Remarks by Hillary Shields
116 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 5
- Play at 18:38
“I had a question before we adopted the agenda.”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 18:43
“Okay, I wanted to ask if we could pull an item from the consent agenda, the item C, the appointments. I'd like to have some further discussion on those.”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 20:12
“I guess what order do you want to do these in? Do you want to vote on the rest of the consent agenda and then discuss that later?”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 22:10
“Have we voted on the consent agenda yet?”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 23:06
“Okay. So I guess there was one appointment I wanted to talk about, which is John Bedoin's proposed appointment to the Planning Commission. I think Council Member Frazier may have had some comments that she wanted to offer first. If you want to lead off, I didn't want to step on your toes.”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 24:18
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 27:35
“And Mary can we vote on his computer. First procedural question, yes, can we can we vote on his appointment separately from the other folks on that list of appointments.”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 1:57:12
“Thank you, Mayor. This is probably for the Developers Council. I'm going to be totally honest. You lost me a few times, but I made some notes, and I wanted to make sure that I kind of captured your points adequately. So I think what I got from your presentation is that the site is zoned commercial. The residential area grew up around a commercially zoned site. It's adjacent to a highway. So while you understand that the neighbors object to this, you feel like since it's zoned commercial and they bought houses near commercially zoned property that you should be able to continue developing it…”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 1:58:21
“Now we're not going to have a commercial use. I'm really just trying to clarify because there's a lot of information. I just want to make sure I kind of understood. And then generally that there's adequate drainage, adequate road capacity. You've worked to kind of revise the designing colors to be more compatible. There's adequate parking. All the normal kind of site stuff that we look at, you feel like that's all addressed. And then I guess to staff, do you concur that the parking traffic Drainage all that is adequate to city standards Yes based on the information we received and yes, okay I…”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:13:02
“Thank you, Mayor. So a couple of questions that come up that seem to deal with whether this is a good business plan, like in terms of the number of other convenience stores around. Like this application is just to say whether or not this land use can go through. It doesn't have to, like we don't set the, like you don't need a certificate of need to put in a convenience store. We don't really set the number of convenience stores in the communities that Like this is just saying for this partial that could we approve this? Use here. We don't I'm just like we don't usually get into those details.…”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:45:29
“There were a couple of questions that came up from the public that I just wanted to get some clarity on. How many cars per day or customers per day do you anticipate? Because I think someone said something in the high thousands, and that seems surprising. So for you, it's a successful business model. What are you kind of counting on?”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:46:44
“Okay, but that is the number of people that would be in and out every day you think is like 5,000?”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:47:02
“Is that something maybe staff can clarify? Again, just trying to understand what those numbers mean.”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:47:24
“Okay. Okay, the future restaurant and all that too. Okay. And then a few folks commented that they had sent in communications about this and they weren't shown on that map. Does this map, I assume, just show people who city staff were made aware of those communications? It's like if someone just emailed one of us and we didn't forward it on to you, you wouldn't know about that? Or how is this collected?”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:47:59
“Okay. Most did, but there were a few. In general, just for us for best practices for the future, is it good for us to forward e-mails like that on to you so you can make them part of the public record, or what's your preference?”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:54:09
“Thank you mayor, so I appreciate everybody's time tonight the presentations the information I guess for me this is a commercially zoned piece of property next to a highway and It just makes sense to have a convenience store there It's been pointed out tonight that there are a lot of convenience stores in the area because it makes sense to have convenience stores next to highways and I understand the opposition, but I also have to balance that against the value of small businesses investing in our community and the rights of property owners to develop their property as they, you know, as they…”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 3:37:39
“Thank you. With the reimbursable project cost, that $6 million, can you go back to the list of what they're going to use that on? I don't I haven't shown it but we could oh I thought it was in like one of the first slides about like the Douglas improvements and turn lanes and This one I Guess so so that lists all the eligible ones. So what did they decide that they actually want to to request? What is the six million portion of that list?”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 3:38:25
“So they'll still have all of those on their list of reimbursables, and as those expenses come in, they can reimburse, but only until they hit that $6 million top out. It's not like they said, well, we're going to just put the road widening and the traffic signal on the list. It's all on the list, but they'll only reimburse until they hit that next.”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 3:38:47
“Yeah, that makes sense. Of that, do you know how much of it is off-site improvements, like the actual Douglas Street overlay and that kind of stuff?”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 3:39:29
“Yeah, so $2.5 million is off-site improvements. Yes, looks like $2.5 million. $3.5 of on-site, and then $5.4 of soft costs. So that's... Correct. Well, that includes the land legal fees. Okay. Yes. Okay. That helps. I understand that all of this meets a legal threshold, but it's helpful for me to understand what we would think of more typically as a public improvement, improvements to the public roads and that kind of thing. Okay. That's all I had. Thank you.”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 3:44:59
“Thank you. I guess I would be in support of this. There are a few things that kind of top the list for me. One, it's very much in line with the level of incentive that we've given on similar projects, so it feels like it meets kind of our prior precedent. I appreciate the breakdown of showing what's really, I mean, obviously these all meet the legal definition of public improvements, but seeing the off-site improvements, especially the varying of overhead electric lines that we're always asking for, new traffic signals, new turn lanes, things like that, that really will be EXPERIENCED BY THE…”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 3:46:11
“Yep. I move for second reading of Bill number 26-186, an ordinance approving the petition for establishment of the Northwest Maine Northeast Douglas Community Improvement District, approving the execution of a cooperative agreement for the district and authorizing and directing further actions in connection therewith.”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 4:09:20
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 4:09:35
“Okay. And then this one, it's just a personal property tax because they already have a real property tax abatement in place as part of the larger Scannell project. Did I get that right?”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 4:09:49
“But the underlying land already has a tax abatement, so that's not part of this request? That's correct. Okay. I think those were all the clarifying questions I had. I'll have a couple comments later.”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026