Comprehensive Plan Committee - Regular Meeting

Minutes probably do have minutes. Yes. And have we distributed them? No. Okay.

But we will want me to make a motion to approve the minutes. Yeah.

Oh, I say, no, I'll say, no. No public on to review edit the public health and recreation.

Right. So two things we're going to do tonight, hopefully, is get through public health and recreation and start to discuss environmental policies. We may have the time on the agenda to talk a little bit, so we'll work through it and get done so some of us can enjoy the rest of the evening. All right, so I don't know if anybody saw. I apologize for the late email, but I did send an email around this afternoon in case anybody was on Zoom. Suzanne and I took another review of the stuff that we sent out and made a few other adjustments to the health and recreation section. So I have that copy version if anybody needs it. Yep. Just send it down that way. Actually, maybe I'll grab one for you.

This is the same as the 1 you sent this isn't what I sent it 2 hours ago.

Yeah. And I, all I did was I just took off the introductory part and so it doesn't matter like a summary.

No, I don't know what we're talking about for you.

At the last meeting, I was going to the Cumberland County website and using some of the language there. It worked for like a description of public health and recreation goals, which I did in the version that I sent you already. I just picked it up because I didn't want to spend any time talking about it. And in this one, we revised the goal to try to make it a little simpler and more active voice, which is more of a goal statement than an objective statement, if you want to get into that level of nuance. We also tried to frame the draft thinking about recreation as inclusive of public health, like we talked about last time. And then thinking about how we can edit some of the – we made some adjustments to the objectives in the version that I sent out – we sent out earlier, I think late last week or early this week. We also parsed out some of the need – so that sort of the framing of this is thinking about public health and recreation as both like the physical properties that the town has and then the programming that's offered. So it's like, what's the quality and quantity of the physical spaces? What's the quality and quantity of the actual programming? And then that sort of shakes out. Suzanne used to be a park planner, so she also added some framework there from her parks, trails, and open space, like how different properties play different roles. thinking about active recreation, thinking about social gathering, thinking about performances and those kinds of things. And then she actually added a recommendation in there, which I didn't identify, but we'll get to. And then I think as we're talking about it, I still think there's some opportunities to identify other programmatic goals for gathering and community building, like thinking about what the skating rink has done as we're going through these kinds of things. Our goal tonight, review the goal, talk about the objectives, and review actions and assign responsibilities and prioritizes. That's what we're going to do, right? Okay. So, first and foremost, the new goal. What we had drafted was safe, well-maintained, and accessible recreational opportunities and community resources for residents of all ages and abilities. Thoughts and comments? Does that accurately encapsulate the broad discussion that we had last time?

Short and sweet.

I always just wonder about language. Is this consistent with other goals? It's like not to do something. You don't need a verb in there? You do not need a verb in a goal statement.

I always think about goals as like this is a... And so we can debate it and we'll revise it however you guys want. But I think about a goal statement as like this is the state of being we are striving to achieve. Okay. And then the objectives are more of the verbs to improve, increase. Objectives tend to have some measurable aspect to them also. And then the actions have to be. One thing I am trying to do as we're going through and rereading a bunch of these things is when we think about our strategies or actions, try to make them a little more action-y. Sometimes they can be a little wishy-washy. Sometimes that's good. Sometimes that's not good.

Do you want to say anything about the fact that people can access these recreational opportunities and community resources of all financial ability? Because some things you have to pay for, some things you don't have to pay for, but we need to make sure that people can access no matter what their fiscal situation is. Yes, sure.

So something like, so this is the goal. Safe, well maintained and accessible recreational opportunities and community resources for residents of all ages, abilities and income levels. Financial status. Nice. Searching for the words.

You got it.

Yeah.

Great.

Okay. And then you would add that also in number one.

Yeah. So, yeah, for the goals, the objectives. Yes. All right. Well, let's do this. Let's review the objectives as a group, and then we'll go into the actions and strategies under each objective. Does that work? Yeah.

Well, I should say when we're going through these, there's a lot of increase, increase, increase. Sure. And. I think that part of what the town should be doing is not just growing, but not doing it without understanding the healthy carrying capacity of the resources that we want to exploit for these purposes. Because we can't just keep expanding. And every which way, that's one of our problems right now. So I just, as we go through these.

That's fair, and I would ask, as we're going through these, if you could help by thinking about which ones trigger that response in your mind, and then we can have a talk about it. That work?

Great.

All right, so the first goal, sorry, the first objective, I'm going to have a hard time with goals and objectives today, I can tell you right now. The first objective is improve access to recreational opportunities and community services for all ages. Mobility, or maybe we have to say for all ages and mobility, but then we have to add something about income level. Think about that.

Why is it mobility here, but ability up above?

Can it be the same? You can say for all.

all ages abilities and income levels yeah or if you just said for all does not just you eliminate because the goal is yeah it is an income level well no we need to exclude left-handed people yeah we may like that's probably so what's the consensus improve access to recreational opportunities for all community services for all period

All right. And then, so again, the objectives are kind of like broken out by, and as we get into the actions, like here's some physical things, here's some programmatic things, you know, it's sort of thought about that in those different ways. And I apologize, Suzanne would definitely be able to explain that much better than I'm going to, but, so increase, the next one is increase the variety of public open spaces.

I'm not sure what that means and that gets,

Yep, just trying to figure that out. Well, my interpretation of that is we want to have a larger variety of. More variety of public open spaces.

Give me an example of what we.

So one public open space, like public open spaces are a lot of different things. So I think one of the challenges that we're going to have is like, let's not just be, maybe we have to think about the fact that we have Acadia National Park, which provides a certain type of open space.

Optimize the variety of public open spaces.

Sure, maybe I'll just explain what the public open spaces could be, like the marina or a pocket park somewhere, like it could be the playground in Otter Creek. It could be a trail that's not part of the park. It could be the boat launch at, yeah. So there's a variety of different open spaces. So when you say optimize, what do you mean?

I mean it takes into account the need to create a generous number of types of open spaces, but also recognizing that it's a finite resource, that that we have to strike a balance.

Was the ice rink optimizing that open space?

Yeah. Because optimizing, I think, doesn't necessarily mean we're just going to increase it, but we would like to think about increasing it, but maybe it's not the right thing to do in any particular case.

We use the ice rink. Aren't we talking about optimizing it by buying the chiller? So therefore, we've made the ice rink be available longer.

Yeah.

So that would be an example of optimizing, I think.

And maybe, you know, let's put a park there, might be a good idea, but maybe for other reasons, for environmental reasons or wildlife reasons, whatever, it's not a good idea. I mean, so each project on its own, you have to sort of think about the pros and cons and the extent of it and so forth, so that it becomes a sustainable use of the land. and the resources.

Could you take that thought and make it more applicable to the actions that are helping you achieve the objective? So the objective is to increase the variety of public open spaces, but while you're doing that, you want to optimize the existing ones or you want to be mindful of the finite capacity of the town to have open spaces if that's where you're going?

I'm not convinced that increasing the variety of public open spaces is actually something that we've demonstrated we need to do.

Is it increased accessibility and use of? Yes. Because that might fulfill the strategies I think align, I think, based on my reading, align with what you're saying. Yeah, I agree. But the objective could be maybe just that's like a slight tweak there. Sure. As opposed to the variety.

Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out where

I'm just trying to get away from the simply the goal is more. Yeah. Sure. I didn't jump in earlier on this first objective, but it's still not quite clear to me. Like the community services aspect feels like just throwing, it really feels all like largely recreational. So I mean, once we go through the objectives, I may have more thoughts about objective one.

Sure. Yeah, that's fine. I think what we did last time was started to bring in more of the health. So it's more of the wellness capacity. It's wellness and recreation. And then the mental health aspect, we spent quite a bit of time talking about last time, which was really interesting to me. But yet, moving away from the idea that for health, the town's responsibility isn't to create another hospital necessarily. So we're moving into the resources that the town What's the role that the town is going to play in that realm? Yeah, community services might not be the right term.

If you saw me doing a little bit of this, I was trying to look at other like land use and public health overlaps. Sure. Trying to understand that.

Yeah. And so I think in that one is also where we sort of looped in, you know, the strategy of having more capacity of staff to deal with, you know, public health concerns, mental health concerns.

No, if you want to leave increase in there, you could say whenever, wherever sustainable, increase the variety of public open spaces or the variety of recreation community services programming.

Yeah, I'm not wedded to the term increase. I'm just trying to figure out what if that if when I think of optimize, I think to me, that means you're making something more efficient. versus what the intent here was to actually, it was probably to think about the amount of open spaces that you have and increase them.

So can we maybe just hold on that one between increase and optimize? Because like Shoshana said, I was reading through the strategies again, and I feel like the strategies do align more with optimize. And so if we're comfortable with the strategies, then maybe we do go back to the word optimize. Yeah.

Once again, I- I'm not convinced it's the right word. I just- Right. That's the first.

All right, well, let's hold that one and we'll get back to it. The next one is increase the variety of recreational and community service programming. So this one deals with the programs, the other one dealt with the physical spaces. The next one I'm going to keep reading through and then you guys can stop me as we go and then we'll get back to it as we go through the actions. But the next one is reducing the impacts of flooding, erosion, sea level rise, and extreme weather on recreational infrastructure. So we're dealing with climate change and resilience. And then lastly, increased access to healthy local foods and community-based wellness initiatives.

I'm in favor of increasing that.

I thought that you might be.

On number three, I'm thinking about community programming. We don't have a town recreation department.

Well, we sort of do.

Or do we? Well, the neighborhood has. What I'm thinking is we rely for a lot of these programmings on other entities And our role in that is to help with paying for stuff. You know, we pay to have the pool maintained. We're going to be paying to have the skating rink going, right? So is it okay to keep it as this is a town's goal is to increase the variety without because he.

Well, if you think about community services, you've got all the libraries doing different things and the historical societies doing their thing. So those are community services and recreation. Primarily, in my head, it's enable dose.

I would say that what I think you were asking was, is it OK if the town isn't actually providing it directly? And I think when you go and look through the strategies, we're not necessarily suggesting, I don't think there's any suggestion in any plan that the town parades are rectified. But by increasing, you can continue to use the same avenues that you have right now to help increase the variety of those programming. If the neighborhood house wants to Have a pickleball league, and the town decides that it's okay to help support that. And that's 1 way to help increase the programming. Said your.

Yeah, so what's going on in Belfast with that? What's that you see what's going on in Belfast? I didn't come up. I'm not using. I know. I know. Anything I could think about that, they're talking about it down here. So, of course. I want to just say, with respect to you mentioned the neighborhood house and recreation support, and I mentioned to you, and then. Email in response to this another factor, and that is figuring out ways for the community to. Enhance opportunities through our schools. And because I just came from a mom dessert school board meeting yesterday and for not for the 1st time, but probably for every year. Is field a season and so kids are taking and every time I hear about this. there are kids in like third or fourth grade who have climbed a mountain for the first time. And that we should be looking for ways to provide opportunities to people from this high, right? Yep. And not just focus on like seniors and stuff like that, which a lot of this tends to do. Yeah, I know the place like agent placement starting at three.

They'll brought that up in a response back to my email. And that's a really good point. And we don't think that was an intentional thing. I know, forget that. So if as we're going through, I think everybody be mindful of like, we're talking about you know, older population and yeah, all ages. So if we're missing something, that's exactly what we're missing.

So I wanted to say one thing that when we had the public meeting at the neighborhood house, one of the components, one of the common things that I heard from multiple tables was they asked why there wasn't a greater capacity for like bicycle lanes. And I don't think that we, I'm not saying we have to do bicycle lanes because I can only imagine how much that would cost. But it's something that's noticeable. If you try to bicycle down to get into the park at the beach, that road is too narrow to have two cars and a bicycle. at the same time. Right. It's a state road.

Yeah. So I would say it's good to be mindful of all that. And in the transportation section, we did add a strategy that addresses that where feasible. Yeah.

I'm wondering if a lot of these should be recreation and then we have one community service objective or community wellness objective. And one food objective, like, I don't know if everyone else is content with the way things are married. I'm happy with that, but it's standing out to me as a little, like, like forcing something.

So you're saying that the topic is really wellness and thus, but, but, but the subcategories include recreation. They include, you know, quality of emotional health. They just do the health reasons to healthy food. And those could be subcategories.

Taking away from last meeting's conversation, and I think recreation has such a core component, like it makes sense that it would be multiple objectives. But if we want to lift up those other components as a group, then I think pulling them out would make sense a little bit more and not lumping under different pieces together.

No wellness is pretty new these days. I know.

And it's hard to know, like, it is really hard to pull out what it means. So, like, the food makes sense. Recreation makes sense. I don't know if there's a piece of, like. These public spaces, that's not recreation that is kind of like. Pro social mental health that that can be lifted up.

Yeah, and sometimes it does sort of, for instance, a plein air art session. You're out in a beautiful space. You're, you know, you've got beautiful views and you're with other people. That's a wellness program as well as a cultural or artistic kind of thing. So there's a lot of blurred lines. There can be a lot of blurred lines. I mean, you know, how we combine things.

Do you think public health actually isn't the right term?

That's what I'm wondering. I'm wondering if like either we have to do some, from where I'm looking at it right now, either we would want to do some pretty serious modification to really hone this as a public health area, or maybe it really is still a recreational goal and that's okay. And maybe there's little places that we pull in like the program partnerships or those things. I did feel like there was some excitement around public, like having more of a public health team, but I'm not sure how we do it in a way that feels true to the comp plan.

So just to try to unwrap that a little bit is so public health It feels like in the context, in my reflection, the context that we were talking about it in is providing opportunities for really mental health opportunities and training and not necessarily like public health in the sense that the town's going to be opening up vaccine clinics, right? And so the term public health, it does to me also have more of a medical, it starts to shift into a different, But are we talking strongly?

I don't know. I don't feel I feel like public health can be all of these things that we're talking about. It doesn't have to be.

Vaccine well, how would you describe it all healthy? Because because we should also think about how the role in a possible role in our community that.

I saw how they gave you mentioned in here. I guess it's that I'm just, I'm not as clear about like, I feel like I'm sitting in so much of these conversations with that. Like what is, how does the land use planning piece look like? What does that look like? I mean, I think all of these pieces are community and public health that we're talking about in this goal area.

So a lot of public health, sort of the definition will land more in areas. And I agree, I'm not entirely sure. When we look at this, this is a very recreation-specific set of goals, not so much public health. Public health is oftentimes more geared towards healthy lifestyles, combating obesity, addiction, drug use, healthy eating, and all those kind of things. So preventative maintenance is really what a lot of it's about is preventative forms of and trying to encourage more healthy lifestyles, I guess. And certainly a component of that healthy lifestyle is encouraging the recreation opportunities. But I agree, I'm feeling like it's a little bit of a cumbersome as we're doing it right now. So I feel like I may have messed things up a little bit. Do you think the term wellness instead of public health?

Yes, maybe so. Community wellness. Different things when we think about public health. Yes.

Because I want to put my school board member hat back on again because the issues that our schools are facing, our school is facing for kids and their families now, are in some ways more acute than they used to be in this way. And so ways in which the community, not just leaving it to the school to have a behaviorist and social worker and this and this and this, but, and do all these elaborate things for dealing with behavioral issues, teachers behaving with the head to behavioral suppression, so on and so forth, but have it be a community-wide focus on how in ways in the community itself, we can lift people up to do the kind of healthier things that some of the things that Alex has just mentioned, that that will all support a healthier community for people of all ages.

Yeah, I think like spaces that promote recreation and positive social opportunities, I think is what this should be. That language feels good to me. Sometimes it doesn't have to be an active space. It's just a space isn't programs and she's in a recreation and positive social, you know. Connection opportunities to me that I would hone in on those 2 things.

But if we have families that are struggling benches in a park are not going to do it.

Yeah, right.

So, and then what's the community responsibility? to try not to meddle, but to try to provide scaffolding for people so that they, kids don't come to school traumatized by this or that or the other issue, which is, I'm not in the building. I'm so I'm, you know, as a school board member, especially as an older one, I'm somewhat remote to some of this stuff, but I'm taking at face value what I'm being told.

So could I ask just a, just a framing question? Because I think we have, there's a couple of different options. Like there's a, One option is to have a chapter section that's just says recreation and it's like a, there's a whole lot of, um, there's like a whole methodology for how you do good recreation planning. And it's again, Suzanne's like an expert at it. So we could like pull some of that out. And then, then we can have another section that's called public health.

Or just as an example, people like community wellness.

is we could have something called community wellness. I'm just testing out framing. We could have something called community wellness. And then right now we could just brainstorm what are the things that we want to make sure are captured under community wellness? Is this recreation? Is it, you know, public health? And then we can start to say, okay, now we need to make sure we capture these things. And then maybe it's a better opportunity for us tonight to just decide like where let's create this framework for this section, and then make sure that we reorganize that. I don't know if a lot of the strategies are going to change. I just think it's how we organize them. And then we can come back and say, OK, did we miss anything under that? Does that make sense? The first question is, do we think it makes more sense to have two separate ? Or do you want to try to capture everything under one section?

Is there a lot? There's a lot of mobility stuff. Is it under the environment's goal? No. Where is it already housed?

The mobility stuff would probably be under a lot of transportation. But at the same time, that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be also under, if we're calling something community wellness.

Overlapped, for sure.

So we'll get to the environmental stuff, but there's a whole framework there that we should be thinking about too. So I guess that's the big question, like, you know, in order to like, really capture what this group wants to try to capture. And, and strictly speaking from a, from a land use perspective, like the comp plan is a land use tool, but technically, but that doesn't mean, and many a comp plan is broader than. just the strict land use elements. And so I think we're sort of bridging that, walking that line to decide, okay, we're going to, you know, the public health element is a topic that is often discussed, particularly right after, you know, COVID. You know, we have to start thinking about these things more, like the mental health aspects start to come into it a little bit. And then there's a natural connection between, you know, recreational opportunities and healthy communities. in a lot of different ways. So anyway, I'm blabbing. But the question I'm asking is, one topic or two?

One. But you're right to remind us about the, you know, it's like the line about when you're up to your ear on alligators, sometimes you forget that your initial objective was to drain the swamp while our initial objective was land use. Yes. I don't know. I don't know how far off a field we should go, but it just seems like if our focus is a comprehensive plan for a thriving community, then we can't ignore all those intangibles. Yeah.

I mean, I think just as a reflection of what I've heard through these conversations, like that term makes a lot of sense to me based on the conversations that we've had and based on our, you know, our public meetings and getting out there and, you know, thinking about the role of a community.

When you say that term, do you mean community wellness? Do you think that would be would it be recreation and community wellness?

I think it's up to you.

I would say community wellness is what I would. It's like, it's like a community wellness. Yeah, exactly.

This is helpful. I don't care if we call it public health or something else, but yeah.

Well, might it be like recreation? Food. Like they've space. I don't know that there's so much overlap between, I'm thinking about like air quality, like smoke-free spaces. Like there's a lot of, I don't want to be the loud voice in this room, I guess. I'll just, we'll see.

So that's the rabbit hole of going down that side of things, right?

Right. But I wonder if it's all, I don't know why it needs to be like this.

I mean, there's definitely going to be. you know, relations. But I think when you think about recreation, there's like a way to think about it that is related to community health. But you're also talking about, do you have enough physical space and, you know, youth sports programs, and do you have enough, and those are all public health and community health related things, but they're also very specific to that term.

Because you just take the word, I mean, public health, I get, I agree, it has a specific meaning. Just take the word public health.

Well, I guess I'm still, I feel like it's community wellness, and then there are objectives, and there may be recreation-related objectives, and then there will be other objectives.

That's what I'm getting at.

So I think I would just say it's like a list of community wellness, and recreation is going to be it.

That's kind of what I was getting at.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

In fact, when I stood up to write it down, my first question was going to be, well, let's talk about all the things that should go under community.

Yeah, yeah. So I think we just dropped that maybe there's like, in a certain strategy, there's a public health phrase as part of that strategy for programming, right? But that is, public health, we can kind of put that to the side as a central element of this goal, as a term.

Sure. So what is your suggestion?

Thank you. God, I mean, community wellness. Yes.

And so when we're going through our objectives, we want to make sure they're a creation. Objective or objectives. We want to make sure there's public health objective or objectives. Is that what you're suggesting?

Well, I think we wouldn't necessarily have to pull it out of public health. I think we could have recreation. We could have. like social community spaces or anything that aren't specific to recreation.

You sort of started this too with what Susanna said, there's active recreation, there's social gathering, there's programs.

Yeah.

Yep.

That's how we started to think about it.

Yeah. I think it captures the health part, but it doesn't label it public health.

And if there's a section around basic needs, I'm not as clear on like behavioral health and the basic needs piece, But if there's a little tiny thread to weave in, maybe it makes sense.

Yeah. What we try to do is integrate it all into those four objectives. I'm just trying to figure out if it sounds like it's not quite there.

I do think that food is access to healthy local food.

Right. The last two seem fine.

Yeah.

And so you're reacting to number one being too comprehensive.

Yeah, I guess I was just split it out. Yeah.

Yep.

Is it the combination of programming and physical spaces that you think should be separated? Because they can work together.

No. I think that's sort of what you've tried to do, right? It's more about like highlighting that there are different, not that recreation is one component with, physical spaces and there's recreation one component of programming, but there are also other components that are separate.

Yes.

Thanks for this process.

If it doesn't make sense, we have to try to make sure. I mean, it's not going to make sense to somebody else, so let's try to get it right. And again, we're not wedded to any particular thing. We're just trying to throw good format into it again. Do you want to just go through the objective one and make sure we have the strategies and then we can kind of re-circle back around and maybe as we're going through, we say, hey, this is a component that might be better on its own. Does that work? Yeah, I think that.

Okay.

All right. How about the first one? Improving signage. Wayfinding seating, rest areas, and public amenities to accommodate a range of ages and abilities. Good.

Who does that? Good questions. Really public works for the most part.

Is that an ongoing thing?

I would think so, yeah.

How about the next one? Coordinate with island connections and regional partners to improve transportation access to healthcare, recreation, and community facilities.

I feel like these first strategies could be part of a separate objective. I guess it's getting to what I was trying to think about.

So I'm just going to label them on this side of mine as we're going through, and then we'll figure out if it works at the end. Does that make sense? Do you have anybody wordsmithing the second one?

Well, should we also include the Danish transportation?

That's why we went with regional partners because we started to realize that was going to turn into a very long list.

In fact, if that figures that comment, do you think it's better just to say coordinate with regional partners? All right.

And who does that?

Yes.

Who does?

Anybody does it. I mean, the neighborhood house will do some of it, but I don't think... I mean, who does do that? Again, if you don't have a recreation director.

Well, we're talking mostly transportation, buses, and trying to make sure that we have good routes and as much access. I guess you'd put that on manager slash select board to try to... Because there's no other specific person who would assign you such a thing. Just fine.

Well, it's basically something that's going to be kept at top of mind when you're having these various discussions.

Yeah. I just put ongoing.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. Well, I'm pretty excited about the Gateway Center, actually.

Yeah. Support community programs and facilities that allow residents to remain active and socially connected as they age. Good?

Mm-hmm.

How do we feel about that one? in a category.

Because it would be in the, if it's parsed out by community services or something like that, that would be separate.

Gail, does that one exclude like your point about, you know, little ones?

Well, it doesn't, I mean, it could be others. It doesn't have to all be in one, but I do think, so if we want to specifically focus on folks in my demographic, then We could certainly leave it like this. If we want to have a broader, a broader approach, you could say, regardless of age across the lifespan, as opposed to as they age, we're all aging. I have more news for you at the same time. It's just, I'm going to set a headstart. So, um, so you could just get rid of as they age. Yeah. Regardless of age of age across the age. Yeah. The lifespan. Yeah. Or as it just take as they age out.

Okay. I just deleted as they age. Incorporate where possible accessibility and universal design principles into municipal facilities, sidewalks, crossings, pathways, lighting, seating areas, and other public infrastructure improvements, including winter maintenance in village centers and other frequently used areas. This is a mobility. I'm going to say public works. I also say ongoing. Maintain and improve public access to water bodies for boating, swimming, fishing and other recreational uses. Work with land trusts and nearby property owners to address concerns.

That's a state required.

The first part, yeah.

That one seems to be the same as the second to the last one, too. They're both really close to being the same. I don't know if we need to have both. We could consolidate and save some paper.

It looks like we need to have both by the state, but would it be less duplicative if the last sentence in the maintain and improve was removed?

think but the next the last one you're talking about is just to continue to maintain at least one major point of publication and that's right that's a duplication it is yep good catch got it and then the next one is too no matter which one we decide to keep uh you'd want to have um marina as part of this

I mean, Harbor Committee is a bunch of the harbors. Ponds End is public works.

They have a resident discount.

All right. Work with Acadia National Park, land trusts, and conservation organizations to maintain and expand trail connectivity and open space access.

And that seems that kind of a duplicate of the last one to it. We could consolidate both of those one way or another.

And I was thinking that in addition to conservation organizations, land trusts, we add in BIS groups.

Yep.

I do think the difference between those two, though, I think one of them is basically saying for land that's already out there, work on the trails, whereas this other one, the one that's a state-required one, that's an interesting requirement, basically saying try to grab land for open spaces whenever possible, which makes it an interesting state requirement. I mean, it's not a bad idea.

Well, whenever possible means maybe and maybe not.

Yeah.

Let me see if there's a way to... Do you think they have slightly different purposes? One is to create, find land.

And one is to make it better. And the state would not include... Acadia National Park exactly doesn't apply everywhere, so. At a minimum.

I just think the requirement that you try to find land is a requirement.

It's not any land. It's important land.

Yeah.

You might want to reorder things to put that up under the work with Acadia National Park. And we're going to eliminate the one before up above that. But then you have to provide educational materials. I guess we have to do that, whatever that is.

We can tweak that one. We'll figure out how to make it work. let's uh talk about the one that says provide educational materials regarding the benefits and protection for landowners allowing public recreational access on the property that's required sure does the state provide a brochure of that yeah can we assign the responsibility to the state yeah i mean that's time stuff and that's

Interesting thing.

Is there, you said, let's talk about the language. Is there flexibility on like, obviously there's a specific. thing to be checked off here, but is there flexibility in the language, or what were you getting?

Yeah, I did not bring the state requirements with me. What did you never say? Accidentally, but I'll look at that one too.

It's fine. It's basically saying teach property owners not to be jerks about people walking on the beach below low tide, for example, is really what they're getting at here.

Okay, it seems like we don't, we should just leave it at what it is. Yeah.

I'll look at the wording. All right, so the last 2, we're going to be either combined with the ones above them. How does that sit the way right now? Just to kind of follow through. I had the 1st, 3. As potential pull outs for community services.

I am looking at 159A, and it is indeed, as Alex says, teaching people not to be jerks about people for recreational or fishing or harvesting activities, what the boundaries are in terms of what landowners can and can't do.

The problem is we do have a brochure and it was probably printed in the 80s that nobody- 2007 was the most, 2015 was the most recent update.

Maine laws really tend to go with the property owner. I know people who have a one foot long fishing pole that they put in their pocket so they can walk along the beach and they say, no, I'm walking to go fishing over there and so they cannot be arrested.

Yeah.

That's what you want to do, I guess. You're not a ruler, huh? All right. Let's move on to objective two. This one is the increase the variety of public open spaces or optimize the variety of public open spaces. It's really only two. Writing a list of parks and open space needs or develop a recreation plan to meet current and future needs.

Or not another committee.

Assign a committee, a community official. Or a community official.

This is, I think, partially from the old plan too. I circled the part that says meet current and future needs. I wonder, have those been defined? That may be part of the purpose of that plan.

And it's state required. I think it would be really helpful to know exactly what the state is requiring here.

Yeah.

creating a plan to meet current and future needs which i think need to be defined or to evaluate current great letting finding out what the language is that's it's required with you

My suspicion here is that a lot of it's going to have to do with the economic issue that we're raised with. Making sure that people have affordable access.

All right, so the questions to follow up on are what exactly is the state requiring and how do we define those needs? And my question to that, Kathy, is probably we're not going to define those needs. So do we expand? If the premise is let's create a recreation plan, part of that plan, the first question will be what is it that we're trying to plan for? Exactly.

I also have a feeling that that state requirement was not necessarily designed for communities who are surrounded by Acadia National Park.

this was probably communities that like never think about those issues yes and i would still say that just because we have a kd national park provides recreational opportunity like a certain kind of recreational opportunity but you're a well-rounded community provides a variety of recreational or open space opportunities and so the point that i would say is you know perhaps we might have the trails and and you know conserved lands covered, but that there's other recreational or open space opportunities that the town could be more effective at, like... Ball fields. Ball fields or, you know, If you want to think about it as an economic development tool, like some of the work that was done when the buildings burned down and, you know, we turned the space between, what is it, down by the kernels into like a place you can go and have like a little park, you know, at least until it gets redeveloped or things like that. That kind of stuff. But there's like a whole variety to be considered. And just because we have Acadian National Park doesn't mean other things shouldn't get. I know.

I'm just guessing that there's sense that you're supposed to inventory and develop a recreation plan. It's a statewide requirement. Yeah, you're right. It's more or less developed depending on where you're at.

A lot of people don't know of the public access on many docs around that people can use.

Here we go. That needs to go on the plan. Eventually. All right. What about the next one? Where feasible, identify locations in each village for social gathering and activate those spaces through investment and additional amenities and programming.

I think that goes to the word optimize.

I like the word activate.

I feel like a little rocket going off. Activate. It sounds kind of ambitious for the town. So this is one where I wondered if we should instead be using language to work with others to do the program and we support them financially.

Although I would argue, I mean, this objective, the ice rink project is pretty much bullseye on what this thing wants.

Yep.

But I think in each community, you know, you've got the Hall and Pretty Marsh, you've got all kinds of things out there that it wouldn't be a bad idea to have representatives from each of those little sub communities with their respective little resources in coordination with one another and figure out how they can maintain and improve. Yeah.

Left-diving at the quarries? You go first. Say things like that.

No, you put it in the chat. It's being recorded, you know. You go first.

All right. So Kathy had a suggestion.

You want to repeat the suggestion, Kathy? Well, that we include language in here, that we work with others to do programming, and we support them financially. So that might be how we activate through, you know, through investments. I just think about third party requests. Exactly. That's me too. That's exactly what I was thinking. But I love the idea of getting people from Pretty Marsh, along with people from Water Creek. The sound, the bridge, all these little community ones.

Yeah. I think, Alex, though, your ... I don't know if it wasn't really a counterpoint to that, but your addition to that was the example of the ... The rink is a great example, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I guess I don't regard this as that ambitious. I think there's a lot of opportunities, and what you just talked about with the halls is an excellent example. Refurbishing some of those can go a long way.

There are some of the suggested responsibility ones that we've said, like, committee, committee, local partners, and maybe that's the instance here.

So I'm still trying to figure out how to incorporate your comment, Kathy, about through investments. Is activate like a broad enough term to incorporate that?

Basically through investments. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So let me get back to the larger question of objective two. Do you want to change the term, optimize the variety of from increase?

Is it even possible to increase public spaces?

We could, but you know, we have to park, you know, there is town land we could utilize, but I think the question- Optimize is a little better.

To me, the question would be, if you are going to be strategic about it, you would say, let's take a proper methodology and do an inventory of our open spaces. And then you're going to find we have a huge bucket of open space that fits into one category, AKA Acadia National Park. That's a certain kind of open space that provides all these different things. then you're going to find hey you know what when we look at our villages we actually have like a bunch of public parks and some playgrounds and then as you start to think about whatever that whatever those buckets are you're going to figure that out and then then you're going to say okay we're actually you know because of our goal for community wellness we're kind of lacking in these things and we need to provide more We need to optimize our investment in these things to create more variety of open spaces, because we're heavily reliant on this kind. Or you might just say, you know what, we got it covered. It's all good. We're just going to continue to maintain them. I don't know the answer to that, but I think that's the purpose of the first bullet.

Or to throw it out, I would say the spot where we might be somewhat on the weak side, I don't think it's so much on the recreation side. more on the wellness side, I guess you'd call it, which would be spaces, meeting spaces, places for people to gather for things. Wintertime stuff, I guess, would be the way I would describe it. People connected during those months.

So, like, broaden out from the neighborhood house. Certainly not on the kind of neighborhood house, but broaden out some activities throughout the community.

Yes. Yeah, so I just wrote down meeting spaces and winter kind of stuff.

That's not so much recreation.

And then everyone has to play a lead role in that.

Well, if that's the idea is that we're talking about different buildings and gatherings, are those public open spaces?

No.

Yeah.

And that's where the problem with this being very recreation heavy starts to run against it. Yes. But at that point in time, we're moved away from our creative sort of a different category. And that's the tricky part here.

Are there homes for like warming and cooling center spaces in this? There are some warming centers in our document.

I would say yes, and I think that we could either think about it here or an environment, or we could think about it under environment and let's. Like, maybe write it down now and then figure out what fits in.

Yeah, every village has a warming center at this point.

But you're not going to stay warm at night. I mean, they're extremely limited. At least the one I'm familiar with up at Sumsville.

Oh, yeah. No, they're a market.

You've got to charge your phone during the day, and then you're not going to stay warm overnight.

Yeah. No, but it's more, is there a space for us as we set goals to be thinking about how to record that and have the town have a world?

So everybody in Sumsville has a generator. Anything else under the wellness side? sort of as we think about that variety of spaces, maybe.

I know you said we are not, you know, the town's role is not to create a new hospital, but the clinic is really valuable. Is there any, like, it's a serious question. I'm not proposing a specific thing, but is there a way to build in, um, a value for providing health care access and social support, community support, something like big at the town, like within the town. We're supporting that through partnerships.

You are supporting it because the clinic is not owned by the hospital.

Is it written in here somewhere? Should we be writing it in here somewhere?

And you've also got, remember, you've also got the public health nurses too.

Yes, but are those things that we should identify? Yes, and they're important.

Should we? So, yeah, under this wellness side, the suggestion is let's make sure we add something in the comprehensive plan that would pass the town to continue supporting, specifically it would be the clinic, And anything else? The town doesn't support the clinic.

Okay.

So that's what I'm asking. And then I think your question was, how does the town support it?

I guess my question is like, how do we do these things bridge into this or do they not?

Alex, I mean, I don't know when you were in your previous work, like how does, I don't know how a municipality like would support. like a clinic, aside from like, we're owning the property and going to give it to somebody to run it or?

Yeah, I think it's more, you know, going to bat for them if they're lobbying for funding somewhere, letters of support, partnering whenever possible, but it's all, it's a million little ways, I guess, be the way I describe that. in there. However, so that's one piece, but the other piece is, and this is why I was sort of laughing with Katrina, because we, or she and I, were thinking Warrant Committee there, where we have a lot of different agencies that come to us that fall into these areas, Nursing Association, HOME, remember them? Yes, right.

Nursery school, probably. the Mount Desert Nursery School.

I can't remember.

I would feel like they're in that broader.

It turns into a very long night, and it gets a little overwhelming, so you lose sight of it. But there's a ton of those different organizations. So certainly putting it into the comp plan triggers the budget process a little bit. Like, no, we should be supporting this because the comp plan says we should be supporting this. So there is some piece to that. Because it is, those particular agencies represent, they're oftentimes right in this generalized realm, I guess I'd describe it from nursing association to home. And wellness. Yeah, it's a lot of the organizations, a lot of the nonprofits doing this kind of work.

So I defer, like, I guess that's the question is, like, how does it fit? But it sounds like there may be a way to say we want to,

um this kind of resource yeah i mean so the the effect of what we're talking about is making it more of a community priority to support those entities in the way that they've already been being supported um so by by virtue of putting something like this in a company at the end of the day what the community is saying is this is how these are things we want you to prioritize in your budget cycle and therefore like those requests really need to be thought through and honored in a way i don't not not necessarily like the the amount that the community can afford because you're trying to balance out a bunch of different things but to say yeah we support that but that might be the say the place to also on like behavioral health or basic needs

We value these types of things in our community and want the town to be giving due consideration to support for these types of things.

This is also where I need to step back a little bit because I'm the doer, not the decider.

I'm not trying to be forceful about it, but I think that's the thing about older plans. When you really think about it as just a land use tool, that's why it was so heavily recreation focused and access to recreation and that kind of stuff. public health is not a requirement of the Growth Management Act, but it is a thing that municipality towns, communities are wrestling with. And a lot of them are putting those values into their comprehensive plan. And by doing that, you're actually saying, yes, policymakers, you need to consider and implement policies that reflect that value that we just put in the comp plan.

And what's interesting is a lot, many of those third party requests to the, to the town are not even on the island, you know, like families first and lifeline. Yeah. But they do provide services. So it's interesting to say.

We do have a general assistance fund also. And it has a broad.

$5,000.

What I'm getting at also is as we're thinking about broadening the bigger picture, we also have to think about how we say it. in the plan that doesn't lock in unintended consequences. That's kind of what I'm getting at. I don't know the answer to that, but we can write it down and then figure out how to write it up.

But on the wellness or community wellness side, that the town continues to support third party entities that might, without dollar figures attached, but

I guess, yeah, I just want to make sure that doesn't, like, block you. What is this?

Community-based outreach.

Right. And say you're a community. Now I'm just spinning off the agenda. The downside of it. The negative results. I get the intent. I just think we want to... Make the like, this may be 1 of those language situations where yes, the value of community wellness is important. We've said it. The action to support that needs to be thought out more. Because somebody could come to a select board meeting or 1 of those 3rd party request me and say, where. community wellness thing and we demand, you know, $10,000 or whatever, it doesn't fit into me. And I can say this.

I'm still trying to like understand, I'm not necessarily saying we have to put that objective in, just still trying to understand like, how do we, if there is this broader wellness component, like how do we build it into it? It fits and it's appropriate for the comprehensive point.

I think that's going to be the balance. Yeah.

And I will say, when I was talking about this, I think I was forgetting, like you said, that the key piece here is a land use document. I was myself going a little off topic there.

Yeah, and it's OK to do that. There's other elements. That's the term comprehensive plan always throws everybody off because now we're like supposed to be talking about communities comprehensively. But again, the heart of a comp plan in terms of its function in the Growth Management Act is really like land use and investments related to land use. But we are allowed to go beyond. Absolutely. So I think that's where I just bring it up because. It's on fire to be out. Do you want to go? And I do think it's a weird, it's an interesting, Because recreation is so tied to this conversation. It's an obvious tie to this conversation. We just want to, you know, it's worth taking the time to kind of figure out how we do it well here. And I think the old plan, the existing plan, didn't quite capture it either.

Anyway, and I guess what I hear us saying is it's all very well and good to say. Let's devote a lot as much as we can of our land use thinking to recreation and so on and so forth. But if we're not also taking it that step a step further to have it be in the service of the wellness of the community.

Yeah, it's a great way to put it. What do we do? I think that's where we were last week and that's where we are now. Yeah.

It doesn't feel like we've come, like, like feels like we're still happy with community wellness as a goal. Yep. I know. And then it's good to reorient and make sure we're centered on what the priority is.

So I don't mean to pause things, but I do say sometimes in language, I don't know. I always think like, well, there's some spin locks that we just want to, it's unintended consequences of what that is. We just want to be mindful of.

Yes.

But objective two, changing it from increase to optimize. Have we decided on that? I don't know. Have we? I wrote down optimize.

I like optimize. Great. All right. How about objective career? Increase the variety of recreational and community services programming. I think we'll change that. I would say optimize. Still optimize? Yeah.

Optimize means we're not going to add any more in my head. Increase means to this and hope to get more going on.

Oh, I don't think of entrepreneurs like that. But to me, it's like, let's either grow it or maintain it at the level that works best for the community in its current circumstances, whatever those are. I don't think of it as just like, let's just fine tune what we've got. Okay.

wasn't my intention okay i think it's i mean i know that use is a challenging one but i feel like it's increase access accessibility and use like that's what the so that could include the existing resources or and build new ones but it's about it's not about the land it's about the reason for the land.

This objective is, this objective is a variety of programming of recreational and community services on the land. So it's really programming. So we dealt with the land. Now we're talking about the actual programs on the land, if you will, or in the space.

Maybe we should reword that then to say the variety of programming for recreational use community services programming up first.

Is it an accessibility thing? Like you don't think so.

Well, variety, I think means, you know, one thing isn't going to fit for everybody. So have more options for people to enter into a space that works for them. Now is that accessibility, but you can say variety and accessibility.

Yeah. So the first objective was improve access to recreational opportunities. This one is increase the variety of recreational community services. So we dealt with access. Now we're dealing with variety of those programs.

Reading ahead through this, I feel like this is one of the objectives where that mixing and matching between recreation and public health is proving particularly awkward. It feels like this is really going to have to get split in two a little bit for some of these, because it's sort of bouncing back and forth a lot as we go through it.

Yeah, I agree. Let's go through it, and then I'll just do what I did on the last one and say this maybe should get its own thing. How about the first one? All right, so wait. Are we going to say optimize the variety, or are we going to say increase the variety of programming for recreational and community services? Does it matter?

Yes, in terms of the reality of what's actually going to happen, it's like whatever's going to happen is going to happen, so I'm sure. We can wordsmith, that's all we want, but it's not a magic wand.

It doesn't matter to me. I just need some guidance. We'll skip it for now.

I feel like increase works here.

We'll keep it at increase. OK. Although, Gail, I did write down your point of grow or maintain at the level that meets the needs of the community. I thought that was good. All right, first one, explore opportunities for expanded indoor recreation and year-round facilities.

Can we have indoor and outdoor? Because the fourth one is support year-round indoor and outdoor recreation and community programming.

Yep. Should they be combined? Yeah, we don't need both.

Yeah, they're both somewhat the same.

We're talking about facilities or programming. And there's the fifth one. Yep. They could be combined.

Got it.

Okay. The next one is coordinate with local nonprofits, healthcare providers, schools, and community organizations to support mental health and wellness initiatives.

So this is probably one we'd want to... Good, but maybe under a different category.

And who does it? He did.

We haven't figured out who does that yet. Who does that?

The town administration.

Yep.

That's really, this is sort of what we were getting at. This is, a lot of this is baked right into that third party requests, second budget process. Because 90% of them fall into this category.

So would that be the BOS and Warrant Committee? Annually?

I just wrote ongoing. The next one, support training and awareness opportunities for municipal staff, recreation providers, and community partners related to mental health awareness, social isolation, aging related needs, and community wellness resources.

You could say aging related needs or age appropriate needs.

Which one?

Well, one broadens it to not just turn it.

I don't know if something gets lost with that, because I know we did something similar before with broadening it out. But in this case, there are unique needs for people who are older adults. There might also be an opportunity to add in another phrase. but I don't want to limit it to too few. Sure. I take it back.

Should include.

Right through that. Scratch that. Are you sure?

It should include the toddlers too.

Well, that's what I was thinking about.

Not just young and old.

That we limit it by, if we start to list age-based populations, there is something about pulling out healthy aging and early childhood. But everybody's important.

Parents of new babies.

Parents, right. And especially it's aspirational, right? Not just, I mean, obviously there are parents in this community, but we have such, it's disproportionately older population. We want to have more families.

We all have struggles at every stage.

Oh, that that goes back to the appropriate. Yeah.

Okay, so the next 1, I think we're going to combine with the 1st 1. yes. Yep. And then the last 1 is support partnerships and community based outreach efforts to help connect isolated. or vulnerable residents with recreational opportunities, wellness programs, transportation services, and social support networks. Back to your third party.

I almost feel like this is one that should be split in two. Like one that says with recreational opportunities if we're talking the recreation side of things. wellness programs, transportation services, and social support. That's a very different thing than recreation. So we're sort of combining two very different components, if that makes sense.

Since we're getting rid of one of those other ones, let's make a new one.

Yeah.

They are really separate.

Let me just say that I have an 80-year-old sister-in-law who's not getting up for exercise. And so wellness and recreation and encouraging her to get out every day are one and the same in that regard. And so I think they're...

I think it should stay in recreation, just those pieces, but then the other pieces should be in a separate stable.

I wonder if we could, that combined explore opportunities for expanded indoor recreation year-round facilities and sport year-round indoor and outdoor recreational community program, just pull that, and this is also getting to this last bullet, but pull that one out and put it under the improve access to recreation opportunities for all ages and mobility or whatever the term is that we landed on, and then split up that last strategy. And just move the recreation up. and change the objective language on objective series.

That's what I was trying to say, but you said it better.

Well, maybe I just had to think it aloud.

And I just want to mention with respect to combining expanded indoor recreation facilities and programming, if you want to expand a facility, you're not going to get anywhere with the town unless you can go to them and say, this is what we'd be using it for. So you've got to have A and B if you're actually ever going to do anything. It's like, we're just not going to build a building for the fun of that or renovate something if you don't have expanded programming. That people can see, so it's good to put it together.

2 sides of the same coin and I summarize where I think we just landed on all that. So objective 3. It's going to be increase the variety of. Programming for recreational and community services. And then actually the 1st. strategy would move to the access objective because it deals with facilities and access. And then you're suggesting that the one that's related to that also be moved to access?

I think I'm suggesting objective three is actually more of a wellness. It scraps the recreation component of objective three and moves the recreation components up.

To a different objective?

There's just different objectives, so the.

Purpose of objective 3 is to deal with the, the amount of programming for both recreation and community service or wellness. So, do we just make 2 things that are. Related to the amount. Let me think about that.

Yeah, your points was fine with that, but I could see the other option as well.

the language is isn't open enough in one to hold it with facilities and is there somewhere in here is it going to be some other place or do we need even need to mention the cooling warming i would have put that under if we're going to keep it in this section which starting to make more sense to me i would have put it under the uh variety of We put it somewhere in this section. Yep. All right. So then the other change we were going to make is changing the support training and awareness one to age appropriate. We're all good with that. And then we're going to try to split the last one into similar topics, but one's recreation more focused and the other one is wellness focused. The next one, objective four, reducing the impacts of flooding, erosion, sea level rise, and extreme weather on recreational research. So this is probably where the warming huts want to go. Does that work? I think we all agreed that was a good objective. The next, the strategy is assess vulnerability of recreational facilities, waterfront access points, and trails to climate-related impacts. It looks like we've already done some of that. Sustainability committee? Yes.

And FEMA, would they be involved? Do they still exist? Yeah, good question. This week they do.

I would make that an ongoing thing. Incorporate resilience, design, and stormwater management practices into recreation and waterfront infrastructure projects.

That's public works and .

What's the other one again?

Marine. Yes.

Stormwater is all public works though.

Yes.

But what about like a private facility that might have to rebuild their pool? That would occur.

Well, that's planning board then or code enforcement.

Well, interestingly enough, that is leading into a stormwater issue that we're tackling. So it still stays.

Next one, seek grant funding and partnerships to support climate adaptation and resilience improvements. And the last one, monitor recreational waters for water quality concerns and invasive species. I think that really belongs in the environment section.

Can you have it in more than one?

Yep. Sure, absolutely, Ken. So the one thing I would ask about this one, are there wellness elements that we're missing?

Not if the subject is recreational infrastructure. That's pretty specific. That's pretty hardware-y.

Do we need a wellness side? Well, we've got objective five here.

We haven't gotten to that yet. All right.

Chapter 5 is increase access to healthy local foods and community-based wellness initiatives. So good. Review and update land use regulations to support small scale agriculture, aquaculture, and local food production where appropriate.

If we say improve instead of increase, are we accomplishing the same thing? But maybe that's a line between optimize and increase that gets us

Sure, what other people think? To improve access to healthy local foods and community-based wellness initiatives.

But what about distribution, like a farm stand?

That could be considered to be improved access to. What are other people feeling?

I'm good with improved, yeah.

I think it works. All right. Let's see, review and update land use regulation. That's good. That must be.

Or should it be sooner? Two years or something.

And I would say the subject of improve, you can look back through this, improve the variety of public open spaces, improve the variety of recreational community service programming. And so on and so forth. It may be an all purpose board we could consider, but we're spending all day on it.

Yeah. We'll go back through and see how it fits. How about assess vulnerability of recreational facilities, waterfront access points, and trails to climate related impacts?

Why is that in there?

It was the first one on number five.

Yeah.

It was the first one.

All right.

Coordinate with Healthy Acadia and regional organizations on nutrition, wellness, and food security initiatives. And are we being specific in terms of what entity, or are we just saying regional organizations? Maybe we could say coordinate with regional organizations such as? And I know that's not consistent to the thing that we just .

It is worth mentioning, though, Healthy Acadia is the group, I believe, that received the state grants specifically towards that. So they have pretty decent funding towards exactly this.

So keep it in there.

Is Healthy Acadia mainly for children?

No.

Old boys like me, too.

Saying what you need.

Who does that? Healthy Acadia. Who coordinates with Healthy Acadia? Okay. Let's see, allow and support appropriate use of public spaces for farmers markets and community food events.

Is it just public or can it be private? Because if you think about Beach Hill Farm doing their big dinners,

Well, just the farm defective farm stands. Yeah.

Is that a review and update land use regulations to support small scale agriculture, agriculture and local food production where appropriate?

Yeah. Yeah.

It's allowed. And then this one is actively handling the Board of Selectmen. Like that, something you should approve. Should approve. They should.

Or whatever.

You know what I mean? Yep. Okay.

I would say, well, nutrition, wellness, I mean, the neighborhood houses are old here that I think is significant. And you might also say the schools. The school, does it still have the garden? The school definitely still has the garden and it also has an educational and they have an actual cook a chef.

The amount of people in our community that are fed by the school is pretty significant.

Yes. Yes. So, would it be continue to support? I'm just making it up right now, but. Local school and other.

well you coordinate with healthy acadia neighborhood house uh the schools and other regional organizations could we put a community gardens in that last one support community gardens well maybe up in the review and update land use regulations to support which we have culture isn't that including community gardens there's one in somesville right

Maybe we should use the term community garden. Yes. Include that. Yeah, if we could have. Including community garden. Yeah.

Let's put that in.

Yeah.

So review and update land use regulations to support community gardens, small scale agriculture, agriculture and local food production more appropriate.

There aren't some sorts of community gardens.

Oh, it's just by some throw one stop. It's a question.

It's part of the distrust.

I didn't realize that was a community garden.

Yeah.

Well, and they used to do a program like I've been thinking about this the whole time. We're talking about young kids. They used to do a program where the kids would all go and they would learn to plant there. But then you you had a mentor who was a master gardener. Who would my daughter, we got a garden out of it at 3 by 5 and taught her how to plant and garden. And I mean, that's an educational piece to young kids and start learning.

Yeah, that was an excellent program. Whoops. Sorry. Yeah. Did that? Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it's. The school is doing so much of that now. Okay.

Yeah. Yes, they are. Yeah, they're using that as an educational component.

Unfortunately, it doesn't happen at the high school.

Right. So we have some additional edits to make, including going through and maybe rubbing some of the topics that are sort of community services or wellness related versus recreation and seeing if we can make that distinction. Yeah, make a distinction rather than try to squeeze everything on to the same thing. We'll do that when we talk about the environment. 1, a little bit. I don't know if anybody had a chance. Did anybody need a hard copy of the. Well, this is just the yeah, so basically what we've been doing is all along is taking. what's in the green binder that is our comprehensive plan and just putting the strategies, you know, putting the whole thing into one new format. So I wanted to talk, I mean, I think before we dive into this, I don't think we're going to, let's not get into actions and strategies tonight, but let's talk about the, the sort of the framework of how we're going to, section because it's big. And so the first thing I wanted to ask or to think about is what we're actually trying to do in the environment section. And I'm going to stick with that term for now because I can't think of a better one. What the original concept, what the concept comprehensive plan does now is take the natural resources inventory section and the marine resources inventory section and just loop all the strategies in one section. So this section is really talking about all the policies that protect natural resources, scenic landscapes, working waterfronts, ecological systems, those things that really define the town, the economy, parts of the economy, I should say, and then thinking about resilience. So there's like, it tries to do a lot. And when I think about it, I just wrote down a couple of key questions as I'm going through thinking about some of these things. The first question is, how do we protect the environmental health? How do we preserve the natural character, whatever that is? How do we sustain resource-based uses and livelihoods? And then how do we prepare for environmental and climate-related change? Those are some questions that we're trying to tackle in this section. And one of the things that I started to think about when I'm reviewing this, and I kind of had to write it down, so that's why I'm reading, just because it was in my head and I couldn't articulate it well enough, is that the current comp plan is very much about, it's just protecting resources. But when you look at the data and when you look at the conversations that we've had, the framing starts to turn a little bit to focus more on stewardship and resilience, thinking about working landscapes and waters and those qualities that we think about as part of our town. So it may be nuanced, but if we take this section and really think about how we talk about strategies that are talking about those things stewardship sustainability resilience and those working landscapes then we can i think have a better lens on all the things that data is telling us about where they are so we're maybe does that resonate with everybody okay so then i would propose a framework by which we update the goal to be instead of three goals, one goal. And that we have, I'm gonna say three for now, three broad objectives. And the first objective would be protecting environmental health. The second objective would be sustaining resource-based uses. And the third objective would be preserving natural qualities, preserving the natural qualities that defines Mount Desert. And I think if that framework is a good place to start, what I'd like to do is just brainstorm what kinds of things we think about under each of those objectives.

with these bullet points those are your objectives nope those are not anything i'm ignoring this i'm ignoring everything that's in there right now i don't like the framework they're sharing i like the framework and i'm going to say i got stopped by the open paragraphs in our environment that were totally aside what am i reading that's why i was in that situation gail and i was like holy crap this section this section is huge and it's like

huge but it's extraordinarily narrow yes because it's all about like yeah let's make sure people can let's protect let's cruise we need rules to protect resources when really our job is to be the stewards of those resources for the future and think about how we can make those resources more resilient for the future and how we can think about that in the context of our marine economy, for example, and some of those elements that come along with that.

Even as we comply with the state's mandates that we make the communities much denser.

Right. All of those things have to get balanced out, even with conflict. So again, the framework for the objectives, and these aren't necessarily objective statements, but the first one is protect environmental health. So when you guys think about protect environmental health, what kinds of things do you think about? Go ahead. I worked on this, but I don't want to share with you yet. Stop idling cars.

Yeah, air quality.

Diversity, natural diversity, water quality, free bugs, infestations, and maintaining a natural, healthy ecosystem. I mean, overall, that's what you're kind of...

invasive species i think it was very recreation specific we talked about um hydrofoil and lakes okay so i i think about things like water quality wetlands wildlife habitat climate resilience ecosystem health biodiversity most of the things you've already air quality

might include like idling or smoking oh yeah i'm sorry yeah look for environments under them

The other day I got a lunch with somebody's cigarette just in Pat, I thought.

And so what I will say is some of the stuff when I start to read over this section, like a lot of the initial things that you're reading about really kind of fall into this category, right? Like you can, so what I'm going to do is probably scrub this section and then if we like all these things, I'm going to try to find the things that fit from there into these different categories.

Erosion control?

Very good. Somewhere in there, well, let's see, somewhere in there we've got the question of the use of chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, wands. Just the weirdest unnatural environment on the planet.

Our moss is doing quite nice, thank you.

I have 99.9% moss.

That's not gross.

Anything else? We don't need to spend a ton of time figuring it out. But just, I mean, these are the kinds of things that we're talking about when we say protect environment and health. And so we're going to start to think about actions that relate to these things. Renewable energy sources.

In my diversity, we're talking about plant and animal diversity, the healthy plant and animal.

I think I said natural diversity.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's both plant and animal. Balance. Which might or might not include a deer kill.

All right. Well, I do want to run this. I know everybody's getting tired, so I just want to keep going. The next one we talked about, I mentioned, was sustained resource-based uses, or better yet, yeah, that's what I called it. So that's probably a better term for that. But the kinds of things that I'm thinking about are like fishing, working waterfronts, farms, forests, and public access, things like that. Do you want to write?

Well, residential, too. I mean, residential behavior or residential land use is also a significant factor in the environmental health of the communities.

So under resource-based uses, you want residential land use?

Well, let's start. I mean, you started with working waterfronts, right?

Yeah.

And I think that's sort of the direction you're going there. Yep. Farming opportunities. Yes.

What environmental resources directly support livelihoods and local economy?

Are there still like granite? I don't feel clear.

I don't know what you're talking about. Okay.

It is fishing and farming, right? They're a drill pretty much. Yep. Yeah. Fishing, working waterfronts, farms, forests, and public access. I'm sure there's more. The next one, preserving Mount Desert. So sorry, Gail, did that answer your question?

No, no, this one.

Preserve Mount Desert's natural resource character or natural character and resilience. I wrote that down. And so what are the environmental qualities that make Mount Desert special and worth preserving? That's the question. That's under that.

That's certainly where you get into residential access, new towns, streams, mountain views, zoning. So residential. There's not too many fences. Mountains. 25-foot tall fences. Please don't forget that.

Forests. What else did you say? You said residential, we said mountains, we said ponds. Yeah, waterways, all the waterways.

When you get into objectives three and four on this, when you dig back down to it, I think they actually sort of recovered from the bizarre opening to pretty solid.

So what I think, that's what I was saying earlier, if we can get behind this framework and just like three simple objectives and one goal, then we can take quite a bit of what's in there and make them fit under each of those things. Instead, it's like kind of the way that it is. currently organized i look forward to seeing the results of your act yeah and so i mean i think about scenic resources too that's a really interesting one and kind of a tough one public or open spaces which we kind of talked about i think about dark sky i think about conservation land natural beauty type stuff And then what I'd like to do is have one goal, and the goal I wrote down was, and I can share this with everybody at the end when I revise it, but the environmental systems and natural qualities, e.g. natural resources, marine resources, scenic landscapes, and working lands and waters that support the community are protected and sustained. That's the goal. And I don't know if we objectives, but those are the three that we're going to organize everything under. Great.

Can we make all the EV cars?

Yeah. Yes. I'll reorganize and then I'm going to send it to the Climate to Thrive to help them make sure they have stuff in there too. Okay. That was it.

Great. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Anything else?

Public comment? Yes, if you want, somebody mentioned smoking. My daughter recently went out to Las Vegas the first time. They went to go see a concert and went into the casino, and smoking's going on there. I was like, oh, my God.

Yeah. Not that many years ago. Our next meeting is June 16th.

When we have scheduled. No, I have something in the calendar.

When I've gotten past the calendar by now, I have the 18th in my calendar as a Thursday. You know, 16 is a Tuesday.

Yeah.

I have to look at it. I've got it on the calendar for the 18th. Yep. Okay. That might be a Suzanne.

Then you'll send out a reminder. So I won't forget.

Yep. I'll give you enough time to work on the environmental piece.

Yeah.

Actually, I already worked on it, but I didn't want to.

Okay.

Go into it. Great. Okay. All right. Motion to adjourn?

Motion to adjourn. Okay.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye.

Thank you all.

Thanks, Stephanie. Thanks, Steph.

Bye, Stephanie.

Bye-bye.