Comprehensive Plan Committee - Regular Meeting

Those in favor I suppose Nick being the So who is our um just controlling the town. So is it just town and you are the participants? Yep. So I'm I'm in charge of the town right now and Suzanne's in charge of the musing group. Okay, fantastic. I just want to make sure there wasn't any public and if there were uh we would see them down here. Yeah.

Okay, great. We are to the inventory chapters continue review. Right. So we thought um today a couple of things it might be interesting to just sort of recap and um maybe combine a dis a larger discussion on housing and land use just to kind of continue on with the discussion that we started last time. So it's not really um maybe slight pivot from the way that we would typically do the you know inventory stuff since we've already talked about existing land use a little bit. We talked about housing um a little bit and the last meeting that we had was more of a um here's the housing data, here's what that housing data is telling us, which I think we could I think we we all agreed uh is a bit dire.

We need to try to start to think about some things to do um you know with housing. So, one thing um actually had printed off all the maps some maps and I left them in my truck so I might have to run up and get them. Oh yeah. Um if you want or I can do it you parked up there. Yep. Yeah.

Probably on the floor in the back or on the chair. So I actually printed off um so we printed off the zoning map. We printed off the previous plans um future land use map and then we also printed off a map that just sort of shows parcels and zones and um um infrastructure and other stuff. So I thought maybe interesting and then I also printed out um from the land use ordinance this is the description of what all the districts are supposed to do. So, not to today I I don't think today's um exercise is really to do a deep dive on, you know, here's all the goals and strategies like the real strategies that we might want to consider from the old plan, but I think it's to have more of a conversation um about continuing to familiarize ourselves with um we know we have a housing problem. here's what the land use maps are saying about the current policies as it relates to how development and where development should happen in the community and then maybe just have a bit of a higher level conversation about that kind of stuff. Does that make sense?

Great. And then um the bulk I think the bulk of like the last half of the meeting we really just want to start talking about public outreach um because we're going to want to have a a big public meeting in uh September, end of September time frame. So there's a few things and we've penciled out um an agenda, you know, sort of a format really for that meeting and we can start to talk about that. Is this a proposal for one big meeting or per? Yeah, big PE public meeting and then we'll we can circle back around and do village followup village meetings at like after that. Okay. Yep. So, and the village meetings you did before, was it a year ago? Probably

more than a year ago. Yeah. But all of that was sort of in preparation for this comp plan. I mean it's I mean I think it builds we have a report of that information and it was sort of an effort to kind of build momentum toward a comprehensive plan. Yes. So there's not I think there's definitely stuff in there that we can use to help formulate you know some of the higher level things that we're thinking about. Yeah.

Yep. But I think we're sort of what I I think would be interesting is to um you know just start to familiarize ourselves with you know here's the existing policies of of the town as it relates to housing and do they start to make sense. Thank you Susan. So that's where we are like dramatically. It would also be interesting for us to have a sober discussion about what the actual drivers of the problems are. Sure. limitations are in terms of future ordinances rulers the drivers are actually

yeah I guess I think it's nice to recognize scale what the you know let's let's have a brainstorming session about what are the drivers and then use that as a way to pivot to say how do we drive those things as the comprehensive plan how do we use a comprehensive and with some of those drivers or what do we have in our responsibility that we need to start thinking about because when I start think about drivers sometimes it's like you know thinking out of buyer host because some of the drivers are not things that we can control through this process but maybe it's to start to think about those things and then figure out okay here's some drivers now how do we use the tools that we have available to us to help work those drivers I think maybe but if we're not discussing the actual thing is a problem in this process the ability to come up with e meaningful efforts to affect the the problems that we have are not like they get very um I'm not saying that It's something that we can control or we can change.

Yeah. But we we don't recognize the source of our challenges and we don't have a communitywide discussion about that. Not as a blame game, but an open communitywide discussion about that so that everybody can think about where they're at in with regard to that. then I don't see how we actually end up anywhere better 10 years from now than we have since 2009. Um, and people get overwhelmed by it. And yeah, it's a huge way beyond our boundaries problem. But

some some are. Yeah, that's I think that's what I'm building on your comment which is to say let's brainstorm what some of the drivers are so that we can all agree and identify what those are and then take a pause and say okay now how do we use this tool to affect change or whatever needs to happen as it relates to those drivers.

Sure. And then I was actually I was looking over the um existing plan again today and I think one of our challenges is going to be is also going to be uh on there on that handful of topics that are very important to the community really thinking about what are the measurable commitments that we can make as a community in order to try to make progress and then um you know maybe it's and I that leads to a whole another series of ources that what I'm sure we're not going to get to today, but you know that that implementation and measurability and accountability to try to do something or nothing. Again, I could get um Kathy supposed to punch me in the arm if I go too down the rabbit hole today. At some point, there's a few things in this community that you just need to decide either you're going to do something about it or you're not. And that makes your path is one way or the other. And that's the end of the discussion. So, we need to figure out what those things are and then give people the option to make that choice somehow. I don't know how to do it yet, but that's it's many a day is worth slogging around this the town and the island trying to figure out like how do we deal with all these things? Um, how can we help people deal with all these things? You know, at some point you just need to decide this is the path we're going down

and we're going to either tack a little bit and try to do a different path or we're going to keep that path and that's fine. They're both totally valid outcomes, but we just need to decide because right now we're kind of in a weird limbo, right?

I have two uh thoughts. Well, one, I wanted to tell you what these maps are um before I sp them out. But, you know, it could be like if the committee decides that housing, as we think about it, interconnected to everything is the major focal point of this comp plan. And I'm just saying maybe that is a decision we make. We could um after the public meeting that we're going to talk about that we're planning for the fall, we could have a workshop, you know, as a town um to really dig into some of those things in more detail. When we did the first housing solutions summit, it was all day and it was sort of divided into getting groups to think about what are the needs and what are the barriers, right? And really going deep into the barriers and then what are some solutions to overcome those barriers. But it was looking sort of at the island as a whole and um maybe even kind of the region that it could be beneficial to sort of drill down into those barriers for the town amount dessert specifically as part of this process. And I guess what I'm one of the things I'm saying is that we really should have some people in here talking about the macroeconomics

that's under it all. It's like Right. And what was the term you were just using, Gail? Because I'm sorry. That was before that when we were saying you really want to talk about the Oh, well they just described. No, the underlying origin of the problems. Yeah. Yeah. How did you describe it? There was like a really good and I was like remembering them just like the drivers or the Yeah. Yes. So, the maps that we've brought today, this is a map that shows water and sewer lines, um,

water in green, sewer in orange, and then the zoning. I mentioned to Suzanne in an email earlier today that I had a conversation with Brian Hanker and Brian would very much like to be part of it from this evening about these sorts of resources because he's got some ideas and he knows the resources and and in addition to that as a res a longtime resident of farms way he's got some opinions about the long-term viability ility of that sort of model.

Um, and so I I would urge us to figure out how and when it would be best to have him join us. He's he says this stuff. So we we also talked to Brian. We have talked to him about public works stuff and we're going to be engaging with them also through the You take that one. We're going to be engaging with them through the U sustainability committee. Yeah. Oh, yeah. All the resources. Yes. I just had that conversation with you.

This map is um the future land use map from the existing plan. So um if you look at the legend down here uh the places that are orange, red and purple are um what the previous committee defined as the growth areas for the future which is now present. And um the arrow that they indicate there sort of goes from um lower intensity to higher intensity for lack of a better description. And then these are sort of the differentiations of rural areas. So, just to explain like what these maps are showing. Um, and we can pass them around or lean over. And

did you guys share this by email so we can have a copy in our own folders? We can. Yeah. Yeah. This is on the town. Yeah. website. I think these are all except for that one. Yeah. This one we made for our own purposes.

Um, yeah. So, just to explain what those are. Yep. So, everybody on the playing board should know that one. easily as well. Well, let I like I'm interested in Gail's concept of getting started. So, if we think about, you know, as a kind of a carryover from our housing conversation, which was a lot of data, you know, here's what the data is saying in Mount Mount and we can recognize that there's some issues. But if we just want to get kind of a list of those big picture drivers on paper so that we can start to think about things in that context a little bit, uh what are those drivers? What are what are people and I think we ought to just put everything on the table that we can think about and then maybe there's a way to kind of consolidate that later but let's just get it on paper first.

Think the natural environment having a national park here having the ocean here having mountains here it's a draw for people. So the natural environment that draws tourism or all kinds of people living here. Great. You talk about there's a firm called Headwaters Economics. They wrote an article called the amenity trap and it looks at communities um similarly that um wrestle with like having a lot of desirable amenities that draw in both year round people but also a lot of seasonal visitations everybody.

Yeah. IC driver also. Um, can we frame this as the drivers like in the big picture as it relates to housing? That's like the focus point of the topic. I think that's what you were getting at, right?

Sure. And I think that an increasing disparity in wealth allows and encourages some, for example, to buy up multiple properties to house res um staff um to support their seasonal residences. um or their businesses. Yeah. Although they're businesses, but when you got a private individual buying 20 other properties. Mhm. To house people and equipment. My last house.

Um and saying to other people, whenever you're ready to sell, let me know. We'll give you a price.

Um people can't compete with that. We've eliminated poor people from this community a long time ago. We've eliminated over the past few decades workingclass people and all those people have moved to Le Moine and Trenton children of working-class people and now we're eliminating people who have always traditionally been middle class people. And um the lack of restraint like I just think is a huge I don't know how to characterize that in a way that fits on a chart but um the ability of people to and the freedom that people feel to come in and just buy a seasonal residence at any price and to outbid and pay cash.

Um people can't compete with that. they can't buy their they can't finance a home. They can't um and our lack of regulation, our lack of regulation to prevent uh and to moderate any of that. Seems people have said to me if I'm sorry I'll stop there with this but some people have said to me now that Bah harbor has you know more restrictions on on um yes short-term rentals and also that they've got a moratorum on building like hotels and where are they going to go well a lot of them are going to Ellsworth

but isn't our town kind of a sitting dock for more and more of that other in other towns on this aisle southwest harbor is changing rapidly huge yep It seems like all the new jobs are seasonal. Yes. All the housing is seasonal. Yes. Everything's seasonal and we need year round. So industry or business opportunity. Yeah. It's a chicken and egg. How we change it? I have no idea.

So if I just write seasonal economy over year round economy, that sort of describe that. Okay. think the regulation angle is the only way to prevent this. I mean, I just I feel very sad right now about, you know, and you open up the paper and you see 1.4 million for some post that, you know, I come on. I I just Mhm. And you know, our daughter has not been here for really four years during the summer and she just was shocked.

Mhm. She was just shocked at what she saw and how people talked and there's just no recognition or understanding about the balance that used to be here. Struggled struggled struggled in the 80s and the 90s and and and she just said, "What's the matter with people?" Well, one of the drivers in all of that is our our inability or unwillingness to over a long period of time to face it. And I was thinking earlier today that and try to be effective about it. Um, you know, my mother's second husband was essentially a depressed alcoholic and one of his most frequent expressions was, "What are you going to do? What are you going to do?" And I think for too long

and that gave him an excuse to not do anything. It expressed his helplessness. It expressed his helplessness. And I think we've been in that mode. We have to change. What are you going to do? I mean, you ask the realators. The realators are going to say, "Well, what are you going to do? People want to buy and sell. Why I'm here." What are you going to do? What's a term? What's a better What's a word to describe that? I have um a community. Well, we have a lack of There's like resignation as I well there's apathy but there's also codependency with the wealthy community. We do have a border dancing in the west community. We sure do. You're looking for another way to say it. Um,

hasn't that always existed? But to me, as you're saying, we had more balance. It was way,

you know, I I went back with the medical center and I was reading, you know, how did they ever decide and who decided to build that building? I couldn't believe it. And it was really the community people got together with the doctor and the hospital and they they didn't go to the summer people. They didn't go to the money bags people until they had gotten consensus from the community. And um and you know it was pretty remarkable. And then once they raised X dollars they started to reach out.

There's a sense of disempowerment. Yeah. And did somebody say to is it um well you said a um aathy or resignation

resignation sense of resignation that nothing can be done. I think with like we sort of described these as wicked problems in the last housing summit where it's like there are these contradictions at play, right? It's like we want a thriving tourism economy in many ways here, but we also want a sustainable year-round community. And so are those things contradictory? Are they complimentary? They're contradictory if they don't have boundaries, right? If they don't have

if the community doesn't continually engage in a discussion about what's again a sense of self-restraint, a sense of it has to be balance. You know, you have all these individual interests are acting in their in individual desires or needs and without a consideration of the whole.

Yeah. So one thing we really struggle with is like who defines what the balance is like both um big picture but then like in the nitty-gritty details of regulations right where it comes down to like the rubber hits the road. So is balance subjective or not? Right? And so who gets to decide and how do you decide it? And in Harver for example, you know, there's this kind of back and forth between like the regulators and the realtors or business community, whomever. And it's and it's not a great model, right? But it's like they're struggling to figure out what that balance is. And I don't think they've necessarily figured that out,

but at least they're struggling with it. Here, we're just It's always easier to jin up people to oppose something. I mean, the short-term rental ordinance is a perfect example of that. It's always easier to jin up opposition to something. And so, you get people to turn out to vote against something and then a lot of them leave after doing that. and and then if you don't but if you if you also need to take responsibility if you support something like that you also organize and you get people to meetings and that certainly didn't happen in that case. Um so yeah so we had resignation apathy or what can we do about it mentality. Yeah. What else?

No. You know, I wonder about this because I been thinking along these same lines for a while and that um this is a pretty nicely balanced group of of ages and having you and Shona here I think helps to balance that out. But I think that there are Thank you. So many young people I think of all the kids my my kids ages and their contemporaries who can't afford to come back or they're you paying a fortune to come back

and what how do we get them engaged to help drive these issues and that's sort of islandwide as well but because I I don't know if any of you saw David Hog who hog who spoke at one of the COA way things. Yep. He's uh he has been involved with the Democratic National Committee. He's one of the survivors of the the Florida shootings. Parkland of what? Parkland High School.

Parkland High School. And so now he's sort of a national speaker on gun rights and a whole lot of other things. And it's like just we're going to do it. And it's just it it's we're not going to take it's always been this way as an answer anymore. We're going to change things. And I think it needs a new level of energy that might come from people who were younger generation below me. Certainly. He says, "This group is called leaders we deserve." Yeah. Well, and and we need to do it before more of them before it's too late before more of them move away. And that's the part that is just um breaking my heart. Well, part of the problem is that we never consider the people who aren't at the table.

We never consider the people who aren't here. You never consider those people sitting in their damn cars stuck in traffic trying to get on and off this island to work here. Many of some of whom used to be able to live here and the cost that they just the sheer energy and time and life and financial cost it takes them to do something like that. We don't take that into account. Um, and we need to be thinking about we need to be thinking about the people who would like to live in the kind of housing that Kathy's trying to get built.

So, just to I mean it sounds like people are thinking about that at least, but it's the question is how do we get other people to think about it, right? Right. How do we engage people who are not here at the table? Right. there. What I found the most interesting and I'll just share I went to I I was on the nursing MDI or M you know MDNA Mount Desert Nursing

whatever it was I was on it for nine years and then you know went to the Chowderfest the first year was just all the same old people you know whatever the next year I never got a poster I never got a call I never got there wasn't anything around I said to Terry are they doing it? And he said, "Nobody gave me a poster." And I finally went up storming up to the building and said, "What's going on? When is it?" And they said, "Oh, it's in two days, Judy." And I said, "Well, who do you expect to come?" And they said, "We have so many people." And I went, "Really?" 300 people. There were people. There were there was a band. It was I My husband and I walked in and we went, "Huh? Who are all these people?

And they and they were young. They were excited. They had kids. It was just the best. And they were locals. Yes. Islanders. They were islanders. Yes. I learned about it through social media. That's exactly in the mail. So, you know, Instagram, Snapchat, all the other stuff that I don't use. And um anyway, I have somebody that she works at um the nursing association and I have used her when I needed to get other people that are younger and she just gave me a whole list of places. I said,

I don't even know where some of these places are, you know? So, they're there. And I think that that's who, you know, you had talked about. I looked at, you know, your thing about, you know, who who would be people to get in a group. Well, we don't want the same old people in the group. We need to get the people who um want to live here.

Might not be able to hang on any longer. And um you know and the hospital needs people, the medical center needs people and you know so I think it can be done but we it's it's a real risk. Well the med so one of the things you're saying is a better deeper media strategy. Yeah. Can can you tell us completely completely different than anything we've ever you've done? Sure. So let's put a pin in that. in the second half of our conversation tonight because I think that'll be a really important strategy to discuss like how do we get other people here. I'm curious how we make the connection

Judy on Tik Tok want me how we make the connection of wanting to have um more year round more people here so we are creating a lot of houses for younger people to stay here but what are we going to what are they going to do what's the connection there so that's something I think about a lot um because I look at previous industries we've had here and we other than the Jackson lab we don't really produce anything on any scale Mhm. Our energy cost is too high. Our shipping costs were way we're at the edge of the earth. We had boats and cannon,

you know. And so I think last time you said, you know, we need to attract technology based something that um those are not uh lowincome jobs, right? So we get more of the same as far as housing costs. You're going to get people from Silicon Valley that say, "What a deal. Only a million dollars, right?" Yeah. Yeah. But people starting up those firms or starting up those industries, those are income or are they going to come here first or are they going to or are they already here? Some of them are here. What about the surveyors that just finished that building

and then whoever they've got adjacent,

you know, and just just think about the little kids that had the ice cream social and um you know, it was a really big deal. And so there's we're just tapping into we don't have access to those people. I'll tell you for a year-round economy there are various jobs. I mean when we started our organization we always said the four pillars of the local economy would be food, arts, science and technology and the natural environment you know and always healthare. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's sort of the foundation of everything. You need all those people so that there should be lots of jobs. And if we had, you know, if we worked more with the agricultural community and had, wouldn't it be great to have a real restaurant? Sorry if anybody's offended, but not the pine tree, a market or you could buy food and maybe some people producing foods and like a a shared kitchen space or, you know, Chad's making hot sauces and somebody's making bread and somebody's doing something else. But I think that there are spin-offs that can work collaboratively with each other. And I think that Scow Heaggan is one of the communities that is proving that that is that it works. I don't know if all of you know about

Scott, but you know, somebody there who was relatively new to the community started bought the old jail and turned it into a a grain mill. Yeah. The main people.

Exactly. and went off to France to learn what the process was so she could understand it all. Came back, set set up this thing and now so it's it's working with the farmers around there. But that grain there's now a bakery that's in an old bank called the bankery but they're using the grain from there. There is a pizza place that's making their own, you know, woodf fired pizzas and there's there are beer places that are using the some of the leftover grains like so the spin-off effects of getting one thing started really can ripple and those jobs are they're going to be year round. There are restaurants, there are breweries, etc. But it starts with one thing and it has all the ripple effect. In the past, towns would give people uh tax incentive, tax breaks to help do some of this

and you know, possibly our town could do something like that. So, can we just just pause for a second because I think we're what we're trying to do is just list out all the things that are barriers, right? And now we're spinning off into well the we'll do here. Yeah. But I I would like to I think this one is a really interesting one. So Kathy brings up a lot of good examples of other communities that are doing things, but their location is maybe not as much. It's a different situation. So I'm not saying we should talk about this specifically how to solve this, but

that this is a good point. In order to do all those things, we have to recognize that our location is a barrier and then find out how to overcome those barriers or what are the assets that we have that don't don't make the barrier so much of a barrier, right? Part of our location is we have basically no more land, right? Uh everything is it's finite. It's finite more so than scout, right? For sure. Um, and I just lost it. One road in. One road in. One road in.

Let me build on that though just a little bit. It's while you're thinking about it. But I also would argue that we have to not argue I suggest that as we're discussing this we also have to think about that the fact that our location we need to in particularly in terms of economy and maybe even housing on the broader scale needs to be thought of not just like how does m how does this town solve these issues. It's how does this community as a as a poor town community and a micro regional community fit into this question because that's really the only way

because that's what I was going to say is you know one of the economic barriers is is the tourism component and by the time um people leave the restaurants that we're talking about they're ready to close down and that doesn't provide yearround opportunity for employment. So we need to be encouraging. We need to be favor well favoring because we need to try to restore balance year round economic activities over policies and that favor tourism. An economy that is not based on foot traffic of tourists but that not exclusively. Yeah. Yeah. that need balanced

places in this world that aren't too far away from here that have actual year round businesses that are based on tourism and visitors and foot traffic that don't close in October Belfast, right? And so, you know, now that spirals back into like, well, they're going to be around after October. But do we think about maybe the part as part of our economic discussion like how do we take a threemon season and turn it into a 12-mon season? Like how do you balance that seasoning into year round housing?

But I think that also goes to your point of it's a communitywide and islandwide discussion there. I mean if you want to take the town of Mount Dert that's a challenge. Northeast Harbor is a destination whereas Belfast is a drive-thru. Um, Seal Harbor is a destination and then up in Mount Bazert, I mean, you don't have up in like the villages, Sville area, you don't have any restaurants and um other than the onetop, but you laugh, but like I know. Yeah, I know. But, you know, so so that goes to that point of that that this is an islandwide conversation from that standpoint. I I still think

that there's a way to think about, you know, I would I look forward to the tourism conversation that we're having and also having like why but that our you know tourism isn't always going to isn't always a bad thing if it's balanced and it provides things back to the place that it's from not necessarily extracting from it but also like there are good jobs that people do in other parts of this country that are very much related to the service industry. Mhm. And we need to maybe think about our service industry as valid year round employment and what are the things that business owners need. You know, you can't expect a business owner to just be open for the sake of being open. Like that's not that doesn't make sense. But like

you need to have people who are living here who can afford to take advantage of or also visiting here in different times of the year. I do think in other places that does that does not solve the problem of affordability. and livability of this community. I didn't say that it did. I just said it still creates year- round employment if you think about it different. Before I forget it, can we add seasonality to the drivers? Seasonality in what way? Not seasonal economy, but seasonal weather. Seasonal. Seasonal weather. You know, I mean, it's going to get better in 50 years. A big dome. No, I mean we're just not going to have

but you know we're packed in the summer and we're awfully light in the winter. So beautifully light in the winter. Yeah, I know. I know. All right. This is a really interesting conversation. I just want to make sure we're getting all the drivers. Just if we have we is there are we leaving anything on the table here? Um I'm just trying to manage time. We have zoning. We have zoning. That's a driver. We've restricted what we can do in many places. Well, is that the lack of regulation? Well, both two different kind of regulations.

Regulation regulation. You need to regul uh resources. Uh and what were uh septic water infrastructure which makes the infrastructure which makes it much more expensive for housing. It it's so much easier if you have town, water, and sewer to make homes that would be affordable, denser homes. Yeah. More homes in the same. You know, I I still baffled by the Sville map about density. It's like it's not going to happen. Okay. Good. Until we build up. Yeah.

Yeah. So I think um maybe let's spend a few more minutes on this topic. But one of the things I was kind of interested in is uh so here let me just roll off some questions that I think when we're getting into like future land use um kinds of discussion would be really interesting. So things like how do the how does the current land use pattern align with our community's housing needs? So we need to start to think about that. you know, is is our current land use pattern or even proposed land use pattern starting to reflect that? Do we have areas where zoning or land use policies are limiting our ability to uh meet our housing needs? How can we um use land use policy to help address affordability and diversity? Which areas of town are most suitable for future residential growth and why? Things like that. So that would be like let's look at this map and make sure this makes sense. Um where would infrastructure investments make the biggest impact so we know where the infrastructure is if we're going to invest in new infrastructure where would be the biggest areas of impact things like that. So those are the kinds of questions

and how would we create those kinds of environments in which the s whatever sort of growth we generated would actually be residential growth. Yes. So the next question, the next set would be well that sort of relates to the tools, the policies and tools that we have to promote. Yeah. Yep. So what's the question? Those are my those are just the the questions that we need to start looking at when we look at these maps.

So we could do a little bit of that now. Particularly maybe looking at this. What areas of town do we think are suitable for residential growth? I'd suggest we use these two maps. And then I think um it would be interesting to talk about now just to sort of frame the question, frame the thought process like what tools do we as a town like our in our job here as comprehensive plan committee members actually need to start to think about you know because there's this document is is only it's like you know you do have to think about it in a box a little bit. there's like larger things at play and then these are these are our plans to try to address those things. You know, I think that the existing comprehensive plan was was pretty clear and consistent with what like Grossmart Maine or others would say.

Sure. In that density should be in villages where there is access to water, power, sewer and that you save the natural environment. And I think that, you know, I think that those things are still valid, except that what you're doing is saving the natural environment as a preserve for those who can afford to live in a more spacious environment. and you're packing others who can't into more concentrated areas as opposed to figuring out how to also use those less currently less densely populated areas in a more efficient and effective fashion. So that's why I was thinking it might be interesting to have Brian Hankle come in soon. Yes.

Yes. I mean some of these questions we're asking right now um what are the areas that are suitable for residential growth? I feel like Brian can be a part of that conversation and share what's possible, what's not possible, what's what the thinking is. Sure. Because I think it can help guide us. Yeah. We have those maps. Yeah. And I think I don't know. I mean, he was very clear to me that he would like to be he would like to share in that. I I think that would be great. Can you join the committee? Is it well if he needs well it's up to it's up to the committee on him but he's got enough but yeah but I he certainly would like to come and be part of this some at least I got that far

and he brought that up I I didn't I mean we were talking about something else um so so just a mental exercise here if we were to pick a spot on the map and said we are going to acquire this land and pack it full of highdensity housing would infrastructure then be put in for like how much does it have to grow in order to justify a sewer and water line? What's the economics on that? And I mean, and depending upon the area, it could be a lot because you might still you have to get it there from somewhere whereas there isn't, you know, something just to hook into.

I don't I don't know how far they brought the sewer lines in for Farn's Way on Beachill Road. They're going to expand it. Yes, I know. I know. Yes. And I know with that one, they did cluster the houses uh really close and a lot of the people that lived there, maybe not a lot of them, but some of them wish that lot was just a little bit bigger. They were put, you know, really too close together. They have 30 acres up there or something like that. 90 acres. Pardon? I mean, that whole that whole swath is really 128. Yeah. Is it all suitable for

it's probably not all there's part of it that's pretty ledge and yeah it and it's it is a choice that people make you know because they had they designed it to be clustered and the whole point of clustering is so that you have woods and from my experience with some of those fans like yeah especially during co those kids are out playing together like as a family out in the woods all the time and so it worked very nicely and there's actually been not too much turnover in that whole neighborhood. I know Megan had left and some folks

and and the person who bought it, they left. Now there's a third person in there and somebody else that lived across from him over on Sydney's Way. I think there's two or three have turned over there. But there are numerous people that have been there and still are there. Yeah. And I don't want to say anything bad about, you know, and I I hate the word workforce housing, but if you would take people up, it's it's not pretty up there. So, you know, I don't mind not mowing a lawn, but I guess what I would suggest is that we reserve our opinions about how we personally want to see our own properties and think about it at a higher context, which is where are the areas where,

you know, a let's just can we all agree that we need a diversity of types of housing for people? Absolutely. Okay. And so then if we start with that premise, then we can start to think about area. Okay. Well, areas over in this part of town might be more appropriate for more dense development. And there's a there's a there there's a demand for that. People like to be there. And then there's other areas of town which we want to um you know make sure are big open space areas because they support the farms and that kind of stuff. And there's there's all the ranges in between, right? Can we all agree that there's Yeah. In our community, we're going to provide a full range of housing types, a mix between ownership and rentals.

Correct. And look looking at this map, I don't see very much uh R1 or or VR1. Yep. It's, you know, a lot of the property is, you know, 2 acres or more, right? Which, you know, increases all the cost. Yeah. Sure. And I think that's sort of so to to sort of combine uh Kathy and Gail's comments, one of them is, you know, where in this community, you know, should we take a look? I I'm a fan of looking at your existing future land use map because it was very thoughtful and there's a reason why it's that way. Starting from that place,

did they get anything wrong? So where where in the community would be suitable for future growth? And then to build on your comment, Gail, which is where are there places in our community which are not are underutilized for future growth? I think that's what you're getting at. And I think they're both they're both exercises that we need to go through. It's not an eitheror situation. It's, you know, and so then when you're looking at different tools, so the things that we need to do as it relates to housing, as as we've discussed, are increasing the supply and diversity of housing types. We're looking at um are there zoning and land use policies that we need to recommend to encourage diversity of different housing types? Um are there incentives that the town can look at in order to help promote housing? So, um, are there restrictions that we need to put on in place that things that we've talked about before? You know, if you do this kind of thing, you may you have to make sure that these there's a deed restriction for year- round housing or things like that. So, there are tools that we're going to be like working through as a group. Are there partnerships that we need to recommend through the comprehensive plan that the town works for? are there assets that the town brings to the table, not just from infrastructure, but tax properties or bigger pieces of land like they've like they've already done. So, all of those things we're going to be, I think, talking about. I not not to play out Brian too much, but one of the other things that he lapsed into with me was a discussion about the model that Farmer's Way represents financially and how he sees limitations to that and how he has other ideas about that and also some ideas about how, you know, do we have a a model in which we pay people to commit to restrict their property to selling to someone year round and what would that look like? And I mean there are all sorts of ideas like that.

Yeah. Um but if you're going to kick off and you want to go I'm going to go back to my village which I always do. Uh Adnausium is I don't understand how again how you can have uh want dense growth in Ssville without first of all with a very narrow extraordinarily overutilized 102 running down the center of it and that can't I don't know how it can handle so much more traffic than it's got already. and what you can do without water. And so that again that gets into maybe our discussion with our friend because I you've got to put in municipal water, right? You can't maybe that's I'm worried I don't

infrastructure sell and I'm thinking I got summer people all around me. I'm thinking like okay I hope it lasts. Can we look at the orange areas here? Those were the indications of future growth. Yeah, the orange areas are the village expansion or extension areas I think they're called. Can everybody see this? Feel free to stand up. Can we close able to put it up there or did you find it in their files or did you stand? Oh, it's on the town website. You say see where did I find it?

Is it in here? Okay, open. I guess my my neighborhood is a a good example. On my side of the road, it's R1 and on the other side of the road, it's R2. And it's a dead end dirt road. And we have two different zonings on that one one little road. And where's your house again? Uh, it's right in the niche right here. I mean crossroads. It's a future growth area. Yep. How would we go about what's the mechanics for going about

reanalyzing the zones and questioning and redrawing the zones? What's what's the mechanics for how you do that? So the way I think we want to go about doing it is looking at this area in a bigger this map and saying okay these were supposed to be future um expansion areas or these are the this was the plan from 2009. Yep. These are the growth areas and then we can we have and we can kind of overlay that blob. Um I think we can and I think we have already but we can overlay that blob onto this a map that actually has the zoning on it and say okay

I see where the zoning isn't reflective of what the future growth area for example. So that would indicate like hey does the does the R1 R2 make sense there or not? you know, do we does this need to be an R1? Is it have now a an R.5 because those are the new state rules.

Well, the other thing we do need here's the other thing we need to get into is that so there's new laws that just got passed when we're going to be getting into this through the Luzo committee. But there are connotations I believe to comprehensive plans in what when you call something a growth area and it is served by water and sewer then you have to have certain lot sizes there like you're required to have like minimal lot sizes like 5,000 square feet 5,000 square feet. So half of what and and we're 10,000 right now. Yeah. In some areas, right? For R1, right?

VR1 is 10,000 ft. It's and this I say this with only with caution in that even on areas like that don't have munisa water and sewer that are in growth areas your minimum lot size is now has to be 20,000 square feet. So we want to just be I think a growth area. What's that? In a growth area. Yeah. So, I just think it needs to be we want to be um thoughtful about what we call a growth area and then thoughtful about what we call other areas because there's just limitations to that that we have to be aware of. I'm not saying it's we couldn't call them all growth areas, but I think that's just something we need to

as we're talking about it, we just need to have the regulatory context now more than before. So, this map has water and sewer lines indicated on here. Yep. does. What does it say about that area? Beach Hill crossroad area. What What do you have up there? Well, yeah, everybody know Septic. Yeah, there's the map on the screen as well. Hold on one second. See, there's like that toolbar underneath the Have you increased the size 19% on the bottom? Yep.

The whole screen way to make my laptop is like 100 years old, too. So, it's probably like that's about how much growth we've had in the last 100 years. Got to make it larger. Sorry. How about that arrow on the bottom? That looks like expand to further to the right down. Yeah, that I think that takes up the whole screen. No, it's better. Okay, it's better. Yeah. So, I don't mean to get into like a full-on future land use map discussion here tonight because we definitely will have to do that, but as a starting point,

it's informative to know This is where we are because it relates to you know housing and land use which we recently talked about.

Okay. Well, that's it. We're gonna get you want me to zoom in on a certain area or do you guys want to look at a particular area in particular or maybe that the the question for this exercise tonight is as a starting point do the red areas make sense and do the orange areas start to make sense I'm arguing that sensible doesn't okay it's current well let's put I'm going to start a chart Um people on the north side of town work in Bar Harbor. It'll be fine. Well, you mean so they go over there? No. No. Just so that they don't have to go through that intersection.

Yeah. I'm sure you're always Well, and it's interesting because it's it's marked as a village and is there's no commercial spot left there really. Um it's not a village and you've got that that road is a huge problem. You get you just imagine dumping a lot more traffic from a more dense like if my lot had like an apartment building on it. Well, first of all, it would be impossible coming out of my hill. That's particular problem. But try our driveway back out of that into I'll I'll talk you with it with

But but dumping a lot more residential traffic onto that street. I just can't imagine. Um, so down in the Well, I mean, you could put traffic lights here, here, and here. So, we don't need to solve the issue tonight, Gail. I think we just need to point out um some things. This is an area we want to make sure we're discussing at some point. Suzanne, are you going to say something? Yeah. I mean, and this is not meant to pick on you, Bill. This is a really a larger question that we ask when we talk about housing in particular, but it's like things will have to change, right? And what are people willing to give up? what change are you willing to live with in order to like

bring the balance back or however you want to phrase it so like engineers can do a lot of stuff right but it might mean that like a road is widened or and I'm not advocating for any of this I'm just saying that like these are the types of questions we have to ask like what are you willing to give up what kind of change are you willing to live with and where's that sort of tipping point of you know this is apocalyp change or whatever for the things that you value. And so I'm just using your example. It's like you could ride widen the road. You could, you know, do a lot of things to accommodate more housing in that area and or not necessarily build new but actually populate the houses that are there now with year round people. So those are just the way we like try

just lost another one to year. Talk about it. Can you I'm trying to figure out around Northeast Harbor to the above it and to the right. What are those orange areas? That pockets of in the green. No, that orange right where your hand is right now. What? The the Asticoot across the street from the Asticoot. There's all those houses. That's where the savages all live and stuff, right? Goes all the way back. Gate Gate House Drive up there at the top. Yep. And and further down was included in that. Yeah. Further down with the arch. That's on Pet Drive.

Yeah. And who lives in there now? What's Why I wondered why that was that like um seasonal ledgy, right? But big houses is that like up where Marches live. Well, a little further on. They're a little further. Okay. Yeah. Right next to Lamp. So, that was actually a qu question that one of my employers asked me. She she was at the summer residence meeting and she was scrolling around on that map with all the purple blotches and she looked at Seal Harbor and said, "How are you going to make higher density on the hill in Seal Harbor with no yearround water and no year round sewer, right? You can't even live off a well, right?

Because there's no place to put a septic system and there's no place, you know, pipes are above ground, right?" and she thought, "Well, that's very foolish." Like, well, this is a proximity. I'm sure the hill being like upper dumbar up up the hill. So, this map doesn't say like, "Let's build here necessarily. What it does is illustrate

all of the policy decisions that have been made about zoning, residential density, the proximity to water and sewer. It doesn't it's not like a blanket land suitability study. Um growth areas as established in comprehensive plans. Um and then clusters of parcels that are village style like 20,000 square feet. So it's really important when people look at it that they like don't necessarily take it as like a blanket indication like this is you know across the board, right? It's like what what's exists in this area and what's possible. Anytime you do work in GIS like this, you obviously have to use it as a starting point and then like go out and like you know dig deeper, field verify, start the conver it's like a conversation starter.

Yeah. Yeah. She was really baffled by though and uh I had to some of those. Yeah. This is I'm sure it's 100 feet from the end of the waterline is where they drew that circle and said that's feasible. not not knowing they nobody ground truths this and says oh this site is suitable it's not a like a land suitability analysis it's an illustration of overlapping policy decisions so when we're looking at growth areas we're fortunate we know the area pretty well and Gail you can say my well is going dry this is not suitable for high

yeah but you know things exist on wells if you're going to put a lot of property you need and less comments at the end of that like Suzanne was saying like if this is an area that is target is could be potential for more development then these things really need to occur to make them better or something like that and and and so here's your 20-year plan. Yes. Right. because the town has to pay to build up.

And I would say even to somebody who lives on the hill in Seal Harbor, just because today you have water lines that go above the ground doesn't mean a year from now all of those lines aren't going to be underground and it's already happened in a bunch of places over there. So yeah, I think the reality of the economics over there might be a little different than the reality of the policies and the physical ability to actually do something over there. But that shouldn't limit us to saying, "Hey, we should look at this place. Here's these are opportunities, right?"

Yeah. And I also think we talk about, right, we're not necessarily getting to like a full-blown future land use, uh, discussion now, but it's important to like remember that you need a set of principles that you're building these ideas around, right? And so, um, it's not about like doing individual lot bylot analysis, um, to determine your growth area or future land use map. And it's not about like I don't want to live near like unknown lawns or like you know what I mean? It's like you can't it has to be a set of principles guiding principles that like are logical and defensible and like legal. Yeah. We believe,

but if we don't ground our proposals in doable with doable plans, we'll be looking at the 2025 version of this map in 10 years. Somebody will be looking at it 10 to 20 years from now and say, geez, that was nice, but we couldn't didn't get anything done. And so we've got to we've got to say well we can say SS is a growth area but just dig in and say what what's that mean? What does that mean for transportation? What does that mean for utilities? What does that mean? What's that going to take? Mhm. Um

and and you build out if you're going to build out a plan for 20 years or something and here's what the town has to commit to doing and here's what would you say there's this there's an intim step there G which is to say hey Sville is a growth area if that's the way it's designated or that's what the community wants and in order and we've identified a few uh some print some highle things that that need to be looked at in SSville in order for it to be a successful growth area and we would recommend a more detailed growth plan for that village. Yes.

Then that's it. That's our next step. And that plan needs to be done in five years or just making timelines up. But the where we are going to go with this comprehensive plan isn't to solve the issues of SSville. We need to agree Sville is an area that needs to be targeted for growth. We can already see through our analysis that there's some zoning inconsistencies that need to be looked at. Uh, and there's some infrastructure needs and there's some traffic issues and there's some other things and now you need to go and figure out those things.

It makes sense to me to say Sville might be a growth area and not Sville is a growth area because we haven't actually demonstrated that it is. It just has uh a slightly denser population in it already of historic homes, by the way, in the National Register of Historic Places. So, and and why couldn't we be thinking about other parts of this town as potential growth areas as well? I mean, and what I think we should say we need to have a more comprehensive discussion about what it takes to be a growth area and where it might be best to situate that. We can definitely work on defining for everybody's for all of our agreement like what do we mean when we say growth area

I go back to like have a set of criteria is it like w the existence of water and sewer infrastructure yes or or the ability to easily

the ability to whatever but like have a set of criteria that makes sense and understand the implications now under main state law of what it means to designate a place as a growth area and um then using that criteria you can identify those places on the map that make sense. But yeah, you can expand it out and it doesn't have to be binary, right? So, one thing we're wrestling with with another town client um is like there's obviously now a very legal there's these implications of using the phrase growth area and you forced to identify them plan but like

there could be other uh language that you use to describe something that's like limited growth or in the past it used to be transitional or something like that where it's like we we're not thinking of the highest density growth going into stone and spoil stone and soil but it could like accommodate some you know infill whatever

and I'm going to get I'm almost going to guarantee you that if the 2009 comprehensive plan committee had been working with the state definitions of what it means to be a growth area in 2025 you wouldn't have seen such a rush to just splotch a bunch of red stuff there and there may be other areas like that too I mean would it's an entirely different conversation now than it was. In what way? Just because of the density

because of the actual density that would be realized and would be allowed in an intense growth area. I'm not aware of too many people who line I don't know anymore actually who line the main street in Ssville who would be in favor of having apartment buildings next to them. So I I'd like to just I think we can pause this conversation because we need to move on. But I do think and I'm using that as I don't I don't mean to just highlight Sumsville, but I'm using it as kind of like an example. I totally understand what you're doing. Yep. And I think we also when we look at the area, we also need to look at a larger area like a growth area has many different characteristics. So the historic street and main street Sville

Yeah. isn't all of Ssville. There's bigger there's other parts of Sville, right? So you can you can describe those things and that sort of gets to the village plan, but it doesn't mean you're going to negate the historical context of the the white homes and black, you know, shutters in the historic area while you're also providing opportunities for more people to be there. We first called it a cute white Republican when we first got here. Great. Let's pivot.

This has been really helpful, I think. Well, for me anyway. Um, I think we can get back to we're going to get back to this when we get to future land use discussions more. Um, but I think we wanted to spend a little bit of time tonight talking about uh the public outreach and in particular talking about the next um or a big P public meeting where we really talk about um you know we we're really trying to build on the sort of vision values um you know mission statement type discussions. Do you have I think I pulled up. Yeah. That

um so Joan away. Okay. So, you know, we've talked about having this public meeting and I think we've been like when is it going to take place and some of that was very much dependent on how far we've been able to get through these inventory chapters and we're really nearing the finish line. I we've put them all in a binder for our own staff purposes and we're reading through and reviewing. Um and we still have one more to go. fiscal capacity, but um which hopefully we will talk about at our next meeting in September. Yep. I'm

like, what day is it today? Going so fast. Um our thinking is that um this meeting would take place sort of at the end of September. I mean, this is a moving target at this point at the neighborhood house. We're going to um meet with Ann Marie uh next week or the week after kind of talk about this in more detail, but um we put together this document and we'll send it out to you all as well. I can zoom in more, but the goal of this meeting so there there will be some like duplication of some of the efforts we've done so far and that is okay and that's intentional. Um, the goal is to inform people about the plan and the process, get people interested and excited and like the bottom bullet, make people talk to each other about these things.

Encourage people, right? Strongly encourage.

Yeah. Well, they'll be sitting at tables together, so hopefully they'll talk. Um, we're going to gather reactions about the key findings that we've developed in these inventory chapters. um and have uh specific questions that'll help us inform. One of the key parts of the comprehensive plan is uh the committee writes a vision statement. So this is our vision for the future of the town desert and then when we get into our um policy writing stage, we'll be writing goals, right? And we'll obviously be uh developing a future land use map and plan. So some of the elements of the public meeting will accomplish these goals here.

Um so then the meeting elements that we're imagining are um so picture a you come into the neighborhood house and there's a series of posters uh around the perimeter of the room and these are infographic posters that about each topic. Right? So, there's a housing poster and it has data and text of the things that we've been talking about in those chapters. Um, and there would be one for all the different topic areas that people can kind of approach and look at um as they're settling in. And then there'll be a period of time in the meeting when they actually engage with them. Um, another element will be uh flip charts um with specific questions at the top and then everyone gets a stack of post-it notes and they go around and write their answers to these questions and then they stick them on the flip charts and it's like this kind of mosaic, colorful mosaic of people's ideas. Um, and these are just some of the questions that we've used in the past in other communities. Um, some of them are things that were asked in the survey slightly differently. they really help us get at those things that we want to use to write a vision statement. Um, and then another element is um having people sit together in small groups with an aerial map and talking about some of these future land questions that are interesting and thorny. And this is where we're like we're going to encourage them to talk to each other about these issues. Um, and these are just sample questions. Like we're not wedded to these, so don't worry too much right now. And then a presentation on like what the comp plan is and the process. So the idea is that some people coming to this would not have even taken the survey. They're like, first I've heard about this, but someone told me I

need to come. Um, and that's a chance for them to learn more and get informed about what's happening. Shouldn't that be at the beginning? So this is not in order. These are just the elements. Yeah. standby.

So then the structure that we're imagining is about two hours. So people would come in, they check in and get a name tag um and then there'd be like a brief period of time where people sit down and there's an explanation of the agenda and the activities that we'll go through. And then there's um next people be asked to stand back up and walk around and respond to these flip charts. And the idea is to just make it social. And a lot of times when we do this, we see people definitely do the assignment, but then they also like to kind of stand off to the side and chat. Um, which is fine. And so then after about 25 minutes, the idea is that they would have answered these flip chart questions and then they would go up to the infographic posters like the housing poster and there and there would be a prompt like about you know what's one goal you have for housing in the town of Mount Dert and they would stick a right answer it and stick a postit on there. Um, so that's I'm calling it a solo activity, but it's kind of like a science fair or like that kind of energy where you walk around and um see what everyone else is writing to, which is really interesting. Then we would call people back and we'd have a presentation um or first we'd talk about you know what are some of the things that we saw or observed um and get people to kind of speak up a little bit and then we would go through a very short presentation about like you know welcome here's what a comp plan is and why we're doing this and what you can expect in the process and um obviously you know kudos to you all um for being on the committee Uh, and then we would have them kind of work together in their small groups around those aerial imagery maps around these future land use questions, report out, and then we'd have a wrap-up. And so this is very much just like a rough draft of what we're

envisioning. So it's a mixture of walking around. It's good to like stand up and move our bodies in these meetings. Um, it's a solo engagement with the information to a certain degree. at their own pace um during that second uh one there. Then there's the presentation to really help inform them about just like the nuts and bolts and then there's the like group work as well. Are we going to get the public to come to this? Yeah, great question. Raffle. Yeah, car. I was saying booze.

Uh I don't think we need to donate. If we can spend a million dollars on two tennis courts, we should be able to raffle off a So, yeah, questions about what's the best day of the week, time of day. Yep. Can we have offer child care so people with kids can have their kids be entertained? That would be great. Great. Yeah. I have some questions about that itself and the content of one I think with respect to people going to groups instead of tables

I think that we ought to have numbers on tables and everybody who comes in gets a number and they don't all cluster weird tribe all right so that's one thing the and couples get separated so husband and wife are so the way There's there's a lot of different strategies to do that and we already talked about that today because that's a big pet peeve of ours too and there's a bunch of different ways to do it. We may not do numbers. We may just like picky dots or something. But yes, it's a good suggestion. Um, the other thing about the let's I mean the whatever is the stickies and the questions we're gonna ask, you know, like what do you

always left a little maybe I'm sure it's me, but I'm always left a little cold by the the utility of what do you love about and questions like that. We're trying to design a vision for what we want to have happen so that 20 years from now we're a healthy and vibrant community and spending too much time talking about nostalgia

ends up I mean a lot of the community meetings you had a couple years ago if I remember I didn't go to one but if I remember reading the output a lot of it was like we have an affordability problem but I don't want my village to change and I guess It's important to know that, but it's also important to do what we can to encourage people to put their thinking caps on, not just their sort of emotional attachment caps to what's already there, what's in the past, and think strategize about how things might look in the future. And so I'm wary about too many of those. What do you love about my dessert?

Well, so I'm sorry, but it's a pleasure. Yeah, that question um is supposed to help inform the vision. So if you love the historic homes in Sville and then that the idea is that that idea would there would be a root of that in the vision statement that we want to continue in the future to value this thing that we currently love in the present

or we want to have deeper conversations about the the importance of that as an ongoing value. So I I would suggest that if you trust the process a little bit that you can't in this particular context the stuff that we're doing at the beginning warms up the questions that might happen at toward the end of the the thing. So as you're walking around thinking about hey you know and those question we haven't refined all the questions yet. Okay. But if you're walking around looking at the poster and you're looking at um you know the data and like there's a prompting question for you to start to think about

then there's a chunk in the middle of that meeting where we're going to ask people you know hey what did you write and have raise your hand and then we can we can use that to pivot to great I we just heard you guys say you know these are all the things that you loved and you're really worried about housing and blah blah blah. Okay, we're gonna spend the next 30 minutes talking about more about what you're going to do about it in the land use context. And so that builds to that,

right? And in a later part of the planning process, but we're trying to get like the core values, right? And so like imagine if we're successful, we have a raffle, we've got child care, whatever it is, right? and getting a huge number of people to come out that like you would get this kind of um ideally there would be a set of core values that are pretty consistently emerging right now. If it's like we really value quiet or something like that then you know you have this idea that is really kind of like a guiding principle in the decision that you make in the policy writing part of the process. So that's why we ask that question. Yeah. And we can phrase it differently.

No, you don't have to for me. I'm just like, well, I quite agree with you that that question always rubs me the wrong way. It's like it's very how do you feel about it? Well, I really like the part. Well, that's not that's not the future. And so I always think of if I was king for a day, what would I do to ensure 20 years from now we've secured the future? How is the park not the future? It is part of it. We can't do well. We can imminent domain some of it, but we can't do much about that. Would there be like a a mail thing to get residents to find out about this?

So, we had this conversation about the survey and like there's absolutely things like that that we can do if we decide that it's valuable way to use the town's resources. Yeah, we can do a postcard. Like, we created a postcard for the survey, but we never mailed it out. Um, and what other people were saying with uh, you know, the social media that I don't look at would be a way to bring in a whole different demographic than you know who who goes to their mailbox anymore unless it's on their phone. Mhm. So I think you know somehow or another trying to let people know and convincing them to actually come

Mhm. is the biggest challenge there is to get anybody to show up for this you know they had the ice cream social thing or something if you could tie in this and that and that and this to get a group coming in but otherwise it's just going to be us at the thing and reaching a man table. Can we We're just bouncing around a little bit, so I want to make sure we're trying to capture everything, but um so let's talk. So format-wise, does that format seem Yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah. Great.

One thing I would add, um we have a very short introduction. I know we don't want to poor people, but is it worth it to have more civics class education beforehand and say, "These are things you can and can't do. this is how towns work. This is you you want to change the town charter, not the the comprehensive plan or the like there are certain things you can't touch. There are state laws

and so when people say, "Oh, I'd love to see more of this or some of that." You know, there's economic implications of that. Do you want to pay more taxes? Yeah, we can do that in the presentation part where we um talk about the planned process um and or move it up in the beginning so people understand a little bit more. I mean getting people's brains turned on saying let's make from the get-go let's say this is a intellectual activity you need to be thinking about it and not it's not just a social right not just or an ice cream social commiserating about

I'd be willing to talk to my my people that you know have helped me with getting not just not just gray-haired, you know, little old people. Yep. Like me, we need to But I mean, it's completely different. And I, you know, to be real honest, I don't get some of this stuff. But, you know, it actually if we can get some of the right people to develop like a marketing plan to try and and you know, so you have stuff in everywhere,

everywhere. It has to be in the newspaper. It has to be, you know, posters aren't going to work. I mean, and then and we really have to figure out what want. Yeah. I think that that working with or through things like the Chamber of Commerce, our newsletter, Island Housing Trust's newsletter. We all have those kinds of vehicles to get out there. The nursing association probably has theirs. uh the historical societies but everybody who's putting out message let's try and get them to get the message be and the school newsletters high school and elementary schools and then way possible yeah and then you have then we have to figure out

I'll I'll ask what would you do you know we were going to have this meeting and what what's the framework and how do we reach the people because it's completely different you know I was told like my grandson will not answer. He doesn't answer an email. He doesn't answer a text anymore. He doesn't answer this. He doesn't It's Well, I'm not sure what it was called anymore, but it it's very different. You know, but so, you know, we want to get some the 20 some odd, 30 year olds, whatever ones are left. Yeah. No, they're 20 to 40 and they

ask a different ask the question add-on question which is what is what can we do at this meeting that will make it more uh attractive for you to actually show up on a week night or whenever it is even though you're just getting off work and you have kids in school or sporting event or whatever and you have to make dinner like what is it that besides you know your civic duty and you know community what is what can we How do we message it in a way or provide the things that's you're a good example? Yeah. What would be compelling enough about this to get you to go to this meeting other than you're on this committee?

I mean, I had second thoughts of walking through that door this evening. It's a beautiful out. Yeah. We can't. What would What big town events do we have coming up? Parad's over. Yeah, ice cream social's over. So the village harbor my boat soul just threw a an informal party at the fire station and Steve Pingham walked at every house which was only like 80 and left him a note on the door and everybody showed up and said we want to do it again as soon as possible. Yeah, cuz it's fun and there's no like hard ass,

right? So can we trick people? I do think I think a lot about or get Steve Pinkham to walk around the village say, "Hey, new new party, new location." I mean, we don't even have to nail stuff out. Yeah. Most of us can walk to our neighbors and we're not going to get everybody out, but we do definitely want a good cross-section. had someone with elementary school age children like having a movie going in the other room pizza or some people from I don't know if there's neighborhood house.

Yeah. having a couple people like the why does these parents night out event why and like um it's great you know they entertain your kids for a couple hours but like uh just something like that or there's I don't know what they have at the neighborhood house um but there maybe there's magnetiles andor whatever and if you make that happen people that you want to hear from is there enough space there I I think we when we have our annual town meeting In May, we have between 60 and 90 uh people show up out of 1,600. Was it more like 1500? Do you have a raffle? It's not there.

Yes, I think I think that number I think it's going down all the time. But you know we h we have trouble and during the town meeting you know it's been said people are getting up and leaving and you know we have to say excuse me but if we go to 50 or below you know that it's over we need to have at least that much and I think that's the biggest challenge is you know we're not getting much at a town meeting this isn't a town meeting and it's not going to be as long as town Not to make it a longer event, but can we have a social hour beforehand where people want to come hang out

and then somebody rings a bell and says, "Now it's time to talk about comprehensive and see how many people leave." At our town's economic development committee, that is an ongoing conversation of how do we identify and create opportunities for people to get together because people want to town picnic socializing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so in the winter months mostly, but it sounds like maybe we does it sound like we need like a subcommittee to work on getting outreach getting outreach for this meeting.

Can we ask uh I guess maybe the select board or something like that what budget we would have that we could have some sort of stuff at our meeting. What kind of you know food can you know we get you know $500 you know $5,000 new car just overthinking this try to becoming more and more and more complicated there's a lot of work to do that night there's a lot of conversation to have that night but you should always have I'm just trying to get people in the door though make the food really easy too I mean

well I just remember going there for a lunch uh several years ago and they had the what it's called the you know um chowder competition that was that we do that in the evening. Yeah. That was reallyation. That was the nursing association the chowder fest people. Yeah. The first year it was a a mom. The second year he couldn't get in and I was like yep. If we get 300 people wouldn't that be miracle discussions will be really interesting. Mhm. Well, just a thought,

but I think there also has to be enough prep and buzz around the community because it's going to be if you do something like that, you're going to have a really hard time getting people to shift gears and actually do a business meeting because you're going to have you're going to have the child fest, right? And you're going to have people partying and you're going to it's like and then it's like, okay, now I suppose you're wondering why we're cultural here. We're going to do some serious conversation here and it's going to go on and on and on and people are going to then you're going to get people walking out. Well, there there is a tone uh and there is a timeline that we have to try to keep people focused on. I think snacks just like here

food you know principle number one of any meeting like we should always bring some food to share. So that's a good thing. luck um comments about like if you got to make sure you have stuff for the kids to do otherwise the parents aren't going to be there and or focused. So we got to talk about a lot of that stuff. Is it better to do it when when's the right time of the day slashw week to do it? What's worked here? I guess we need to ask working couples that have kids when is a good time. Don't ask me. Saturday afternoon. I mean like midm morning Saturday even. I mean there's things I don't know. I've been to a couple school

years already started by that time. So we want to avoid events that the school might be having. That's right. And youth sports are kind of bananas. Yeah. Well, I wondered about a Sunday afternoon. Did we did we do an event on a Sunday afternoon in February? Yeah, it turned out pretty good. It was Yeah, I think we had 40some people. You were there with your wife and I think a two-month old baby at the time and we had Buddy Brown who was 92. So we had a nice range of ages. I don't want to wait until February, but No, but listen, like that means there's something to do. The nice thing about doing it at that time of year is like it's like something to do. There's less. Yes.

Yeah. Well, don't are you expecting to do more than just one Yes. event. Yes. So I think you know it's sort of like we have to create a buzz somehow and um and I would be happy to work on that marketing side of things of helping to get the word out and in all different newsletters and everything else. Yeah, I would say from our perspective that part is really on you guys. Okay, Kathy, I can help, you know, go talk to

people places that stay open. Like I know in Bar Harbor when they did their comp plan, you know, they went like they had events at bars and restaurants that were open and so it was kind of like the draw was to come and eat or drink, but also they had a microphone and they had a way to like encounter people in a informal environment. And I don't know if there's things like that here where there's like quiz night or if there's, you know, something like that. So you can have this is meant to be more of like a traditional model, but you can have also these like satellite opportunities to connect with people in that way. Yeah. I mean, if people stay, they can do karaoke. Great. Sing about your business.

Sing about what you love. Love housing. Lament about housing. In our goal to attract people to this, is there something in our promotion, some provocative question that we can get them primed? Yeah. What's your vision of the future? Vision of the future. Learn about what's going on. Let's come up with a fun logo for that. Oh, stop. No, I mean, you're going to have you're going to have messages going out there. something that's

if people walk into it already having some thoughts in their brain, hopefully better result comes out. They've already thought about the basic questions. They've acknowledged the problem. We don't need to talk about that anymore. We can just move to what do you want to see for the future and then what are you willing to sacrifice or you know what what level you want to put into this? Yeah. Yeah. Or how Yeah. How far can you stretch in terms of thinking about a a large dessert that doesn't look like it does now and doesn't function like it because it's not going to Yeah.

And how can we best facilitate a healthy version? That's that's not something to Yeah. We won't fe fearonger them into coming. I think whatever it takes, you're going to see phone store clothes, you know, closing. It's a big deal. I mean, it's just so depressing. Yep.

And th this is a different question for a different time, but somehow it ties into all this for me. We're not having honest and meaningful discussions across the different groups of property owners in this town. We're not actually building in real conversations between people who own seasonal properties and people who live here around. People own short-term rentals and people who live here around. people who own mansions and live here year round. People who don't want things built in their neighborhood and people who do. We're not providing the opportunity to have honest and hopefully productive conversations with one another about this community as a whole because we can't I mean are you suggesting we should have those?

Yes. Yeah. What do you think we need to do to get that to happen? I mean, other than this public meeting, I need to do it before. Well, this public meeting is late September. Well, maybe because we just came up with a lot of great additional ideas. So, public meeting is late. Well, I don't Yeah. Well, yeah. Or whenever it is. um this public meeting is not necessarily going to be a venue for having those kinds of No, I'd be part of the conversation. I'd be really curious to know what it would take to be able to have an honest discussion with summer neighbor summer resation. So, I'm just going to offer that like we have done these um

this uh series with Rainy Bench looking at historical um kind of examples of island is really about like islandwide decision making around difficult topics. That's a kind of generalization, but a lot of those and then there's a Q&A at the end and um and it's about housing ultimately and a lot of those conversations are very candid and kind of difficult. They're at the libraries. So that's like a little bit more of a neutral um environment. But I would almost venture to say like what you're describing almost you need like a professional facilitator or mediator

because we're you're threatening people's financial life prerogative or whatever. So it's like a really big deal. Yes. And it's important but you have to approach it differently. It's not something we can do in this. Correct. Correct. And I I think I think I said I'm not talking about this meeting but it's an important part of this process. I mean, you and I can sit around and read privileging place, but if we're not willing to have that, if there's not a venue for me to go and have that conversation with my seasonal neighbors,

then how do we ever together? And not in an accusatory way. I mean, I understand why my seasonal neighbors want to buy year round houses and then go to Florida in the winter. I Well, I don't understand that, but but I mean, I understand why some might want to do that. But how do we have those conversations? Cuz we're all impacting one another. And in the current economic system, I don't know how anything changes without people understanding the the responsibility and the role of self-restraint and so I would say we need to finish talking about this meeting and we should definitely put time on our agenda in the future to talk about this because I think it's really um important.

Yeah. And unfortunately, I feel like humans are sort of like crisis response sort of motivated. And so I think it's important to talk when we talk about these things, it's about saying like we need to be proactive so we're not like letting things bottom out in order to like really see the need for certain things to change or whatever it is the goals and the policies to happen. And maybe that's not here for the comprehensive plan committee, but it is something that can come out of this work that we're doing. Yeah, I was going to say that as well and echo what Suzanne is saying in that, you know, in order to have those kinds of conversations, it's a very there's a

it's a very methodical and thoughtful setup to be able to have a productive conversation. And it would be interesting to brainstorm about, okay, how do we do that? And there's some things that we might be able to do as part of our comp plan process, but I also think as part of the comp plan, part of the the we're going to identify a lot of things that we're not going to solve as part of the comp plan. And one way to try to solve them is to set that up

because if we don't have those conversations, we won't get anywhere get any consistently. It's like housing and a lot of these topics like it is there's a consistent need for action and it's like it's it's you can't we can't start the energy right after the comp plan and then lose the energy. Like that's what happens with all comp plans. You know, you have this big push right up after this big process and everybody's just exhausted at the end. Well, this is just the beginning. Now you have, you know, five or 10 more years where you actually have to do something

and you have to be consistent and methodical about how you do it. Now you guys did present at the July SR meeting. How did that go?

How'd that go? That one I think it was an interesting um meeting. I'm glad that we were there. Um housing was a big topic for the people that were there. I think people were receptive to the discussion. Um I don't it wasn't uh the format wasn't geared toward like a real deep conversation. It was much more like here's what we're doing in the comp plan and then we got into some housing discussions a little bit and then I I was there and stuck around afterwards and had some good conversations with a few people and you'll do another one in August. I don't know if we're back in August. Well, there is a meeting I have the date

I know there's a meeting. Yes. 10. Um, is your sense that this it's the same group or is it like a July crowd and there's an August crowd? There's a July crowd and an August crowd, but they they do interact somewhat. So, I um I think it's important to go and and I can't do it anymore because I finally just said to them, look, I'm now illegal if I'm a summer resident. because we live here year round and um well I will be delivering a child to college that day so I will not be here. Okay. But well you're lucky

we we have it in our calendar. We haven't actually been asked to go to that meeting. Well sometimes you can ask and I think I think is it John Olsen that's the who's the president? I don't remember who it is. Is it Ned? No. It might be I have his email. Tracy Tracy is the one that I've been doing. But Tracy Tracy is there like Yeah, she's the person that we have to deal with directly. Yes. My neighbor. Yeah, she was fine. Well, she was very helpful. Finally just said she's overstepping her bounds and she's speaking out of turn because many summer residents do not agree.

Well, I don't know what the context of that is, but she was very helpful in facilitating us going to this meeting. And uh the way that we had also discussed it was I think it would actually be better to have a summer residents association gathering that is specific to this topic and not all the other things because first they were talking about um tax assessments and there's like a bunch of different things on their agenda. Some of we've been to those before, but if we could get them to actually just be there for this one topic, we could actually do some more better engagement. I would think that they would agree to do that.

Yeah. I think people are interested. Yeah. And we can follow up with them. I do think like you know we have an ambitious time frame that we set out for this planning process, but realistically we will probably be in the position to meet with them next summer to go over goals and policies like a more kind of um you know substantial set of things to respond to in terms of like hey that all your houses are going to be blue or whatever and they're going to want to respond you know you need to do it before that I don't know how realistic it is to think that we're going to get this plan ready by the town meeting this year because it needs to be ready by Yeah. in June. Like I mean we're ready already.

Talking about 27 now, not 26. Well, the plan could be done before town meeting and it's got to go through the state. It will be Yeah, it'll be well Yeah. on its way by then, but the timing of how to get everything ready is tough. Yep. Yep. Um Okay. Well, this is really helpful and I like all your uh enthusiasm around how to get reach out to people. So, could I just maybe close the loop on this a little bit? I think we haven't resolved a few things and there was a talk of having a subcommittee or who how whoever, but I think we need to kind of take this back. We're going to be having a meeting with the neighborhood house anyway on Monday,

the 18th. The 18th. And so at that point, we can start to look at, you know, what's some availability. But I'm still I think the biggest thing that I'm still unclear about is whether or not we should target a weekend um Sunday afternoon or if we should target like a weekday, you know, traditional. It's always hard to find a meeting night during the week because we are have this meeting or I have that meeting sports. Yep. But is a Sunday afternoon take away from other I mean not the kids have there's never a good time soccer happens on Sunday all over the state you're just never going to figure Yeah. Yeah.

So maybe Suzanne and I just have to decide this is when we're going to be able to do it and then we'll look at the school calendar and we'll you know obviously look at the town schedule and stuff. Yep. I think anything obvious you know right because there's always going to be something. Yeah. Yeah.

And so between now and our next meeting, which is the beginning of September, please engage with us on this topic, if we send you emails about like here's when this is when we're thinking this is going to be. If somebody's like, "Oh my god, if half of you are on vacation that day or whatever, then we got to something we want to know about." Um, the last thing I wanted to mention too, and we don't have time to like really get into this, but I know I sent out the email about like a videographer or it doesn't have to even be like a professional, but do you think there is value in like um asking people, especially people we don't normally hear from, to like answer some of these questions on video and then they could be like edited together and put onto the project website. Um so that's just something to think about and um

it humanizes some difficult conversations. A lot of times plan um

committees or project managers will like do more of the touchyfey stuff that we're less interested in. That sounds like, you know, where in the beginning where it's like um, you know, going out to a festival or a farmers market and just getting kind of engaging people and getting them to feel optimism for the future of their community and like why this is a good thing to be involved in. Um, so we can keep talking about that as an additional way to get out there. Um, and I just wanted to also show you that this, you know, we have a project website for this project. So if people ask you about this, you can send them here. The URL is goofy because we the town I mean we haven't really gone back to ask, but if the town wants to pay for like a URL that's like town or comp plan or whatever, we can do that. But right now this is just like a um Squarespace generated one. But just a reminder on this website there's an about section um and it's about the plan and process um the committee your names are there um these are recent planning efforts so the existing plan the village planning workshops document the climate action plan that a climate to thrive did and some photos from the village planning work um how to get involved. So, this is where we did have a link to the survey. Um, that there's a public meeting coming up. There's the option to have a meeting in a box if people were interested in that. We can put that together. But basically, it's like a way to package up a lot of the questions and the maps that we ask into like a big manila envelope. And if you you know that like these people have a knitting circle or there's like a book club and whatever, people can kind of answer those questions and fill that stuff out and participate in that way and then mail it back or we can pick it up. Um then I added these update pages.

So what we're doing is every time we have a committee meeting, we're putting a summary of what we've talked about. So like go through check those out if you would like. It's no nothing in here is um inflammatory. It's just very kind of like the committee met. Here's what we talked about. It's not even like a straight uh the minutes. Um but we thought about linking the Zoom recordings too. So the idea is like we want people to know what's going on and as much as possible they can access these conversations that you all are having. Um and um I did do like community survey. I just put some of the um word clouds up and some quick stats on like who took the survey. Um so when you hover over this, it shows you like what the question was. And I really like this one because it's so like yes. Um and like uh what are the major challenges? What would make the town a better place in the future? and it's like more year round, you know, house these things. I, you know, it's not perfect. It's just yet another way to like get um that information out there about what's going on. So, uh just wanted you to know that's there and that's something we're doing in order to like continue to be really transparent about um this process and help people understand what's going on so that when they all get all the buzz about the public meeting, they can come and see like, oh, they're doing stuff. they're talking about stuff and this is very interesting. So,

well, let's actually highlight in the information about that meeting so that people hopefully will be encouraged to look at a new meeting. And you said that the town it's got a silly URL because it's just a freebie. Yeah. But the town could link to it. It could have something on their new website to say it's already it's already there. Good. Okay.

I mean, you don't spend a lot of time on this page on the town website. Yeah. So, this is the comp plan committee page for the and the town's new website, right? So, they have a link there. It's sort of it's not totally duplicative, but like they have that there. And then because I personally felt like we can do so much more with a like standalone project website in terms of like sharing materials and pictures and like creating the feeling of this process. That's why we made this other um website. So, there is a link there for people. Yep.

Um, a couple other things that we need maybe we can put on our agenda for next meeting is if we want to have like besides the Brians of the world, like who else might be helpful to come to a committee meeting to talk about a particular topic, we're already outreaching with committees and other people to try to get information from them that informs our piece of the work. But um if there's other people that we might want to hear from, we should put that on the list and it may be like associated with when we're getting into topic areas to talk about goals and strategies, but just to brainstorm about that a little bit.

Wonder if it'd be nice to have somebody from the select board now and then show up. We have we have three of us from the uh planning board here. Got it. So we got that part covered. Yeah. and we can give them an update too once in a while which we should probably do soon.

I just want to say one more thing about the idea of like convers conversing across socioeconomic groups. The goal from my thinking would be for us to each have the opportunity to understand everybody understand the impact of the decisions that we make about how we use our community and the ripple effect of those decisions on others. And that isn't limited to any one particular group. It's each of us and all of us how we think about communities. And I don't think we can do that just among ourselves, meaning year-round residents, and actually have a full picture or or a full sense of how we're in this together and how we need to be engaged in trying to reach the goals that we want to that we can find commonality on that we want to reach. It's not it's not to like say you guys, you know, it's not that um it's it's to listen to each other, to converse with each other,

right? And I and not have it devolve as it does in so many meetings like, well, you just I hope you're still trying to pit this against the summer community and turn this into them versus that just happens every time and it just like conversation. Yeah, that's why we need like a totally different setting and context and mediator and like this is like a very yes carefully formulated process and not be contentious. I think those library meetings, I mean that what Suzanne was saying, those those in our experience and we do a lot of these kinds of things like those have been really good

low pressure settings for people to come and have good discussions. But I also like love the idea of you know if you want to do that like open might night at the northeast or you know like if you get businesses on board they're you're not talking about maybe people in this crowd but there are other people that you're facilitating I don't know there's all kinds of I like the library idea you have a you set up a small panel discussion you know and then have people come and dialogue has been great yep all right it's 7:00 hearing No public comment. Seeing no public for comment. See motion to adjurnn. Take a motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjurnn. Yes. Thank you. Those in favor can get

I. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Thanks Suzanne. And we'll