Comprehensive Plan Committee - Regular Meeting

Alan said he was going to watch the recording tomorrow. So this is for you, Alan. Anyway, all right. So tonight, what we had on the agenda was to talk about a little bit about what to talk about fiscal capacity, and then start to jump into future land use. So because there's so few of us, we have pivoted a little bit and we're going to talk about fiscal capacity and we're going to check in on some stuff because we're trying to wrap up regional coordination. And then I think it would be good to just look ahead about the calendar and how we can make sure that because the future land use stuff um really deserves a little bit of attention so the so sort of the course of of that is going to be um you know the first meeting i think it makes sense for us to spend a little bit of time just talking about what future land use actually is and what a growth area is supposed to be let's get oriented on some of the state housing rules that are coming into effect which might you know then we can talk a little bit about where we are But I think that's gonna carry over into like, now what do we do about it? And that's probably like at least a two meeting sequence. So we'll get to that at the end. Does that make sense? All right, so before we get started, just wanna introduce the new person in the room today. This is Jasmine Bender. Jasmine is a new planner at the Musson Group. I don't know if Jasmine, do you wanna tell us a little bit about yourself?

Absolutely. Yeah. I'm happy to be back. I grew up on MDI and went away for school. And I recently just got my master's of urban and environmental planning at UVA in Charlottesville, Virginia, and decided to move home to be closer to family and friends. And so happy to be here. Yeah.

Yeah. But we're fortunate to have Jasmine seek us out a little bit to at least chat. And it seems like a good opportunity. So keeping the talent on the island. So Jasmine, this is your fourth day on the job, and Suzanne and I have been just dragging Jasmine to a bunch of different meetings so she can get a sense of what we work on at Demos & Groups. So Jasmine's here.

Great.

All right. So any other questions about the agenda tonight?

I'm probably going to throw in a curveball as we go. What's that? I'm probably going to end up throwing in a curveball.

Love the curveballs. Throw them right in.

You'll know when it comes.

Sorry to interrupt you. Are we expecting anyone else on Zoom?

Gail may jump in on the Zoom at some point. Yep. So for fiscal capacity, I think I mentioned this last time, but this is sort of like kind of the natural extension in comprehensive planning of the sewer, the services, the public facilities and services section. So the other one, in the old plan, there was not a huge amount of fiscal capacity, but there was a copy of the town's capital improvement plan at the time. So we just prepared this as a rough draft, having not really talked to anybody about it, just for conversation purposes, sort of in the same format as the other sections of the plan. My thought tonight, having talked to you today, Alex, would be talk to us about you know what the town does for fiscal capacity um not fiscal capacity but basically like capital improvement planning and that kind of stuff and then um maybe we go through this and you throw as many curveballs as as you think are necessary at it but we don't need to like um you know really uh have a huge section on fiscal capacity it really like kind of builds on other things so that makes sense yeah i'll probably just be adding in a couple of phrases that all love it

Great. Send us down the rabbit hole. Oh, good. Yes.

Well, so let's, why don't we, I think it was, it's kind of important to start with the basics of what the town already does, and then we can kind of jump in there. Do you, do you, if you, if you want to do it a different way, I'm open to that too.

I'm going to turn it to you.

101, fiscal capacity. I mean, looking through this, and I think we saw this last time, I know this all looks pretty boilerplate stuff. And I think we're pretty boilerplate as a town in a lot of ways. We're not doing anything wildly out there, other than the fact that we happen to have a actually adequately funded CIP plan. Go us. And we've actually kept up with the infrastructure over the years. Go us. And that makes us boring from the perspective of this. There is no... how do we catch up on stuff that's 50 years out of date? We don't have that problem here.

Yeah.

That's unusual.

I think that's exciting.

That is good.

It's very, very unusual.

What's that?

How common?

It's not that common.

For towns to have CIP.

Yes. It's not uncommon for towns to have CIP. It's uncommon for towns to adequately support their CIP.

Smaller. I would say. In our experience, I think we are often like, hey, do you guys have a... capital improvement plan. And what does that look like? And it's often not at all a very it's if anything, it's not very robust. So we're usually like, this section can start to get a little more like this is where I would be like, well, your short term strategy is to actually have a capital improvement plan to start one. And then that's, that's been our experience.

So kudos to whoever got that started.

Yeah.

Katrina?

Well, it was what Warren Committee.

Yeah, Warren Committee. In Derlin's time or before that? Yeah, you got to give Derlin some credit on this one. You really do. This is very much something that he championed and it was painful to get it up to the dollar amounts that are now going in there that remain relatively flat year over year now. But it's that and some very, very complex spreadsheets that keep track of how we're doing. And I always use the most simplistic answer, which is keeping track of putting, saving up the money for the next plow truck. And so, you know, plow truck, you can pretty well say, you know, how many years out you are until you need to do the next one. And you can take a pretty good shot over time as to what the next one's going to cost. And so you use a lot of formulas to just make sure that you're every year. putting away enough money for each and every one of the plow trucks. And so as long as you're doing that and you're putting the correct amount of money aside and you're keeping up with it, it's not vastly painful nor is it vastly painful when the time comes to buy it because you've already set aside enough money for that. And then that gets that very simple version of just say a plow truck then also goes out to buildings, wastewater infrastructure, fire equipment, all of those big purchases, that same methodology gets applied to all of them. And so, you know, it's this big gargantuan sort of spreadsheet and series of calculations being made, but it all comes down to a simple dollar figure. And that's the pain that the countdown went through was to get to that pretty good sized dollar figure that gets set aside every year. But a perfect example of it working is the giant reval. And I know it's nobody's favorite topic, but when it came time to get back the dollar amount that the giant reval was going to cost, he'd already set aside every penny of that money. We're not going to have to raise anything extra for the giant reval because we actually started putting money aside for a 10, 15 years ago and managed to build up the correct amount.

I think that's kind of unique and like definitely something to celebrate. Yeah.

So that's, that's really Walking in the door and having that all up and running, yeah. That job. Yeah, so that's our CIP plan. Yeah, it's a lot of pain. It's well over a million dollars every year as part of the budget. It's typically the first thing addressed every year just because there's a lot that goes into it. But it's sound investing. And then, yeah, when I tell somebody in another town, I'm like, no, our wastewater treatment plants are actually in pretty good shape. They're all like, I'm going to, yes, I hate you so much. So yeah, that's where we stand. It does make us unusual. Great.

So I guess I would say what we tried to do in this section is basically try to reflect that and just make it super simple. The language could definitely be tweaked, but basically the goal of having long-term fiscal help supported by sound investments in public facilities and infrastructure supports residents, protects community assets, and reinforces the identified growth areas. high-level goal. And then the objective, you know, most of the sections that we have have multiple objectives, but this one's just one objective. You know, plan, finance, prioritize municipal investments to maintain public facilities and services while supporting the town's long-term goals. And then the strategies. basically continue to sort of reflect a lot of the ongoing stuff. I don't know. I think I forgot to delete short term off this one because I was using a different template. But I think we'll need to keep the short term because that's where I'm going to throw in a curveball. All right. So everybody's happy with the goal and the objective? And the first one is basically to maintain and update the capital improvement plan. Good?

Do you have a warrant committee?

We could. I didn't know who else to add. Definitely Warren Committee. Yeah. I thought we'd probably spend more time on the suggested responsibilities than the... Yeah.

Warren Committee. Warren Committee will get on to a lot of this.

Okay. Great. That's a good one. Yeah. And the next one, coordinate capital investments with future land use plan, directing growth-related infrastructure investments to designated growth areas where appropriate.

Designated growth areas and potential TIF districts. Yes. I did not add that on purpose. Potentially what? TIF districts.

TIF. T-I-F. T-I-F. Incremental financing.

That's incremental financing districts.

Do you want to give the one-on-one on that since we're going to be bringing it up?

That's going to take us a half hour. Okay, I'll try. This is something that came out in the past couple of weeks in some conversations and trying to figure out how we were gonna deal with, to be honest, an entirely different problem of repaying a debt. And it led a couple of our lawyers to basically ask the simple question of, hey, is the town doing TIF districts? That could work. And suddenly we realized, There's a major tool provided by the state through the Department of Economic Development that the town, oddly enough, has never taken advantage of. It's called the Tax Increment Financing District. The Tax Increment Financing District is a mechanism that the town can use to designate certain sections of a town as areas where they want to see growth, so specific areas where they want to see growth and or improvement. They then designate that as a TIF district, which has a number of advantages both to the municipality and potentially to people who are looking to do something in that district that happens to be something that the town also wants. so for example if a section of town were designated as a tiff district and somebody came in wanting to build a whole bunch of apartments in that section right where the town wanted apartments the town could offer up some potential tax benefits to that particular person approved by the select board it does not mean that it's a free check by any stretch of the imagination that group would have to prove that this is truly in the best interest of the town and the town could help them out there. It also provides some benefits to the town and then it shelters valuation from some of the state formulas. Namely, it would reduce our county taxes, increase our revenue sharing, and increase our state aid to schools. So TIF districts are a tool that have been used all around the state a fair amount. Oddly enough, not here. A great time that the town probably coulda, shoulda, woulda Established a TIF district. Is a TIF district on Main Street shortly after the top fires would have been?

Huge.

Perfect. Yeah. So this is something brand new under the sun. You all are the first person to hear me talk about it. People hear me talk about it publicly, but this came out. Some kind of interesting conversations last week where I suddenly realized, and then in chatting with everyone, like, don't we do it yeah let's do this um we have cip so you know um so this so you're going to see me ask to have us insert these words in here and then you're going to start hearing this peer on public forums and public discussions and you'll start to see this go public as a concept being floated um but it's also caused people to come to me and say well who would that be a good use? I'm like, that's literally what they're designed for. You know, this person wants to put in an affordable housing, but he was hoping for some kind of a tax break. Could we make that a tip? Yep. Literally exactly what TIF does. Yeah.

It's like an incentive tool.

yeah um but it also can really benefit the town so this is going to be a massive topic of conversation over the course of this winter as we talk through this packet could easily get shot down um but there's a reason towns all over the state have done these and also many ways that these have gone horribly sideways um but i know all of those ways so i think we can avoid that that did them and have never even used they're like they're

It's really interesting to think about the history of them. Sure.

You set up a TIF district and it doesn't actually grow. It doesn't do anyone any good. You go way too liberal with the credit enhancements agreements for stuff that either doesn't actually do any good or there's a little bit of a like, why did you give that person? Those are the various ways that can go sideways. But in terms of, oddly enough, a town perfectly positioned to actually take advantage of a test district and have it do some good, I know that people think, ooh, it's meal and dessert. It's not good for it. But essentially, if you've got two major issues, either A, you have a suffering retail slash commercial core, or B, you have an affordable housing problem.

Who doesn't have those? Not like anyone we know.

So, yeah, that's, I think you'll see me ask to add that on a few pieces here. Great. So just out of curiosity, how is that?

Is that zoning or is it some other tool that establishes that?

It's established by the Select Board with approval by the Department of Economic Development. It doesn't affect zoning at all. It doesn't change any zoning.

So it can be any, whatever shape. Yeah, you want it doesn't have to coincide with growth areas for it.

Nope doesn't change tax rates. It doesn't change zoning. No, no zoning. No code enforcement rule apply. And in fact, there could be many, many people who suddenly find themselves in a TIF district. And never know, because absolutely nothing else changes. So, if your property is suddenly in a TIF district.

Nothing changes, except that you could apply for approval. Correct.

If you're in a TIF perspective and you're like, I want to build 20-unit workforce housing within this spot. Could you all work with me on this? Then suddenly the answer is, actually, yes. Now we have a tool to help you out here.

And for that one particular project, the developer would have their property taxes reduced. Is that how it works?

It could, yes.

Okay.

Yep. And there's a lot of formulas that go into that, and we'll dig into it, and you all are going to... I ran this 10 times over, but yes, that's the way it works in essence. Tax increment financing districts. Been in Maine for about 25 years. Yeah.

We've actually given presentations on it, and you did a much better job than we did. So thank you.

Part of why I'm excited about this is that the bond council for the town of Mount Desert is a woman named Alyssa Tibbetts, who also happens to be the foremost person for TIF districts in the state of Maine.

Yeah. And they're used around the country, like as great economic development tools and housing development tools.

Does it have any implications for the developers in terms of income tax as well? Or is it just property taxes?

Tax increment financing means basically they don't even get a break on their taxes overall. They get a break on their taxes or the difference between what that property had for value before they started versus after and so this is what we got out if you establish a tiff district and nothing changes that tiff district does nothing but if you establish a tiff district and it actually works and it causes a change in the increment there they can get a break on that change so it's basically if they add value um and that value has to be more than just property value it has to actually be for the good of the town then they can get a break on that difference that they've created there is how it works um y'all are going to be hearing about this ad nauseum all through the winter so i won't go too deep into it because you're going to hear it five times over right um but yeah something new under the sun literally popped up last week on a different conversation um and then when we started talking it was definitely a Yeah, it's good too. Why haven't we done this already? I don't know.

Oh, sorry. I don't want to suggest that we revisit other topics because it's like the train needs to keep moving. But I would think maybe looking again at the housing policy section and economy would make a lot of sense. And it can be a simple insertion of when we talk about creative tools to incentivize affordable housing development or whatever it is. I think it would be appropriate to add.

And I'm sorry, I don't know why I wasn't thinking of that a week ago. I worked with them at the Town of Cumberland a bunch. They were extremely successful. Their goal at the Town of Cumberland was a little different. It was a method used to help boost up the CIP, to be honest, because Town of Cumberland was the prior management, prior to me starting there, was very proud of the fact that the Town of Cumberland had no debt. And we kept saying, All the roads are falling apart.

You should incur some debt.

Maybe. That's the problem. So it was used as a tool for that. It would not be the case here. It would be much more used as a tool to spur those very desperately needed areas.

Yeah. That's amazing. That's very exciting.

Yeah. Sorry. So I told you I was throwing a curveball. My bad. It's not a curveball.

That's a positive ad.

And Alex, we are happy to talk more with you at any point about that.

Absolutely.

Yeah. We'll be getting Alyssa up here pretty quickly on that too, just because she's the lawyer that goes to these.

I think they're very important to have somebody who knows how to really set one up. So that's going to be awesome. All right. Well, the next one then is pursue state, federal, and private grant funding and other partnerships to reduce the local tax burden for capital projects.

Including TIF districts.

Is that town staff? I just put town staff. I wasn't sure who else.

It eventually goes to Warren Committee Select Board and everything, but in terms of we're going to have to do the work.

Yes. Seems to me that that funnels through like, uh, Brian or the harbor masters, like, Hey, I have this thing and I know that these grants are out there and we're going to be the ones sort of like put the project together.

So public works in there.

Uh, I just said town staff.

Okay.

That's going to be across the board. It'll any number of them can do it. Yeah.

Evaluate opportunities for shared services, inter-local agreements, and regional partnerships that improve efficiency and reduce costs while maintaining service levels. I think we talked about that last time. I'm going to keep going until somebody says stop. Continue to maintain prudent financial management practices that preserve the town's long-term fiscal stability and borrowing capacity. Ed Warren, committee member. Yes. Okay. And lastly, periodic select work.

Oh, when you could, yeah.

Yeah.

It's, I mean, you know, more committee does the rail lifting then.

Lastly, periodically review municipal facilities and infrastructure to identify maintenance needs and prioritize investments that extend a useful life of public assets before replacement. I just put, I put public works.

Does this include the state-recommended strategies?

I think so, yes.

OK. Because I know they have the one that's like, you have to direct 75% of your capital investments into, like, that's our language. Yep. And I feel like that's covered by the line up about the coordinated capital investments with the future land use plan.

I don't want to dwell on this one too much, but is this from last time around? Some of this is repetitive. Yep.

Go ahead, say what you need to say.

Well, when I read between the lines, it feels a little bit like saying, get out the duct tape and bailing wire to keep it going a few more years. But extend, prioritize investments that extend the useful life of public assets before replacement. Did you see that?

It's like repointing the elementary school. You know, taking care of the brain care.

OK, that's cool. Yes, repointing is a perfect example of don't let it go too long.

Yes, OK. Gene, there's like a more positive way to say it. Continue to maintain assets.

Prioritize investments in a timely manner in order to extend. Because repointing is a perfect example. You wait too long on repointing, and you don't do it when it needs doing. You basically do it when it's supposed to be done. Maybe I'm overthinking it. I'll shut up.

So where would we put in a timely manner?

Prioritize investments. Prioritize in a timely manner.

OK.

Is we getting down to the duct tape in bed and.

It's a good way to have that in and get to it before duct tape needed.

Yeah.

I guess that's what legal language is appropriate time.

So there comes a point when you're keeping something going too long and you're starting to throw good money at it. That's where you're like, come back to the dump trucks. Hey, we can get an extra five years out of this dump truck if we spend X dollars every single year trying to keep it going.

you're not really and the fire department just did that new chassis for the truck but trucks older than six years have to go anyways so they put a bunch of money and it's a three-year shelf life just for from other legalities that are going to end the life prematurely of that truck so thanks wasn't worth repairing it we just waited and got a new truck and have a fully functional item. So, yeah, there's some things to be aware of in that.

Is it possible for structures or mechanical things like that to come up with something like the CIP? You know you're going to be saving money, you're going to have to spend it. Is there a maintenance plan for each bit of equipment or facility that you can say, you know, in three years we're going to need to do this or that or the other thing? I think it's like a depreciation costs kind of approach. A plan for maintenance that's not just about money, but the activity of getting it done.

I would say that it is the weakest portion of our present CIP plan, which is very good at specific pieces of equipment. So yeah, it's got the fire trucks and the dump trucks and the stuff down pat. But when you get into, say, this town hall, Has it separated out HVAC versus plumbing versus and separated out the various components that may degrade at different areas? No, it hasn't done a great job of that. And that's an area where it probably needs to get beefed up a little bit.

But it's... And does that go into fiscal capacity or is that somewhere else in that?

No, it's in the CID. I would not call that comp plan level. I would call that internally an area for potential improvement. I would really just call it that. We do need to do better there. But at least we're setting aside money and at least we're doing okay with it.

For replacement, mostly.

Yeah. And it's bigger buildings like this where you do have to separate out roof versus exterior versus HVAC versus heating systems. Yeah.

so just before we leave this last one um i guess following up with what i think you partially were reacting to it seems to me that the word prioritize is a policy choice that you're now prioritizing doing um projects that extend the useful life so that's where the duct tape and the You know, I think chicken wire comes into play maybe. And so is there maybe we just want to rethink the wording a little bit so that you're, you know, reviewing facilities and infrastructure to identify maintenance needs In a timely manner. In a timely manner to extend the useful life. So it's like the prioritizing part is a, you're now, that makes this policy a priority. That word. Yes. To me. And I don't think that's what you, I think maybe partially that's what you're reacting to. We don't want to prioritize that effort over other things. We just want to do it.

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, it was the extend the useful life that set off an alarm bell. Because that's not always a good idea.

You want to say, like, where appropriate? I mean.

Sure, that's OK, too. I mean, again, I think I'm splitting hairs here, so.

You have to feel comfortable. If public works right now is the suggested responsibility.

Perfect. One way or the other, it all flows through them. Yeah.

It seems like it's this kind of stuff for sure. Okay. Anything else on public fiscal capacity? I mean, are we missing anything here? Quick review. All right. Okay. Let's move on to regional coordination. So, everybody has a hard copy of that and Shoshana. I apologize. I did not. Maybe Susan will have better luck being able to pull that 1 up than I did. I don't know exactly where it is in the folder. uh so for this one we've already done some work on on this one and remember we had like a brainstorming uh session on the bullet on the flip chart where we talked about like different regional partners for different things and i think we're just trying to make sure that we're getting uh reflecting correctly um basically the town's sort of priorities so the way that we've organized it in this version is basically under you know different topic headings that are very similar to the sections in the comp plan um My first question is, are we missing anything? And then the second question is, should we sort of rejigger it so that there's higher priorities? Like if we get, you know, I don't think it's really organized priority wise, but I just want to make sure we're getting it.

Yeah, right now it's just organized like it's mentioning each topic that we thought touch on in the plan. And then we had gone through as a committee and brainstormed early on, I think before we started the policy writing phase of the project and brainstormed a giant list. And so this is just like the documentation of that, but there's always, it's always great to like ask that question. Are there any, of these that are higher priorities, for example? Or are there any right now that are already very much underway, right, that we want to highlight and sort of draw to the top as being a current and future priority?

Can we add a word in the housing paragraph? Of course. Can we add the word safe? Mm-hmm. Because it should be safe, stable, and affordable. Thanks. Yeah, of course.

So we do know that the towns, in the region are working on this regional strategic plan through the League of Towns that focuses on housing, economy, transportation, for example. I mean, this isn't quite like regional per se, but I think anytime homes are being built in any of the towns in this area, they are serving certainly the town and other towns as well because people with one place work somewhere else. So there is obviously Ripples 3 happening with the Island Housing Trust, which I guess you could kind of frame as a somewhat regional effort. Anyway, these are just thoughts. There's no like correct answer, but if any of these jumped out as major priorities to like we can add a section at the top that's like these are the priority topics or concerns or whatever the word is that makes sense. That could be something that you stew on. when we revisit another time too.

Yeah. So this is what already exists.

Yeah. So we went through this exercise.

Prioritize.

Yeah.

that would prioritize new things that we want to do, like what new agreement could improve what we have. But you're saying which one of these partners is our favorite?

No, no, no, not the partners, the topic.

The topic.

So these are existing organizations or entities in the area that the town either currently coordinates with or could possibly coordinate with and this is a required chapter by the state and it's meant to be an exercise in having the town think about okay who is out there that either we have an existing relationship with that we're working with for example island housing trust again or um you know we know they exist but something additional could be done. So it's really about the topic and not so much the partner.

Yeah. I just heard that.

Yeah, nope.

Yeah, pick a friend.

And get someone to elaborate. Like everybody. Great, okay. Kathy, so Coastal Enterprises Institute. Inc. Inc. I feel like we had a note, but.

I think Kathy asked who it was in our earlier thing, but we already. I thought she knew the answer. I knew the answer. Great. Great. So, yeah, the way we kind of think about it is like housing is an important regional priority or housing is an important topic in the town. We've spent a lot of time talking about it. We have a whole section on all these different housing goals. There are regional entities that are good partners to collaborate with in one form or another for that. topic. This is what that's what's identified below. This is not an exhaustive list either. And it's not to say that, you know, five, six years from now, some of these organizations might not be the same organization anymore, it could be totally different. But I think partially what we also want to do is make sure that as we're going through this, like, hey, these are maybe even highlighting some of the regional initiatives that we're already involved with as a town. And we just want to make sure that we're capturing that here as well.

Great. Or it's even as simple as having a statement or two in the introduction that's like, this is not exhaustive, but this is a fairly complete list of all the partners in these various topic areas. But our town's priority at this time is to really lean in in a certain area.

And so perhaps the question really is for a matter, and I don't mean to punt it, but if it's kind of hard to reflect on in the moment, we want to revisit it and get some additional thought as we wrap up the comp plan. But generally speaking, this is where we are with regional coordination.

I have a question. Is the broader common plan, like, would we want to mirror the ordering in terms of prioritization or is there a structure that's pre-anticipated, pre-planned for the broader common plan in terms of the different sections?

That's a great question. I feel like we've always just sort of like default followed the state checklist, which I don't, it's like in the inventories, it's like demographics and then economy and then housing or something like that, but it's really like up to you for sure. I love that kind of question.

I guess I'm happy with us waiting on this regional coordination prioritization question, but maybe there's some reflection of those two pieces in tandem down the road.

Yeah, and it's less of a question about how we list these headings in green, too, just to clarify under this partners. It's like, do we want to add a section up here that's top priorities or something? You know what I mean? I'm just making this up.

Could this get distributed throughout the comp plan? For housing section, and then there is our housing regional partners, or does this is a state requirement to have a section it's called.

Yeah, it is a requirement to have a section called. Regional coordination yes, but that doesn't mean that we couldn't also add something at the bottom. It's something. Integrated into that section that says, like, here's our regional coordination opportunities for that.

I think I'm just thinking for ease of reading. I want to open to the housing section and have. It does talk to the demographics on 1 page and the strategy on the next page and who we can work with on 3rd page and say, that's everything. I don't flip the appendix to find out sure. The regional partners are love this idea.

I love, like, thinking about how to do it more effectively. I think the biggest challenge is that those inventory requirements are so data intensive. Um. But I'm like.

It was terrible. That was so hard to read. So anything can improve that.

What you end up getting, I think, often are like what we just closed out the Carabasas Valley one over the winter. And so the policy, like future land use and the policy guides section, they almost read as like a mini plan within the plan. And then the inventories are like kind of the reference at the back. But you want to see that information, obviously. If you're just reading it cold, you're like, where did you get that idea? What's that based on?

Yeah, like in other contexts what we have also done is remember in the data section we have like key findings. So we can actually pull those key findings out of the data part and just have the data be just straight up analysis and then pull the key findings and put them basically in front. Like that's like the second thing you'll see in the policy section. So like here's what we already know about know fiscal capacity and then here's a couple of key findings about the town's fiscal capacity then there's a goal then there's some objectives and some strategies to go along with that

That's just 1 way that we had some, some meeting where we had nice little posters. Well, those key findings out.

Yep. Yeah. The infographics.

Yeah. Graphic very visually, like, 1 person could open it. Yep. Enjoy it. Yeah.

Not have to dig any further, but if they wanted to all the data's like, little 8 and a half by 11 versions of that. If they were readable or turn it down somehow upfront. I like that idea a lot.

Yep.

Yeah.

But I'd say that is why we put the key findings under the policy section, because it saves you from having to go back through all the data.

Yeah.

But some people really like that. So we want that there.

It is. We want it in spreadsheet form so you can manipulate.

All right, well, let's put a pin in this one. It seems like we want to do, because I do want to spend five minutes or so just sort of looking ahead to the next meetings. Now, this is our first and only scheduled meeting in August. I will say what I think we want to look at is when we've looked ahead in August, it seems like maybe not such a great idea to try to schedule another one for August just because there's things going on. And I know, well, at least I have college deliberate coming up pretty soon.

there's other things happening.

But I think we want to try to commit to definitely the one that we've already got scheduled in September, and another one in September, and we're gonna have to do to, like, we're gonna have to really commit to doing two meetings, you know, leading up to the end of the year. And I really do want to try to get this mostly done, if not all done and into the state, like before the holidays sort of mess with things. Because that's also happened before.

So when is our September meeting?

So our September meeting would be Thursday the 3rd. Then if we stuck to our normal sequence, it would be the 17th. I think it still works. Do you see anything on our calendar that Gives you pause about the 17th?

I have a meeting in Fremont, but you don't, unless you're coming to that meeting. Can we pencil in the 17th?

I think so.

Great. All right. Do you want to just stick to September and then we can send some dates around via email that say here's the October and November meeting dates? Okay. You said 17th?

Yep. Are you putting that in the calendar?

I did, yeah, but I haven't added it yet enough to invite everybody.

Okay. The goal is really to, so just big picture, like by going through this fiscal capacity section, we've sort of closed out all of the policy writing minus the future land use piece, which is a huge piece of the comp plan overall. So that's worth celebrating. Good job, everybody. It's a big effort to go through all those goals and objectives and strategies. And then we're taking them all and compiling them so that we can take a big step back and look at them all together and understand them, how they relate to each other, if that makes sense. But in September, the goal is really to get through that future land use planning piece, which is typically where, not that people haven't been engaged all along, but where you start to look at a map and you're talking about a line on the map that defines a growth area. And so it can be pretty substantive and we want to use our time really well at those two meetings and also talk about public outreach, which I know we had initially thought about doing at the end of the summer into the early fall. Did you want to touch on that?

Well, I think we need to get back into once we have some sense of where we're heading with future land use. We'll want to get back into doing public outreach. Like, we're going to want to have some community meetings coming up. I did have a question though. Like, is there anything typically oftentimes we'll get invited or like, asked to be a part of the summer residents association meeting, but we didn't this year. Is that. Is there something we want to try to do between now and the end of the summer? We don't have time to schedule a big thing, but is there some sort of engagement that we're missing that we want to try to get to?

Do they only meet twice in the summer?

They do, and they're fixated on beating me up about the dumpsters.

Do you want me to propose something comprehensive plan-wise that's really going to distract?

Nothing will distract them from that.

That's a really big issue.

I had five times as many questions about the dumpsters as I did the full measure on list reval.

Wow.

So that should be an indicator for you.

OK. Well, that's great. So I think we can start. You thought I wasn't hearing the noise. You thought I wasn't hearing the noise. That's awesome. One thing we had talked about today is we're at a pretty good point with all these other sections. So we are going to start putting them up on the website. And we can start to use the other networks to try to get the word out. And then we'll really start to focus in on, let's do our next big public meeting. And here's how we're going to organize that. Yeah.

I'll just add like so for the everything we've drafted so far, like what we're going to be doing internally is like, you know, reading it through again, making sure that everything's formatted consistently. It's more sort of like document finalization and prep. But yeah, for the public meeting, there's a lot to share with the vision statement, all of the goals, high level stuff like the goals and objectives. And then, if we're able to, the proposed future land use map, which is what people will really react to, in addition to demos.

Yeah. Do we have drafts of all these available to us?

That's a great question. I need to go and double check, because we have a shared drive that we set up originally. So we'll make sure to do that. Make sure you get access to all of them.

Yeah, we're actually going through scrubbing to make sure that you know, font size is consistent stuff right now. But we'll get everything out to everybody.

Can we add in the historic resources regional partners part, we had two things. We add the Great Harbor Maritime Museum. And we add library archives. Yeah,

Is there much written other than the maps of future land use? Is there a lot of narrative that we're going to be reviewing?

I don't know if there's going to be a ton of narrative in that section. There is some narrative. I think the other thing that we're going to be trying to integrate is we spent some good time like trying to describe the villages. So there's an element that we've just started talking a little bit more about today, how we're going to start to put that into more visual slash narrative form and how that might inform the future growth area discussion.

And then including the villages sound and well, that's up to you guys.

But I think what we're probably going to talk about those. Yeah. And we have sound residents here. Right. But are you the only one here? Judy is too, but she can't be here. Yeah, she's right there. I knew we had sound representation.

I would say that we're not going to put the boundary lines of all the villages on a map. We're going to say, here's a little dot and then a call out that says, this is that sound village area. And then there's probably, the way we think about certain things is like, here's a description that we talked about, and then there's some planning uh future planning considerations when you're talking about these villages and so we can identify those things the other part of this is because this is a comprehensive plan we don't you know i said i have a feeling we're going to have some interesting discussions about certain areas of town or certain villages in town we don't need to like solve all the issues for that area what we need to do is identify that area and we've called it in other places like this is a future focus area so we've identified this these planning needs for this area through the comprehensive plan and that's like the next thing that you should do in that village yeah it's a way the company the plan doesn't allow you to be as sort of like site plan right oriented so it's a way to capture those great ideas Yeah, we're not doing a downtown village plan for Otter Creek in the comp plan.

Maybe after. Well, I was just going to ask if you could give us some, if there's a lot of stuff to read, could you give it to us?

I think what we'll want to do is give you the background information. So I really think it's important for this conversation and for this group to start with, here's the basic stuff that we need to think about. Like this is what the state says a growth area is. This is what you've already said your growth areas are. These are some legal considerations that we have to keep in mind as we're thinking about growth areas. And that's like the foundation for having discussions about the future land use map. And so if we don't have that, I feel like we're going to ping pong around our conversation. So we just have to all agree like, oh yeah, here's what a growth area is. And so we might have to like keep popping it back out. Don't forget, growth area.

Is it worth having like a primer on it? Like just have a Zoom meeting sometime in August so that we all get that precursor of this is what the strategy is. When we are here on the third, we're not. learning what it is.

You mean for future land use?

For future land use.

We could look and see if that would work. I think it's really important for everybody to be present for that initial thing. So if we can't all get together and do it, then it's really only worth doing it if we're all sitting around so we all have the same starting point. In my mind. I happily try to figure out if we could do a Zoom, if everybody can do it.

Yeah.

Or if it's recorded on Zoom, at least there's enough people to ask questions and then everybody can catch up one.

It's really an info session kind of, or learning session more than... Yep.

Because I think that's really what the first, our September meeting, the first meeting in September, that's what it's going to be.

Information. So we can prime it on the information.

We will send you things in advance for sure. But there's a lot of visuals, so being able to be here in person is important for kind of walking through those.

Yeah, we want to roll out the map.

Yeah. My answer is totally, like, with the school changes that are happening, is it no longer going to be an AOS? Does anyone know? No idea. Is it an RSU?

Don't know.

OK, hasn't been decided yet. I'm just going to put a little system.

Yeah. Yes, I believe it would change it from an AOS to an RSU, if I recall correctly. And it's been very secondary to all the other considerations.

We know the number.

Yeah, you bet. That's a great solution.

If you're doing things on there, you bet. I'm wondering about spelling out a couple of things like CEI. Maybe you did that. Yeah. Okay. DHS, you know. I think the historical society is the MDI Historical Society, but the Abbey doesn't have a Y at the end. Okay. That's an E. Just A-B-B-E. Yeah.

I believe, yes.

Two E's. Two E's? Two B's. One E. I know one. What?

Told you it's been a long day. What is the BHB historically? Bar Harbor.

It's like a shorthand.

Bar Harbor.

Just Bar Harbor. Yeah, it's got an extra B in there.

BHB.

That's the way I do it. And I think I made it up when I moved here. I like made up. It's got to be HP for all of the HP. Yeah. Harbor being HP. Harbor. Okay. I don't know why. It's about. Yeah. It's old airport.

Yeah. That's funny. I don't know if I would have known that.

Yeah. I don't know.

Okay, one more thing. Right up at the top paragraph, it says, because these four towns are located together on an island and share a dependence on Acadia National Park. It seems like we share maybe more than that and maybe not a dependence. We share an impact from our shared local economies and part of that is the national park. Just seem to oddly emphasize that like we're all, Tremont is not relying on national park traffic. But there's a bunch of rentals, there's a bunch of campgrounds, there's a bunch of other stuff that might be there anyways, right? But not.

It's a lighthouse.

It's a lighthouse.

I think we can definitely- Interdependence as opposed to dependence.

I mean- That's good.

Park can't function without us.

Right.

Do we want to mention the Outer Islands at all? In that paragraph? Yeah, in addition to the four island towns.

Yep. They're part of the League of Towns. Yeah.

I think they're also relying on services here.

It feels like they're missed, yeah.

Yep, good catch. We'll also take comments as you're, you know, when you go home and eat dinner tonight and you're just really stewing for the family.

Yeah, right. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. You want to go on TV? No, we're going to talk coffee.

I'm going to tell you about the dumpsters. Right.

Anything else you wanted to go over tonight?

Want to talk about your mental health situation? We have an interdependence upon them.

Yes. Do people feel like they have a big picture sense of where we are in this process and where we're calling other people or us? You guys. I mean, you're here, so yeah.

And just for everyone's sake, because I sort of have select board members ask about this, and my answer is we are just walking our way through it. We're here just Deepen out. You're not hearing a lot because we're just churning through.

I'm a little overdue with the updates on our project website, but always send people there because there's a lot of great background information. I think all the inventory drafts are there, so we can start to put the policy chapters up there too. They'll see how much work you guys have done.

We can always update the select board, but, uh, and I think we'd have to really talk about like, to what degree an update, you know, how do we give them an update with given how much meat is in it right now.

You need to be a little further along. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. I think part of it, I got their hands full right now.

There's a lot of work that's been done. It's really about marketing it and like packaging it for you, for your sake too, to see like, How far you've gone.

Yeah, I feel like we've come through. I mean, the future land use is going to be a really interesting discussion. I don't know if it's as I mean, it will be a slog, but not the kind of slog that we're going through here.

Necessarily, so I'll just say to you, like, some materials we'll send out to you. We'll send out the vision statement again. Because it's important that things we. talk about in terms of the future land use map and the growth area, that you connect the dots between that vision statement, those ideas, and the future land use map. So we'll send that out. We'll send out a map that sort of essentially simplifies what the existing growth area is according to the existing comp plan uh we've gone through and pulled out all of the strategies from all of the topic sections that are future land use related um as well and i think we're going to put a couple kind of like a handout together about like what is the future land use map and like what's a growth area yeah so that section also have objectives and strategies okay so another it's little bit of that it's another topic policy topic but also yeah and sometimes it's like you know it is so interrelated with everything else that some of those strategies are just sort of essentially duplication of existing ones um but there's sometimes they're standalone ones too yeah it's kind of like the you know the policy section of building on your existing land use inventory if you had like major zoning changes that you wanted to make for example you can recommend those in the future land use i recommend yeah i'm seeing your bills turning that's still coming out not you but it's the committee

In the economy, regional partners, what is CEI?

Oh yeah, we spelled that out. Coastal Enterprises Inc.

They're like a community development organization. They do a lot of funding for... Actually, my wife, when she started her small business in South Dakota, got a loan from CEI to start that business.

They also do home buyer education programs.

Ah, so they do investing in communities, small businesses, economic development tool.

Yeah.

Big statewide CDF. What's that?

Okay. CDIF maybe community development investment. Yep.

Okay.

Um, what about the main community foundation is there?

Yeah.

Great.

All right. Anything else?

I can think of.

Jasmine, what are we missing? All right.

Thanks, everybody. Shoshana.

Motion to adjourn. Any last thoughts?

Motion to adjourn. Goodbye. Thank you. Thank you.