Speakers labeled via automated voice-based diarization + AI name-matching against the city's official roster. Automated transcription can still mis-hear a name during fast speech (e.g. a rapid roll-call vote) -- clear near-misses are auto-corrected, but this is not manually verified line-by-line. Treat names as a strong best guess, not an official record.
[0:11] Allie: I was not sorry and I just talked about it. I have so many conferences coming up, like I'm going to New Hampshire for the Northern New England American Planning Association conference, and then I have planning day coming up, and I've had plan board meetings every night this week, so I was like, I just can't make it over there. But it's funny, because I live in Monmouth, so it actually is pretty close to where I live.
[0:45] Speaker B (unidentified): There were some good things.
[0:49] Speaker C (unidentified): I think we were at the same one. Yeah.
[0:52] Speaker D (unidentified): How good did that be? Yeah, it was good.
[0:56] Allie: You know, an overview of it. That's great. We're starting to make a little web in our office of how all the state departments now are transcending since everybody's moved around.
[1:08] Chair: We will call the meeting to order at 5.30, the meeting of the Comprehensive Planning Committee. First piece on the agenda, because we are recording Zoom, is to determine who is here. So, Alexandra or Allie? Yes. Present.
[1:26] Speaker F (unidentified): Beth? Not at the moment. Clarissa? Here.
[1:31] Chair: Dave? Is here. David Willis?
[1:35] Allie: Not yet. Yeah, he's going to be absent today.
[1:39] Chair: Absent today. Okay. Faye, not yet. Gabe?
[1:43] Speaker G (unidentified): He can't come. He's going to be absent today. Okay. John?
[1:47] Chair: No. Mark is here. Hi. Welcome. And I'm here. Yay. Along with Erica and Courtney. Do you have one? And Sarah. And Faye should be coming. Faye should be coming. The first action is to look at the minutes from the last meeting that you have reviewed. Are there any corrections? No. And then I guess I'll have to make note of them because we don't have a secretary at the moment. Or it'll be on the Zoom.
[2:15] Speaker C (unidentified): Yeah, or I can do it too. I'll make notes. Good.
[2:18] Chair: Big standout that people looked at. Make
[2:27] Speaker H (unidentified): a motion to approve the minutes as stated. David? Second. All
[2:35] Speaker F (unidentified): those in favor? Opposed? Opposed? Passed. I would have stayed since I wasn't here. Great.
[2:44] Chair: Okay. So then our first act of business is to elect a secretary. Are members of based on previous discussion, if you were not sitting here, that is being recorded on Zoom, you could report on Zoom with your own phone and then ask Zoom to record, and then you would have printed out minutes that you could easily review and make any corrections and submit for proof. So it's not like you can scratch write whatever, it's much less arduous than previous old-fashioned ways we've had to take minutes. So, is there a volunteer or someone who would like to talk to you or nominate somebody without asking them? Wonderful.
[4:19] Speaker B (unidentified): Self-volunteer. I volunteered.
[4:22] Allie: I was trying to speak up for you.
[4:33] Speaker D (unidentified): That's true. Part of the minutes get taken at other board meetings that
[4:41] Speaker I (unidentified): we have a planning assistant for. Planning board, select board as a clerk do it for
[4:47] Speaker C (unidentified): very nice. Do we have to record? You can also transcribe off that recorder.
[4:53] Speaker G (unidentified): Is that, I mean, the other thing, you can, you can download onto your phone a program that'll do it
[5:03] Allie: same thing. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I'm already doing it. Yeah, so I'm recording it through there, so we can get that overview. You know, I'm not sure if everybody's comfortable with that version of it. If I send it out after, and then everybody can make critiques, if they, you know, I'll obviously read through it, but if that will facilitate, I'm happy to do that. Do we have to put it into that, this format? Yeah, I can definitely make sure, I can put it in, you know, like a Word document, make it a PDF, I can send it out to everybody. Yeah, I'm not willing to be secretary
[5:38] Speaker J (unidentified): during the meeting, but I'm willing to take the transcript from Zoom and turn it into minutes, but it's amazing. Yes, if that's allowed, and I will take that job, but I'm
[5:51] Speaker D (unidentified): not going to take it. We're a group effort. We use the technology, that's it.
[5:56] Allie: Might as well tap into it if we have it, you know. All right, so formally Beth has
[6:01] Chair: offered, so a second, with the condition that Erika will submit a written document to Beth that you can review to make sure it's not the right thing. I mean, it's in Zoom. I did like, I
[6:20] Speaker J (unidentified): watched, I took the transcript off the last one, and I already wrote some. Well, I know how to do all that. Yeah, okay, so
[6:25] Speaker K (unidentified): you can do it. I just like, I, you don't want to sit here and take it. No, well, I just, I'm not,
[6:29] Speaker J (unidentified): I'm not going to. My brain is warped like that. Yep. Yep.
[6:33] Allie: Perfect. Whatever I can facilitate, I'm happy.
[6:36] Speaker J (unidentified): I will second it and first it and like that. But I feel like normally a secretary isn't actually participating. That's why I asked that question before. Yeah.
[6:43] Speaker L (unidentified): We should, if that's what we're going to do, which is totally fine, we should make sure that we say out loud the name of whoever makes the motion and whoever seconds.
[6:51] Speaker H (unidentified): Yeah. So that we're not like, I just seconded,
[6:54] Speaker D (unidentified): but I just raised my hand to assume.
[6:56] Speaker H (unidentified): It was like, yes, Adley seconds.
[6:57] Speaker F (unidentified): Yes. Right. That's a really good point.
[6:59] Speaker L (unidentified): As long as the name gets said, it's fine. Perfect.
[7:04] Speaker G (unidentified): Everybody has to be a narrator. If you're going to do something, it has to be a narrator. We'll all help each other.
[7:09] Chair: We should also note that Beth Weisberger has come in, and Jim Bennett has come in, and anybody else? And Faye. And Faye.
[7:19] Speaker L (unidentified): Oh, yeah. It was late.
[7:22] Speaker M (unidentified): We're all announcing ourselves.
[7:29] Chair: All right. So we are officially ready to move on to talk about this incredible survey of all these questions.
[7:36] Allie: So clearly I send very,, very many examples just because I wanted to get us started in the process of thinking about questions that make the most sense for Bethel. and I just want to say now that my thought is that we can have this running while we're doing our first visioning session so that we can speak to it while we're there and interacting with the community so that they know that's also going on, that then we can engage them in another way for a visioning session, which I will go through after. truly though typically when I go through these surveys with everybody we kind of go through as a group and determine what makes most sense for the town being that you guys absolutely know the questions that need to be asked for Bethel so I'd like to tap into you guys for that specifically I did talk to Dave Willis a little bit via email just about making sure that we're incorporating questions that really get to the root of land use components being that Bethel has very little regulation at this point just getting a flavor for what the community members want to see and what they'd be willing to regulate give and take on those kind of pieces so I just figured I'd put that out there being that I've got that feedback via email but I think it's kind of best if we just go into it personally I think really important question to ask are these ones that we did ask for Newry in the sense of are you a resident if so for how long another one that I really do like to ask is if anybody rents any property out in town but just getting through the type of residents that live
[9:15] Speaker G (unidentified): in that role. Can I just like back it up to sort of like. Yeah please do. Yeah so like you're already talking about which question. So what's the function of, what's the function of the survey and what's the function of the vision just in a general sort of a way so that we can understand when we're saying like we like this, we like that, we're doing it based on what
[9:45] Allie: The function is, yeah, absolutely, so the public input that we're getting here is to really lay the foundation for what we're going to write into the chapters and what we use to form the vision statement. In the sense of, I'd like to have a specific session where we go through what the vision of the community is so that, you know, it can reinforce what we're having in these questions. So I like to kind of use them together so that, you know, we can get certain answers out of the survey and have certain components that we discuss with the community as a group. That way the survey isn't extremely long and overwhelming, but we know we're asking specific questions through there and then having another idea of a focus for the engagement session.
[10:29] Speaker G (unidentified): And the visioning sessions that you do are inviting the community in for a different type of feedback?
[10:40] Allie: Yeah, so you know an exercise of in 10 years where do you want to see Bethel and how can we get there and you know having a breakout exercise. I do have something I can go through a little while as far as this session goes, but again being that you guys are the committee I hope to bring these things together. It's not, you know, just dictated by what I say, but I want to bring it together as a group. I usually put them out for like two months, so again, you know, it for you guys as a committee knowing your people, knowing how things typically work, what it makes sense to have the survey be running while we have the public engagement session or what it makes sense to have this run first and then we have our engagement session to speak to the responses that we got.
[11:34] Speaker G (unidentified): Well, not having the details of the visioning session. There's one way you could do a visioning session where it's it really drills down on specific issues that people in the community have in a way that a survey wouldn't. And in that case, it would make sense to do the this survey I think do the survey first and then do the division because a survey might define what the hottest topics are so that then the visioning session could be designed around that. Absolutely, because we might
[12:19] Speaker J (unidentified): not get the answer if you don't ask the question right in the survey and then we're not getting the information we need that follow-up session allows us to
[12:27] Speaker G (unidentified): Do that. Yeah, I mean, I actually think that in some ways the survey is going to define what the issues are, but then the specifics about the issues are going to come up in the vision, because there's like anything that's a hot topic for Bethel is going to have like so many dimensions to it. Would just, it would, it would like transcend anything you can do in a survey. Yeah, I would
[12:53] Chair: imagine, I would hope that we have many more responses to a survey than people attending the meeting, so you could be skewed by the people that are passionate about one very specific something. Yeah, absolutely, a meeting. Yeah, and we haven't thought of what everybody responded to. Yeah, based on the responses
[13:11] Speaker L (unidentified): to the survey, we may decide that we need to do a couple of visioning sessions on
[13:15] Allie: specific topics, and that's absolutely what I suspected, but again, I think we just needed to get into it as a group to decide, okay, what parts do we want to do first? Because some communities say, we want to do that before we get into everything else. So I just like to take a gauge of what people want.
[13:34] Speaker G (unidentified): I also think that maybe when it comes to the vision, we can do it in a way that, or market it in a way that it's not just another meeting for people to go to. Definitely. And it's a little bit about a semantic difference, but it is, there are lots of people who don't want to go to any meetings having to do with the town unless like their taxes are. It's true, so we have to, we
[14:03] Speaker M (unidentified): could maybe figure out some cool ways to do those. Yeah, it's true.
[14:18] Allie: It's true. It's absolutely true.
[14:20] Speaker G (unidentified): Yeah, but I mean, I think that's going to end up being like one of the most important things to do is get as many people from the community to be able to articulate what they think is most important. I mean, in terms of having a plan that really answers everything that we need to answer. Absolutely.
[14:44] Speaker C (unidentified): And I think, I mean, we have like such a good diverse group here. I think if we can each like come up with like a list of people we would personally, if you had a reason, like if you could invite somebody and say
[15:16] Speaker G (unidentified): especially if we're doing a couple that were, that were on. Yeah, we're getting, I mean, we're already looking at some pretty challenging times if you think
[15:28] Allie: About the survey, I mean, that's something else I wanted to bring up. So I feel like you're kind of reading my mind in the sense of it is a quirky time of year, you know what I mean. So when I'm thinking about the first of the engagement sessions, or whatever we decide to call it, of interacting the public, what month would be the best for that, just out of curiosity, of like when do you guys have the most people in town again from the local standpoint? June probably, but maybe we'll have our fourth one by then.
[16:05] Speaker G (unidentified): I don't think anything, I don't think anything before January, it just, it just for most people it just keeps accelerating, yeah, like wait, Thanksgiving
[16:19] Speaker H (unidentified): now, Christmas, so absolutely I would also advocate for a keen and after MLK weekend, because that stretch between Christmas and MLK weekend for a lot of people in various like areas with work, that is a crazy time of year in town and family, and so yeah.
[16:42] Speaker J (unidentified): I think it would be a great point to do it for like later January. I'm confused, the survey or the
[16:48] Speaker H (unidentified): the event, an in-person kind of discussion, yeah, the non-meetings,
[16:56] Speaker N (unidentified): the non-meeting,
[16:57] Allie: non-meeting fun times that talk about issues that continue to talk about.
[17:02] Speaker J (unidentified): I think I
[17:04] Speaker L (unidentified): overheard, we had a little bit of crosstalk, but I think I overheard, were you all talking about utilizing some existing well-attended town events and maybe trying to
[17:13] Chair: we did at a past meeting
[17:14] Speaker L (unidentified): I think that could be really effective if we figure out how we want to show up.
[17:19] Speaker G (unidentified): It might be, maybe not to do what we're talking about right now, but to make people aware of the process and that things are coming up. Absolutely, yeah, Turkey Tuesday, we can, we can make everybody aware of it, there can be something right there where you can get that.
[17:44] Speaker C (unidentified): I was thinking about Turkey Tuesdays, maybe.
[17:47] Speaker N (unidentified): Everybody wants to think back on Turkey Tuesday.
[17:50] Speaker C (unidentified): We could get this survey ready.
[17:54] Speaker I (unidentified): Yeah. Giving a brief overview of Turkey Tuesday. OK.
[17:58] Allie: Sounded like fun to me, but I said, no, definitely not. I can eat turkey twice that week.
[18:03] Speaker C (unidentified): It's fine, you know.
[18:04] Speaker G (unidentified): Tuesday before Thanksgiving, it's a tradition. How great is that? We might as well. Well, it started with the Good Food Store did it because the people who work there and the other people who always worked on Thanksgiving needed a celebration, and then we grabbed it from them after COVID. I mean, I'm not going to say the name because it'll take me like five minutes. And now it's at Mount Abram.
[18:43] Speaker H (unidentified): It was a hit last year.
[18:46] Speaker G (unidentified): I think it's been two years. This will be the third year, I think.
[18:54] Speaker L (unidentified): I wasn't around for the first year.
[18:56] Speaker H (unidentified): I think I was out of town that week, and that's why I wasn't at Turkey Tuesday.
[19:00] Speaker L (unidentified): I was there last year.
[19:01] Speaker F (unidentified): We actually started it with David at his house originally.
[19:05] Speaker G (unidentified): Yeah. We have the photos. We bring the photos out from all years. There are people who show up who have been there every year. That's great. I didn't even live here when it started.
[19:18] Allie: Yeah, so it'll be great to be able to use those sort of events that you already know are well attended to see how we can incorporate getting some feedback from this as well.
[19:27] Speaker G (unidentified): Well, Sarah was just suggesting that if we had the survey together by then, and that's the 24th of November, then it might be, like, if people wanted her, they wanted the QR code.
[19:39] Allie: Yeah, we need that paper size, too, for people who don't utilize that kind of stuff.
[19:45] Speaker C (unidentified): Or we could have a couple iPads, maybe. That's great. I would be willing to sit at one. Because if people need help, there are people who are going to struggle with it.
[19:57] Speaker G (unidentified): And then there might be some other places that we could, this is really getting ahead of things, but we could put stuff at the, like copies of it at, probably at the gym and at the bowling alley. Those are places where people go to and there's stuff like that.
[20:21] Allie: Definitely. Yeah, the more we can get it out there and get it around and involve people.
[20:26] Speaker M (unidentified): That is all what the process is, our copies, QR codes, and covers all the. Yeah.
[20:31] Chair: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We could probably do a couple of sessions at Gemini, too, for people that need assistance. Oh, that'd be great.
[20:38] Speaker L (unidentified): Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like a pop-up office. Like office hour. Yeah. Yeah.
[20:42] Speaker C (unidentified): Is there libraries? If you want support. Still be like 10 hours or something. Maybe it could happen. Yeah.
[20:48] Speaker G (unidentified): That's great. We could do it at, yeah, sure. I'm not going to say anymore.
[20:56] Speaker J (unidentified): Where, logistically, how does the paper survey
[20:59] Allie: They get entered in, data get entered in. I usually enter them myself. If we have it in some sort of online format, I'll put it in, so you better have iPads or something. Yeah, definitely, it's variable. I usually get way more online, but I know for Newry they still had like probably ten people that filled it out at the office would stop, probably have like, so I just like to have it in the case that people do want it that way, but you know, whatever way that we can facilitate it.
[21:33] Speaker G (unidentified): I'm happy to do. I think it's a generational thing in my work, it's
[21:37] Speaker M (unidentified): Really like younger people want a QR code. That's usually what I face too, when
[21:45] Allie: I bring up the survey that I'm like, let's put it out in all ways so we can capture everybody. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so that was the other thing I wanted to bring up, logistics senses. I do have a SurveyMonkey account through AFCOG that I could input it myself and be the manager of it. There's been other times in other towns where for Nuri one of their committee members already had an account, volunteer to do it himself through there. So again, I'm variable in any way that you guys want to put it forward. Whether it's me, one of you, I'm
[22:16] Speaker J (unidentified): totally fine with whatever. I'm good. So yeah, you don't have some special software or something, you're just using a regular survey. Yeah, if you do, then you know, no, I, yes, I have a goal. I found the new research really interesting. Thank you for sending that data. I think just looking at that, just in terms of the length of questions and the number of people that fill it out, and there's a bunch of things that we can take from that to make our survey
[22:46] Allie: and I made a list. Yay! I was hoping somebody would do that! Thank you!
[22:52] Speaker J (unidentified): It started with 438, which is a lot of people. But then by the end there was like 200 people. So I think, like I worry about something like that where you don't get good data because you don't even know who's really answering at the end. So also I think that should relate to the order of our questions to absolutely it's open-ended questions probably should be a little at the beginning when people are still not if it starts to feel hard and then you're just you're like pressing buttons that's not beautiful though but we already talked about some things it was obviously skewed older but we know we all you older here too, but if we do want, I think there was like, it says 2% of people were under 36. I know. That might be true for Nuri, but we have young people in Bethel, so I think we want to try
[23:48] Allie: to figure it out. Yeah, absolutely. But I thought, you know, it's kind of where our friends are now. Yeah.
[23:55] Speaker G (unidentified): One of the things that I thought about, but never brought up, is that I think that we should find a way to incorporate the students and also the students at Gould and that the students at Gould will be interesting in this day they're
[24:20] Allie: Really from all over the place. So you do like a student focus survey if you guys would think that would be a good idea to just think about the types of questions we would want to ask them. To short? To short, yeah, like 10 questions. And also, believe me, I know New Aries is really long. I was like, guys, please come and cut down on it. And I tried to be like, all right, let's see how long it would take one of you to fill it out. So if you want to short, know what you want it to do.
[24:47] Speaker J (unidentified): I think once we do it, we actually get a couple people to take it.
[24:51] Speaker M (unidentified): That's what I said, too. I think that was the reason I asked you
[24:55] Speaker G (unidentified): this question in the beginning. What's the utility? Because that sort of defines the length. That's true. If it's if it's more important for us to get many community members to do the survey, then it should definitely be shorter, like a bunch shorter, and that we should just figure out, okay, these are the key things we want to get, yeah, and then we'll get the
[25:21] Allie: rest of this stuff at the sessions. Yeah, absolutely.
[25:24] Chair: It seemed like we had multiple other questions to drill down further about each topic. It's just like, all right, I just answered, you know, you just answered this. You have to have this on a piece of paper too. Exactly. Maybe with visioning some of those questions might be part of the discussion as you try to find this. That's what I think.
[25:43] Speaker G (unidentified): Yeah. We see the two process, the process of, what is the process of the survey? We define that now and that defines the kind of questions and the order that they go in. Yeah. The visioning non-meetings, or whatever they are, designed to do other things. And we understand that, so we know we don't have to put that in the survey. I think that's just what you said. Absolutely.
[26:10] Speaker H (unidentified): We could also do a shorter, focused survey. So if we're doing something about public access and recreation, and then we have a 10-question survey that's available for like a week before and a week after, yeah, and then we can get more focused data on specific topics that way. That's a great idea. It is so
[26:34] Allie: nice to be able to do with my topic area like that too, and I you know as far as breaking it down, having individual sessions for it, for me it's like, okay, if you're talking about economy, you really kind of want to focus in on that. If you're talking about housing, let's really get into it on that. So I think that's, you know, a fantastic idea, and I always say let's try not to make it any
[27:01] Speaker B (unidentified): Longer than 10. I wonder if you could divide it up so that people could take whichever part of the survey. That's a good idea about so if somebody really cared about the housing, yeah, they cared about the employment part, or they could
[27:15] Allie: just do yes, whatever you want, and that's you know there. I always like to put like little introduction kind of thing at the top to just to give some preface to the survey, so you know we can include things like that. Feel free to fill out whatever
[27:28] Speaker C (unidentified): you do or don't. Survey Monkey let you proceed to another question without
[27:35] Allie: answering if you put it into settings. Yeah, you don't think you can go by topic. Yeah, I was gonna say so I'd probably just have to check it off for all the room and then they could scroll down. You could do it us that way or you could do it in like this graphic form or so. Yeah, moving forward if we all agree
[28:08] Chair: that we want to involve students, I think we need to make some decision about how that approach is going to start because it's going to take some steps to get to that and make it happen in a timely manner that we can use it. Absolutely. So is there a civics class? What grades do we want to be engaged in? Yeah. And who's going to move that through?
[28:29] Speaker J (unidentified): Let's have that. I think it'd be better if we get our survey, and then we can look at it and think, OK, which of these questions might be relevant to them? And we can pull them out, and then have that.
[28:38] Allie: That's kind of what I was thinking, too.
[28:40] Chair: But I'd be getting conversation with somebody about, could we? We're working on this. We'd like some student input.
[29:31] Speaker N (unidentified): I feel like taking a moment and taking a big step back, because I think we're all very excited which is amazing and maybe kind of recenter around like okay here 's our decision points that we want to make regarding a survey and then kind of talk about topics we've gone everywhere from like what questions who were asking when we're asking what we're doing so maybe if we can kind of like come back and a little structure to what we're talking about in regards to the survey so then
[30:06] Allie: we can I wanted to learn the survey questions so we can start to pick some
[30:12] Speaker N (unidentified): Out that's so I think before and I think maybe this is what you are getting at is before we like talk about what questions we're going to ask we have to talk about what is the purpose of the survey which I think we've been yeah kind of I think I think maybe we can confirm that the purpose of the survey is to, so we want to do the survey ahead of an in-person session and the survey is going to help inform what we want to dive deeper on as far as topics are concerned.
[30:48] Speaker G (unidentified): But we're not diving deep in the survey? Not in the survey.
[30:50] Speaker N (unidentified): The survey will identify the topics that we want to dive deeper in, person.
[30:55] Allie: Is this a generic one it's a consolidation of a bunch of different questions that have been used in a bunch of different towns so that's why I'd like to give a lot of examples because honestly every town prefers to do it in
[31:17] Speaker I (unidentified): A different way so the front page was an email from Erica and it was right
[31:51] Speaker N (unidentified): And that survey is like, cool, we get a yes or no answer. What does that tell us? What do we do once we receive that information? And how do we move forward with it?
[32:01] Speaker F (unidentified): I didn't like Kingfields that much. Dury's was good, but it's still a lot in it.
[32:06] Chair: It's long. Yeah, Dury's is long.
[32:09] Speaker F (unidentified): I think most of, there may be a couple of things that could come out of this one, but most of it's there. I think if it's just kept simple and plain and easy, and get more people to do it.
[32:22] Chair: When I started looking, I wrote at the top of my page without reading that one of my things about town is communication and how you know and connect and whether you're new, moving, or what's going on, whatever. And then Red came up with a question that's in the Noreen. They actually asked that. Yeah, exactly.
[32:40] Allie: So that's why, again, I helped bring together all of those ones. So that's why I like to start off with just a bunch of different questions to see how we want to move about forward with the group so this was all very good clarifying information.
[32:59] Speaker B (unidentified): When you do set up the survey online, make sure that people can check off more than one thing. Yeah, absolutely.
[33:07] Chair: So is there anything in section one about you? Should we be asking all those questions? Do you need that information? What's in your packet today at your table?
[33:19] Speaker N (unidentified): Yeah, I just had to note to keep all of the demographic questions.
[33:24] Chair: Community vision. Was there some questions about strengths and challenges? There's a lot of things listed there. Do we have concerns about all of them and do we have that kind of question?
[33:35] Allie: That works perfectly for us. Or would we? Numbers are, yes. Then I can just circle them, you know. Four and five.
[33:42] Speaker N (unidentified): So one question I had for pretty much all of the ones that have this big list of things, where it says choose, I love to like choose multiple answers, but having people put them in priority order and get better data, because it's like, cool, you choose five. I don't know if it's one or five, and I know in SurveyMonkey you can do that. So yeah, you can actually, it is all the list of the questions that I
[34:14] Allie: can send you, or that is helpful, honestly, whatever is easier for you. And also I just wanted to mention all of these have like a lot, like too many options, but I did that so that we could cross some out and you guys just had a little bit more to look at them, less. I think that also
[34:30] Speaker F (unidentified): it may get confusing. I mean, running them lengthwise like that works, but it doesn't
[34:37] Speaker O (unidentified): matter to be on order a lot of pages if we're doing them by paper. Oh, when it goes to the next
[34:45] Speaker F (unidentified): page, you mean? Well, no, not so much that. If I'm trying to, if I'm handed a packet with 10 pages in it, I'm going to go, oh, I got to fill all this out. If I'm handed a package, it's just like the, it's the exact same thing with five pages, because you put them in a separate column. The only problem is that it can get confusing, but I like your idea.
[35:13] Speaker N (unidentified): I mean, out of how many new reads, only ten people did paper copy, out of 400 and something. So, consideration, for sure.
[35:22] Chair: Could you make some kind of an analogy, I don't know, assumption, I don't know, I assume, but of these, the answers that aren't responded to clearly are not the greatest strengths. So for some reason, people put them at the bottom. So do we need to have one challenge to prioritize those, or maybe we find that out in another way?
[35:44] Speaker N (unidentified): Wait, say that again.
[35:45] Chair: So if we're going to put our top five and we're going to rank them, then everything that doesn't have a number here is less important to people.
[35:56] Speaker G (unidentified): Well, I think Marissa was suggesting that we rank all of them, not five, but just rank them all.
[36:26] Speaker J (unidentified): So when I look at it right now, all this is asking is just like, what's your connection and how long you lived here? But I think something like age might be, yeah, I think whether people have kids would be interesting, and I think these are quick easy questions. Yeah, and I think the second question could just be, do you rent your own, like that straight up? I think I just, I want to say that before I try to then edit it later.
[36:56] Speaker O (unidentified): about resources in the future okay you can on the land but not have housing right so
[37:07] Speaker J (unidentified): That's not a resident. Well, I think we asked like year-round or part-time up top, so I don't know, that it feels redundant on this. So the second question at least needs to be worded differently, so it could be like, yeah, once again, I mean, maybe landowner just belongs in the connection to town. Someone could click landowner there and the next question could just be like rent or own.
[37:30] Speaker G (unidentified): Yeah, aren't the first two kind of redundant?
[37:33] Speaker J (unidentified): That's why I was like, but we do need to know if people rent versus own.
[37:39] Allie: I feel like housing is literally the biggest thing everybody talks about.
[37:43] Speaker J (unidentified): So if we're not collecting information about housing, that's kind of the obvious.
[37:48] Speaker F (unidentified): I think you also have to have in there
[37:52] Allie: McNerney's if you're how long you've lived there, I don't know.
[37:57] Speaker F (unidentified): That wasn't bad, but you know that if it's a short term
[38:03] Speaker J (unidentified): Yeah, I think that'll be a different section. Yeah, that's not like about you, that's about, yeah, so this also might not be in there, we might need to have it, but exactly, yeah.
[38:16] Chair: Based on what's in question number one, then there is some additional outreach to not assuming that this is being answered just by people that reside in Bethel, because there's employees, business owners.
[38:30] Allie: Well, I do that usually so we can figure out what type of the population is answering the questions, so we know, okay, if it's somebody that visits Bethel, we want to know what's that kind of opinion, where it's coming from. So that's typically why I keep those in mind.
[38:45] Chair: Outreach needs to be clear that all the town employees should be completing this
[38:51] Speaker D (unidentified): and all the businesses know that their workers should be. That's going to be up
[38:58] Allie: to the town on whether you want to spread it far and wide or don't. I, that's totally, you probably don't mean resident anyway, like, yes, I think property owners would necessarily, yeah, right, it was like the students too. So I think it's more so if we ask that defining question, then we get to the root of that rather than saying, okay, no, it's only residents. If we have that in the survey, then we can kind of filter it through that. That's typically how I go about it.
[39:26] Speaker N (unidentified): Yeah, I think it's a wise way to do it because you never know who's going to end up seeing it.
[39:29] Allie: And that's what's happened. And sometimes, like, for Kingfield, the amount of people from Salem that filled out the survey, but I kept that question in there thinking that would probably happen, which was great to have the insight, but, you know, it just...
[39:44] Speaker B (unidentified): So it's really the wording of the question.
[39:46] Speaker N (unidentified): Yeah, absolutely. And is it for the Bethel community?
[39:50] Allie: The more specific. Yes and no.
[39:54] Speaker H (unidentified): Because we do reside in the Bethel community. However, this comprehensive plan is for the town of Bethel. It is not for the wider Bethel community and the community like Bethel area. So that's where I was just... I don't think that we need to restrict who is allowed to take this, but I think that we should take the thoughts and opinions of taxpaying Bethel residents, or not residents, but anyone who's a taxpayer in Bethel versus someone who's a taxpayer in Greenwood or Newry. Like this is for the town of Bethel. I have to be a resident to be on this committee. Yep. And so I think that I absolutely agree with that, and that's
[40:43] Allie: kind of again why I asked the question, because then you prioritize it. Yeah, and you can qualify. Yeah, say, yeah, that's great that the people in Green would be like if Bethel had this, but this comprehensive plan's for Bethel. Yeah.
[40:55] Chair: Yeah, what best describes your connection to Bethel and
[41:16] Speaker L (unidentified): then I think we would need thinking about Beth's point around like rent or own. I think I think we need to split out to get clean data. We need to split out the question a little bit to say like, do you rent a home or a business in Bethel, yes or no? Do you own land in Bethel, yes or no? Do you rent out the land that you own in Bethel, yes or no? Because then we'd be able to cross-reference that data with the data from what best describes your connections. We'd be able to understand we have we're looking at here data from someone who is a renter who owns. Yeah,
[41:52] Speaker K (unidentified): property that's rented as a business, multifaceted. Yes, we'd be able to see each of those kind of threads. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and we
[42:04] Speaker G (unidentified): definitely something kids possibly it needs to say something about whether they use any of
[42:18] Allie: The schools, yeah, I was gonna say, I wrote that question down from, I did one for Kingfield because they were thinking about pulling out of this. Yes, there was a committee form that gave me the questions to put in there for those components, so happy to tweet them as according to what makes sense for Bethel. What sort of responses you're looking at, you know, I was gonna say, you know, but just thinking about like what type of questions we would want to ask, I mean, I
[43:01] Speaker G (unidentified): think it's really interesting to think about that in terms of issues, especially considering we have two people who run the school board, because issues about funding education, if you have kids you always have a different perspective than
[43:49] Allie: yeah, and usually I chase down that kind of data when I'm doing the chapter stuff, so if we can reaffirm this through asking it in the survey, that's all I
[43:58] Speaker J (unidentified): to make it more realistic, is that needed for this part of the survey? Yeah, that's something that we
[44:06] Allie: do after the fact if we're asking specifically about education. I think what we said just a
[44:12] Speaker G (unidentified): couple minutes ago to remind everyone was that we wanted this survey to first kind of identify the person who's taking the survey and then go through some general, get some general information that we can then use later just to not lose track of, it's great
[44:45] Speaker N (unidentified): if you have a question the kids live in your house or yes or no, exactly, they'll exactly, yes, so you can tailor it, this is just the first, so once
[45:02] Speaker F (unidentified): we get it all, there might be questions, then we go over it again, we're gonna cut
[45:06] Speaker G (unidentified): some other things out or you know, or we might, we might be able to find a way to do some non meetings to get to this specific stuff as opposed to doing
[45:20] Allie: another survey that 's it that's kind of you know what i mean those the in person just brings out more people when you're talking to them and obviously you know doing the variety of ways is good but so i think that's a great idea the how many kids in your houses so how time check at
[46:09] Speaker N (unidentified): So, and again, just to kind of circle back to coming out of this meeting today, I'm going to assume, but tell me from later on, is you will take the nest of things we've talked about today, you'll kind of say, here's a draft document of our survey, and you will
[46:23] Allie: pass it to this group. And I'll say, tear it up and tell me what's good and bad, or whatever. Okay. Yes, that's exactly it. Perfect. Now, is me to, this is exactly how it goes. I start off with these basic things, get your input, fix it accordingly, and send it back over.
[46:37] Speaker G (unidentified): And it's okay if we're still working on the survey questions after this meeting's over with, right? It's not like if we're...
[46:48] Allie: The door is never shut, Dave. You're good. So, truly, if it's easier for anybody, if you have written up comments that you think would be helpful to send over, please do. Because I'd love to read through any input that you guys have so that I can make it as best I possibly can.
[47:02] Speaker L (unidentified): What's the date that we're aiming to send it out?
[47:04] Speaker K (unidentified): So I had written down November 24th. Somebody mentioned that before. Yeah, I
[47:23] Speaker J (unidentified): One would be the strongest, ranking them all. There's a point where the rankings
[47:37] Speaker K (unidentified): Become you're just like that, just put eight on this one. Yeah, and so if we
[47:43] Allie: Could avoid that, then did you pick? Yeah, okay, so we'll do that for four and five.
[47:48] Chair: Yes, my question goes back to them. Do we need five if nobody checks?
[48:00] Speaker J (unidentified): Yeah, but they could be the same.
[48:09] Speaker N (unidentified): There they're actually very different I feel like this is the challenges are like oh
[48:16] Speaker H (unidentified): Oh, right, the strings. I think you can definitely take transportation access off of strings. Like if you can cut down on some of the options, we all know, like there's no transportation here, it can't be a string.
[48:30] Allie: Yes, absolutely. Well, there used to be. Sure, yes, but we're talking about currently.
[48:55] Speaker L (unidentified): I do think that Sue's point, I like the idea, I do think there should be two separate questions for greatest strength and greatest weaknesses, or biggest challenges. Yeah, but I do think that these sections, the options should speak to each other more so that we're able to contrast, so we're able to say like the, some folks might rate greatest strengths and other folks may rate the same things as largest challenges, and I think we'll get stronger data if we have, if we can kind of change the wording to these so that they are more general. I think, does that make sense to folks, the way that we can do that?
[49:37] Speaker G (unidentified): I thought, when you started, I actually thought what you were going to say was, have the same list for four and five. That's not what you meant, though.
[49:46] Speaker L (unidentified): No, that is what I'm saying.
[49:48] Allie: Yeah, well, I was thinking the same thing, too,
[49:51] Speaker L (unidentified): Because we need to change the wording of them.
[49:53] Allie: Yes, that is what I'm saying.
[49:54] Speaker G (unidentified): So there's, I can see one in four that's, I'm
[50:02] Speaker M (unidentified): Not totally getting scenic beauty. Yeah, it's something that this is a
[50:07] Allie: Technical thing of in the natural resources section of the comprehensive plan that the town identifies scenic resources, and if you would like, then you can further protection of those scenic resources in your local ordinances. For example, Newry's identifying their scenic ridge lines as a scenic resource so that they can try to curb development from those locations, and so that's where that comes from. Do we need to ask in here necessarily? I'm wondering like for
[50:38] Speaker G (unidentified): A survey, it's scenic beauty and natural resources. Happy to cross any of them out. I mean, like, both of them seem really natural resources are the river
[51:08] Allie: Lakes and stuff. Honestly, and that's how the comprehensive plan really comes into place when we do identify those sort of things and then go forward with working on ordinances. That's the mechanism, it's really through the comprehensive plan so
[51:26] Speaker F (unidentified): so the public safety service will change the name of it or something but to be more specific well the question is the general person looks at that the first thing other than my business PD is it 's actually emergency services but then if you also read it as public safety that also means public works yeah
[51:51] Speaker J (unidentified): What if we just scrapped that first question, the number four, and just said something like, what do you love about Bethel?
[51:57] Allie: I like that. Open-ended. Yeah. And then it makes it as well.
[52:02] Speaker J (unidentified): The challenges, I think, are really specific, and we need to ask them, and they probably need to be reworded. But I agree, the top ones, like, I'm like, even if we find out the top five, like, what do we even learn from this? And so why make somebody go through and rank them when, like, it doesn't tell us anything? Yeah.
[52:18] Speaker I (unidentified): But wasn't there one town that you said that, like, or maybe it was at the meeting where the select board was at, and maybe it was one of the other towns, said that, like, they didn't realize that, like, the Main Street area was so important to people, so they were maybe leaning more towards, like, protecting that area more. I think it was actually, yeah, maintaining small town characters. They didn't realize, like, that might be such a big, like, thing that people liked about it.
[52:51] Allie: Yeah, I think most towns usually say that. Just as a... Obviously, it's a common Western main theme. Keep my rural character.
[53:02] Speaker J (unidentified): Or what if we said, like, what are the three things you most value about Bethel or something like that? I love that. Trying to get them to list so they don't write too much. List three things you love about Bethel.
[53:17] Speaker L (unidentified): And we can include in parentheses, like, examples might include whatever we want to call it. Scenic viewings.
[53:24] Speaker N (unidentified): Free writing is really hard to highlight.
[53:28] Allie: I don't think it is now. It's easier. Yes, it is, it is.
[53:34] Speaker J (unidentified): I would say I feel very confident. Times have changed.
[53:38] Allie: And honestly, it's helpful.
[53:40] Speaker J (unidentified): And we're willing to do 100%.
[53:42] Allie: It's really helpful.
[53:44] Speaker N (unidentified): I paid 10 years ago when I had to do lessons in Maine.
[53:48] Speaker D (unidentified): So are we doing all four and five?
[53:53] Speaker M (unidentified): Are we doing all four and five?
[53:55] Speaker J (unidentified): I think five is super important. I just think we should be worried about some of them.
[53:59] Speaker K (unidentified): Absolutely, they're just right now, I think that it might be helpful to have
[54:08] Speaker L (unidentified): just for data, I guess, what they, I, but yeah, without a compilation, it might be helpful to give to have checkboxes
[54:20] Allie: Actually want to keep our strength, other result, that's when I did Woodstock survey, they, for every single question, they asked me to add other, or would you like to contribute more information, so
[54:47] Speaker J (unidentified): Absolutely, the way we call them, like, aging in place, I feel like is what we say here instead of aging infrastructure.
[55:00] Allie: That's actually like old buildings.
[55:04] Chair: We can put that on there too.
[55:08] Speaker J (unidentified): Isn't that everywhere in Maine?
[55:10] Allie: Yes, keep everything rural and aging infrastructure.
[55:15] Speaker J (unidentified): My construction is aging.
[55:18] Allie: I think aging in place is probably, that's probably a better thing to be included in the aging.
[55:26] Speaker F (unidentified): Well, that should be in there somewhere. That also describes buildings too.
[55:29] Speaker H (unidentified): No, that would be aging population. Yes.
[55:33] Speaker F (unidentified): Aging in place doesn't make sense.
[55:35] Speaker L (unidentified): Are we saying that's the biggest challenge?
[55:37] Speaker H (unidentified): That is actually something that is a really big consideration in this town. Our demographics are skewed really, to that older age bracket. And in like 20 years, our town numbers are going to be rising.
[55:53] Speaker N (unidentified): That's true.
[55:55] Speaker L (unidentified): We're just going to have a population decline.
[55:57] Speaker F (unidentified): So aging infrastructure and aging population.
[56:02] Speaker C (unidentified): But the aging infrastructure is the buildings, correct? Yes.
[56:05] Speaker J (unidentified): I didn't jump straight to this younger thing.
[56:10] Allie: Listen, both are relevant.
[56:12] Speaker F (unidentified): The only important parenthesis is buildings slash roads.
[56:18] Speaker H (unidentified): I would put, parenthesis, town infrastructure, or aging infrastructure, because I think that sort of encompasses roads, buildings, bridges, everything like that. And then aging population, I think most people will understand.
[56:36] Speaker O (unidentified): The aging town infrastructure makes more sense.
[56:39] Speaker B (unidentified): Because, like, sewage treatment plant, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
[56:43] Speaker J (unidentified): I don't know if this is, I don't know what's addressed in the housing part later, but like a short-term rentals belong on this list, yeah, so I get a
[56:56] Allie: Little more into that, like how concerned you about the following housing issues, but I don't want to complicate things or confuse anybody. We're
[57:09] Speaker N (unidentified): Five minutes away from our actual and meeting time. We did have a buffer. We did have a half an hour buffer. Yeah, I feel like you have to make a motion to say until 7. I don't
[57:23] Speaker D (unidentified): know how this works, but you just kind of keep going, keep going. Okay, like if we
[57:29] Speaker J (unidentified): have like some break something down, can we just email? Yes, please, rather than
[57:34] Allie: yeah, and that's kind of what I was gonna say is I'm really good at reading documents in between meetings, so we can have back and forth to refine this thing. Child care belongs on here. Exactly, but guess what? You guys also might want to think about it for a minute so that you can think about those things. So please, I am
[57:51] Speaker N (unidentified): always happy for comments. Let's shift it to general discussion.
[57:56] Chair: What's the purpose of a 10-20 years from now? What are people's opinions? Is that really important for us to know in the survey now?
[58:03] Speaker N (unidentified): Where are you on it? Number 6. I think it's a terrible question to ask people because they don't really know like the point of the process and the conversation is to figure it out. So I agree. Okay, I like that. You have any additional input?
[58:17] Allie: I just open it up if they want to, they can, but if not, whatever. So there'll only be two questions and
[58:25] Speaker G (unidentified): then gentlemen, and I hope you got the thing that Faye said about trying to get the
[58:33] Speaker L (unidentified): I can write an email with a suggestion on how those.
[58:37] Allie: Yeah, that's what I was going to say. How many can line up?
[58:39] Speaker L (unidentified): Oh, well, we have five because we're talking about cutting four. So that actually isn't relevant. We're cutting four? We're making four an open answer question.
[58:46] Allie: List three things you love about Bethel. Are
[58:52] Speaker G (unidentified): we going to include some things for people who just like to check stuff off and not think?
[58:58] Speaker H (unidentified): To their challenges and complain. That's it.
[59:00] Allie: out then they can complain down here and then they can keep going and then do they have any additional input maybe yes no but I think that feels nice to have like all right here's one then you create things and then all right you have anything else the housing ones I you know obviously I have a bunch of different perhaps sort of things in here but again it's going to be however you guys think it's going to roll out best but let's keep going into that one so
[59:26] Speaker H (unidentified): I think these first two questions are pretty good, and I like that format if that's something that works on survey month. It does, yeah. I think that question 10 is also good, it's an open-ended one, and then I think 11 and 12 are duplicates
[59:47] Speaker L (unidentified): of each other almost. I agree with you. I think we could cut 11, 12, 13, and 14.
[59:54] Allie: No, always listen, I'm happy about that. Let's just get it done because truly, again, I included way too many so that you guys could take no. Yes, I feel like I
[1:00:06] Speaker J (unidentified): think housing is something that should probably have its own survey, like a little survey, and also the targeted people asked to fill it out that are in that. Oh my god, I guess a little bit too. I feel like you want to make sure like you're, we're hearing people's concerns, but I don't know that there should be
[1:00:23] Speaker F (unidentified): more than a couple questions about it because we're going to dig into it. That's going to be a real, that's going to be a huge, it's going to be talking, and yes, absolutely, it's probably the biggest one we're going to deal with, absolutely. When we're saying where would you like to see increased housing density, what are we asking, where you build the new housing? Yeah, so you need to have a designated growth area through your future land use plan as a comp plan, so that's just starting to dip your
[1:00:53] Allie: toe into. We have to designate an area for growth. Let's see what people think
[1:00:58] Speaker G (unidentified): about where they want to see the growth. I really like the idea that we had earlier about keeping this survey to just hit some stuff and not repeat.
[1:01:07] Allie: Yeah, so then let's take that one off. We can do that at our session where we ask people to speak. What if we just did 8 and 9?
[1:01:14] Speaker G (unidentified): Just did 8 and 9 and then go on to something else.
[1:01:17] Chair: That's good to me. Looking at how we were the listing on number five with the greatest challenges, maybe something about that has to do with housing, and it does say lack of housing options and housing affordability already, so that
[1:01:29] Allie: gives us a touch. Yeah, good point, definitely good point. Okay, so keeping seven, eight, nine, crossing out ten through fourteen. Yeah, I was going to say
[1:01:43] Speaker J (unidentified): so I see this is what happens, I can't help it, we were around 14. Yeah, that's
[1:02:10] Allie: That's why I said I know how to do math.
[1:02:11] Speaker N (unidentified): So we're kind of getting rid of 10 through 14.
[1:02:14] Allie: Yes, exactly.
[1:02:18] Chair: Do we have data that show us what the impact is of this kind of housing? And do we need to ask people what they think the impact is? If we already can collect data and show?
[1:02:28] Speaker N (unidentified): I think it's interesting to understand what people's opinions are versus reality. [Speaker D (unidentified): That is true.] I think that is something I'm actually very curious of. For number 15 is what people think, and then actually pulling data to say compared to what the hacks are okay and
[1:02:51] Speaker J (unidentified): then I also think that what if we had to break them like one through like a
[1:02:58] Speaker O (unidentified): it wasn't such a big chart. Well that's what the major, the major, minor,. It takes a lot more time to sort through.
[1:03:04] Speaker N (unidentified): You're just doing one, you're just choosing one of them.
[1:03:09] Speaker J (unidentified): Well, yeah. You could like pick major for all of them. I feel like the data cannot, you could also end up with bad data the way that the chart is structured. Yeah, what I might say because right now I'd be like yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yes all of that
[1:03:30] Allie: So we might want to yeah, you just take this list and then rate in priority order. That's what I was just gonna ask Yep,
[1:03:39] Speaker M (unidentified): that's it. Okay That would give more interesting data. Yeah, that also answers my rate the short-term rental
[1:03:46] Speaker J (unidentified): I want that in there somewhere and I know
[1:03:48] Allie: you're not on that list and like obviously we'll have her into that more through subsequent meetings but we at least at least need that little bit in getting you know what I mean to recognize it okay I feel like that 11 and then 16 11 is pretty straightforward you know I'm pretty much gonna say now that it's it's hard for everybody to buy a house at this point in time people have a difficulty keeping it and getting employees so you know do we want
[1:04:18] Speaker G (unidentified): to just scratch them? I would suggest scrapping 11, 16, and 17. I was hoping you would say that.
[1:04:27] Speaker H (unidentified): Agreed. Cool. 11, 16, and 17. Section 4.
[1:04:35] Speaker N (unidentified): There's no harm in saying you have additional input.
[1:04:38] Speaker J (unidentified): Sometimes if it's on every section they're like whatever.
[1:04:42] Chair: Maybe ask it at the end.
[1:04:44] Speaker H (unidentified): yeah the final one yeah and we're gonna do a more specific survey about house yes so chances to ask these kinds of questions in better ways yeah some have
[1:05:02] Allie: done like a specific business survey to now kind of like obsessed with the idea of having one specifically for the school children though because i think that oh for sure we're
[1:05:10] Speaker J (unidentified): definitely doing that yeah okay let's keep going we want a question that's like do you expect to stay in Bethel as you get older is that important or interesting yeah i think that's a great question
[1:05:25] Speaker D (unidentified): where does it go yeah i know no i don't know do you how long have you lived in the community
[1:05:34] Speaker J (unidentified): it's like thinking of it after the housing questions I know saying like can
[1:05:38] Allie: you afford to live here that's exactly what I don't know we can noodle on how
[1:05:47] Speaker N (unidentified): How we ask one of which is community facilities and services do we want to
[1:06:09] Allie: you know what I mean through it yeah 18 yes or no do we want to have a question
[1:06:22] Speaker M (unidentified): on economic development in this first survey that's that's kind of 18 yeah are
[1:06:39] Allie: Are we okay with the excellent, good, fair situation or should we do it in a better way? I think that's a good question.
[1:06:48] Speaker N (unidentified): We need to ask what type of businesses?
[1:06:52] Speaker H (unidentified): I think that if we were to keep that question, it should be What types of businesses do you utilize the most? Oh, yeah, instead of like what do you want to see most like what services that are available? Do you actually use?
[1:07:10] Speaker J (unidentified): I think this is asking like what's missing yeah right yeah are we
[1:07:14] Speaker N (unidentified): gonna do with that and for me like I kind of like the thought of just understanding a baseline of where people are at
[1:07:23] Allie: yeah I really like just for
[1:07:25] Speaker N (unidentified): perspective none of the full-time residents use the restaurants yeah weird example but like that could be true and I know it's a huge it's true restaurant surviving here is hard because of the lumpy yeah so I kind of interested to understand what type of things people are using for what exists not like what do you want to see pie in the sky of stuff that doesn't exist here
[1:07:47] Speaker L (unidentified): yet I think that if we I like the idea of doing that I think it has to also have a Congress question of what businesses would you like to start using
[1:07:56] Speaker J (unidentified): yeah I mean just using just using one question from each of the sections that
[1:08:15] Speaker G (unidentified): are here it's already too long and I'm not the only person who's taught but like the length really affects the quality
[1:08:27] Speaker J (unidentified): of what you get. I think some of these things might already be like,
[1:08:31] Speaker H (unidentified): if they're in the challenges part,
[1:08:33] Speaker J (unidentified): things like childcare, healthcare, like those,, we'll get those answers in that list, too, and it might be redundant to ask. I mean, I think some things that aren't on that list, so we wouldn't be collecting it, but.
[1:08:46] Chair: Look at the two and see if there's something.
[1:08:48] Speaker F (unidentified): I would say 19 can come out and keep 20, or
[1:08:54] Speaker O (unidentified): some or something in that direction I can see a stunning section for me just
[1:08:59] Speaker K (unidentified): question 18 I think that we can delve in further depending on what we get from
[1:09:05] Speaker L (unidentified): that back and help inform where we go what else we what else we explore 22 and
[1:09:16] Speaker H (unidentified): and then because 22 is future vision and so like two questions that's pretty quick and then you move on to the next section
[1:09:34] Speaker G (unidentified): well maybe Erica gets this thing condensed and then we look at it again
[1:09:46] Allie: And again, that's where I need the local input of like, what are the things that you guys think you're lacking so that I can reiterate that in here, you know what I mean? So if there are specific things, please tell me, and I'll look it in there.
[1:10:01] Chair: Oh, yeah. A grocery store that has fresh wheat rice cakes. Something nice.
[1:10:07] Speaker H (unidentified): Okay, so. I think we're around the economy section. Yeah, I was going to say that.
[1:10:13] Speaker J (unidentified): Question number? 18 and 22, and then a virgin.
[1:10:19] Speaker N (unidentified): I still want to keep on the table.
[1:10:20] Allie: And I'm going to, Beth, I think you said looking at some of the stuff in 20 to put into 18.
[1:11:09] Speaker H (unidentified): I think 24 is great as is, I think it would be really, but I also think you should put
[1:11:16] Speaker J (unidentified): in. This is your youth question.
[1:11:18] Speaker H (unidentified): I also think you should put in an option. Oh, you do have never. Yeah, they're just even though we are such a big outdoor a wrecked town there are a lot of people who like don't really they're not
[1:11:40] Speaker O (unidentified): people it's just frequently occasionally never. Yeah, yes, because they're not the same groups of people but we do not have we don't have any so should I not well
[1:12:33] Speaker J (unidentified): and you're asking it questions about it so it doesn't say in Bethel it just says
[1:12:40] Speaker I (unidentified): do you use them people ATV and Waterford
[1:13:04] Speaker L (unidentified): Should we get cross country?
[1:13:06] Speaker F (unidentified): Should we get cross country?
[1:13:07] Speaker L (unidentified): Biking into road and like mountain or like off road?
[1:13:13] Speaker G (unidentified): I don't, I mean, you could split it even more than that.
[1:13:18] Allie: I know. I get into it.
[1:13:21] Speaker H (unidentified): What about gravel trails?
[1:13:22] Speaker N (unidentified): You're different than mountain biking.
[1:13:26] Speaker M (unidentified): I mean, you have road biking, you have, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
[1:13:32] Allie: I have been told, I have been told, yes, honestly, that is exactly, it's basically just people who like to go outside but don't want to do the activities.
[1:13:49] Speaker G (unidentified): It's been recommended. But they can be birders, you know, and that's a good use of it.
[1:13:53] Chair: Is that different than walking?
[1:13:56] Speaker H (unidentified): Yes, because it's walking.
[1:13:58] Speaker I (unidentified): That's a specific purpose.
[1:14:00] Speaker G (unidentified): It's really stopping.
[1:14:02] Speaker N (unidentified): It's more stopping. Alright, we've got 20 minutes.
[1:14:07] Speaker O (unidentified): Less than 20 minutes. Do we need 25?
[1:14:10] Speaker H (unidentified): No, we do not need that. Question 25.
[1:14:15] Allie: 26, do we need that?
[1:14:17] Speaker H (unidentified): No. I do not think we do.
[1:14:19] Speaker G (unidentified): I just like that first one.
[1:14:25] Speaker J (unidentified): I feel like that's about rec department which is interesting but I don't know yeah
[1:14:32] Speaker O (unidentified): when you're 26 right yeah so we'll keep that one okay that's great yeah it might
[1:14:44] Speaker D (unidentified): not be an initial but also if it doesn't stay in the initial we should just go that's kind of what
[1:14:50] Speaker M (unidentified): we still have it hasn't gone anywhere oh i haven't had any things for life any questions about
[1:14:56] Speaker N (unidentified): facilities yeah i know i think 26 is actually good okay 26. it's also like what we want to
[1:15:03] Speaker J (unidentified): Invest in eventually. Yeah, exactly, unless everyone says they're all capital. Yeah, everything.
[1:15:08] Allie: Rocks. All right, I know somebody asked out of Woodstock and I'm like, well, it's just for priority and investment. Okay, if I were going to ask a question, no, if you, If you guys were, no, like if there's one thing that you would ask.
[1:15:36] Speaker J (unidentified): I want to be able to ride my bike from town to Telstar. That is the only thing I want to be able to do. As you should.
[1:15:42] Speaker I (unidentified): Which is all state roads almost, right?
[1:15:45] Speaker J (unidentified): It is like, critically unsafe and they're actually not allowed to ride their bikes.
[1:15:51] Chair: So, at least they've been told they're not allowed to. I live on a roof.
[1:15:53] Speaker L (unidentified): Yeah, roof 5.
[1:15:55] Speaker C (unidentified): At least 27.
[1:15:58] Speaker J (unidentified): No, I mean like a bike path. No, I want to see it as far to extend Telstar like it would anywhere else instead of Gilead.
[1:16:08] Speaker O (unidentified): The Walking Dead is actually in proposal to go from Telstar all the way to Gilead.
[1:16:21] Speaker F (unidentified): But now you've got different problems with maintaining it.
[1:16:28] Speaker D (unidentified): Yeah, okay, this is for, I've heard from other select boards just knowing the
[1:16:48] Allie: Priority of what people want. Again, we've asked this question in somewhat of different ways, so up to you guys. Probably it's relevant question later.
[1:17:03] Speaker J (unidentified): Also about the investment, future investment. Yeah, 41, I feel like that's the same as 29 but more broad and probably one question related to like, yeah, we don't really know funding investing, but I don't know that, I mean.
[1:17:20] Speaker G (unidentified): I mean, at least 29 is more, it's more specific.
[1:17:26] Allie: Do you want it to be, or no?
[1:17:28] Speaker G (unidentified): I think that maybe I'm the only person who feels this way, but I like specific questions because I can answer them. If you give me an open-ended question.
[1:17:41] Speaker I (unidentified): I also like 29 because there's so much conversation about streetlights by Walgreens, and then you
[1:17:52] Speaker J (unidentified): So then should we be more specific then, like are these, I'm assuming this is just a generic list? Yes, exactly. Are there backfill specific things that we should have on this list?
[1:18:04] Speaker G (unidentified): We could email Erica with those things and move on to the next section.
[1:18:11] Allie: Sounds perfect to me. So I'm thinking that we can scrap 30, 31, 32. Yes.
[1:18:29] Speaker G (unidentified): I don't, I think 28 is not clear enough for people. Yeah, I think 20 million.
[1:18:45] Speaker L (unidentified): I wonder if we need a totally different question in this section that isn't on here, and I'm thinking like do we want to ask about experience or do we want to ask about opinion or preference, and I'm waiting at question 24 where we have the like how often do you use the following, I forget how we reworded it, Bethel natural resource whatever, we could ask a similar question that is like how often do you use the following transportation options throughout Bethel, and I don't know if that's exactly like do we want how often are things used or do we want a question of like what do people want to see or prioritize, right, so maybe we use a similar format and say like take the list of I mean that's question 29 basically right, what transportation, it's not necessarily what transportation improvements should be prioritized but like what transportation features, okay yeah, should be prioritized, yes, because then we can pull question 28 combined with the options in question 29 and have one question that's basically like
[1:20:03] Speaker K (unidentified): yeah all right all right I'm determined
[1:20:14] Speaker M (unidentified): this is
[1:20:22] Allie: a pretty broad one yeah it's really open-ended so I'm gonna say
[1:20:31] Speaker H (unidentified): I think that this is definitely a section that could warrant a more detailed survey. I definitely think we can stick it to two or three questions maybe.
[1:20:44] Allie: That's what I was thinking too.
[1:20:47] Speaker N (unidentified): Are there, again, are there Bethel specifics that we could put to this?
[1:21:16] Allie: yeah I was told to do that because of the fact that shoreland zoning exists and Woodstock wanted me to just try to word it in a way that made people understand that they already have some form of protection but they wanted to know if it was more, i think it's a confusing question personally so but again how would you
[1:21:48] Speaker M (unidentified): answer in this room how would you answer that question, i want a list so they can like check
[1:21:53] Speaker L (unidentified): off things so yeah it's not really a preliminary question that's a very specific yeah like digging
[1:22:00] Speaker K (unidentified): in yeah so black I want it yeah
[1:22:05] Allie: I crossed that one out 34 we crossed out
[1:22:15] Speaker N (unidentified): 35 it's another like opinion one, it'd be interesting to understand what do they think is important to the community's future.
[1:22:30] Speaker B (unidentified): Yeah. There could be some other things on that list, too. Some of the things from above.
[1:22:34] Allie: If we take out 36 and add more things into 35.
[1:22:38] Speaker B (unidentified): And create things like water quality.
[1:22:40] Speaker J (unidentified): And that. No, how you guys will have this, but I prefer when a survey doesn't have a neutral option and you have to choose. Oh, I'd like that. Yeah. Better data sometimes, even if it is.
[1:22:51] Speaker L (unidentified): I love that. Or someone just gets a question if they don't have an opinion. That's it. Yeah.
[1:22:55] Allie: Yeah, it doesn't let people, yeah, then it lets them be wishy-washy. Yes, okay, why don't we know?
[1:23:03] Chair: If somebody was flooded, don't we know where the flooding is? And I agree with you, I know exactly
[1:23:09] Speaker J (unidentified): where it is. If there's anything we wanted to add to that list, yeah, I was going to say, yes, please
[1:23:20] Allie: that those are the things that are bolstering them up, like, you know what I mean? I think just getting through it, yes, I'm gonna cross that out. I think everybody is fairly concerned about water resources, and it might be more useful to keep in something like 38. I was gonna say specific things that would make sense, say less section 8. Okay, so this is where again, this one, it was last modified for Woodstock, so there might not be things that make sense, but what do we think about that one? 40, yes, so it's just how would you rate the following, and it's firing, ems, police, public safety, public works, parks and recreation, library services, community facilities. Do we even need it? I think we do, yeah, I think it's a good thing to, you know, prioritize and
[1:24:40] Speaker J (unidentified): public education going there, I definitely should
[1:24:52] Speaker G (unidentified): I don't, I don't tend to like this format, but I guess there's like, we're asking the rate it
[1:25:05] Speaker F (unidentified): yeah, I know, all the library, no, I get it, Jim, but I
[1:25:23] Speaker G (unidentified): I just wonder whether the information you get from that is really good information, or whether it turns into this opinion thing where you volunteer at the fire department, the fire department is excellent, you don't go to the library, the library is bad.
[1:25:43] Speaker N (unidentified): I mean, you're going to get that. Those are outliers.
[1:25:45] Speaker F (unidentified): Everything is that way.
[1:25:47] Chair: What happens if we don't do 40 and we do 41, and the examples down here cover all of those in question number 40?
[1:25:54] Speaker D (unidentified): And then people have to prioritize with the one through three or whatever.
[1:26:00] Speaker F (unidentified): I like the format of 40 better.
[1:26:02] Speaker J (unidentified): But what if we learn from 40? I guess that's what I'm wondering.
[1:26:06] Speaker N (unidentified): Even if 50% of the people say the library services are poor, then we can dig in further in conversation about why people have said that.
[1:26:14] Speaker B (unidentified): It'll be interesting to see what person would say that, because you can look back and say, is this a renter, is this a long-term resident, is this a business owner, and they're rating these things in this particular way, so that's how I would use that.
[1:26:28] Speaker F (unidentified): For me, I don't use the library, but I also know that it's good.
[1:26:33] Speaker I (unidentified): Or you just don't have to check it, correct? That's it, yeah.
[1:26:37] Speaker N (unidentified): I think with the draft, let's just keep it in for the draft, and then we can do that.
[1:26:41] Allie: And then select kind of one of the questions.
[1:26:42] Chair: And 41, do we keep 41 to get the priority closing, or we get that from you?
[1:26:46] Speaker H (unidentified): I think it makes sense to keep both of those questions.
[1:26:49] Chair: And then we're on nine, and we have four minutes. All right,
[1:26:54] Allie: again, this is the, which characteristics are the most important to preserve?
[1:26:58] Speaker J (unidentified): The section needs to be first.
[1:27:00] Allie: Yeah, no, that's a great point. Yes. Or something. It's like after the population question.
[1:27:07] Speaker N (unidentified): The idea of not labeling the sections, because it's possible.
[1:27:10] Speaker J (unidentified): That's possible, yes.
[1:27:11] Allie: No, but once again, at one point I was asked to do it, so I'm happy to take it out.
[1:27:18] Speaker J (unidentified): That's interesting, too.
[1:27:19] Speaker N (unidentified): So why don't you say, right, and then you're like, oh, this is important to do after I send a question.
[1:27:25] Chair: So you have recommendations for additional boxes to check under 43, then email them to Erica, and then we get to 44 and we cross that out because it's another one of those broad questions. How should future growth be managed? And any additional input? Nope. And final thoughts? We don't want any final thoughts.
[1:27:49] Speaker J (unidentified): Wait,, wait. I like the fourth time. I think we should
[1:27:54] Allie: keep it. I think we're curious to hear what you thought. Because that's like just us dipping our toe into that growth. Yes. We've got to ease into it. And then optional contract information. We're at the end. wait can we I like oh I read it 's just like interesting to know what it ends up it's easy not to answer yeah it's not so easy to answer yeah
[1:28:22] Speaker L (unidentified): okay so we're keeping 44 we're keeping 45 yeah we're cutting places yo yeah we just want a general
[1:28:32] Speaker N (unidentified): Anything discussed in this survey. maybe one
[1:28:37] Speaker H (unidentified): That's what I was going to say. That's what I'm wearing. Not just that boy. Do you have any additional comments or suggestions?
[1:28:44] Speaker N (unidentified): I love it. We're not gonna have sections
[1:29:00] Allie: BECAUSE IT'S INTERESTING TO SEE WHAT PEOPLE SAY. [Speaker H (unidentified): IT'S REALLY TOPIC.] ALL RIGHT. I'M GOING TO LEAVE IT FOR NOW.
[1:29:07] Speaker J (unidentified): WE CAN MOVE THEM TO THE BEGINNING.
[1:29:13] Speaker H (unidentified): I LIKE THOSE QUESTIONS, BUT IF YOU PUT THEM AT THE END, NO ONE IS EVER, MAYBE 10 PEOPLE WILL ACTUALLY.
[1:29:20] Allie: SO THOSE ONES AND THE, LIKE, COMMUNITY CHARACTER INTO THIS, I'M THINKING MOVE AFTER THE THINGS ABOUT HOW OLD YOU
[1:29:29] Speaker M (unidentified): are residency we can also we can also look at it when you push it out to all of us and talk about order then yeah but once again we're trying to work in