeah.

Okay. Spot ongoing. Yep. Okay. Keep up the good work. Yeah. Monitor locations that could become high crash areas and make improvements to alleviate safety concerns. For instance, widening road shoulders um for parking near seasonal attractions. So, you know, this is a huge deal with Aadia National Park.

I think there should be say something here. If we take out the reference to Aadia, it should say work with partners or something to monitor locations. What do you think about that? Do we have information on where all the crashes occur? Yeah, it's in the inventory. Okay.

Um the the state like has an incredible crash data map, the interactive map that you can go to the video if you want to spend your time that way. And um you can like uh sort and filter it in all kinds of way like show me all the places where there were collisions with deer at night or whatever. It's really interesting. And then they they aggregate it in a way you can see where the high crash locations are. So if there's like a you know more instances in certain areas that all comes from police reports is really interesting. Yeah. My daughter did a science fair project on it.

You know it too well. So, I have to say on that topic, but totally not part of our meeting. I saw a deer crossing the we know when you're on um um you're going under the Cadillac Mountain the bridge, there's a deer walking across the bridge like miserable seeing that deer walk across the bridge. Lovely. And no traffic cuz the road is there was it was lovely. Stay with them. Goodbye children. We make that ongoing. They come up to my door. Give me some corn.

Who else needs to be on this suggested responsibility to monitoring high crash locations like police? Police. Police are about public works. Great. Wow. Do we want to throw up in there? Identifies a spot. It falls on public works, but ultimately it's it's start monitoring would be police. Yeah. Right. Support the improvement of public signage in order to increase the clarity, consistency, and enhancement of public signs throughout the town.

Isn't that code enforcement? Doesn't Kim control signs? Public. I think what I would say is this one and there's another one in there where I think I might have added or we added um more wayf finding but I think this would fall under that part of it like make sure you have good signs so people know where they're going. I'm not sure if there's a so there's no more traffic committee. Well, first of all, does that still seem like a good idea? Yes. Okay. I think we got enough committees.

So now we got the focus or where we need it. So to me this would be a public works and economic development committee because wayfinding is an important economic development tool. I'm just again just a suggestion. I'm not saying that traffic wouldn't be good but I there's a limited number of people willing to serve on stuff.

Sure. Um, I feel like this could be like continue. It's like something about like continuing to assess. I don't know. Does there need to be a project where it's like some places will do that say like we're going to make a wait and I need a plan, you know, and they'll go out and like figure out what all where all the signs are and what they're saying and do they actually like make sense? Are they consistent? I don't know that that's what this is suggesting.

Yeah. So a few years ago when the some of the signs came up was there was there an actual wayfinding plan developed or was it like a branding is it I'm just if there is an existing wayfinding plan that it would be great to try to implement the plan if there if it hasn't been implemented or was it just like a was when Jackie Huitt was here working with the ad hoc economic development committee right and I I wasn't a part of that so I don't know if there was a master plan of y for wayfinding But it felt more like Brandy. And so this one I mean for this objective we're talking about the roads, right? Yep. This is under the roads objective.

So I think if we as we get deeper into transportation, maybe a couple more objective there is like a wayfinding conversation to be had. Um regarding the support um the improvement of public signage, isn't that also police so that you go to the right place at the right time? you know, you turn appropriately. Uh, you know, traffic traffic directional signage. Yeah. Dot. Yeah. I mean, public signage is such a broad way of talking about it. So, yeah. out there. Do you think in this one this is related question to you, would it make more sense to make this more road related

and less about wayfinding like general way finding? Correct. Yeah. All right. Well, in the in the spirit of time, maybe we can dive into that a little bit, but like does that make sense? The distinction change the word public to traffic signs, something to that effect. And I think that changes the thing. But there's way finding somewhere else. Yeah. We just get rid just say some be ongoing. Okay. Yep.

Develop standards to manage new curb cuts on our major roadways. I is there an urban compact zone designation for this area? I can't remember from the you know so like the DOT like um

when we were doing Belfast plan I don't think this ever applied in Kabasa Valley but like it's like as you're approaching um Belfast on the Searsport road or whatever like after a certain point um if you're within the urban compact zone there's different standards about like how many curb cuts you can have and how if you're having like a ton of um you know curb cuts in a row like that starts to create a lot of potential safety issues. And so there's there's they regulate that. Um when I saw this, I wasn't really sure. Uh that exists here. I don't think any part of this town is part of like an urban compact. Yeah.

I'm not sure we have a major roadway. Yeah. Someville. Yeah, that's true. Someville for sure. I think the point of the this one is really to think about, you know, curb cuts and sight distances and how that affects safety, the the flow of traffic on major roadways. And I don't think it's actually been done. Just I would put um yeah, Luzo and planning board.

Yeah. Lo. So, and Suzanne, just for my understanding, you know, we mentioned Ssville, but that's also a state road. How much control do does the town of Mount Dessert have when it comes to curb cuts? Well, you would have to go get a code, a curb cut permit through um the main DOT. Yes. Yeah. But town could also establish its own standards that your driveway has to be so many feet from the adjacent driveway. There's other things you can do. I hear what you're saying. Okay. Yep.

So, if this was in the existing plan, never completed, do you want to make it a short term? Do you feel like it needs to be is it a high priority?

Not for me. Yeah, I don't know that it is a high priority. Oh, okay. We have other things that are higher. number of sites and most of us will all be on areas that are MDOT roads. So long term Y and that's fine and it's good to have it in the plan to you know remember we talked about it the thing that's the end of that objective. So zoom through. Can we just do a check in because it's it is 7 o'clock. We have four more. Three more. Happy to board ahead or Yep. Let's go quick.

Keep my mouth shut. Next one is objective three. Work with surrounding communities to strengthen regional transportation connections and mobility options.

Was an edit we suggested? Yeah. Yeah. Good. support an increase in year-round public transportation through regional providers, including Downeyy's Transportation and Island Explorer to expand route, service availability, and improve connections to employment. You want to say to employment or can you just stop at the word connections because we have if we're going to have a year-round community, it's not everyone's working. Some people are here on vacation. You know, if you could take the bus to Eagle Lake to go ice fishing with your traps or cross country skiing or go to the grocery store,

right? Or your kids school. Sure. Okay, keep going. I was thinking we should delete staff, but Okay. Mhm. uh support the creation of an off island intermoal transit hub to reduce commuter and visitor traffic. We deleted that one because it's been accomplished. Thank you Park. Um support the creation of a ride sharing network on and off the island. I think we were trying to think about what that meant.

Yeah. Wasn't quite sure about that. Like right now I feel like people go on bar Harbor burger and swap and will someone give me a ride or it's not clear to me that it's a town Yeah. action. Yeah. Do you think we should this one? Yes. Okay. I don't really know not to go back but it's what support an increase what that first strategy really means. But maybe that doesn't matter. you question for more bus routes. Just longer season. Yeah, long. I think it could just mean a lot of different things, I guess, is what I mean.

What if you said support an increase in year- round public transportation options? It's kind of what the one above is just doing. Yeah. Sort of rephrasing the objective with a little more detail. Good. I mean to not be duplicative. I could say um work with Down East transportation and I filler to expand the house service availability and improve connections throughout the year or something like that.

That would work. Yes.

Yeah. Do you want to identify them or do you want to say transportation providers? Yeah, I like I think transportation advisors in case those places go belly up 10 years, 15 years. Well, and also to remain consistent with um yeah, what we've done prior to improve connections here. Okay. Um, strengthen transit connections at better link village centers, residential areas, and key destinations, biking, walking, etc. I think that was a brainstorm. You had that.

That was like um might have been tired. Okay. Um, also one that's deleted says, "Support the creation of a regional transportation organization whose mission is to address transportation concerns at the regional level." And that was assigned to MBI tomorrow and transportation group. Okay. Um, do you want to skip that last one? This one I just shared that Paul had added. The point here is more than just the first one. We're talking not just about public transportation options, but making connections to better link places through like biking and walking. Can

we fold those together? Sure. So it could be like um are you talking about like the next trip? So like once you get off the bus you're the goal is to connect uh to strengthen regional transportation connections and mobility options. So, right now we're only talking about vehic vehicles, cars and buses, and so far we've only got one strategy. And I'm kind of the opinion that this might just be an objective that we reduce or eliminate.

I kind of feel like you if you did a mass or a mobility plan, this would be part of that. Hey. Yeah, it feels kind of forced like we're trying to make something that will either naturally occur or like the uh the ride sharing network. Like no town is going to make a ride sharing network, but Facebook made it with no problem, right? Because it's free. Yeah. So maybe a lot of this is just going to take care of itself and

what doesn't take care of itself rolls into the master transportation plan. Um objective three should become a strategy for objective one, right? Or Yeah, maybe. Um yes. Yeah, that's a rank.

Let's look at how we combine those. Okay, great. Yep. They work with surrounding communities or entities, organizations like, you know, without naming it, Down East Transportation or Island Explore. Um, okay. Okay, I think there's two more. Yep. All right. Objective four, align use and transportation planning to support sustainable and efficient growth patterns. So, originally it said use transportation planning as a tool to manage new growth. Um, go ahead.

Well, just the thought process behind this edit is to reframe it a little bit more in the positive and lessen the negative. So you're using it to support sustainable and efficient growth as opposed to manage which is a little more like directive. Fine. Um ensure consideration of opportunities for connected road networks and through streets over culde-sacs and deadend roads and new subdivisions. Where through streets are not possible. Encourage pedestrian or bicycle access ways between them. Yep. Okay.

Any word on going? Um, promote the use of shared driveways and access management techniques to increase safety and reduce roadway impacts. This is when we're talking about cur curb cuts, right? And so like how do you have like interpersonal access or whatever? Don't we have an ordinance that if more than one house is accessed on a driveway, it changes it to a road? Well, the definition of a road is two or more, three or more. So, driveways are two you lots, two houses, two dwelling units, whatever. Two lots and roads are anything over two. Cuz yes,

cuz what? I just know across the street from me, they had to have their own driveway or they had would have had to name the road and they because there were going to be two houses on the driveway and if they put two houses on the driveway, they were going to have to name the driveway as a road and neither house wanted to lose their previous That's an E91 issue, I think. Okay. They named it as a road. We had to do that at Hillway, right? Away. We had to do that at Milan Way. I don't know why we need to promote shared driveways, curb cuts.

So I think the reason there Alan is because it's again if you want to have an objective that says align land use and transportation planning to support sustainable and efficient growth, one tool is to promote the use of shared driveways and access. Yes. Um, planning board and ordinance review committees. I just mean that all that lo.

Okay. I'm going um update the uh ladies or to allow more flexible parking arrangements in the pedestrian oriented villages. That should be sidewalks. So, not in pretty marsh because you all don't you're not pedestrian oriented.

You do walk there. I mean, there's nobody on the ground, so it's okay. Yeah. I don't I don't know what this means. So, in the in the in the next, what is this? What was this talking about? like what's the for example what are more flexible parking arrangements what I would parking availability what I would say is that a lot of older ordinance structures are based on you if you have this use you have to have this number of parking spaces

but that that the end result of that approach to parking regulation makes it so that you build Walmart parking lots for Christmas and not for like normal times, just as an example. And what you might want to do in your village areas where sometimes you have more traffic and you have a bunch of different uses and a limited amount of space, you need to create more flexible parking standards that aren't saying like if you have a restaurant in this location, you have to have x number of parking spaces per employee, x number of parking spaces per building because you're actually in a village. And it's most of the time assumed that you're going to have um different opportunities or people are going to be able to walk from here to there. So, so you need to be more thoughtful about your your standards, not so rigid about your standards. And and my experience in Mount Dert is that you're almost too flexible right now. there's not enough standards, but don't go, you don't necessarily need to go down the path of having too much standards because then you'll disincentivize all of the other strategies for a place like Northeast Tarbo where you want to encourage housing on second stories and all that good stuff.

So, are you saying there are no standards right now? The standards are um show us how to provide how you're going to provide as much parking as possible, which is like a ridiculously hard thing to judge when you're on the planning board. So maybe should the strategy be like evaluate the need to refine standards or something about like it sounds like somebody needs to figure out how to improve the standards. Yes, somebody does need to figure that out. That's a tough question. Yeah, Gail is not flexible. Well, we're not talking about Gail, but Well, it's it's we are land use ordinances. That's Luso.

Yep. But I think what we're trying to figure out is how to phrase this. The I think the intent of this one because this was from the original. This was from the existing plan was that not to go too far down the let's make sure our parking standards are like this, but make it a little more than what we currently have, which is a reasonable thing to think about. So it's something about the perform like they're not performing maybe the way you need them to. So, well, you know, it's funny because we've just been talking about this and I don't think any of us got the idea from this language that that's what this was about. Yeah. So, it's a little confusing. It definitely needs to be rewritten for

I mean I you guys could all disagree with me. I'm just telling you, but like my once you explained it now it makes sense. But I just what I would caution us is to not go down the be flexible enough in our language to not just direct the town to create inflexible set of parking standards that aren't going to service the community, but it'll be it'll change other things that you really want to accomplish. Think about like determining a need to revise. Yeah, maybe we go back through this one, Suzanne. Okay. Or just stop at the word standards.

Okay. Great.

Okay. Require new development to evaluate parking demand and encourage shared, reduced, or flexible parking arrangements where appropriate. I feel like you're getting at that idea in that one. I think we could probably think about how we combine these two. Okay. Um, objective five. Oh, planning board do the public work select board. You guys want this to be ongoing? Of course. Okay.

Uh, objective five, invest in transportation infrastructure and services that enhance safety, accessibility, and overall quality of life for residents and visitors. Word pleasurability is missing.

I feel like this is so um similar to the goal statement, right? But this really is about investments. Sounds like um under here we have develop and implement a parking management plan for high demand areas such as northeastal harbor key trail heads including strategies to improve efficiency reduce complex balance resident visitor workforce needs. Change that to parking committee. But can we get rid of um identifying villages or towns? Because I mean Pond's End is a a show on a good day,

Landing, you know, Echo Lake, but doesn't matter. If it's pretty, people are going to stop. If it's pleasurable, people are going to enjoy it. So, just maybe take out the Yeah. high just high demand areas. High demand areas. Yep. So, the first task is like what? Let's make a list of all the high demand areas. Yeah. Okay. Ongoing parking committee. Um, who else? No, I'd actually put that as short term. Yeah. And that's literally something that's getting tackled in the coming months that's occurring regardless of the comp plan. Anyway, so

in terms of implementing it, who is implementing it? Of course. So taffing committee could develop it but public works is going to be implementing it. Actually police in with public and with public works. Yeah. But at the end of the day expand and maintain sidewalks, crosswalks and pedestrian connections within and between village centers and key destinations. This seems like similar to one above um which is okay. public works.

I feel like we already said the exact same thing in our prior object. Yeah. Under sort of a multimodal. So, we what I'm going to make a note here to um reference above and make sure it's either not duplicative or if it is combined or eliminating them. And there was another instance with a state standard that was duplicative, but we had said that was rightable with that. So, as long as we look like a lot of these we've actually already covered and under under headings.

Some of these are a little more specific like now you we're saying you will invest in bike facilities such as bike lanes. We're saying you should invest in infrastructure to like bus stops and shelters if we needed them. But maybe they all get kind of looped in because of the chart of the other strategy. Like if you're going to have more buses, you're going to need more bus stops. We can look through these. Yeah. Is that is that ongoing?

Invest in bike facilities um to improve safety and expand transportation options. Invest in infrastructure that improves public transportation use. continue to enhance waybinding systems. There's the way finding. So this is really about the objective is about invest making the investments. What do people think about those statements? I like the statements from the pure pure fact that you know one wants to say we're going to invest but the the truth is I think we've said this on one of the prior ones is it's a little bit ongoing and as as you can like so for example sidewalks um you know if something's being developed and you have the ability to put sidewalks in great but I don't think the town is going to say hey we're now going to invest in sidewalks um up. I'm trying to think of, you know, any road. But, um, so I like the ideas, but I think I think it's hard to sit to sort of mandate the town or say that say to the town that you have to start investing in these.

Yeah. So, typically it's like we were saying before, it's like if a project like the bridge of Baskin Creek there. So it's like this you're already in there with all your um you know equipment and machinery and like let's make that just part of the project. So when and where possible invest in the infrastructure. Okay. We'll review this again and the next time will there be like a a summary page of the objectives? Yeah. Okay. Do we have any bus stop shelters?

I don't know if I don't even know if there are any in Bar Harbor like where the There's a bench. Yeah, there are benches and but not shelters. There might be one right across from Pizza. Maybe that one. I know. That's what I was trying to look at inside my head. I don't think there's a shelter. Yeah, there's a bench there. Okay, it's just a veg Jordan Pond house. All right, under the wisteria,

right? What about with the wayfinding systems? This is continuing to enhance um what about evaluate and enhance? I feel like there's like a missing piece which is like are we paying attention to it? Right. Whose job is that? Public works economic development committee. Yes.

I'm going. Okay. Uh work with MDOT, Acadia, and other partners to align infrastructure improvements to maximize funding opportunities ongoing. Yep. That's public works.

Go ahead. So if you were to think about it like um even conversations that were recently had at like the League of Towns meeting about the board of selection also

prioritize upgrades to roads, pulverts and transportation facilities that improve resilience to flooding, erosion and extreme weather. I don't think you need even the word extreme. I think it's just weather.

I think the weather's becoming extreme. So, it's the new norm. Sometimes we say extreme weather events like it's like a norm. Yep. I guess I'm struggling with this one because I don't they're already this is what public works are already any anyway like they really are. It's not like we're a crew that's going to be like good enough like it's not really how this town rolls other way around. Yeah. Sometimes we just put it in there. How

about continue upgrades instead of prioritize? Sure. mean did it. Yeah. Great job, everybody. Yeah. Way to hang in there. Yeah. Thank you. It was good. Get to go back and reflect on all the decisions and did they make sense? Yeah. and go find that traffic internet mapping thing. That's our next allow.

All right. Is there a second? Yes. All right. Those in favor? Stephanie. Hi, Steph. Thanks everybody. Have a good night. Go Mortise.