Housing Strategic Planning Steering Committee - Regular Meeting

It's 9.01. You can get started. Okay.

So call the meeting to order.

And in attendance, we have myself, Howard Margulies, chair, Michael Fogliano from zoning, Harold Thompson, is sitting in for Todd Mantek from planning. We appreciate you coming. From zoning and on screen is George Frampton from affordable housing. Might mention, and here's Jim. Let's just get a couple of things real quick and we'll get to Jim very quickly. I would just like to make a motion. I forgot to include the River Cog Planning and Housing Committee report. And I also attended a River Cog seminar on tax abatement. So I'd like to clue that so I could have a motion to someone add that to the agenda.

Yeah, I mean, and so I think we need to talk about, we need to have those permanent on the agenda, the River Cog reports.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. Any discussion? All those in favor? Okay, we'll add that to the agenda. Thank you. Well, the other thing I wanted to mention, it looks like Martha is going to speak Jim Cordo may have difficulty continuing on the committee because of time frame issues being this this time of the day. So Arthur's going to talk to him and we'll see if he will continue. Okay.

Whatever you can get from Jim, even as an ad hoc, he's a valuable resource.

Yes, it would be a big loss. And we know Michael has had the call of the West somehow, which he has yielded to. And I'm sure the town... It's very great for all the years of service, and you'll certainly be missed in the old mine, that's for sure.

As am I, for the opportunity.

Okay. George and I thought it would be a good idea to invite a number of people with some expertise on housing to get various views. So today we're going to have Jim. We have a number of people who are interested in intertwining.

What else is... A couple others.

But anyway, Harold, you might consider that too. We would certainly, with your experience, we'd love to hear kind of your views. You know, you've 120 years of being on the Planning Commission. So it would be really good to have, if you want to think about coming in and making a presentation on what you, how you think, how this is going to happen.

In addition to local folks, who's critical to the whole process, I'd encourage you to get some of the NGOs in. So that's Hope Partnership, Mercy Housing, Habitat for Humanity from the not-for-profit sector. And also there are some developers out there with experience in affordable housing, including some that make it a business to leverage state and federal grants and partnership with the public sector to build as much affordable housing as they can. So they don't use 830G to come in, as much market rate as they can. And they actually try to maximize the affordable fraction and only do enough market rate to make the balance sheets work. And they are, I know at least one that has a lot of expertise in work in the state and federal grant system and tax system to their advantage to do that. So that's just another sector to consider.

Yeah, yeah, good idea. Thank you. So should we have, so that I can take good minutes. Could we follow the agenda? Because I'm not sure where these comments are now on the agenda, so it would really be helpful for me.

I'm trying to... We were talking... We're at the... We're at where? We're at gym. Yeah, exactly. And we just run down a little bit to talk about... And we admit about the introduction. Yeah.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Okay, so we're going to have more Jims come. I got that piece, but I didn't capture all your family. I didn't realize it was going to go on.

Okay, well, we will stick with the agenda. I appreciate that. Okay, so I know Jim has limited time, and we want to get him on early, so we'll just go ahead, Jim. You're on.

Thanks very much, Joe. Before I start, Michael, we're just on a personal level and, of course, on a municipal level, we're really, really going to miss you. It's unusual for us, but we're happy for you. And so it brings us to the task at hand. I think there's two truths that are more or less self-evident that align almost universally. People love Luthtown. It's not a town full of grievance. If anything, people, myself included, don't want to see a lot of change. We like the town the way it is, particularly nature, the natural environment and its proximity to our homes and our neighborhoods, its accessibility, clean waters, availability of open space. All of this is something that we treasure along with the historic architecture landmarks that we have and the unique culture of the town. So, I mean, that's something that I think we all treasure. And we don't, you know, fear that everyone has the town will look like every other town, which drive down the coast or, you know, my example is always Long Island, which is just a rolling catastrophe. You know, every year you go out there and you just see, you know, some of the decisions that are made Excuse me. Can you hear me? Yeah, can you speak louder? Oh, sure.

Sorry.

Sorry. Can you hear me?

Yes. Is there a mic there that Jim could talk into a little bit more?

I'm having a really hard time hearing.

And I can't turn this up. Is that on a wire?

A long enough wire? To pick it up, it should be.

That's a charger problem.

Yeah, you might be able to just bring the puck itself over without the wire.

George, can you hear me now? Is that any better?

That's a little better, yeah.

Okay. I think you can just take the puck and move it down towards, pick it up and leave the base.

How's this, George? Is this better? That's better, great. Thank you. All right. Without repeating everything, I'll just, to summarize, I think, The two truths in town, one, are people really love the town and they don't want to see change. They like the town the way it is. Number two is that due to how the decisions we've made over the last half century and our zoning, the developments encouraged our large single family homes. And two cohorts have pressed out of town, essentially, and that's our young families, If you have children and they're sitting out on their own, they don't have a lot of good housing choices. You know, we see more and more 5,000 square foot homes, 9,000 square foot homes being built, and there's nothing wrong with that per se. It's just not a place where a young family can start. And our retirement community, our elders, when they finish the toils of their daily labor and they're looking to downsize from larger homes, again, few options apart from moving out of town. So we're losing a lot of our own residents, nevermind excluding people who want to move into town. So at the same time, people don't want to see change. People do mention they'd like to see different housing options. And the other reality that we're facing now is that we have this Public Act 25-1, or the House Bill 8002, which overrides our commercial zoning in town, has some mandates, and could very well, without our input, without our proactive action, could very well not only sort of change the physical environment of the town, but wreak havoc on our natural world and the fabric of our historic community. So how do we reconcile all of this? I know zoning has already, they have a stopgap measure to address this. Some of this goes into effect July 1st. The core challenge we have in front of us is dealing with Public Act 25-1. And we can either default to a regional framework where Rivercock presents a plan to us, a housing plan, or we can work towards our own municipal plan where we create specifically tailored housing road plan and to keep zoning authority decisions, mostly in the line choosing how we want to see development while providing legal safeguards. Two of the strategic tools we have at our disposal are the priority housing development zones that are established in Sections 9 and 10. These zones unlock critical pathways to claim exemptions or moratorium from 830 . Now, one of the guardrails that we can look at putting in place here is the single family requirement of four units per acre essentially matches our existing R10 zone. So if we look at objective design standards, setbacks, and other environmental requirements, we could guide the development in some of these priority housing development zones to look something like an R10, particularly where we have, say, a C30 across the street from an R10. This could be one strategy to address that. We also have the option of the transit community district. Online status is having bus service. Opens up the possibility of having a transit district. And again, we can look at C10, C30 on Shore Road, at Halls Road, and at Laysville. We have an existing model of mixed use that We've had on the ground now for about 10 or 15 units and it's working very very well. It's the Soundview Village District which essentially used to be a C-10 and the C-10 we still have a rump district on the north side of Shore Road near Hartford Avenue but the C-10 was too restrictive to do anything on Hartford Avenue. It did not allow their mixed use and It did not recognize the facts on the ground where some buildings didn't have standard setbacks. They were on lots that didn't conform to the square. The Village District essentially massaged some of that, and it allowed for development that looked like a sound view. It also set some pretty strict design standards, which weren't controversial and which were very, very successful. Unfortunately, in this new zoning rewrite, a lot of that sort of went by the wayside. We have standards for fencing, for example, and proposals would go first to the Soundview Commission for review, and then it would go to zoning. The Soundview Commission has been taken out of that loop now, and fencing, for example, just defaults to the town standard. I think we need to revisit that And we need to think about the model Southview Village District presents, which allows for mixed use, which allows for multifamily, and has done so successfully with design standards. We need to look at that model for our other commercial districts. And so Part of what will help us defend our town, number one, we have no public sewer or water in a lot of the towns. So we have to be very cognizant of high density development in terms of public infrastructure. We have a unique and fragile ecosystem. And this is something that I think is not only a local asset, it's a regional asset as we saw during COVID, A lot of our open space is just completely overrun. We serve all of New England through this unique coastal environment, the Connecticut River Gateway, the Long Island Sound. What we want to do is to continue to protect and enhance this. And particularly our salt marshes, which speak directly to resiliency, but the more we allow encroaching into the salt marshes, the more particularly we develop areas where the salt marshes could be advancing in the next 10 to 20 years. Not only imperils the ecosystem, but it imperils our ability to be a resilient community going forward. And those realities at hand I would recommend a four-step action plan to begin addressing some of these challenges ahead. One is to, and some of this has already been done, I believe, but we need to pull all of this together. One is an infrastructure audit to quantify exactly how much developable land Old Lyme has, where it is, what the quality of it is. Two, to calculate our exemption targets, to find out the exact number of completed units we would need to secure an exemption from 830G. Three, to draft architectural guidelines that have specific physical design codes that developers can access. Now, most towns do this. You can go to their website at zoning and you see what zoning wants to see. So if you're a developer, there's no, questioning, you know, in each particular district what the town wants to see, so you can tailor your application. I know design standards came under attack recently, but I think most of the town agreed that if we're going to deal with these new state mandates, drafting architectural guidelines is probably our best defense. And we need to think about the opt-out vote for accessory dwelling units, which I believe are currently allowed in the R40 and R80 zones. So we need to have a vigorous discussion on whether we opt out and perhaps design an extension of where the accessory dwelling units are allowed or whether we opt out entirely or have a discussion as to whether we don't opt out have accessory dwelling units available. The concern last time around, we did have the vote to opt out, was that the R10 would become, number one, far too dense. Number two, these units would essentially be used as therapy units because these are seasonal communities. So that's essentially My view of it, going forward, I would personally, without jumping the gun, I would personally recommend that we start working towards our own municipal household growth plan, rather than defaulting to the regional plan. We need to be partners with River Cod, we need to be partners as Michael said, with NGOs, with essentially everybody in the process. to gather everybody together, we're not going to be in a confrontational stance in any way. But I think if we don't have a rigorous analysis ahead of time of what the potential is of what we want to see and how this new zoning will play into that, how we can unlock some of the advantages that are in this bill, while mitigating some of the disadvantages that might turn this into sort of a cookie cutter town that looks like every other sprawling suburb across the country, which we want to avoid that. I think our best way of doing that is to wrap our minds around a very difficult task. It's going to take a lot of work and a lot of heavy lifting is to right now begin working towards our own municipal housing so that by the time 2027 rolls around, when River Cog is going to be coming to us, we have a very clear idea of what our strengths and weaknesses are, how we can use River Cog's expertise and use their guidance, rather than having River Cog present us something and then being in a defensive posture and having to say, oh, good God, this is going to wreak havoc on the town. How can we push back? Rather, I would like to go at least halfway down the road to 20.7. So when River Cobb comes to us, we're well-grounded. We know what the facts on the ground are. We know what we'd like to see to help our town sort of face the housing challenges that we have in particular time period and to preserve our environment.

Thank you. Questions from anyone? Comments?

Yeah, I had one question. In terms of our housing growth plan, I'm looking at it more that we are going to direct River Clog to what we want. We know that the state is going to say, if we don't accept River Clogs, they're going to say, why not? And then when we present one, it has to be accepted by the state. So I'm looking at being proactive and reduce and we have all the information, and I know Mike, we're going to lose Mike, but he has all the information. I'm going to have him on speed dial just in case we need that information. I'll be there. But we have the information that you're talking about, so would you see that as a good path forward so that, yes, we're making sure we have all the information and making sure Rivercock has all that information, so that we're working and being more proactive there. I did not anticipate that we weren't going to be involved in that process. They've got a whole housing committee, and I think they're not going to do a plan for the region that isn't very town-specific. It's going to be a specific plan for each town. So do you see that as a path forward, working that?

Yeah, without a doubt. You know, I don't want to present this in stark terms.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, if they didn't put what we expected, I mean, but I think part of that planning process is we are anticipating that we're going to be part of it. And if they just say, you know, if we get pushback from what we want and they don't do that, I don't anticipate that unless it's something that they're saying legally we can't and we still want to push for it for whatever reason. So, I'm just putting that out there that I, that's what I'm anticipating. And that's for this guy.

So we have seen on the steering committee for the. The steering committee for the regional housing plan that is going to repair is the housing committee. The housing committee, and we have a vote and a seat on that. And we also have a vote through Martha on the executive committee. That's eventually going to adopt the whole package. So. We'll reap what we sow in this one. If we're fully engaged, if we're aware of what's going on, if we're tightly networked with Rivercock. Back in 22, when we did the affordable housing plan, they were a tremendous asset and they saved us a ton of time and money. And we actually came up with a plan that was substantially our own. We authored it. But it was the infrastructure for that and the data wrangling and the connectivity to the state was mediated by River Cog. And it turned out to be a legitimate win-win, in my opinion, at least. So, yeah. And I'll jump ahead a little bit. There's a, I don't think it's a... He's going to be... Well, I've got the discussion with Jim on here. It's not going to be a yes-no discussion. and a one or a zero on the regional housing plan. There's a middle ground, which is you do a partnership on it, and it's almost a hybrid between they write the core and it's wrapped in a very old lime centric, old lime beneficial surface that interprets the core of the plan in terms that suit old lime. And I found it's the same folks that are there. They're very receptive to that. Sam Gold, Megan Drew Fliss, they're going to be open to that kind of partnership to come up with something that's unique.

I might add from the planning committee, my sense is that River Cog has our interests at heart. I don't think they're, you know, this is the state imposed. They understand the issues of these smaller towns, and I think their interests are fairly well aligned with ours. So I echo what you're saying. I mean, there are going to be things that come down from the state. They're going to be a number. We'll discuss this a little later, but one of the things they said, the packets are out, actually going out now. They said they have three already, so we should receive one soon. But what you'll have to do, I didn't discuss the whole thing, but the initial part of the assessment is you have to look at how many households in your community are spending 30% of their income, 50% of their income, and 80% on housing to get a feel for where the issues are. So I agree. I have a question. One of the, when I step back and look at this whole process, so we have new housing law, we have the zoning changes, and the one thing that seems to be, if I were coming in as a project planner or I would start, What is the ultimate goal? When we get done, what do we want the town to look like? And how does it all fit together? And how is it viable? So yeah, we may allow housing here, housing there, both mixed use here or there, but you need the economic development piece, the housing piece, so that the housing goes into the right area and makes it more viable. So I'm a little concerned that your train has left the station and like in the closed road project, zoning was just one element. There was a whole plan and that fit into the plan. And it seems to me that we were starting almost with the details and we're not stepping back and looking at what do we want the ultimate outcome to look like, and how does it all fit together? And it requires, I think, POCD portion, but it might require some kind of master plan, and we're kind of missing that. I would be here to comment.

Actually, you alluded to that. One of the four steps is that we need to find out what we have. When we take a look at planning over the last three decades, The number of developments have gone down. Why is that? And we're, you know, I even thought it was even if you want to do something, an assessment might consider moratorium on construction just so you can figure out what properties are available and how do you protect those properties so that you might put more houses on. For example, there's a a house that's going in on flat rock. I think it's on 32 acres of land all by itself. So before we can really proceed, in my mind anyway, we have to figure out what we've got. Because I thought years ago that all the development was going to be done because they were coming in, developers were coming in with parcels that were wetlands that were you dug down three or four feet, you were on ledge. And the casualty of that is that, yes, we don't have silvers, we don't have septic systems. And so this property was elevated higher than another development. So if someone was trying to push something in, all the effluent from those houses was gonna travel right on top of the ledge and go right down to the lower level development. So again, we need to find out, you know, people have come in with properties that were very much substandard and they were denied, but we need to have a real solid inventory of what we have and where it's at. And then we can see how it blends in with everything else. And again, Basically, Michael is right on us. River Cod is being a tremendous resource. And not that they do understand this.

And they're doing those inventories. They are. And we have an existing one that we were actually the only one of the 17 towns that did the affordable housing plan that insisted that there be that inventory. So we actually got a grant and supported a consultant at River Cod to do that first assessment. And it was a first pass. It needs to be refined. The other thing about River Cog, and I neglected to mention this, is there's two ways to look at River Cog. One is it's 17 independent municipalities. The other way is it's Middletown and the other 16. And the message there is we're not alone in what we're confronting. So when you work with River Cog, you not only get River Cog, you get the 15 other towns that have a lot of overlap with Old Lyman, what they're confronting, especially at the river.

Any further questions?

I mean, I don't think any comments were mutually exclusive. I agree with T.B. 's, Harold, Michael. So it's, yeah, I mean, yes to all of this. You know, I think CircleCog is a powerful partner in all of this, and I didn't mean any of this to be set up as a confrontational thing. I just think, just as to what you were saying, i'm advocating more or less coming up with not so much a master plan that is not going to fly on the year master plan um but a vision of you know begin with what did we want and you know and that's why i said starkly in the beginning i think we all want to protect our natural environment and the sort of fabric of the town uh and i think most people would agree that we need more housing options in this town that aren't just large, simple families. So how do we reconcile the two? So if we have a broad vision, if we have some specificity as to what's available, what do we want to protect, how do we want to address what's available, how do we deal with zoning areas that are antiquated. I mean, the C-10 is a ridiculously antiquated zone. The C-30 is an antiquated zone. How do we adapt that to what we're looking for in this town to keep it an economically viable town? It doesn't mean we need to bring in nuclear power plants and shopping malls. I mean, that's not the model of our town. There's nothing wrong with the town being based on seasonal communities, people who come here for their second homes for their retirement. I mean, that's We've always been a recreational community for the last 150 years. We're not going to change that. And I don't think we should look down on that. A lot of people do. It's not a real town. Of course it's a real town. It serves a real purpose. But it won't be viable without a vigorous commercial base, without housing options, or its residents. All towns are dynamic. We can't just look at people who are here and we can't say, oh, we just want to bring a whole different set of people in here. But between the two, people are always coming in and coming out. So how do we make the town more viable and dynamic, but at the same time preserving what we have? I think that begins with a vision that you're talking about. And how, you know, what you're saying about, you know, we've gone a long way towards that. It's a matter of pulling it all together It's mostly discussions, I believe. I think we need to have a lot of, how do we spread, engage more people, you know, beyond this group so that we don't have something called road where, you know, maybe it's idealistic to think that we could get these issues in the bulletin board and get out of the bulletin station like that. Have some time. You know, let's see if we can do that. There's always going to be people who want to sort of make hay out of it, but I think there are enough thoughtful people in town, I think the majority, that we can have this discussion. And I think we need to start, and we need to start with the big picture, like you say. The hard part is, what does that mean in terms of detail? What does that mean in terms of policy? How do we make that jump?

And then regulation.

Regulation at the end. Right. I think we can do that. Can I ask a question?

Sure. Michael mentioned that in connection with the 2022 plan, affordable housing plan, you got a grant and did an inventory. Certainly, that would be very valuable. I haven't seen it. And one might look at that differently or more useful or might be amended even knowing that the state is requiring and going to put pressure on towns to, you know, put more housing into commercial, focus on commercial areas that are currently commercially zoned. Is that an inventory that is still very useful, I assume?

As a starting point, I think so. Yeah, it's an addendum to the affordable housing plan. And the data is all there. And actually, River Cog preserved the data. So I expect they'll be using it as the state is doing one, and it's going to filter through River Cog. So I think they have a starting point. They're aware that it's there. So that would be my expectation. And the grant we got was a technical support grant that accompanied the 830J mandate for the affordable housing plan, which has been repealed. So I'm not aware that there are technical support grants available now. The other thing that I would completely support is your last point on the ADUs. We have some of the most restrictive regulations in the state. I haven't read them all, but everyone I've read is significantly more relaxed than ours for two reasons. One is in the traditional sense of an ADU where you basically have the in-law apartment context, that's useful. It's also useful to look at that in the broader context of how do we reuse what we have? So we have a great surplus of large three-, four-, five-bedroom homes. How do you adapt what we have to the shifting demographic and the emerging needs that we have and reusing what you have, whether that's whether that's commercial space or whether it's the big homes that the demographics aren't as well matched with anymore. That's a broader thing to look at. But certainly, in terms of the ADU regulations, that's, in my mind, for Pete's sake, just do it.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Nice to see you, Rudy.

Okay. Okay. Moving on. Rule of the minutes. We're going to make a motion to accept the minutes.

I move to approve the minutes.

Second. No. Michael, second. Okay. Any discussion?

Vote. I abstain. We have everyone approved to accept Harold's abstain since he was not here to meet. I'm sorry, George, go ahead. Did you say something?

Aye.

Okay, so we have everyone approved except for Harold who abstained because he was not at the last meeting. Okay, old business. We had discussed the EDC strategic plan last time and I had pointed out in my mind there were some discrepancies between their section on housing and our POCD, and I thought they might want to revisit that. Basically, their section on housing indicated that everything was hunky-dory, that we had a mix of housing problems, and did not mention affordable housing, did not mention any of the alternatives that were stated in the POCD. So they needed input right away. So we didn't have the time to vote on it. So I went to their meeting and presented my own personal views. We did discuss it here, but I presented those as my own not the committees. So I just want to make sure I would assume that that's sufficient, but if anyone thinks we should send any official committee response.

Yeah.

So, well, there are things that I was questioning after we, if you brought it up, I went online, they adopted the plan in like December or something. So it was adopted like, It's not like they're adopting it now. They've already adopted it. So I was just questioning what... I had no problem with making recommendations that they may do an amendment to it, but I was just wondering, there seemed like there was an urgency that they were working on it, but that's not the sense I got when I went online that they had already just adopted this new plan.

Well, Martha had mentioned that they were looking for feedback and they needed it at their last meeting. That was the deadline. for feedback, and I realized it was, I'm not sure why. Yeah, well, I don't know.

She mentioned that in response to you, that if we needed to do it, we needed to do it fast, but she probably didn't realize that. I'm just saying, if you go into their minutes and whatever, they've already adopted that plan.

Right.

And so I think what, you know, I think bringing them in, talking about it, and I think that there's... They need to update it, but this is what I would recommend. We've got a lot going on before they update that plan. I don't know if they know what to say. And so it may be that they would update their plan when we had more information. There's going to be a lot of public hearings that zoning is having. We're going to be getting more information back from the cards. They need to look at the housing plan. So I'm not sure what we would want them to update it to say in their plan right now. I guess that's where I'd stand. I appreciate that they should update it, but I'm not sure what we should tell them to update it to.

Right. So not to denigrate the hard work that volunteers do, what standing does that plan have? There's nothing statutory about it. There were no public hearings on it. So there was no process other than a handful of very well-intentioned, hard-working volunteers coming together and trying to do the best work they could. But Does it have standing in our planning? It wasn't adopted by the Board of Selectmen, right? So the town hasn't adopted it. Right. So in that case, I think the channel is just, as you suggested, just to partner with them and say, first, read the POCD. These are the two generations that have called for housing options. You know better than I am at peril with that.

I guess I would look at it. I was surprised they meant it from an economic development perspective, not that there's not economic development, because obviously they look at the real estate market. But I wasn't really sure where, in terms of an economic development plan, where a real housing policy came into play. So their discussion of housing, and I see where they kind of basically said, hey, there's a mix of housing, real estate market's good. That's the economic piece that they're looking at. And I guess I was looking at, you know, I mean, I think the bigger plan is that we need housing near different centers, we need that. But I'm not sure what type of plan that they're looking at that it fits in with what, you know, I mean, I guess the only thing I would say is they should support the health, you know, the economic development should be coordinating. I mean, that's the big thing they should put in their plan, not to do the housing plan. You know what I'm saying?

And where did the 22 advanced CT report go that was very specific about needing housing options and that the lack of housing options was a barrier to economic development? Yeah.

Yeah.

That was only a few years ago that that report actually came out.

Yeah.

Well, I think they... 180 degrees off that. I mean, in a sense...

I think they got the message just for me personally. So I think we can, I just wanted to see if anyone thought we should do something officially. If at this point we're fine, let's see what happens. That's good too.

Yeah. I mean, they are invited to the meetings of the, you know, that we're going to have on housing as one of the focus group folks. And basically, you know, we made sure that, especially after we brought this up at the meeting, I guess at this point, I would say, Let's just make sure they're in the process of having an ongoing dialogue and then see where they fit, because I don't think it's the most important thing we have to work on, to be honest with you. There's a whole lot of stuff we have to work on.

When these record packages come in of the underlying data, there's going to be an economic development component to that, and there's an opportunity, I think, to bring the EDC in to vet that part of it and make sure that it represents our reality.

Yeah, I've said to them, they really need to take a seat at the table in this, that they're a part of the process and the key one, and they should make sure that they're doing voices or whatever it is.

I'm sure we'll hear from them in the development.

Anyone else? Okay, so we won't do anything at this point. The transit community thing, I just want to, We don't have to spend that much time on it now. I just want to make a couple of points. I know last time that we had Eric here, he had mentioned almost by definition, there are hauled road and short road are qualified for the transit district community. The whole town is.

Yeah. By dint of the bus route, I guess. Right. We're not, we are. The options are you're either a transit community, a transit adjacent community, or not. So we are the first category based on the state's categorization of the 169 municipalities. We're a transit community, which gives us, we don't have to opt into being one. We are one. And that gives us other options to create some of the districts and get access to some funding.

Right. Yeah. And I think, My understanding is that if you're going to opt in, that you do that through OPM, and that makes you eligible for whatever additional state funding there is. So at some point, I guess my point is, even though the whole town qualifies, that means we still have to make some decisions as to where we want, and I think it's a really important decision, and it goes back to how things fit together, you know. That's your point about what we want at the end of this.

I mean, I think talking about the transit community piece of Public Act 25-1 by itself on this agenda is not productive. I think it's one of those things that when we come up with a housing plan, If the housing plan says a transit district is a good thing to have as part of our housing plan, then we have that discussion. Let's have a bigger discussion with everybody. And I think, I mean, you want to start, green is one of our options. So you put it on as an option, but I don't see it as a separate discussion from the bigger discussion of a housing plan.

It's a how, not a what.

Yeah, it's a how, it's not a what. I just wanted to clarify. My point was, Eric said, it's, you know, the whole, we qualify for, But there are some steps besides just qualify. Do you have to opt in and there's state benefits allegedly?

So my understanding is there's no opt-in required. So we are in as a transit. The next step is to decide how you use that status of being in. So we have the opportunity. So that's why I'm agreeing with Denise that it's a how, not a what. But what has happened? But the bigger what is what do you want? So we don't have to decide to opt in to having access to these other features of our plan, like the transit districts, which are accompanied by opting into mandatory minimum density. And in return, you get access to compete for funding to support that. But there's a trade-off.

That should be part of the public act. That's part of the public act, 25.1 discussion. It's not a separate discussion.

Right. Okay. So that clarifies that. We'll move to new business. Let's talk about the agenda that we had, Rivercock, planning and housing. Michael, do you want to talk about that?

Sure. Were you at Tuesday's meeting? Okay. Did you attend?

I did sit in, yeah.

You did? Okay. I was there too. So to cut to the nub of it, we're at a phase now. Let me back up and just review. So the way this is going to go is that The OPM is going to be providing some state level data on infrastructure and also some tools to support the buildable land inventory. River Cog is going to take that along with some of the other work they're doing and wrangle the core data into data packages that are going to be delivered to each town for the town. And they're also doing it in aggregate at the regional level. So we have a data package pending to be delivered to us for Old Lyme, and they're also aggregating it, as I said, for the planning district, for the lower Connecticut region, for the region. So that hasn't happened yet. We've had some initial discussions on it. Most of the discussions at River Cog, since they've taken on the coordinating the steering committee function for the regional housing plan has been process oriented. We're at the transition now where we're gonna start rolling up our sleeves and getting into some data. And so that's basically where we're at. The overall process is that in partnership with the state, River Cog is gonna come up with a regional housing goal. That's the, what's called the assessment phase. The second phase is going to be to look at town by town. They're going to look at some of the demographics, the infrastructure, the economics, and they're going to come up with a town by town allocation of that. So essentially, river cargoes are going to come up with the pie, and then they're going to cut the pie among the 17 towns. And we're right now, even before the pie has been the recipe for that is going to be all the data. So I think the role right now is to stay fully engaged with them because I think the heavy lift is about to come where we have to look critically at what comes out of their data packages because that's going to drive our eventual allocation.

How do you... So Martha's going to get this package, right?

Yeah. I think that Martha will and Eric will as well.

Okay, so where does that go and who's going to be actual? Do we know that?

I think there's some kind of housing strategy committee, if I recall correctly.

So understand that our charge is to communicate to our three boards. So if we get it, or if it comes to our boards, it could come to zoning. I mean, Eric oversees all of those committees. If it goes to the committee, then we bring it here.

It could come either way. Yeah, and Eric, remember talked about the housing. His initial thoughts at a planning meeting was that planning should be done. So it's going to be interesting to see where that goes.

There's another divide. And even a divide within Rivertown. So the 25-1, the statute says that the responsible party for creating and adopting housing The housing growth plan is where there are separate planning and zoning commissions, which there are no line, they plan them. However, the steering committee at River Cog is the regional housing committee, not the regional planning committee. So, which means we have to keep talking to each other. And I think that shines a light on the importance of this group.

So it could possibly land here. It could possibly land in zoning.

Well, it's going to land in town, I think. So it's going to land in multiple places.

I think we just need to make it clear to Martha and to Eric that this committee needs to see it and that all of the entities on this committee, which includes, you know, planning, housing, zoning, And with one more, or is it just the three? Zoning, planning, housing.

Mostly planning. The first here is planning and zoning.

No, no, I'm saying the people here. Affordable housing is yellow. It's affordable housing, planning, and zoning. I say whoever. There's only three. There's three. Yeah. So I mean, and those are the basic committees that are here. as I can put it, part of this, and who are representing us at COG as well as, you know, than here. But I think that's also the responsibility of when they send the information out, I'm assuming they're going to let the representatives on the committees know. Yeah.

They do. And that's why, as Howard said, three packages have gone out to three towns, and the rest are a little behind schedule. Not surprising, not bad. But I'm sure that Eric will get it. I don't know if Martha will get it, but at least Eric will get it.

I think Martha will, because I think legally, actually the person responsible for the housing plan has to sign off. That's why we have. She is the one responsible. So I think she'll get it. So do we need any motion to say when it comes in? Steer it here or we're, let's just see.

I think we just, you know, I just think we got it. Stay close. Yeah. And I would say the regional housing committee, this is going to move really fast.

Right.

And I saw it happen. River Cod did it, but I thought it was a great thing. They actually, when fair share was rearing its head, they went through and did a, an assessment and allocation month. So they have a draft of this already in hand. So what Rivercar is gonna go through now is updating that trial run they did. They had no teeth and had no statutory weight, but they just did it as an exercise to know what they were talking about and they do. So stay close to the housing committee.

Yeah, so Mike, just quickly, do they have a standing meeting or do they change it every month?

Fourth Tuesday, 2 p.m.

Okay. Fourth Tuesday at 2 p.m.?

Then we have two. So today we have two delegates. Tomorrow we'll have one.

Okay. And does the other attend? Is it she will?

Yeah.

Does she attend?

She wasn't at the last one, I don't believe, but she wasn't the one before that. But I think it's really important.

And is Martha the... Oh, have you talked with Martha about replacement yet?

She's aware that it's going. Okay. You go, by the way, they're very open. So if anybody from this committee, they're actually welcome to attend. You don't have a vote, but you're part of it. It's almost like anybody can self-designate as an alternate.

Yeah. Do they have them at their office? They have them virtually. Oh, yeah, virtually.

Once a quarter, they'll bring everybody together.

But otherwise, they're virtual.

Yeah. By design and for an hour. So it goes by really quickly and you got to pay attention. They do a lot of work and then it gets summarized and in really good, in a very professional way, it gets summarized and there are typically slide decks and data packs that go out afterwards.

So we contact to get on that list to get from.

Megan Juflas is the assistant Director.

Yeah, if you go on their website, you might be able to do it on the website. Eliza was there.

Yeah, she's the one. That's who I was thinking of. She'll make sure we do that. They do a lot of good work.

All right, so then the update on the planning piece. Planning. Is there an update on the planning committee from River?

Yeah, let me just, before I get to that, there's not an extensive one, but I sat in on tax abatements, and it was very interesting. You know, you'd think most tax abatements are for commercial reasons, and actually, the person who made the presentation, I think, is the planner in Middletown, and And he said, actually, they've been for affordable housing. We have it in this town. Are we? We have it in this town.

We have it here. Yeah. Okay. Linewood and Wrightfield Manor both have standing tax abatements.

So I was just wondering if, as we go through the housing process, is that one of the tools that we would consider to then to potentially expand formal housing.

It doesn't do a developer any good. It may not do a developer any good. They may not be interested in it.

So I think it's worth considering under the broader context of incentives. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It will be fit for purpose sometimes, other times maybe not.

And it wouldn't be a precedent. We already have it in town.

We do.

It was interesting. I was really surprised to hear that most of the tax abatements were going to housing rather than commercial.

Okay, as far as, it wasn't a lot. Or just as a little bit of information underlying that, a lot of the tax abatements are tied to federal programs, and the single biggest category of affordable housing in the state and here in old Lyme are federally subsidized. housing, of which Limewood and Wrightfield-Manor both are.

Okay. Sam Gold made a... There wasn't a lot new on P25-1. Sam Gold did a presentation and basically he said Connecticut was kind of an anomaly when it stuck out basically from a lot of the other states in housing growth, and his contention was that housing growth in other states was driven by job growth, and Connecticut was almost the opposite, that the housing growth here is not creating any jobs and not tied to that. So he said housing. There are a bunch of slides. I didn't receive them yet. I just took a photo of the last one where he summed up and he said, housing shortage is not a part of contributing driven or not by housing, not keeping up with job growth. And Connecticut job growth is not keeping up with housing growth, stymieing public investment to encourage both housing and business development. So that's what I said. My question would be, you've got to really kind of peel that back and see. Obviously, in Connecticut, a lot of new housing growth or what Jim described, single families, larger homes, which I don't think would typically drive a lot of housing growth. But we didn't go into all that. But anyway, that's kind of all that was basically all the update that there was nothing really new, just that the packages were going out and they did leak the one portion of the assessment would be that you will, as I said before, try to look at your housing and see how many people on what the incomes of housing, how many people are spending 30%, 50%, or 80% on housing. And that would give them, see where the choke points are. That was supposedly the purpose of that. And that's all I got for that.

There's another aspect of the data package that I'll just raise as something to pay attention to, which is, I think it's related to what you said, Howard, is the vacancy rate. Because that's going to, that's going to be a component of the eventual allocation that comes down for O-line. In O-line, our vacancy rate is skewed by the seasonal housing. So we have, if you just look at the top line numbers, O-line shows like over a third of our housing is vacant. And if you look at, there's a, There's a hint of that because when you look at the number of housing units in O-Line, it's around 5,000, 5,100. If you look at the number of households in O-Line, it's closer to 3,000. So there are many more housing units in O-Line than there are households. And if first peel of the onion tells you that seasonal properties are categorized in the top level data as vacant. You got to get in there and not to be defensive, but prevent the high vacancy rate being interpreted as a lot of opportunity to create affordable housing because it doesn't necessarily play out that way in Omaha. So we just have to drill.

Can I add something to that? Jim Lampos mentioned to me a month ago or more the discussion about tax abatements that you know some of those non-year-round houses could with some tax relief and other funding easily be converted to year-round affordable housing so you know there may be some opportunities there but it may be by stressing those opportunities that it's only a tiny slice of the vacant housing there's a positive part as well as a defensive part to say, yes, there's an opportunity here, but it's an opportunity that's very limited, and here's the specific opportunity.

I agree, George. And that's why I didn't want to be defensive. You just need to be accurate about it and understand what that means before you make an assumption that, oh, there's all this vacant property here. We could throw some money at it, and it'll be a substrate.

It's not just deserted housing that's underutilized. Right. It's not necessarily low-hanging fruit.

Yeah, it's not necessarily low-hanging fruit. I think when you started looking at what the average people have for mortgages and stuff, taking into account the fact that the average population in the town is between 50 and 65, that's the majority. And I think a lot of those people don't have mortgages at all. Correct. And so that's going to buy us that whole database. Yeah, yeah.

This is back to the theme where you just don't look at the spreadsheet and start making decisions based on it. You got to roll up your sleeves and get in and see what would best it.

Yeah. Okay. Any other questions on those? Okay. I know, I just wanted to put the zoning commission survey in public hearings. I was just curious to, I know a lot of that information is online and what public people said, but I I'm just curious to hear from the zoning people kind of what your take so far is. What are you hearing? Have you made any kind of trends, any conclusions from what you've heard so far? Is there what stands out to you?

Yes, I can. And just quickly, a report on what the zoning rewrites and that balance with Public Act 125, you know, or 25-1. I'm also dealing with 125, which is the nature-based solution. So I keep, it's 25-125 and 25-1. Anyway, just to confuse me. So, but I think that should be a standing agenda item. So the river plot plus what's happening with zoning, because it's tied in right, and these are running in parallel. So let's just talk about the dates first, and the public hearing on July 1st, and that is to address the Public Act 25-1. We know that planning approved those, said they were compatible with the POCD, but the public hearing will be Then we'll see what we, you know, close it that night.

And that's a limited set of changes that's driven by the July 1st mandates. There's no options in there. That's just a response to the mandates.

And what we wanted to make sure, I'm not sure if it was conveyed at Planning Commission or whoever is hearing this, but as Michael said, we did what we needed to do to protect the town in the interim. We feel that there's probably changes that need to be made in the commercial zones besides what we had to do because of Public Act 25-1. We didn't want to make all those changes. First of all, we had not a lot of time. We're doing a whole zoning rewrite. We can update anything we do. This is to protect. We're doing something immediately to protect the town because Public Act 25-1 is going to affect July 1st. And if we don't put stuff in place, then they just get to use the state statute. You can do whatever they want. And we put restrictions on, including, if you don't know, we put a restriction on that said they couldn't do this development unless it included affordable housing, which is not a requirement in the statute, but we put that in. It would be very hard for someone to say that wasn't the intent of the statute because they basically, the whole statute was supposedly to you know, not just drive housing, but drive affordable housing. So it wasn't in there, and I questioned why it wasn't in there when they did it statewide, but we put it in, and I thought that was a good move. And actually, River Cog was recommending that as well. So we're really happy with that. So that's the first thing we're working on.

Is that no development virtually?

No, so what we recommended was mixed use. and the bottom floor will be commercial top. So if they're coming in with something that, you know, the structure have to be like, so doesn't mean that it's, you know, we're looking to fix it, but we put something in quickly to, to do that. So it's, it's, it's what it is, but we're looking, it's a commercial zone. Uh, it's a mixed use zone. And what we adopted was the, cause they could have either done a, um, just purely multiple, what was it, multiple dwelling zone versus a mixed use zone. And it was either or. So they could have, if we didn't adopt regulations, they could have just come in and put all housing under mixed, multiple dwelling stuff. They could have just put all affordable, or I should say all housing in the commercial zones and not even had to do any commercial.

The scope of it is middle housing, three to nine units.

Yeah, middle housing, yeah. And so they could have done that. And what we said was, but because there's an or in there, it's like you can pick middle housing or you could pick the mixed use. We went with the mixed use to keep the commercial zone viable so they can do, so that's what we went with. And we took that or seriously that we did. And if we didn't, if we don't adopt this, they can come in just with housing.

And that or was interpreted by River Cog. River Cog, and I was like, yes, because that was my first choice. Our choice, not the developer's choice.

Yes, and we jumped on, because they came out with that, and when River Cog came in, because they helped all the towns get ready for this July 1st, and when they came in with that, I'm like, that was my first question, what's that or mean? And they were like, oh, it's being interpreted as that you can have one or the other as long as you do one of these two things. It's like, so they can't fault us for the mixed use zone. So that's where we're going. So please, you know, read the regs, come to the public hearing, let us know. You know, we're taking, you know, you can always send written comments. So, you know, it's out there and make sure you do that. In terms of the zoning rewrite, the housing stuff is cranking up. We've had our first community workshop on environmental issues. And of course, these overlap. We had a meeting last night with all the commission members and stakeholder groups, which is what we're calling our focus group meetings, and went over a lot of this. A lot of it is going to impact zoning because there's, excuse me, impact housing because there's going to be changes to the floodplain regulations. We have to do something with the floodplain regulations So a lot of stuff. And we're going to be looking at all of the environmental constraints as well. That is going to be part of the big housing plan analysis. So that's for sure. So we're seeing, we know we're going to see a lot of overlap. The housing community workshop that's going to be similar to the environmental community workshop is July 29th. The date has been set. Let me make sure I say that date right. looked at it. And that's the July 29th at 630 to 830. And that will be on the zoning rewrite. If you went to the first one, IMEG, so Francisco Gomes, who is our consultant, did a fantastic job, I think, getting information from folks. I think people were very pleased in the workshop. It's not for us to speak. It's for us to hear from the general public. we will be following up that workshop with a focus group, with the, you know, planning, zoning, all the folks who are the, you know, the affordable housing folks, all the folks who are intimately involved with housing, as well as some of our partners, hopefully. And because we don't have as many commissions, but they are, but you know, it's interesting, a lot of commissions. So for example, if we start talking about open space zoning as a tool, We know the open space people should be there, right? So it's one of those things. So there's just going to be a lot of overlap. And that's the nature of the environmental stuff with housing and because we have those constraints. We haven't set the date for that follow-up meeting yet. It'll probably get set in the next month, but it's going to be sometime in August. And I know it's a terrible time, but we were asked to make sure we had this when the seasonal people were here because some of this impacts them. So that's that. And then we'll be following up this rewrite process, talking about commercial zones, but also some of the site plan stuff, like parking, like signage, like fencing, like whatever, that miscellaneous stuff that sometimes doesn't get caught, taken care of in the other stuff. And that's gonna be, we're gonna be doing that in September. Folks may wanna know that we, last night, Barring any conflicts with flood control board folks, they were going to double check on it. But under zoning commission in September, the flood motion control board is going to be looking at, is going to be presenting their floodplain. They did extensive work on the floodplain stuff. And that's really, like I said, that's really, really important. Those floodplain regulations, how you can rebuild a house, where you can rebuild a house. know what when you have to elevate it's going to be really important to the housing discussion so that's on that's going to be on our on the regular um zoning meeting for our september meeting which is the second monday of the month um and they're going to come in and present all that that said what they presented is all online so it's really important for folks to know that everybody's comments are now online hopefully yours are now all online ed if they're not let us know i try to I've been working with them to say like to everything that had to be and make sure everything's online, but we've got a, you know, a page where everything is online. We're still working out all the little tweaks. We want to make sure it's now, we've got it on the zoning page. We need, we are going to try to get a link on the front page. So when they go to the town hall, they say zoning rewrite, you just click it and it goes to the zoning rewrite page. So that's our next step. We're trying to orchestrate all of that. So that's kind of where we are. In terms of what we've heard, we haven't done, like I said, for the, you know, we haven't done a lot with housing, obviously. You know, we've heard from Edie on, and so we've got that. But I will say, because we focused this month on the environmental stuff, we're just starting to get into the housing stuff. We really haven't heard it that much on housing, with the exception of the stuff I talked about that's environmental. And so, and we went through environmental. We tackled different things last night. with the different commissions. It was, we looked at water resources and, you know, one of the things that we're going to be really focused on is looking at that drinking water supply piece of that. There's, as well as, you know, all the flood stuff, but that was in, we put flooding and FEMA stuff in another category by itself. So we talked about water resources, open space, transit in terms of non-vegative transit, so walking districts, the FEMA, and just a few other miscellaneous like cultural resources and those types of things. So those are kind of where we, oh, and then let me just say, the big piece was landscaping, looking at plant materials, looking at trees, taking down trees. So there was a whole thing on the landscaping thing and how do we put that in? I will say we explained to people the difference between a tree ordinance, which is not under planning and zoning, that would be under the tree ordinance if we had one, But what we can do within the zoning ordinance, which would be looking at people coming in for new applications, not just all of a sudden regulating trees, that would be a whole different thing, and that's not what zoning does. So we can explain that to people, but that's on people's minds a lot, just to let folks know. So that's kind of where we are with the zoning rewrite, that we're just starting to get into the housing piece. We are expecting, we have told... Gomes, our consultant, that we really want him to make sure people understand that there's these two processes happening at the same time. So where we are looking to update the planning regulations by March 2027, we won't be, we won't have, River Park won't be done yet, that work that they're doing. So it may be that we need to revisit, or it may be that depending on where they are, we may update all the regs and tweak some of the housing stuff, but not do the full blown housing stuff until we figure out what we're doing with River Park. I don't know. I mean, it's a parallel process. So it's like, and that's where this group comes in. The one thing that we told all the commissions last night that we're going to be doing is, Gomes is going to be giving us some, you know, based on what we hear at workshops and based on what we hear at, you know, from the focus groups and, you know, this working group and whatever, they'll, he's going to be, you know, starting to, you know, update regulations. And he'll give, It's going to be a good take back and forth between him and the commission. And we expect that we will be, we're not having one and done with the focus groups. The focus groups is going to be an ongoing dialogue. Because we have this group in place, we're expecting that we'll be able to have that ongoing dialogue with the people in this room on the housing. But it could be that we'll bring in something like the NGOs we may have to have. some discussions with who aren't necessarily at this table. But that's where we're looking at that give and take. And I think, you know, I know that's why Martha thought, you know, we talked about this group because it's what's happening at River Cog. It's what's happening with Public Act 125, 25-1. And then, you know, what's happening with the zoning rewrite. So that's kind of the update there. Did I miss anything, Michael? Michael's abandoning me. Just to let you know, Michael and I, we work really hard, just like River Cog did on the process. so that everybody's voice is being heard. And I know people were thinking it was a little slow, but we had to get the process right. And we had to make sure staff was buying into the process, which is not that they are against the process, but understand we've got limited staff that serve multiple commissions. So it would be great if Eric only served zoning or only served planning, but he does planning, zoning, inland wetlands. Did he do enforcement? He does all the zoning enforcement stuff. And does he do affordable housing? No, he doesn't do affordable housing. But he does those three commissions. And then zoning rewrite means we're having lots of additional meetings. So just wanted to put that in there. So please be patient as we're working through stuff that needs to be posted and whatever, because it's a heavy, heavy lift.

Which is another argument to stay close to River Cod because they are a deep well of resource.

That's right. And we're hoping that River Cod will actually be at... So last night, I facilitated the meeting because River Cod could not be there. We are hoping with the focus group in August that River Cod will be there to help facilitate so I can back out of it. The environmental stuff, it was easy for me to facilitate and just keep my mouth shut and know what people were saying and whatever. And Eric just took notes. With the housing, we're going to try to have River Club facilitate that. And also just reinforce. Like I said, I really appreciate everybody in this room. Let people know that we have two processes going on. We have the building rewrite. We didn't know Public Act 25, that one was going to happen when we started down this road. And so we've got two processes happening at the same time. Is there a date for the focus group for housing? Not yet.

We're going to be setting that in the next couple of weeks.

And that'll be in September or in August? It'll be August. Okay.

I've got to get off, I'm afraid, but I think we're at the end of the public comment.

Okay. Okay.

Okay.

Thank you, Denise. I just want to commend zoning because I know in the scramble to meet 7 July 1 deadline, a lot of towns did not have their act in place. And zoning did sort of really commend zoning for getting that done. I just want to go back. We'll do public comment in a second. One thing I did leave out from River College, there was a little portion of our presentation where the number of municipalities were concerned because if you look at the distribution of land and usage in municipalities in Connecticut, the overwhelming majority is housing, and then commercial is a fairly small segment, and industrial even smaller, but they're like less than 10%. So it was a real concern with the housing issues that we don't chew up all that commercial area because we really need that. And that if you start infiltrating commercial areas with housing, you're going to wind up with no commercial area. So that was another thing I just wanted to mention. I did distribute this little time frame so that Okay, moving on to public comment. I just have a quick comment. Edie Twining, is that your name?

Edie Twining, and I'm an old line. I just wanted to say that what Jim said and Harold Rhee said The infrastructure audit, I think is the first thing needs to happen in this whole committee, because you need to know what you have and where you can be. I mean, it's like, you need a map. You know, we have a map of all the older spaces and all the old line, and there's a lot, which is great, but there's a few chunks of big pieces of land that could be developed. And do we want to see that developed? Do we want to see that protected? And I think, you know, if we're talking multifamily housing, Putting away a SNCC seems to me like against the grain of what people really need or want. So I just wanted to mention that. And also just how does the town do an infrastructure audit? What do we do to get that to happen? Do we hire someone? Is there something in-house that can do it? I mean, how do you do that?

Well, the state is going to start it. So they're behind schedule. But it's part of the statute that OPM is going to deliver that to the towns via River Cog, and River Cog is going to augment it. So our role in that, I think, is going to be a lot of vetting rather than creating.

Which means just recognizing what is where, right?

Yeah, so look at what they sent us and make sure it comports with our reality.

Yeah, literally what they call it is a field check. They'll give us the maps and we say, yes, this is correct, or no, it's not correct.

I see. I think the When they passed the law, they felt that the cogs had the expertise. So they were the best people.

And they have an engineer or someone that does that?

And the state's going to start with, for example, the sewer capacity. They're going to do that.

And so they'll actually have an environmental person. Yeah. Well, that's great to know.

Okay, I have to go. I'm going to sort stuff out. Okay, the last thing, future committee agenda items, does anyone want to comment on that or do you think we're on track what we're doing right now?

Yeah, I mean, I think the main thing, like I said, is making sure we have the updates because then we know what Riverclog needs from us.

Right.

as a town and all three commissions know that, right? Because we've got our folks here. And I think the report on the zoning rewrite, and then if there's other stuff that other commissions are doing that you need to put on the agenda. But I think that that's, those are the river cards, those are the main agenda items that we really need to focus on.

Okay. Here's an extension of the first thing, which is as the data starts to flow and it's imminent, I think there's a role for this committee to dispatch that data to the experts that are going to do the field review and to vet it. Whether that's a consultant, one of the commissions that has authority over it or whatever, but to just make sure that, use the coordinating role of this committee to get the data into the right hands so it's well reviewed and responded to.

So I think that having that, you know, as an agenda item, an update on River Fog and any action needed, something like that.

Okay. All right. Well, before we adjourn, I just want to thank Harold for attending and Michael again. I'm sure the downloads owes you a tremendous debt of gratitude for all your service. You'll truly be missed. Thank you. Motion to adjourn, anyone? So moved.

Second. Okay.

Discussion? Vote? All those in favor? Thank you.