Comprehensive Plan Committee - Regular Meeting

Alan Kimberly, hi, I can't make it to a meeting today. Sorry. He's going to be on the line.

It's my weather app literally said good day to be outside today.

All right. We have minutes from April 29, May 14 and June 4. any comments, changes?

No.

Do you want a motion to approve?

Yeah. All right. Any comments? Edits? All right. Those in favor, aye. All right.

No public comments. And all right. Review edits on environmental policy.

Yes. I suspect Kathy will be here too, by the way. Right. I can see her car over there. Yep. So, after the last meeting, we had discussed sort of rethinking the framework of the environment section. To simplify the goal into 1 goal, and to create basically 3 objectives. Um, so this, these objectives are those three things that we talked about right at the end of the meeting. And then what I did was went through the old plan and then, uh, and tried to take things out that were already done more or less rejigger things and, and then put everything under these objectives. So I also, we rewrote the environmental, you know, our environment intro. so vince if you need it do you want a hard copy oh sure yeah was this the was this the intro that was kind of the last time i deleted it and started over again that was that one yes thank you okay so i would say the environment section uh there aren't that many sections where we've like taken a whole acts to it and to start it over again but this is one of them but there are similar things in there so um i don't know i'm happy to take wordsmithing suggestions on the intro paragraph or you can send them to me in a different time but i really want to focus on the goals and make sure the objectives work and then um i mean we could just slog through the actions um one thing i will say is as i was going through this I did notice that there's not like everything, a lot of things are ongoing in here. And so what that says to me is there, we haven't identified the real priorities, like if there are any, uh, and I suspect that there should be, since we're talking about the environment. So it would be interesting to hear some feedback on that. And once we're done with maybe even after today, we can scrub it a little bit. And then I plan on sending this to a Climate to Thrive because I know they're working with the Sustainability Committee, and part of their job is to actually review this anyway. So that's my plan. And I bet they'll have some more sort of targeted stuff. And our job there will then be to reframe it into a plan. reframe their additions or comments yeah okay all right so uh you want to get started what do you want to do just go for it i think let's go for it so did anybody have any thoughts on the goal keep in mind that the the reframing of the the framework that we're going kind of going for is more less Um, protection in more stewardship and enhancement of, um, so there is some protection in there, but I think stewardship is more of the, the theme. It's kind of great. Love it. All right. Then we had the three objectives. The first one being maintain healthy and resilient natural systems that support clean water, biodiversity, wildlife, habitat, and ecosystem function. Good. Sustain natural and marine resources that support resource-based livelihoods. What's that?

I'm just reading a word.

Good. Yep. And preserve and protect natural resources that define the town. I really like that. That's a good way to put it. Great. Then we get into, like, you know, the nuances of scenic landscapes and that kind of thing. But I dodged that. It's too specific in that. All right. So the strategies, part of what I tried to do on the other side, too, is I put, you know, at the end of this document, probably, like, pages 9 and 10 are all of the state goals. And we don't need to do this tonight. Like, what I think, because... This section called Our Environment actually is really like a compilation of three different sections that are required as part of the Growth Management Act, maybe four. So you have like natural resources, you have marine resources, you have forestry, and you have agriculture. We don't have a ton of agriculture, so we don't need to worry about that. But we're just trying to simplify it. And then what I think we're going to end up doing just for state review purposes is like Do this what I did on the state goal side, and then even maybe even have to reorganize the strategies in each section just so they match, they follow, like, what the state's going to be looking at for review. So, sometimes we've had to do that and they're like, wait, you didn't say this and I'm like, well, if you read this thing, it actually says the same thing, but in slightly different words. Is that okay? And they're like, yeah, thanks. is that it's just clunky i mean the category is they've got a conky sometimes i mean i think i always think they're really good topics to look at you know those are the core functions or things that you want to look at comprehensively but then sometimes the way natural resources marine resources like those are separate yep and what were the other two forestry we're starting to take agriculture

I mean, you could make an argument that certain aspects of each of those are independent, but they're also intertwined. Absolutely.

I don't disagree with you. Here's what it is. I do think having an our environment section that incorporates all these things in the way that we're talking about is good. I just think that what we need to do to make it easy or getting consistency review is to say, here's what you said we were supposed to do and here's where it, you know, in this section.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. This is our document and here's how your criteria are also met.

So, I mean, we'll do that for other sections too, but I think this one in particular because we're kind of a bit different.

Is there more state required policies in this section than other ones?

Yes. Like it seems like the other ones, one or two at the bottom. Yeah. Oh, there's a lot. There's a lot. Yeah.

Marine Resources adds quite a bit.

Okay, so I wonder who might lose their hat on here and move on through this and say, hey, wait a minute, what are you doing?

Yeah, I just, I don't, you know, again, I tried to take a whack at responsibilities. It may not work. I think we have some questions going through. And again, as we're thinking about each of these objectives, if there is more of a short-term sort of priority that we can think about, we ought to just write it down.

Can I, so can I start by asking you questions? Yes. Okay, the first strategy.

Yep.

Is it really, when you talk about stormwater management, erosion control, foster standards, are those all things that you would expect to find like at subdivision ordinances? Is that what you're talking about? And it's not like a separate ordinance for stormwater management?

No.

Okay, it's all part of like- It's a lose out then.

Like the conditional use permit has section, okay. And then I don't think we do a very good job here of thinking- You may want to add planning board to that then. Yes. I don't think we do a very good job thinking about phosphorus, but that is a thing you have to think about when you're in a lake. You know, you have lakes.

Yeah, we just have limits on how close you can go.

So, yeah, the intent of the first strategy is really like, yes, you have ordinances and yes, you should be reviewing them.

Yes, but my question was, they're not like discrete ordinances. They're embedded within what we already work with. So let's check those things off.

Hey, I just want to recognize that Suzanne is in the house.

Hi, everybody. Hello, Suzanne. I just wanted you to know, Noel has inspired me. I'm still working on this project.

She couldn't resist. So the public, and you're going to the next one, if we could, the public water supply protection ordinance, I had to go, I looked at the, the what, and I went back and read it. Um, that's a select board ordinance. And so I'm not sure, um, the LUSO committee. There's always a gray area, like, like, we're supposed to do land use stuff and then there's select board stuff. And if the select board wants to ask the, I mean, that's been an issue in the past. If select board wants to ask Luzo to deal with something they do, but.

Who's the enforcer on that?

Select board.

Select board is the enforcer.

Yeah, it's not code enforcement.

Yeah.

Select board.

Okay.

We can just make select board.

Police, actually.

Okay. You can call it police.

It's like if you have a vehicle on the bond, you're supposed to know.

We can just make it select board.

I think so.

In public works, because that's really what it is. Yep. Okay. Thank you. And then the next one, uh, do you guys want me to read them out loud or can we all faster program? Yeah. Good.

Um, I'm concerned sustainability committee. I'm not sure that they've got the skill set to do that.

Right, right. Yep. You'll notice... Or their portfolio. Eric, I mean, Alex, I did put sustainability committee meeting, like sustainability committee on a bunch of these. So that's a good evaluation for us to go through.

Yeah. I mean, it's...

And a larger question about that, this only talks about coordinating with other communities to deal with water bodies and resources. I would assume that a water body that's entirely within our town borders, we don't, I mean, there may be streams and stuff, but in addition to coordinating with others, we need to be doing our own. Yep. So that's only, that's a piece of it, I would say, coordinating.

Yes.

Right?

We're required to do this. I mean, all we have to go public works for lack of a better.

It helps that we have We're just required to cooperate.

Well, no.

Yeah, if you look at what, further down the list.

Identification of water bodies requiring water quality monitoring. So who would identify such a thing? Water company would.

Because they're checking the water quality every day at the ones that count.

Yeah.

i don't know if this is just about public water supply resources it's also about double groups and streams and there used to be a mdi water quality coalition or something there's other places around there are people that do this and so this objective is to basically work with within the town and with partners to do we know if the volunteer lake monitoring group i don't know i don't know i've sometimes we we have done some research to try to figure out like is that james disney well it might have been but when we were doing the inventory we did some research to try to find more like hey are there any things that jump out in the data. I mean, it's just not easily accessible. So I'm not exactly sure what they do. And I know the park does a lot of stuff.

I think the main DET coordinates with those groups. So that might be the people to follow up on that with.

So for on page 8, in terms of the state recommended strategies, only one of them is participate in local and regional efforts to monitor, protect, and wear warrant, and improve water quality. And everything else is deal with your water quality. Yep. In town.

I'm thinking of a recent episode involving lower Hadlock, upper Hadlock, Mount Desert Water District wanting the park to remove the beaver dams. And the person who got stuck right in the middle of all that was Brian. So that's why it's a public work. Okay. Yeah. And the strategy is good.

Did you want to make it seem like we have a choice in the matter? Well, we could tweak the wording. I mean, this isn't exactly what the state said. All right.

Do we want to say, but what I'm getting at is, do we want to be saying protect water resources, including coordinating with neighboring communities and local regional partners? Um, and that way we've got our own job to do plus coordinating, you know what I'm saying?

Yep. Let me mess around with that. Does that framing make sense to everybody though?

Okay. In the next one, you've got LUSO in there, and I'm not, coordinate with neighboring communities and regional state resource agent to protect shared critical natural resources. That's not LUSO.

I was thinking when I put that in that LUSO would be the extension of that, but we're happy to take it out.

I think sustainability can stay on that one though.

Yeah. I mean, again, if the Board of Selectmen says, we need an ordinance that says X, and we'd like you to work on it, we'll take it under advisement.

Maybe we'll do it.

It'll fit you in on Tuesday. All right.

How about the next one? Is the suggested timeframe was that is that a state suggestion or is that, you know, what this was a leftover from your old plan and I kind of think you already do it. And so I actually meant to put a question on that 1 and go, I change it. Okay.

We definitely put out a lot of stuff along these lines.

Oh, the public information. Yeah, I would say. provide public information and communication about subjects and domains instead of improve. I don't know, improve from what?

Right. No, I agree. They're doing all that stuff, so. Or continue to?

I was just about to say continue to, yeah.

Sure. If it's not your one. Whichever. Okay. And just leave sustainability committee there. Yeah. That's more in their wheelhouse. Right. How about the next one?

Well, we do have private roads. We don't do public roads. And public properties require the retention by contractors, owners. We don't handle construction maintenance of public roads. You want to build a private road, you have to come to the planning board. And we don't do public properties. Why don't some of the town come before the planning?

Well, I just added public works to this list of responsible responsibilities, but yeah, part of it would be whatever the best management practices are when you come in to develop a road, like a subdivision or whatever. Planning Board and LUSO at some point, potentially, and Public Works.

Good?

We're working. We're silent reading today. All right. Kathy, we're on objective number one. Everybody thought the goal was good and the three objectives were fine. So we're moving down. The only person on the Zoom right now is me and Suzanne.

I don't know what the state of Maine's beginning with habitat program is.

Oh, that's a good program. What they do is collect all the like habitat and natural resources data. That's what all of your natural resources mapping is based on their maps. When the state gives you the data pack for comprehensive plans, all of their maps come from that program i assume our planner will tell us when there's some aspect of that that needs to be incorporated yep i mean every time you um i've been aware to create an ordinance you should be at you know you could be asking developers like hey are you doing something in the habitat of the you know rare um freshwater clam or something like that i don't know

The deer, the white-tailed deer.

The white-tailed deer. Actually, they have maps for deer wintering habitat, which are apparently really important. Yeah, there are in some other places. Yeah, so there are places that you have to be aware of.

I think we can convince our deer that they should go winter in official deer wintering habitats. Yeah, it's all about what type of deer you've got to talk to.

Yeah, it's all about the type of habitat.

You've got to talk to the coyotes.

All right, we good with that one?

Yeah.

Dale, you've worked with who's working on it?

That's a lot of you. Well, where appropriate. Well, actually, ongoing means to me when it comes up, it comes up. And I think it's not like I'm going to go to our next Luso meeting and say, guess what? We're going to be working on it.

I think ongoing isn't necessarily like, hey, you and within the next one to two years, you're going to do this. It's basically the way I think about it is partially you're already doing it. And if you have, say, like you have stormwater standards in your ordinance, you should stop reviewing your ordinance periodically to make sure that the rules that the the standards that you have are actually the best, the best management standards. All right. Page three. We could probably get some more refinement on this from sustainability and a climate to thrive.

Yeah, I would love to see us look at building standards, environmental building standards and that sort of thing in our ordinances, but we don't. I mean, I kind of, well, they're not going to replace the building, but it kind of wins when we went, like we're doing in the Clifton Dock thing last night. It's like the solar panels? No, no solar panels.

Yeah, I think, so the climate action plan that's in existence now is very much geared toward action, like less, using less electricity. So like actions that you can take that will help lessen the impact to the climate. Sure. And then I think you're actually working on... That's like building envelope issues.

Right.

And so some of those things you're already implementing. And I wrote down a note, like, I think this would be a place where Climate to Thrive would help to say, hey, you know, we've already worked through this.

What are we implementing in that regard?

Exactly. Right now, I think, though, you're working on solar panels and you're thinking about... Well, we have the solar ordinance now. That's the... I mean, the town has been actively working with the Climate to Thrive to put solar panels on. Oh, sure. On public buildings. Yeah.

Yeah.

Not to say that that's the only thing you have to do.

I mean, in terms of like new construction or renovation, that sort of thing. There are no environmental impact considerations of the building itself, the envelope itself. What's the energy draw going to be of this building? There's no sky's the limit.

Yep. So is there something we should add to this, to that?

We should add to it, but it would be in particular and specifically, but it would be... I mean, you're already instructing us to incorporate considerations. Yes. And ordinance updates, I assume, would include the LUSO.

Yeah, absolutely.

Because the others are just like you say, it's putting solar panels on the town garage, which is great.

Yeah, that's a good. But. As new homes are constructed, there are standards that we already have in place, the universal building code, right? Right.

Those are state. We don't... Well, international.

Right. Those are not... Like the state code is only by default enforced here.

Because we don't have anything.

Kim doesn't have to go out and inspect specifically for things that are in Mubec, but builders actually have to build to Mubec and architects are supposed to visit Mubec.

And so if those things are kept up, is there a climate resilience factor in all of that?

I honestly don't know. Or is it just how many electrical outlets you have to have in the kitchen?

There are installation requirements for attics and exterior walls. And everything costs money. So people don't want to just burn fuel to heat a house. They tend to build. Right.

You pay now, I'll pay later.

Right.

In a way.

Everybody tends to be building a lot more efficiently and tighter.

So like Kathy, the MB365 and the Nolan Wei one, the foundation, the reason why the foundation is spray foamed on the inside is because of those energy codes. Yeah.

And we put extra insulation in the attic too.

So some of that is, yeah, we, you know, I guess the question I would have, and I don't think we need to answer it tonight. is are there some more specifics that we want to add to the plan related to climate action that the town should consider and is there a timeline to that?

And I don't think we are in a position to answer specifics. Well, tonight or maybe unless somebody really understood what is already required. I don't because it's not within our ambit.

Well, this would be where I would go back to the sustainability committee and say, what are you working on that you think needs to be in the comp plan beyond just like when we were there, that was a very, very much like we're just doing education. I mean, is there are there other things that you want to be doing? I don't know. But that's the kind of stuff that I would think about. Just for time transactions. I would say resiliency is a theme that kind of should be all, you know, how are we

doing things to adapt to the already changed climate that's resiliency or even if it hadn't changed winters are cold and summers are that's just efficiency yeah i'd rather see this uh just focused on municipal planning and infrastructure okay and not like we don't have to get into ordinance because that's governed by building codes that aren't in our ordinance necessary.

We still have them in our ordinance, but we don't. At least we don't so far. I haven't heard, I personally haven't heard it. Somebody else may have any interest in dipping our toes in that water.

Is there any value in suggesting in providing education and information about possibilities rather than enforcing things? Just, you know, if somebody is taking out a permit or somebody is buying land or somebody is planning on building a house, say, have you considered this?

I would love to see that best practices delivered.

I think that's a great idea. Yeah.

I don't know if you guys can hear me. I think that's a great Sustainability Committee project. We've seen other municipalities really focus on if we're going to achieve some of these goals, it's going to be in our municipal buildings only because that's something they have control over.

Is that a question or I didn't get the last statement?

The town has control over municipal buildings and infrastructure only, not private property. Right.

Yeah. Like, in Belfast, they had these ambitious, like, we're going to make all municipal buildings solar goals, but they weren't essentially trying to regulate, you know, private or, like, track and enforce other, you know what I mean?

Yep. So I crossed out ordinance updates and wrote education. Okay.

Well, then, if you're going to do that, then I suppose you could take the...

I just crossed out Luzzo also.

Luzzo, yeah. I do think the idea of having as comprehensive as you can and efficient suggestions for

I mean, there's plenty of information out there. Yes. It's just we don't have to invent it. No. It's just make it available to people. Make it, yeah, make it accessible. Yeah. Handy. Okay.

Although, yeah, there's so much of the building that takes place around here is somebody going to an architect anyway. Right. Ground file.

We good with that one? Yeah. All right. So the next one I left in, but I also crossed it out because I thought probably it would need it to get deleted. So this is a carryover from the last one. And I just left it more for discussion.

Why wouldn't we cross it out?

Well, that's a good question. I wasn't sure that the town really wanted to do a hydrogeologic study of the town's water resources.

Well, when we get to the question of growth areas and we'll be, I assume, debating whether or not, for example, we leave my favorite village out because we don't have water and you can't meaningfully keep adding lots of densely spaced buildings without town water. But what do you do about that? Is it going to be part of a process where the town figures out what the capacity really is and how you might deliver water? And would this be part of that process?

I don't know. Could be part of the process of thinking about how you develop more efficiently or better in a growth area.

I mean, I think water supply is so critical and it's something people, we just kind of like ignore. It's like, oh, just roll out.

I mean, I guess, I don't know if we ignore it. I think questions of carrying capacity are very, very complicated. It really depends on how, it's a really difficult question. and somewhat subjective thing to try to study but my question really wasn't i'm not debating this i think it's up to you guys i just i put it there i put the strikethrough in more for discussion purposes so when we if we have like a subdivision and we want to require evidence that there's sufficient water for the subdivision that's not going to drain everybody else's

I don't think I've ever gone through that and actually seen whether or not the documentation and the information you can get is actually useful as opposed to just having a welder come in and say, Oh yeah, we're right. I mean, what can be done to actually determine if there's, we don't have aquaverse where all this all like crack and water flowing through it. How do we determine what the care capacity is versus just letting people keep building?

Well, so there are ways that you can require people who are doing more development to test the water capacity by doing... There's hydrological tests that you can do. In Bar Harbor, people have to do them all the time. And so there's a scientific way to do that. And then you get the results and go over it.

Is your sense is that it's...

Why is that reliable? Very reliable? I mean, I think the test is reliable where you're doing drawdown tests. The complicating part is where it's because we're all on fissures.

Yeah.

And, you know, because you tap into this. The idea is you're if you're tapping into this fissure, you just do a well and then you test, do a drawdown test on that well to see if it's affecting if you're connected to the same vein.

Yeah.

And, you know, it's. I think it's reliable for the test.

So was this done? Because if this was in here in 2009 and it said within two years, what was done? Nothing. There's a lot of within two years.

Suzanne, you said something AFPO on your...

yeah um in maryland like they kind of deal with this i mean there's subdivisions happening at like this huge scale right so they have it's not a carrying capacity study but it's an adequate public facilities ordinance and so there's a way to say okay if you're proposing this new development how many um you know school uh kids does this generate because there it's a school crowding issue or how like you know it's a vehicle trips like testing people trips and like what it's basically like a list a checklist to say what are the anticipated impacts on public facilities and you know they prioritize certain things and stormwater is a huge issue there because of thunderstorms but that's an example of like how you know you can go to create sort of a checklist like that that isn't a carrying capacity center per se

We have a bunch of that in our ordinances. Yes.

So it may be sufficient.

Okay, but it's that's different than. Groundwater that's different than groundwater and it's different than figuring out for planning for the future. How you could target areas to. to encourage or discourage growth i mean that's different than responding to the heelway application and to find out what get a traffic study to find out how many kids on bikes this this strategy is very specifically telling the town to do a complete

or complete a comprehensive hydrological study of the town's water resources.

If it goes away, that's fine. At some point, if we want to do something to encourage denser growth where we don't currently have a water supply, we'll have to grapple with that. But we don't need it in the comprehensive plan to make that happen.

We could add, put a pin in this one a little bit and then make sure that when we're talking about future land use, there is a something along the lines of what Suzanne was talking about, but also within these lines, but without doing like a, you know, like a, I would say a carrying capacity analysis that that's not exactly what we're talking about, but something we could, I think maybe the future land use plan is a better area to start to wrestle with that question that you're talking about. Yeah, so move this from environmental. I probably wouldn't say exactly what this says, but something along, you know, if we want to revisit the question in the way that Gail's talking about, which is, hey, if we're saying, if we're saying, you know, Sonesville is going to be the new downtown area and then the question needs to become we need to put something in place to say okay you know what kinds of things need to be answered in order for that infrastructure needs to be provided and we have to make that reasonable and possible and then we'll get into all those things again

so i would just generally speaking i would love this whole island to have a sense of its water carrying capacity i mean you look at the summers we have now they're drier and drier and drier and that's when we're overrun with people turning on the showers and packing houses and and yet we don't it always astonishes me that we don't seem to actually take that into account

Yeah, I mean, I think it does get taken into account quite a bit, but we just wrestle with it more.

Yeah, it also doesn't fit with the objective so much. Maintain healthy, resilient systems. This is more about carrying capacity.

Okay, good.

Let's talk about it.

All right. Don't forget about it. Right.

Right. It belongs, if anything, it belongs elsewhere.

Hmm.

Right.

What is the status of this?

This is a tough one because we've struggled to even have a shellfish committee.

Yeah, so I think we've let them know. Suzanne may be able to add some something to this, but I know we have talked to Rusty Taylor, who is the chair or co-chair. And I think we want to, something makes sense to have something like that in here, but it is just sort of a question. Did you, what do you want to, did you have any, what was your conversation with him, Suzanne?

Yeah. So when we did this public access to water study for Maine Coast Heritage Trust, and it's been a couple of years, what I think I remember him saying is that there just isn't the sort of volume of interest in shellfishing, sort of like uh as in the past and that was one of my um takeaways there does that sound right to you guys there aren't as many people like pulling permits or however the process works forgive me um to to participate in shell fishing is that because there's no shellfish areas in mount dessert or very few i think yeah a combination of very few and maybe just sort of like a like, I don't know if it was a generational thing, like a waning interest. I don't, I'm not sure.

Yeah, it's both. As in other things are occurring. Yeah. The best clam flood, I think, is out near Bartlett's, which is kind of far out there. Yeah. It seemed that there was a few others, but they're pretty small in scope and not, not great in existence.

And have they had?

The last plan flat in this town is a parking lot right now, so. So that's the issue. I mean, it's become a very, very, very small piece of it. My suggestion would be simply change it from within two years to ongoing, because if there is an outbreak that forces it, we do need to react to it. But the lack of shellfish has nothing to do with bacterial contamination these days. It's much more of a lack of interest and a lack of actual clam plants.

Yeah, because I think we've done a good job of eliminating as many overboard discharges. That was one contributing factor. Not so much. And then it's failing septic systems and stormwater runoff. That's half the problem.

What authority is it that closes down the state? Yeah.

Which would land on the Shellfish Committee to at least be part of it. But yeah, it's not them that decides it.

Yeah. My question to them would be, is there an area that you guys have been targeting for a long time and just isn't getting the attention that it needs that we need to put in the comp plan?

Attention in what sense?

In that, hey, this isn't actually a decent plan flat, but it's been closed for years because we're not doing X, Y, and Z. They don't know of any such thing? Yeah, that would be my question to them. Yeah, not that I know of.

So I guess, is the subtext of your question, do we leave this in here?

I think we're still leaving it in. We're just putting it as ongoing.

Okay. Now when we get to the next one.

Yep.

Develop a monitoring and managing strategy for invasive plant and animal species. It looks like you're talking about in our waterways.

Well, this was a leftover from the old plan, but I think maybe it combined two different things that said the same thing. Yeah, it would be in the lakes.

Right, and that's fine because everything in terms of what you're supposed to be doing relates to not putting boats in the water with bill foil on it or something like that. Yep. So the first sentence should reflect the fact that it's focused on invasive species in water.

Aquatic.

There you go.

Aquatic plants and animals, because the same thing happens with bait fish. You're not supposed to release bait fish into lakes and ponds.

OK, good. For invasive aquatic plant and animal species?

This is really an education thing. You're just posting signs. And when you get a fishing license, here's a brochure that says what you already know.

Or you don't. Or you can't. Just to remind you. Do we want to make it aquatic plants and animals, or do we want to make it invasive species? And animal species. Like, there are invasive...

They'll shut down a lot of gardens if they sometimes...

I'm all for that, actually. Although, don't ask me to dig up the lupine.

There's lupines all over the place. Do we not like those anymore?

Dave, if we started trying to get rid of lupins.

Yeah, I agree. I think lupins are great. How about Norwood maples? You know, it's like those are all over the place. What do we do about that? Yeah, that's a good story. All right. So yeah, I think it's a whole.

I think this is fine exactly as it is, actually. But I mean, if we want to wordsmith it a little bit. Yeah, I mean, I did have to keep it as an ongoing.

Yes. Yeah. And it's, um, so, well, I guess the question that we had on the side was, has anything been done yet? And if not, do you want to at least start doing something in the short term? Whereas if you said ongoing, it would be instead of developing, monitoring and managing the strategy, it would be continue to monitor. And implement the .

They aren't putting any more hogweed in the gardens.

This is already happening, so. It is. The monitoring and management strategy. I don't know if I'd call it that. It's mostly a don't do it.

Yeah. It's an education. The signs are at every lake, every boat ramp. Then there's somebody at ponds end every day of the summer checking boats. That's from the Maynard wildlife.

Maynard.

Yeah.

So it's but it should you should link the first sentence with the fact that everything in it that the action items are actually all aquatic. Yeah, I wrote down aquatic. Thank you. Yeah. And then that's it.

I think we can tweak this a little bit to make it shorter to provide education and encourage volunteer programs for monitoring. Yep. Get rid of all our responsibility of it.

Inventory existing . OK. Good. All right.

Let's see, objective two, the first strategy, my question was, has this already been done with the GMRI study? And maybe not something that we can all answer, but if it has, I would sort of rephrase the goal of the strategy a little bit. So that's a question that I don't know the answer to because I haven't fully, I don't really understand what this study said yet.

With all of these next ones, which are all about fishing and marine resources, where is fishing in a broad sense in the economy of our town and our region at this point in time? In terms of this town, is it still a big economic engine?

uh i mean i don't know if it's as big of an economic engine as it was i still think it is an economic engine and i would also ask let's yep and i think that when you start to think about less i wouldn't even make it specific to fishing as much as you're making it part of your thinking about the marine economy in general and not the boating part but the you know future economic opportunities that are going to be like commercial fishing, but not necessarily pulling in as many lobsters as everybody's been pulling in. What about raising, you know, oysters?

I mean, I guess that's what, yeah, sure.

Other activities.

There are economic. No, there's, there's, and then when you start to think about the economy, then you're thinking, well, hey, we know Bartlett's is a, you know, really important working harbor.

Yep.

In combination with its recreational boating outside, but if we had the type of facility over there that could really support that type of activity, this is where we'd want it to go. So you start to spin that off. But there's a lot of like blue economy type stuff that I, I mean, I still think you're a big player in that.

Okay. I'm not suggesting we're not. I'm just trying to understand. I don't have the stats. We're at the same time where the community is at this point in time.

Yeah. I mean, I definitely think if you just head down to the marina in the wintertime, when it switches over to the fishing boat, it fills right up with them. Absolutely.

And are they working in the winter, or are they just somewhere?

Yeah, usually if they're in the marina in the wintertime, they're working. If they're not working, they've hauled their boat out somewhere. Yeah.

OK, thank you.

It's a funny point in the year when we are between winter boats and the summer boats, and it's suddenly empty out there.

Yeah, thank you.

Yep.

So I don't know if we need to answer this question as much as I need to ask somebody else, but...

I mean, where I struggle a little bit is this single inventory piece, inventory existing public and commercial. And there's no one single inventory on this, but there's an awful lot of individual projects occurring on all this. I guess that's the one piece of this. Every facility has a different need, I guess, is what I'd get at. Clifton is one thing. It's just had to get raised up quite a bit, but the pier of the town doesn't have to go up quite as high because it's not... It's not out there in the... It's not as... Well, and it had more, too. It had more... Yeah, exactly.

And so that's where I'm... Well, Clifton is private, so that's... Does the other suggestion for wording make more sense? Periodically review public and commercial marine access facilities and use those findings to guide investments in dock, ramp, float, moorings, parking, and other shoreside infrastructure?

Sure. We should have a conference. I mean, it's not like we have 12 hoppers. I mean, we should have a conference that looks so we can triage, so we can prioritize.

We actually already did. We've done a public access study for MDI, including Mount Desert. So we know, like, a lot about the public access, the public access points. Sure. But it wasn't specific to, the inventory would be, here they are. This is the condition of these places. And you could start with, here's what the town owns, versus what Clifton Dock needs to do as a private space, which is very critical to the water infrastructure.

Yeah, they're required to be a fuel dock.

They're required to be a field doc?

Yeah. Cool. Well, they have some funny penalties that kick in if they aren't.

Yeah.

They lose use of the facility.

Is that the deed? I guess I didn't read that carefully enough.

Funny deed. What would have been funny is if the planning board said, no, you're not having fuel, but yet you're required to.

It reverts back to the original family that once upon a time owned it. They failed to have fuel.

Instead, they're going to bury those vulnerable fuel lines underground, so leading to the dock.

All right.

Do you want to make a tweet to this, Alex? Can we just go back to the first one? Because I feel like they are two very different things. Sure. I guess it's just that... The word inventory is like there's going to be this one big study that I don't love. And keeping track of it, I think, is absolutely critical. And as we go along, continuing to work on these because the one that has me most worried right now is Seal Harbor Pier. I just don't review inventory of existing maybe or something. Something to say rather than like this. Do it once. Maybe you're. Yeah, periodically review.

Yeah, yeah, and make it ongoing.

Yeah, yeah, definitely ongoing.

So that makes me think about, and we can get to this when we talk about public facilities, but shouldn't doing something about Seal Harbor dock be in the comprehensive plan as a short-term goal?

No.

I mean, if this is a plan for the next decade, then it would just be review and update facilities as necessary.

Well, I think that you want to, this is what I was saying at the beginning, that every action, every strategy that we've talked about is a ongoing strategy. So there's nothing to guide the actions of the town as it relates to the environment. And what I'm saying is if you already know, Because because this is a 10 year plan, it's okay to have some things that you're going to knock off the list in the 1st, 2 years. That's great. Next round. Somebody can say, did they do this? Those things start working.

I don't tend to agree with you because it may turn out when you look more carefully at where things are a Bartlett that needs to have something done to it. And maybe that's more. I mean, I'm not saying it does, but but why. I don't think it's within the purview of this committee to decide that you need to attend to Seal Harbor dock now. You need to do that in the next two years. If we're directing them to prioritize, to assess and prioritize what gets done when, I think that does it.

That's not what we're doing. We're not directing them to prioritize anything. We're just saying, go talk about future needs. And there's other places in the plan where we have said, you shall do this in the next two years. So I guess my question is, why not do that? I'm only using Bartlett's as an example. I don't care if it's Bartlett's or something else.

I don't need to answer it tonight, but it is a larger question.

Everything can't be ongoing.

And I'm not sure we should be... From this perch be telling the town when and how they should, we should be committing substantial resources to any particular facility. We already are going to be facing a rebuild of the. Dark right down here in the next couple of years. Okay. So if we say. You need to do a sale harbor in the next couple of years. Well, where's that money going to come from? And how does that fit in with the plans to already rebuild this dock?

I think that's up to the town to figure out. This actually is the place to say, we already identified those as critical waterfront infrastructure. So you know Seal Harbor is one, you know Northeast Harbor is one, whatever they are. And so this is the time to say, we already know there's needs there and you should address those needs sooner than later.

Well, as a member of the comprehensive plan, I don't know personally what needs are where and how they should be triaged. I mean, I think that's what we should task the Harvard committee and the select board with doing.

Right, but that's why we said inventory, because nobody's done that yet. So you're reacting to all these things. Sometimes it's it. We'll do whatever you want, but I'm saying at a certain point, you need to organize yourself to say, here are all these places, these are all the needs of these places, and somebody's got to make that decision. What's a priority?

So if you say review existing public commercial marine access facilities and identify needs and address them.

Or prioritize. Or prioritize them.

Then you can make it a short term, and you can make that a short term, because then you just say.

You can make the decision you're going out this. Yep. Then that starts to put the, the budgetary conversation. Right.

But then, as long as it's not the role of this committee to say, this is more important than that. Yeah.

Yeah. I kind of, I kind of misinterpreted that as well, but what you're really getting back to here is. This is an actual hole we got going here. We really do need to figure out which one should come first, second, third, and fourth on our priority list. And we don't really have that yet. You're right, because Seal Harbor, prior to coming here, Seal Harbor wasn't really on my radar until quite literally day one. I found myself standing out there going, oh, this is a lot closer to the water than Northeast Harbor Marina. But even then, I still don't know that that would necessarily rise to number one, because it does get a lot less use than the other ones. So even if it is in more jeopardy relative to the Northeast Harbor Marina, which is probably 20 times the usage of all the other docks combined, where do you prioritize that? So yeah, OK. I hear you.

So would we think of Oh, sorry. I'm just a great advocate for the inventory process. It doesn't have to mean like a full-scale strategic plan or anything, but it's just like a way to create a list and a decision-making matrix at the same time. That way it's like you're kind of thinking out what are the criteria that we need to think about and putting it in an Excel sheet and then using that to kind of guide your thinking.

The other part of this for me is, everything is so loosey-goosey. The ongoing things to me are like, you have to review your ordinances periodically. That's ongoing. You're going to do certain things ongoing, but at some point, you can't. And yes, to some degree, you should be reviewing your public facilities to make sure that they're meeting the current demand. But at some point, we actually need to say, do this thing. to help you make decisions along the lines of what you were talking about. Like, how do you know what is the priority or not? Because that activity has never been done.

So would you think of this as being somewhat analogous to what the town already does with respect to its capital? plans, you know, when we assess the fire trucks and the equipment and, you know, that they have a life of X and this is what we anticipate the needs are going to be in X number of years. And here's where we're at with each of these.

I would. And I think we're going to have a very...

So we do a version of that sort of thing and have that infrastructure assessment.

Yes. And I think we'll have a very similar strategy in public facilities that does the same thing, but you're already, I mean, like not to jump ahead, but you know, the town does a really good job of all the things that it does. And part of what we're trying to do is make sure we're maintaining that level of service that we want. And, and the capital plan is the way to do it. I would think the inventory activity would be the thing that would guide you on your capital planning. And then, and then once you make an investment thinking about like we're doing, you know, there's lifespan questions and that kind of stuff.

Yeah, I'm good. I think there's no mechanism to do this, but I think that now that I understand where you're going with this, this turns into something of, you know, I put it in bold, but in terms of directives to direct the town to do this becomes a big one and more of a direct. And so if we start to get down to the handful of bullet points that become the, here's some very specific things, I would suggest this go into it because this is a very specific and not insignificant action. There's a lot of studies.

I mean, if the town had an assessment of all of its infrastructure, you know, this building and could look at the whole picture along with the docks and stuff like that, say this is where we're probably going to need to be in the next 5, 10, 15 more years.

Yeah. I mean, I would add that as it's sort of a, you know, that activity, this activity will feed into that activity.

I mean, the reality is the town pier is already well underway simply because it's 70 years old. But next to the pier is the breakwater, which an assessment of does that need to be raised, that's not part of the pier project, is out there. That is a concern I've got. I didn't raise the thing. Doesn't mean everything around it might not flood. Yeah, that's right.

All right, so when I just edited this, it still kept it as review existing public and commercial marine access facilities, identify future needs, and prioritize. Something, something. Got to work on that. So review, identify, and prioritize. Short term. Maybe short term. Okay. Okay. How about the next one? Yeah. Yeah.

Great. I love that. It's a tricky thing.

Yeah.

Next?

I think so. Yeah. Great. The next one is?

Shellfishing. Back to shellfishing. This feels very redundant to me.

It might be. And is this one, is it better in this one than in the other one? But the other one's more about the quality, the health of the ecosystem.

The other one focuses on bacterial contamination. And this one is more broad-based. So this one's probably better.

This one's better.

Yeah. I'll figure it out.

Okay. Anything you want to change about it or are we good? We're good.

How about the next one? Educate property owners. Fantastic.

I'll put that in there for you.

I'm going to grow as many trees as I can.

Yep. So this is another one. Maybe I don't think I put the state requirement there, but I think it is. It seems like it. Yeah, the open space.

Yeah.

I wasn't exactly sure. They're not... I mean, you probably already do it, but do you really, you know?

I always get a little... We don't manage any forests here.

Here on MDA, but...

There's a couple properties that they've split them, and then a big chunk is in tree growth. They pay $50 in taxes on it.

Like any pretty marsh area. Or some trees.

When will I find myself dealing with my first tree growth violation? I don't know. But the tip line was open, so if you want to... Of course it opened before, yeah. But here? Not here. But it'll happen.

As soon as Vincent grows his trees. It'll take a while. It's a real...

I mean, sooner or later, somebody breaks down and breaks their.

Yeah, it's a big penalty too. Yeah.

You have to harvest that. I know in Massachusetts, you have to go and selectively harvest every year and have some.

You have to have a management plan. I think it has to be updated every five years or something. So you're working for that tax break, sort of.

To be honest. The violation invariably involves somebody being just Well, yeah, it was a tree growth, but it was blocking my view.

No. You can have it both ways. All right.

Next to your state requirements? Pretty much. Any choices on those? Nope.

So we'll have them. Let's see. Wait a minute. Review municipal consultancy.

Yeah. So if you go back to the state stuff, they want you to consult with, you know, I mean, Forest Service, when you're doing things about forest management and they want you to consult with the Soil and Water Conservation District when you're doing things about agriculture.

So, is this really the LUZO Committee? Did they put LUZO?

For the review of municipal regulations and consult, the first two, there really isn't any.

doesn't really feel like it's something well isn't animal husbandry and all that stuff in those ordinances so if somebody wants to start a farm beluso is the barrier to their pipe dreams alpaca farm what are we part of nubian goats i love the name winter

I don't know if this needs to be a medium term either. I think that was a carryover from the old plan. Yeah. And the other two above.

We'll take that one for the team.

The other two above it don't have any designations. I didn't know who to put there. Like punted.

Is there a time frame where it could just be as appropriate?

Usually I would put as appropriate at the beginning of the sentence.

Would either of those be code enforcement? I would put code enforcement for both of those two. That's true.

We haven't put a lot of code enforcement.

Under the review, the one that loses on, can we say no?

EMG. I don't think that would go.

Local.

I don't want to lose what Vincent just said, but I might put as appropriate on consult with those two somewhere in there. OK, good. What about the last one?

on this page.

Seems pretty abstract. And that's not required.

And it's not a carryover either. I don't remember the look.

Is this the town is coordinating? Cooperating. Cooperating with? to encourage conservation? Once again, it seems like you could.

Of productive farmland, large habitat blocks, and working waterfowl.

It feels a little obvious to me. Of course we'd do that. In which case, I guess, if you're going to do this as an ongoing and selected responsibility, it'd probably be select board, actually, on this one.

think this one might need to be in there but let's keep if it's like i'd like to check sure and what's the local like is that main coast heritage trust or yeah like all of us to always be a gas station or like a cliff and dock and you could be like this is always going to be a farm and just screw over anybody else that wants to do something else that

We've been trying not to put, like, we could list a thousand partners. Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes.

And then some partners who don't get listed get offended.

And the next one in corporate ag looks fine to me.

Who's doing that?

I don't. I don't know, sustainability?

Is there an economic development committee? This is a perfect example. I would put this under economic development committee. This is the economic development committee that's on sort of a hiatus right now because they're not really feeling like they've got enough direction.

Yep.

So here's an example where we can give them some more specifics.

I think there's a lot in other chapters too for them. Turn that down.

It's like shocking.

It's not you. I'm still here. I can.

I'm going to try.

There you go. All right.

You saw this? Say something. Say something, Suzanne.

Oh, sorry. Yeah, I'm still here. Is that better? Thank you.

That's better. Better?

Yeah. I was just saying, there's a lot of other... strategies and other topic policy topic areas that have been suggested for the economic development.

I mean, it's still put it under them. Not because it's not gonna be a major thing by any stretch, but I just put on going.

And I would think that could be in the next one too. Support local food production. Partnering with local schools on educational initiatives. Well, you'd probably want a school board committee on that, wouldn't you?

Well, I would say who from the town is going to work with the schools?

Yes, at least the elementary school is way ahead already.

Yeah, I mean, to me, this was something, that's why I put the sustainability committee, it's kind of already doing stuff like that.

I'd say it's more than an economic development, yes.

I guess, if you're talking about identifying the opportunities to improve long-term viability of small-scale farming in the town, then, and you could, I'm not sure where the loser committee is there, except, that we just kind of had an example of that with and that was the planning board the beach hill farm came to us want and that gets to the table of uses they wanted permission to be able to hold several weddings at beach hill farm and it was going to support their underlying work and we had to We have to pretend that it was sufficiently similar to the current uses allowed. Wedding venue will be on our list of table of uses today, but in this day and age. So yeah, I guess that could be planning board or a loser, whichever you want to say it. But I think it also could be economic. Oh, it's just a committee. What are the opportunities to improve long-term viability of small-scale farming in the town?

I had an economic development committee. Somebody comes up with a novel way to make it go. They can be the people for that.

Yeah. OK. Let's see. The next one I thought maybe this would be two actions. Identify and implement. And then there's working with boat yards. Yeah, maybe it makes sense as one.

I think it's fine as one because we're concerned about contamination from it. Oh yeah. And it's the same stuff at both places basically.

I didn't know they were specific.

It's toxic. Are there other places where other municipal areas would be like a marina?

I mean, it's got ducks and it's got a lot of people coming and going. It doesn't have, yeah. It's got winches, it's got people all in wait, it's got... You could just say all marinas. Yep. I was just thinking that myself. There's a big marina someday.

All marinas and docking facilities.

Okay. Did you say and docking facilities?

I don't know. I mean... Barlow's isn't really a marina. It's a .

I can rewrite this one a little bit, but more comprehensive to what you're saying, generally.

I mean, I think it would include Sunsville Landing. It's not part of the town, but .

I think the original wording had a lot to do with there were programs that the state had, like Clean Marina. programs, and I don't know exactly what the status of those programs is these days. So this is just a genericized version of that.

And do we actually want to talk, broaden it to talk about encouraged adoption of best management practices by every type of facility, whether it's private or nonprofit or for how to handle being on and around the water? I mean, obviously, boat yards and facilities like down here are the most obvious vectors for. What do people think? Sumsville Landing and private docks that keep getting bigger.

I'm a little confused because encouraged adoption of best management practices by local boat yards and marine businesses.

I'm just wondering if you should broaden that.

That's all.

I mean, not just, I mean, marine businesses to correct water quality, marine habitat, like, like there are things that the sums of the landing board processes in terms of what people can and can't do off from the dock and around the dock. And that will have an impact on water quality around the dock. And people have their private ducks. We have similar thing.

Wouldn't that still be a Marine business though?

It's a nonprofit.

Oh, I see what you're saying. Okay, okay, okay, okay. So it's almost like users need to be in there, marine.

Marine, yeah, dock owners. I think I would make that a separate strategy and something like educate marine or waterfront owners, property owners. Just with waterfront access? Yes. And then I would be very specific to like, what we're talking about here is when you. Like a bunch of boat, or you bring your boat up from the water, or you're putting fuel near the water, or you're doing all these things are very specific sort of Marina. Things that you really need to pay attention to, and there are, there's a series of. programs and best management practices that you have to do like if you're if you're at ables and you're washing a boat at the end of the season like that's there's a very specific thing that you need to do to make sure the water is clean it doesn't affect as you're washing like the crappy stuff that you keep on the bottom of your boat into the back into the ocean you know there's there's this is very specific to that kind of

Just get sprayed now.

Just get power wash. Power washer, you're still taking the paint off. Exactly. And it's a problem. Yes, that's what I'm talking about.

Yes. But there isn't anything that they're actually doing now to prevent that. I'm not going to pick on them.

I'm only using Ables as an example. Yeah, I know. A place I could think of that had the travel lifts close by. And they're not really doing anything.

well or across the highway jocks yeah jock's gonna do more so that's another example yeah a jock or whoever jock is you know yep what was that name it's chris toomey bought it who did chris toomey um he bought uh jock williams but he did when did that happen april really wow

Still going to be a boneyard.

Yep. Still going to be a boneyard. Good.

I'm sure I wouldn't have allowed anything at all.

I know, right? And everybody's staying. What's up? Everybody's staying.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, they built him a boat, Stanley, last year, and he got to know them and vice versa. So, yeah, no drugs. Just ready to sell.

He's been ready. Yeah, talking you into sell.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not long for this. Well, that's a nice transition, though. All right.

So the next one is, I don't, I wasn't sure what to do with this, but is this like create a town conservation commission? This is a leftover from the old plant. We're going to call it sustainability.

Yeah.

So we can delete it.

Exactly. Sustainability. All right.

Here we go. The inventory again.

So close. All right. We're on to objective three.

Yes.

You remember? Yes.

The answer is yes. Right. So the first one's good? That's what I heard. No, I'm kidding. Sorry.

I don't know why Liz was there.

All right. Who should be there, Gail? I don't know.

I don't think it was him. I'm not supposed to put up works this time. I don't know what Louisa would do with that.

How about just select Board of Sustainability Committee?

Yeah, sure.

They're going to be busy. Yeah.

All right.

This is interesting.

Well, that it includes scenic resources. Just as a Just throwing out an example. Somebody just bought Matty Allen's house. Oh, really? Yeah. And so that is at the head of the sound, driving along. The place next door, you used to be able to see a lot more of the sound until that house was structured and a fence, a wall. How do we prevent that? That's a scenic overlook. Is there rules about that? Putting a fence up on your property? And if I were buying her a property, you'd have to be out of your mind to not want to put a fence there. I know. But it will change everything. Well, that's the conflict again. That's the problem. Yeah.

Word is, so far, they're tearing it down. They're doing a massive renovation. Yes.

Yeah. Is he putting up a fence? Seems like a nice man. So I'm at a bean supper in January.

I will comment that that giant house, I don't know if y'all remember what was there before. What was that?

Falling down. But it was small.

Yeah. Always elevate the road.

I mean, I come back to number 1. Yeah, I can certainly see cases of this. A great example of that would be. Land and garden preserve has an easement on the land at the head of. the harbor that is actually owned by the Aztecu, but there's very strict provisions that that needs to be maintained as that scenic pass through. That's why you see it cut down periodically to that specific height. There's very specific provisions to do that and only that. They're not allowed to do more, do less. They have to maintain it just like that. So that's why we still have that little bit of view into the harbor. And if they'd left it alone, that would have grown up and you would have been gone ages ago.

Exactly. But somewhere in Aluso, we do have a discussion about... Fences.

Scenic views. Well, so maybe the LUSO committee should remain in this.

Wouldn't be LUSO. What this strategy says is back to the, it's sort of like, you know, you don't, if you don't know what your resources are, it's really hard to even talk about, it's hard to know what the strategies are to protect those resources.

So all this says is,

identify and maintain an inventory of priority conservation lands, habitat corridors, scenic resources, and open spaces, and use that information to guide stewardship initiatives, conservation partnerships, and voluntary protection efforts with willing landowners and conservation organizations. So if you said that thing at the The land at the head of the harbor was private property, but it's been like a really important scenic resource for the community. Then you could go and use that information to talk to Maine Coast Heritage Trust or Land and Garden Preserve or whoever's going to manage it.

You know, it helps you arrange a connection between a private landowner and a conservation group. Yes.

And this is not identifying so that you're not just cherry picking in the middle of a, or at least, you know, like you could cherry pick if something pops up and everybody's like, holy crap, I forgot that was important, but you could also, you know, like that area is very important to us. So now we need to start thinking about what we want to do to maintain it. Okay.

I was just going to advocate for another inventory.

That's it.

We just did it. But it's true.

We made a list in the actual inventory chapter, and then we also sat down and did an exercise as a committee where we marked a map of what people see as their scenic views and scenic resources. So I think by naming it and mapping it, yeah, then you can create some sort of structure or rules around it.

Okay. I did take Luzo out, Gail.

Thank you. I don't sleep that much at night.

How about the next one? How about ... Oh, I did put it in the report already. Which one are we on? Number two. Second one.

I mean, yeah. Good enough.

I took out loser. I was going to say it.

I was going to not say it, just for the fun of it. See how many losers we can slide in. But the next one, I think, is going to stay there.

You have to put a time frame in the second one. Oh, yeah. Isn't that ongoing?

Yeah. I'm like, it's literally my job right there.

If I may get back to Kathy. A solid fence as opposed to a rail or similar fence or wall more than four feet in height, measured vertically from the ground directly, shall require either code enforcement or conditioners with such fences or walls will not unduly restrict scenic views.

Perfect. How about the third one? I wonder when that got added. A while ago. It's been now. So to celebrate a success of the first comp plan, there was more specifics of the comp plan than the existing one. There was a lot of specifics in there about doing better lighting stuff, which we already did. And now this one is just sort of a continuation of making sure that you're, you know.

Yeah, this is a win appropriate instead of continuing. Annually reviewing, we could just say when appropriate, when new lighting technology emerges.

Right. Yes, exactly.

Instead of like every day we need a change.

We're going to bed at night. I'm going to think about that ordinance.

I thought that's what you did, Gail. I'm going to continue to think about that ordinance. Is it? Annually.

It's going to come after the LEDs. It'll be next.

That'll be interesting. All right. How about maintain and periodically update climate vulnerability assessments?

Mm-hmm yeah.

Good. Yeah. Appropriately. Yes. That's the responsibility.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Maybe there's that too. Nice. Okay. How about the next one?

Yeah.

Yeah. Probably ongoing. I just get tired of writing ongoing. How does this start somewhat redundant?

I know, that's what I'm thinking.

And I feel like number two. The first one was about conservation. Both one and two, I feel like kind of cover this already.

Okay, well, this is pursue funding opportunities. Is this grants?

Well, okay.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Oh, I thought we were on to the next one, which is kind of redundant to the top ones.

No, I agree though.

If we're talking pursuit grants, leave it alone.

Would you include economic development in there?

Oh, yeah, I would.

Yeah, OK.

So yeah, this one's more specific to public awareness, but it is kind of similar to the second strategy. Are we good with it?

I guess. I do feel like it's, I agree with you, it's kind of redundant. Unnecessary. The number two.

advancing stewardship and continuation yeah yeah same with education draw a link to these two and then try to figure out how to make them same similar yep more similar okay about the next one but it's ongoing uh well it isn't that it hasn't been evaluated continue to evaluate and it's okay lighting standards versus municipal street lighting i guess okay so yeah one of them was there was a strategy in the old or the current plans something about yeah we switched out leds right i thought you i thought the town's already done most of yes yes yes so i think you either take it out or um

Or just make it ongoing if there are new strategies.

Yeah, it's definitely it's it's not within 2 years anymore. It's right. We're like, whatever comes after, but it might just be public works, not.

The strip sustainability committee, we'll give them a break.

It won't be system. Yeah, it would be public works. the reduced long-term operating costs i mean that's the one thing in the budget that doubled in cost was street lighting i don't know if anybody noticed it it went from like ten thousand to twenty thousand or something last year or two years ago we had an overrun that amount because we had to do a bunch of repairs on them i think that was that was where it was going it isn't it definitely has a city cost it hasn't been that no it was more um

We lowered it way down from the crazy high number it used to be with the sodium, but nobody factored in the fact that we aren't going to need to care periodically, spend money to keep up on them. And so that's why we're like the budget, like same, same, same. No, that was Brian coming online being like, so we didn't really budget for the fact that I'm going to have to repair these once in a while, folks. That's, that's what that one was. Okay.

Next.

Yeah, sure.

Good. And the next one.

Now, can I just say at the bottom of all this something? Sure. All of these, like so much about. conversations, all of these land use and conservation and environmental protection efforts, there are things about these that we can do ourselves. But our actual ability to bend the curve or impact any of these in a significant way is extremely limited because the problem is a lot bigger than the amount of dessert. So I just wonder why we don't have something that at least encourages not only the education of us the citizenry, but encourages the community itself to communicate with state and federal officials to push for laws and policies that will actually help Do all of the things that were not just specific grants. But if we want to do anything about sea level rise and needing to do or whatever. It's going to take more than just what we can do within our borders and it is entirely consistent. with our duties and responsibilities for us to be advocates as a community, to be advocates for these things with bigger governmental agencies that can actually make a bigger difference. And so I don't know why we shouldn't think about having a bullet point in an ongoing bullet point in there that makes it a priority for us to understand, help people understand and get involved in those kind of linkages and those kinds of I'm not saying it very coherently, but... You're saying that the town should educate and encourage the citizenry to be active in... Well, not just the citizenry, but the town itself should look for ways to be advocates with the state and federal government. Isn't that a nation's up for now? For global impact problems. For laws and policies that actually contribute to the success of what it is that we're trying to do here. Because we're not going to, we can nibble around the edges with any of this stuff, but we're not going to actually solve the problem.

So, it sounds to me like you're kind of going in the direction of sort of upstream advocacy efforts that we should be putting more effort into that. Yeah. Lobbying for the right thing.

So, you could, yeah, we call it that, but I probably wouldn't use that. Yeah, no, I know.

Advocating. Right. So, is that appropriate for the town?

I think it sure is. For the sustainability committee to engage with at least state level or public representatives on the federal level.

Yeah. I mean, what's wrong with this one was a town saying to the state or the federal government, we're trying to solve this problem here. And the real source of the problem is there and that's within your jurisdiction. And here's what we would like to ask you to do to support our efforts, to have clean water or support our efforts, to not have all our infrastructure flood or whatever, whatever. Um, I mean, we can do all the little things that we're proposing doing and that's great. We should do that too. We should, we should, you know, local government should do local things, but local government needs to be proactive in asking the bigger fish in the pond to please not keep eating us.

Well, let's come back to that because I think that's philosophical. It's a very interesting piece. I'm going to choose my words carefully as the person who would ultimately be directed. But to me, that's very much a select board level decision. And there's no guarantee if we put it on here, the select board would necessarily agree, right? Because it's very much a saying, prioritize and ultimately could even have something of a budget impact because prioritize upstream advocacy efforts or working, spending more time working towards the state house and working with the state and establishing legislation and stuff like that.

Or maybe to your main municipal or whatever.

Sure. And certainly main municipal has its advocacy arm that tries to sort of represent all the towns as best as possible. It's an interesting question. And I mention it because we are a small town, not a larger town where that might be a little bit more of an easy sell. So it's just I don't know where the select board would go on such a thing or not. That's all I'm saying.

And I guess what I'm saying is because we're a small town, We also need to be coalescing with other small towns to actually try to make more substantive changes and improvements that will make it possible for us to continue to do all the things we want to do as this small town. We're not, we are technically, we are on an island, but we're not an island. And there's a plan in terms of solving these problems and addressing these problems. And I'm just trying to figure out how we might weave that in to what we consider to be important work of the town to get to accomplish this stuff.

Would that be something you could say was explore the ways in which the town could connect with others to promote change on a bigger level? Exploring it.

Yeah, you could. I mean, you're hitting on a dilemma that I'm dealing with, which is exactly what is a good mechanism to join together on a broader level. And there's organizations out there that one might look at and go, oh, maybe that should be the one. But they're not there. It's just a really, it's a hard one. Yeah. Because, yeah, I mean, if we were the city of Portland, this would be easy. Like, yep, we've got a person to do that. Sure. But we're not. And so how do you band together and how do you get towns, even say, for example, within this island that will oftentimes have very disparate viewpoints on what they find most important?

I guess what I don't want to do is get the other piece of that, which is helping our community to understand, because there's also citizen advocacy, helping our community to understand how we fit into the Baker-Bisher and how citizens can be engaged in.

So I'd call that downstream rather than upstream.

Yeah. Okay. So that's a good tie into, and Suzanne just reminded me that we are, we have talked about this before and having like, pulling out some, I don't know if it's a separate section or like in some part of our introduction like that overarching governance thing that we've talked about before. So that's a good segue to that. More specific to this particular section, are we suggesting that we also have something that's a strategy where it's, you know, when appropriate, advocate with federal, state, and regional entities to on behalf of our environmental goals or something to that effect?

I think if we came up with an overarching concept, an overarching approach to the comprehensive plan as a whole, Certainly affordability and all that stuff we've talked about before, that those are all issues that we're not going to solve all by ourselves. Sure. Yep. And how do we target the other things that we as a community, both as individuals and as a town, can and should be doing to... Yep.

I think we can in the comprehensive plan, even right up front as part of our overarching themes say, you know, that recognize, and I'm not going to articulate it now, but recognize the things that you continually reminding us about, which is these are all great, but we're also part of a bigger thing and we need to be able to advocate for the stuff that we're looking at, you know, whatever that is. And getting also to Alex's point, which is like, and to me, if it's an overarching theme, that really lends itself to saying, well, the policy, the the Board of Selectmen, who's theoretically the policy makers, technically, of the town, can then take that into consideration and then direct appropriately the town's resources toward that objective, those objectives. And so I don't know exactly how to write that, but I think we've talked about it before, and it would be a really interesting section to parse out a little bit more.

And I do think that there's two pieces of it, because in some way, having a conversation within the community at large about these strands and the challenges we face as a community and what are the drivers of those challenges and where are the areas where we could have the greatest impact in having good solutions for them. And what is the role of citizens in the community as well as just not expecting Alex to go and solve this problem. I mean, I think in some ways that would be even, I think in the long run, be even more important.

I think let's bring that into the bigger picture. And I think putting it sort of upfront in a way that isn't like,

you know, within one objective.

Yeah, yeah. But and then sort of get to the more minute points is when we're in these strategies, part of what I'm hearing, you know, so the bigger point was, let's go and advocate for things that are important to us, like environmentally, that's where it started. But it's really like bigger than that. Sure. But then the other thing you said was, you know, making sure that we're educating each other on The things that we find important for the environmental side, I think we've already put those strategies in place, but just want to make sure as we're reviewing that, you know, we, that is part of what the sustainability committee actually does.

Right.

So, but, but let me let Susan and I can put our heads together and maybe we'll just figure out, you know. Okay.

I think you're right. I think it would, I think having it in a broader is, thank you.

But I mean, it is, it's an aspect that I'm struggling with a little bit, um, because I was thinking of a good way to put this in context. If you look in terms of valuation, um, we're the largest community in Hancock County. If you look at us in terms of population, where middle of the pack so which are we right so yeah right you know um and that's sort of the the piece of it and then you get to who are the people who show up at town who can show up and vote at town meeting and and who are trying to maintain the year-round community yeah because you i will have these occasions where certainly when chatting with other managers i can sort of sense like okay they're thinking like dessert is the largest valuation, Alex. No, we have a staff of 50. We're not that town. So yeah, it's an interesting mix there.