Oxford Comprehensive Plan Committee holds first meeting, picks leaders

[0:00] Adam Garland: I think everybody does. My name is Adam Garland. I'm the town manager. I figured we'd just go around the room real quick. I think most of us know each other, but just to kind of break the ice. Lois, do you want to go first, who you are? [0:10] Speaker B (unidentified): Lois, Mike, can you hold it? Yes. [0:14] Adam Garland: And you're excited to be here. I'm [0:21] Kathleen Fillingham: Kathleen Fillingham. I'm the assessor's agent for Town of Boxer. [0:26] Audrey Swayze: I am Audrey Swayze. I am the town clerk. [0:29] Crystal: I am Crystal here in Robert. Obviously also live in Oxford and did budget planning, and now we're moving on to the next phase, but you still got another year. I have another budget coming a year, but [0:59] Speaker F (unidentified): You do have more time, but I think I got one more year off, Jackson. [1:05] Speaker G (unidentified): I'm [1:09] Shane Thomas: Shane Thomas, code enforcement officer, who I also probably say that I asked them questions. Did [1:24] Crystal: you ask them questions? No, I'm a teacher. There's no such thing. [1:34] Speaker F (unidentified): There's stupid statements and stupid actions. Yes, we're all known for those too. [1:42] Adam Garland: So one of the things that we do have to do with this being a regular town committee, we are going to have to establish who wants to be the chairman. I would also recommend having a vice chair in case the chair can't be here. I've got the town clerk here tonight, but it would be really nice if we could find somebody on the committee that would be interested in doing the minutes, because I'm not sure if the town clerks will be able to be at all of the meetings, so we need somebody who can do minutes and keep track of those things. So the first thing is, anybody interested in being the chair? [2:16] Crystal: I think it would be a great role for College. Second. [2:23] Shane Thomas: Creatory motion. Yeah. What? Wait a minute. [2:53] Adam Garland: All those in favor of Cauley Jackson as the chair, vote no if you don't want him to be the chair. [2:59] Kathleen Fillingham: He could be the chair, and then whoever is the vice chair would fill in while he's gone. [3:09] Adam Garland: I mean, the thing is, I agree with you, do you have any more legislative business studies coming up, or is that coming to an end? It's coming to an end. So really you're just going to be, because this is probably going to cook along, I think, per year, you know. My other, I mean, frankly, I wouldn't be surprised, you know, Thanksgiving, Christmas, we might not be super active during that time, but you're going to be out of talent, so. [3:39] Kathleen Fillingham: We're going to have one meeting a month. One meeting a month. [3:43] Adam Garland: Yeah. So, I mean, if you're not interested, we'll just have some [3:48] Speaker G (unidentified): time. I'm just saying, I wanted to let you guys know that. [3:57] Adam Garland: ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? Congratulations, sir. Would you like to see who you can find to be your second and they secretary, if you will eliminate? Thanks. [4:23] Crystal: Chair, I said as the vice chair, is there something else you'd rather? Okay, no. [4:36] Speaker B (unidentified): No, not at all, no. Nobody does. What happened to the paper quotas? We're [4:46] Audrey Swayze: recording, we're live right now. [4:47] Speaker B (unidentified): Well then we can't. Why can't we use that? Did you say that we don't really [4:51] Adam Garland: well, we wanted to keep minutes because we're going to find with the comprehensive plan. I think we have to have physical minutes if I remember correctly talking to Aaron. So and here [5:05] Audrey Swayze: she is. I'm so sorry, I got stuck behind the D.O.T. truck striping the road and I was like, there's no way for me to get around, so I'm so sorry I'm late, everybody. Well, all we've done thus far is [5:19] Adam Garland: did introductions, called the is now the chairman of the committee, and we're just working on vice chair. We are also having a conversation about the need for minutes. So yes, so I will [5:33] Audrey Swayze: say it's nice to have somebody kind of designated as the secretary. Something I have done in the past that I know is helpful is Zoom does a good record of meetings and do a transcript, so yeah, exactly, you know, and then everybody can still have an equal chance to pay attention and we have that to refer to. So really whatever methodology works best for you guys, okay? We got [5:59] Crystal: rid of that one. It's now whatever that is. Do you have the ability to transcribe after [6:07] Speaker G (unidentified): recorded meetings? Yeah, okay. Oh, we've got a nomination on the floor. ANY OTHER NOMINATIONS? ANYBODY MOVE THE NOMINATION SEES? [6:22] Kathleen Fillingham: SO MOVED. ALL IN FAVOR? YEAH. [6:32] Crystal: CONGRATULATIONS. WHOO-HOO. SO WE STILL SHOULD HAVE SOMEONE RESPONSIBLE THOUGH FOR WORKING THROUGH THE TRANSCRIBING AS A SECRETARY THOUGH. SO WE STILL SHOULD NOMINATE A SECRETARY. YES. [6:44] Adam Garland: I MEAN I CAN. [6:49] Kathleen Fillingham: NOMINATIONS FOR SECONDARY. IS THAT SOMETHING THAT WE COULD JUST DO TOGETHER? [6:54] Adam Garland: IF YOU'RE VOLUNTEERING TO DO THAT, SURE. SURE. OKAY. ALL RIGHT. TOGETHER PEOPLE. I JUST DIDN'T WANT TO PUT MORE ON YOU THAN YOU WANTED. SO IF YOU'RE COMFORTABLE DOING THAT, THEN THAT WOULD BE WONDERFUL. THAT'S FINE. ALL RIGHT, THAT TAKES CARE OF IT. SO WITH THAT BEING SAID, YOU'RE JUST IN TIME. DO YOU WANT TO INTRODUCE YOURSELF? YEAH. [7:16] Audrey Swayze: And then maybe go over what the comprehensive plan process is and what folks have just signed themselves up for. Yes, I was going to say, so I can't help myself, but want to go through my just intro presentation to kind of give you guys a flavor for what it is being that. It's been so long since the last comp plan was updated, but to back up. Hi, I'm Erica. I am the land use planner at Africa. I got stuck on the truck today. I love doing this work. I'm working with a ton of communities to do comprehensive planning right now. Example, I just finished Jay's comprehensive plan last summer. I'm working on Kingfield, Lury, Bethel and Woodstop as well right now. So I'm doing a lot of comprehensive planning work around the region, which I think has been really helpful to think of some good strategies on more of a widespread basis that everybody can feed into each other. so that being said i 'm typically you know an advisor when it comes to comprehensive planning ordinances i've worked with shane on those sort of things mapping etc so i will be here to kind of lead you through this process so that we can get to the overall final product of a full comprehensive plan but will it be helpful for me to kind of go through just what it is the exact requirements perfect great so i have it on here i will send out this presentation afterwards so you guys can have it to refer to, but I'll just, you know, really going through the basics of what it is. So the comp, we do have emails for everybody, we have like a roster, oh [8:57] Adam Garland: you guys are the best. You want to pass that around so all the members have it, but also [9:01] Audrey Swayze: thank you, that's great. What I'll do, and I can't help myself, and I'll just say it now, is being that I do a lot of this work, I have a lot of guidance materials, so I will likely send you guys just kind of everything I got, that way if you want to look through it you can, if you don't want to look through it I won't be offended, but I might as well share it with everybody. So in general, the comp plan is a long-range planning document and you identify the town's goals, policies and strategies over the next 10 years. What the comp plan does is it provides a framework for future growth by serving as the legal basis for your zoning. So if you have zoning in your town, you have to have a comprehensive plan, which provides that legal basis for those designations. So it's a little past due for the time that we update the comprehensive plan. But being that we have a lot of new state housing initiatives and things of that nature coming through, I think it's really good timing to be delving into this kind of work. So the comp plan establishes a unified community vision for managing growth, and it serves as the roadmap for future development by providing a context for private and public development decisions balancing development with conservation in the way that the town wants to so there's a few key components that are included in the comprehensive plan first like I said there's a vision strategy or a vision statement for the town towns go either way on their vision or I've seen some who like to have more of a few-page overview of what they're thinking about for their vision and then I have others, a majority of which who I'm working with that like to keep it nice and simple, three sentences maximum of this is what we want in our town and that kind of just sets the whole tone for the rest of your comprehensive plan. So aside from having a vision, as I'm sure you're very much familiar if you've looked at your previous comprehensive plan, it contains a data inventory. So the data inventory is what analyzes is the current conditions that when we bring the chapters together, we'll put data in relation to those and just perform an analysis to describe what the current characteristics are based off the data that we found. And then we follow that through by doing an assessment of the data, like I said, so that we can come up with some clear goals, policies, and strategies related to each topic area that's within the comprehensive plan. I will get to the list of topic areas, but just giving some perspective around the whole of the document. So, what dictates what is within the comprehensive plan is Maine's Growth Management Act. The state is in the process of updating the Growth Management Act and they're going through the rulemaking process right now. So, there are a few pieces of this that are a little bit up in the air as far as the exact data requirements go, but the And the intention of the updates that the state is doing is to make it so that there's less data jargon throughout the plan and it's more so focused on strategies and working with the community to really get where you want to be. So those of us who have been doing these sort of plans, and again, if you look at your previous one, it's moving away from just kind of reiterating what's within the data, and it's more sort of using that to identify your strategies. So, when you finish your plan, the end-all, be-all, the process is, first, you send it over to the state and they review it in comparison to the Growth Management Act to let you know if the plan is either consistent or inconsistent with the Growth Management Act. That finding of consistency is kind of that check off of, we fulfilled the state's criteria, That's what will make the town preferred for grants and really it's just then saying you have a consistent comprehensive plan. So all of that to say, that's kind of the final check off of the plan is just to make sure it's consistent in the state size. But to get down into it, I'm going to read these 14 topic areas out loud. Please don't feel like you need to memorize them because like I said, I will be sending this around after the fact though if you were to look at the table of contents within your previous comprehensive plan it would it will look very similar to the things I'm going to read out so starting off historic and archaeological resources so I will mention that there are certain chapters within the comprehensive plan even though yours is fairly dated that won't change too much so for the one like the archaeological resources and historic resources we're kind of picking up from okay so what's happened since that we want to include in there so there'll be some chapters that will require a little bit less updating just beating the materials within and some are a little bit heavier on the date requirements so additionally we have population and demographics so that's just looking at the composition of your community age you know income etc economy housing transportation recreation water resources natural resources agriculture and forestry public facilities and services fiscal capacity and then existing land use on top of that you have a capital investment plan and the future land use plan so not only do we have these topic areas there's two those two pieces within the capital investment plan and the future land use plan which really set the stage for the town going forward so it's identifying capital expenditures you know putting together some budgets for things the town wants To see in the future, and the future land use plan is really what dictates what then goes into your zoning map. So it'll be us looking at, okay, where are our zoning districts right now? Is there anything that we feel we could change here? Do we want to amend the boundaries to any extent? So truly it's comprehensive, and then it covers pretty much everything. But I have to say, like I said, I like this process. I know it can be a little arduous, but it does give you such good perspective as to what's going on with the town right now, that it really helps you know make those things like the capital investment plan and future land use plan relevant, so that we give ourselves some goals to reach in the future and specific steps to get there. I'm very much for being actionable when I put these things together. So truly the future land use plan is kind of the end-all be-all of the comprehensive plan in general, being that it's focused on the land use and where your zoning will go. So within the future land use plan, the town is required to designate growth areas, rural areas, and critical resource areas to manage development prevents for all and promote sustainability. The growth areas can accommodate increased density, and the rural areas, critical resource areas are the way, the areas that we want to push development away from. So I bring this up because with new legislation that just came around, they've created a new tie to your future land use plan. So in new legislation, density allowances are heavily tied to the location of your designated growth area and the location of your water and sewer infrastructure. So as we're bringing together this plan, we'll be careful when we're designating our growth areas because of the fact that this new housing legislation MAKES IT SO THAT LOT SIZE DENSITIES WILL BE DECREASED PRETTY SIGNIFICANTLY IN THOSE AREAS. SO JUST FOR PERSPECTIVE, IF A LOT IS LOCATED INSIDE THE DESIGNATED GROWTH AREA, AND IT IS SERVED BY BOTH PUBLIC WATER AND SEWER, THE STATE HAS NOW DICTATED THAT WE HAVE TO ALLOW A LOT SIZE OF 5,000 SQUARE FEET. SO BIG CHANGES GOING ON, TAKING A LITTLE BIT AWAY, A LOT AWAY FROM THE WHOLE RURAL AUTHORITY, But that being said, I'm really going to want to focus on those designations when we get into this plan, knowing the implications of the smaller lot sizes. Side point to say, it's great that we're updating your comp plan right now to dictate those growth areas and the rural areas and the critical resource areas. Because I do have a lot of municipalities where this legislation has came about, they updated their comp plan two or three years ago, and now they have to go back and amend it. So in wake of this legislation, so yes, we've waited a bit, but we're now situated in a good way to prepare for these new changes and be proactive in it rather than going back to amend something. So as we're bringing it together, we'll think about that increased density potential that comes in the future. [Speaker B (unidentified): All right, so] I always say the town's comp plan should be updated every 10 years because the state's consistency finding I talked about earlier lasts for 12 years. So once you have your plan review, if they find it consistent, that status lasts for 12 years. I typically say start, you know, update every 10 years that way it doesn't lapse in that two year period and give yourself a chance to work through the update before, you know, that piece is rolled back on. So we have a diverse group of stakeholders on the committee that you guys will provide your input as we bring together, you know, the different goals, policies, season strategies as we pull in the data. I typically say the comp plan committee is tasked with overseeing the update to the plan and provides local knowledge to develop strategies for plan implementation. So that to say, yes, I'm a collector of data. I'm a planner. I will pull everything I can in relation to Oxford. But that being said, the first thing that I do whenever I do any updates is give it all to you guys and say, is this accurate as people that live here and work here and are functioning in the community every day? Because yeah, the data might say one thing, but local knowledge is paramount. So I like to make sure that's, you know, really included throughout the plan. I usually say the update process takes about a year and a half, and that's just given I like to tick through those 14 chapters kind of Monthly that way we can focus on each of the different topic areas, give them the thoughts that we need to move on to the next one. So a little bit of a process, but it's really because there's so much material in there that, you know, I like to go through it carefully and make sure we're focusing on one thing at a time so that we can work together in the end. So in general, the role of the comp plan review committee will be to oversee the update of the plan, like I just said, prepare and distribute a public survey. So that's one of the first things I do in the process to gain public input is put out a survey, and I think that's kind of a nice thing to just get the committee started, get the community a little bit more involved as we start to write some of those pieces. That being said, I've done a lot of public surveys and I have like a repository of about 60 questions, and what I usually end up doing is sending that out to everybody and say circle some ones that you guys think would be relevant to the town and or contribute maybe one or two more that you think would be nice to add to that list. So say if you have any specific issues going on, if there's something the town wants a little further feedback on for a future initiative, so just planting the seed for that, being that 'll be something that kind of comes out in the future. Another role is just becoming familiarized with the previous plan. So yes, I know it was from 1991, so there is a lot of things that have changed clearly, but I do think it's really relevant to go through that and say okay, what strategies did we make last time and did we even accomplish any of those and are any of them still relevant today. So I think, you know, it's a good exercise to just go through it and see what was acted on, what wasn't, so that we know if there is anything we can carry over. Another role will be these lovely committee meetings. So depending on the town, depending on the committee and what people have as far as schedules go, like I said, I typically set like a monthly meeting, that way we can kind of keep it on track by chapter. There are certain cases where when I write the water resources and natural resources chapter, they are full of data and technical components, but they really lend themselves to each other, that there are cases where I'll say hey guys, I think we should take a break for this month so I can work on water resources, natural resources and present them to you at the same time. So a little bit of variability There, but I do like to usually say, let's put something on the calendar for monthly. That way we can just make sure we keep the process going. Another role of the committee will be depending on whether the town decides they want to contract fully without the entirety of the plan. Or in some cases, there's people on the committee who possess the knowledge to write some of the updates. So that's another thing I wanted to talk about a little bit, you know, while I was here is just to get a taste of if there is, yes, yeah, there's always people that are, you know, have the skill set on the committee, and being that we contract for the services throughout, if there's things that can be done internally, let's do that, because there's no way that we should waste any other talent's funds if things can be done by community members. So always just like to mention that from the start of, I know I read through all those chapters and there's 14, so it's hard to remember them, but I'll send over the presentation if you guys do want to think about if there's any specific topic areas that you guys would be interested in focusing on a little bit more, you know, we can tap into that, so you know, you guys could do some of the work, how I could do some of the work, so I just like to mention that early on. Another thing will be that vision statement, like I said, that is typically led by the committee and informed by the public survey. So I try to include some questions in the public survey that'll bring some facts to light that kind of help us start off in that process of bringing the vision statement together. And the last piece of it will be to conduct public engagement sessions to get further input on the plan. So I typically like to say we could do two engagement sessions. I usually do one after I have a few of the chapters done, so typically the population and demographics, housing and economy, and then I'll set the first engagement session so that we can go through some of what we've put together to get some feedback from the community on what's within so far, so that we can see, okay, we're going in the relative direction based upon the feedback that we're getting, and that way the community can also see that, yes, we're taking their public input into consideration as received through the public survey so that's kind of the overall of what the comp plan is what the role of the committee is again on appcog's end i can be a contractor for the town with a set scope of work and a price so that means again like i said i like to you know tap into whatever knowledge the committee has to see how we can accomplish it in the most cost effective way possible and then the town will assess the items that i can complete but that i'll complete that you guys will complete we'll write up a contract if that's the case and then we'll kind of just keep going like i said in the monthly meeting fashion and bring the survey together and then get right into those chapters so typically i will just say this it is very helpful if i'm usually the one that's kind of overseeing the entirety of it in the sense that I can make sure it's consistent amongst the different sections but that being said if I can get help from you guys I'm writing some of that content I will take anything I can get so truly just think about if there's things in particular you know you might have a specific skill set or even if that's you know you enjoy doing graphic design I want to make this thing look a little bit more aesthetically pleasing at the end so little things like that can come into play as well we have a potential timeline in here but again i kind of mentioned that briefly but typically i'll have our first meeting as an organizing meeting like this so we kind of you know decide on officer roles think about how often you want to meet etc at our next meeting usually what i do is try to just start getting into those survey questions take some out that we think won't be relevant i like to keep the survey that it takes like 15 minutes for people to complete and not some long crazy thing, but I do like to include some open-ended sections so that people can write in written responses if they want to, and I've had some good success there. So that's, you know, as far as our committee goes here, our next step will probably be to bring together the public survey so we can start to get that out and rolling. But now that I've just talked at you guys about many, things, do you have any questions? The [26:41] Kathleen Fillingham: public survey is about something that we could post on our on the website yeah yes okay yeah mail out a hard copy [26:51] Audrey Swayze: So usually what I do, I have a Survey Monkey account, so what I'll do is just do it through there, and then it's included in the contract. But if I've seen it, towns go about it in different ways. One website always works, you can just embed the Survey Monkey like right into your website. I have had some towns, Woodstock and Newry, sent out a direct mailer to every address that they had, so that with a little QR code of the survey on it, to see if they could get some further input that way. Definitely a cost associated with that. They did get a lot of responses on their survey. survey like so for perspective Neurie has like 426 residents year-round and they got like 450 responses on their survey because they sent it in the mail so but that being said I also leave a bunch of paper copies available at the town hall and also put the note in with the survey that if you want to fill this out via paper we have them available at the town hall I think it's just the more ways you get it out the better and then that way whoever wants to fill it out [27:55] Adam Garland: whatever way, we have the option available to them. Well the mailers are always very expensive, I know. Yeah, so we could, one of the things we've been doing the last few years for like our sound meeting is putting comfortable signs like, yeah, and we could even do a little of that, but we also could leave at like all the all the different sound buildings and maybe some of the businesses would allow us to leave the QR code. That's what I'm thinking so [28:23] Audrey Swayze: I put one up at the transfer station and work stop too, just so I'll make, you know, I can do things like make a little flyer that says hey fill out our survey, here's the QR code, and you have the link, you say it's paper, you got the QR code, and you put it up wherever people go. And I think, you know, those who want to fill it out definitely will, and as long as it's in a bunch of central control locations and you got it available in a variety of ways, been pretty successful thus far [28:50] Adam Garland: with surveys. Are the surveys anonymous or do they have to put in their address, or I usually leave a [28:57] Audrey Swayze: Just open-ended question at the end if you want to learn more about the comp plan or hear further about our information, put down your email address. That way, guess what, when we have the engagement session, if there's a handful of five people who put in their email address, we can send them a notice to say hey, we're going to have the public engagement session now. So I don't, I like to keep everything anonymous that way everybody can say whatever they think and they do, which is helpful, but you know. Giving the option that way, if there are people who are like maybe I would be more involved, let me grab some contact information there too. Okay, dumb question, there's no dumb question, I do this too much so sometimes I can, you know. How about circulating some of these questionnaires at the elementary school? I love getting students involved in the comp plan, so you're speaking to the right person right now. Honestly, it's been something that I've been bringing up because they might be in elementary. Yeah, they might be in elementary and high school right now, but they're going to be the people that are going to be the adults eventually when this plan, especially is a 10-year plan, and we're thinking about what happened. Yeah, right, that's how I feel too. Yeah, so I look for me and you know any sort of school-aged people when we can. I know there was one town too who kind of put something out like here's an art contest for whoever wants to do the cover page of the comp plan and kind of put that out. In the schools and a little involvement there, so I love to do things of that nature, always open to it. You know, we can make everybody feel involved to an extent without feeling pressed for information. I always think that's good. [30:46] Kathleen Fillingham: Elementary is good I think because we have a little extra element. Our middle school and high school are multiple panels. Yeah, so. [31:01] Adam Garland: you were kind of mentioning i had to go grab my calendar so that i could have that but that do we want to try and set like a routine schedule for these meetings like you know we could even make it you know if wednesday nights are good for people we could make it the what is this the third wednesday of the month or something like that i mean that is that something that what do people that's totally cool for me but that's more of the you GUYS QUESTIONS THIS WOULD BE THE WELL THE SELECTMENT'S Meeting is tomorrow, so it would be the first. This would be the third Wednesday of the month, wouldn't it, not if there's four weeks in. [31:41] Kathleen Fillingham: The month, this is the third, this is just a funky month. Yeah, it's a funky month, so anyway, so [31:49] Adam Garland: whatever the preference is, I just, yeah, you're, yeah, that's fine. The other day is the selectment's meeting, I didn't know what day it was either, so I'm good. Oh yeah, well I know [31:58] Audrey Swayze: know, so for just perspective, the third Tuesday or Wednesday in October would be the 21st, and again, so say if you guys are like, you know, whatever, so we would rather read every other month and have you bring us two things, that is also okay. I am open to going about the process of whatever is going to work the best for you guys, so if it's more of a, you know, you'd rather meet less and have more to review, or meet more frequently with us to review, totally up to you guys. [32:29] Crystal: 21st [32:34] Adam Garland: Work for everybody? Five o'clock work for everybody? Sounds great to me. Yeah, and I think that at the very least, maybe as we get going, we'll establish what that regular meeting will be, but yeah, well, we never should leave the room without the next one, please. [32:59] Audrey Swayze: Absolutely agree. Yeah, so we don't, and then that just makes sure we keep going, and you know, just continue down the path of update. But I have to say, I'm excited to do yours, being that it creates me as a human, so you know, I haven't gotten to do one where it was done before I was even alive yet, so [33:17] Speaker F (unidentified): I'm really excited to be like starting right here, you know. Wonderful, I think it's, it gives us a [33:33] Audrey Swayze: different opportunity of when I usually go to high school, when I look through these things, it's like, okay, so there's not really a lot that's changed since the last complaint. That's not going to be the case here, which is what I'm excited about, because it's usually, all right, yeah, these things have changed, but we're kind of starting fresh, like, okay, what do we want today? Yes, we know we have this plan from the past, but what are we thinking about, so [33:59] Speaker G (unidentified): it's fun work, that's why I'm going to be sending out everything. Yes, so I'm going to send this [34:06] Audrey Swayze: presentation, and like I said, I'm warning you now that I have too many guidance documents, and you'll be like, wow, we don't want to see all of this, but I'm just going to send it in the case you do want to look at some of it, any of it, because I've made so many things to try to facilitate this whole process and make it a little bit more understandable that any of it, you know, can I have to say, because Adam brought it up before, on the website, yeah, we have our own page, I just [34:56] Kathleen Fillingham: updated it today with the members and our old plan, so that's where you don't have a copy of it. [35:09] Speaker G (unidentified): I think we should have so we can go over there with her canoe we should have coffee. [35:18] Adam Garland: Do you all want a hard copy of the old one is that yours no this is here the only thing I would. [35:53] Speaker B (unidentified): I CAN'T GET IT OUT IS THAT IT'S WHEN YOU DO YOUR WHAT YOU JUST DID IS IN HERE AND DO YOU CHANGE DO YOU CHANGE WHAT'S IN THESE YES OR DO THE DOES THE COMMITTEE THE COMMITTEE. [36:26] Speaker G (unidentified): Would we be the ones that look at it and make the recommendations to you this is a great process. [36:32] Audrey Swayze: Question so typically what I do is ahead of the meeting I'll prepare an updated chapter so I'll rewrite all of that information and get the data but if there is an instance where you guys would like to do more of that work it would be a savings for the town so I always like TO OPEN THAT DOOR OF I'M MORE THAN HAPPY TO WRITE THIS THING FROM START TO FINISH AND JUST GET INPUT FROM YOU GUYS ON WHAT I'VE WRITTEN OR I'M HAPPY TO WORK WITH YOU TO BRING CERTAIN PARTS OF IT TOGETHER. [37:04] Speaker G (unidentified): I'M SAYING IS THAT WE'RE GOING TO TAKE A CHAPTER AND YOU'RE GOING TO REWRITE IT BEFORE. [37:14] Kathleen Fillingham: WE DO IT? YEP. SO IT WOULD BE LIKE A COMMITTEE. [37:16] Audrey Swayze: Committee changes then we have to then so what I do and this is perfect to say so what I usually do is I write the whole long chapter I personally like to make a separation of where I do an executive summary of the full 40 page chapter I do so that there can be an executive summary of each of the topic areas in the front for the light person who just wants to read the overview then the data in the back for all the wrong things when I come into the meeting I usually send you guys both the. Chapter and the executive summary of the chapter at least a week ahead of the meeting Then we go through it together as a group at the meeting And then you guys have open ring to give me comments on any of the things at any point in time Whether it's at the meeting or whether it's after if you decide actually there's something a population and demographics I think should be in there You guys are really the fact checkers and the people who are looking at what I put together they say this is how. It's been the most appropriately flat boxers so you're going to. [38:18] Speaker G (unidentified): Make sure that all the state rules and regulations are going to get there exactly and that's usually. [38:22] Audrey Swayze: Why I say it's helpful if I start off by writing it just so that I can make sure we're meeting the marks as far as the state's requirements go and then you guys can make sure we're meeting the mark. [38:32] Adam Garland: So as we go along, when we're, when we're reviewing it in this round table, are you going to just be making edits? Is that basically what's going on along the way, or making red lines so that when [38:46] Audrey Swayze: it's done, then the finished product kind of goes out? Yep, exactly. Yeah, so I'll do it, like I said, just going through by chapter, and of course we'll just do the chapters, then we'll go into the future land use plan, we'll go into each of them, so that at the end they all come together into that one 200, 150 page document, but we're going through it incrementally, so you know, as we built different pieces, if you guys think it's something else we might want to add in there [39:13] Adam Garland: I know that's the selecting when I, when I've been, when I've talked to them about this process, they're definitely looking for a meat and potatoes approach. We're not looking for, I'm very, and this [39:25] Audrey Swayze: is something I love to say to towns too, though, if we're going to take the time to do this, let's make something that's actually helpful for the town when we're done, not just we're a great town and here's a pretty picture of the town and these are the things. Let's talk about what we're going to do. How are we going to deal with, you know, hazard mitigation when we have all these floods going on? How's that going to impact the community? What things can we do to make sure we have a plan in place if an emergency happens? I like to focus on things like that, or what's our water and sewer infrastructure look like, how much capacity we have, what's that going to look like in the future, so that I'm very much of let's get to the facts, let's make actionable items that, you know, the select board, planning board, town manager could pick up after the plan is done and say we went through this and identified that as a select board we're going to do these need strategies. I do usually try to recommend within the comprehensive plan that a comp plan implementation committee, before just being that the town manager, select board, planning board, code officer, everybody is so already has their plate full with their own job, that I think it's just nice to have a few separate people just designated to making sure the things we write actually happen [40:38] Speaker B (unidentified): so it doesn't just sit on the shelf again. But now in this one water, mm-hmm, was quite in depth, yeah, and we, I at my level have no way of knowing if we even came close to the recommended increases. Now is that what you will put in the new one? Yeah, okay, so I don't have to think about that, no worrying about [41:10] Audrey Swayze: out the technical components and truly because it's hard stuff and it's scientific information so i would expect you not to know about that unless you were a land use planner so that's where i come in to fill in those pieces of information that you won't be able to get the water resources and natural resources they're always just up there when it comes to the data pieces but again i know what needs to be in there so it's really just me working it in and [41:36] Speaker B (unidentified): then it'll be you guys will be now we haven't met the goals that are in here does that do we start from there or do we start from is yours going to say this is what we should have done and now we're going to do this or does it go to back to we haven't done this are we going to finish this [41:59] Audrey Swayze: this before we start something new totally i hear you there so what i usually do is come up with a list of recommended strategies the state also details strategies you must include yeah so we didn't do them either a lot of people are gonna talk okay so i'll make sure those things are included but what i usually do in writing the chapter analyzing the data thinking about it from a planning perspective i usually come up with a few more recommended strategies specific to the town so I don't like to get too crazy that you know after the plan's done each different department in the town has like 50 things to implement but I like to make it really clear and straightforward of what objectives we want to include you know say if I look at a specific chapter or we're talking I don't know as a point we're looking at transportation and people are talking about how they want to have more public transportation maybe something I would recommend in the strategies is investigate opportunities for expanding public transportation those are the kind of sentiments of things that i would mix in there a comp plan is more [43:09] Kathleen Fillingham: recommendations and goals it's not mandates so we're moving on now whatever we did or didn't accomplish out of that really it's kind of known boy and so we're going to start over and if there's stuff in that we find like we want to hold right it's still good it's still [43:26] Audrey Swayze: great exactly we can add that 's exactly how i usually go about it because there are random pieces really looking there like huh that was a good one that we might want to carry over so that's why i look at it to say you know there might have been some study done in the past that there was something really relevant but that's exactly the way that i look at it [43:47] Shane Thomas: So where this is, the comprehensive plan will drive future zone. I'm assuming it'll also help us come into compliance with state law in certain areas that we may be lagging since last I was up in 91. At any point during this process, [44:08] Speaker F (unidentified): will we be required to rewrite ordinances that all comes after this is done. [44:16] Shane Thomas: The reason why I asked, because July 1st of next year we're going to be coming to compliance with [44:23] Speaker F (unidentified): some of the zoning changes that we're making for the legislation. Exactly, which is why again [44:28] Audrey Swayze: I'm happy we're doing it right now, because I've been in conversation with the state about the applicability of the growth areas when you're going through the uptake, because it does kind of create that, well, our one common plan says this is the growth areas, but this is what we're working through now. That's something I'm just going to have continued conversation with them as far as it's just odd timing of when the new legislation's coming into place at that 2027 date, and a lot of towns are updating their comp plan, so we wouldn't get, we wouldn't get an extension on those deadlines because we're updating. No, but I think the key piece there is thinking about that it is tied to the growth area which we're going to define in here. So the parts where, you know, it's dictated around water and sewer, that's just going to be what it's going to be. We can go forward with amending the ordinance in the way of saying the growth area as identified in the comprehensive plan is going to have this lot size, the 5,000 square foot lot size, and if working to update that growth area in the comprehensive plan, even if we put it in the ordinance and reference the comp plan, when it's updated it will then reference the growth areas that we dictate through there. So that's kind of what I'm thinking to, like, align it so that it works out that we're not writing the ordinance to then go back and rewrite it after we're done with the comp plan, but more so, you know, being compliance with the new legislation and then revise the growth area through the comp plan so that the ordinance forms back to it. That's kind of what I'm thinking. Does that make sense? Absolutely. All right, I don't know where the that [46:03] Shane Thomas: zoning falls in the in the chapters, but could we move a chapter up if we get close to next year [46:12] Audrey Swayze: Yes,, and that's what I was thinking too of, because that's something we have to handle, you know. Guess what, if we put off historic and archeological resources so we can focus on land use a little bit more before that date, I think it would be less strong. I know you were about to say something. [46:30] Crystal: When you send out everything a week or two before, can you send it in two different PDFs so that we have the bullet points in the smaller file and then all of your data in that in a larger separate file? Yeah, when we go to print we can, yeah, absolutely, when we want to print, yeah, definitely. [46:49] Audrey Swayze: And I usually, so sometimes when I do the chapters too, I'll send them a Word in case people do like to do track changes in that way or print them. I take comments in any form, so it's, you know, if you guys want to write them, hand write them on the document, if you want to do track changes with a Word, any way that works for you to review it, I'm happy to take in, but I'll make sure that I so. [47:11] Crystal: Separate, are you saying your executive summary? Yeah, separate from, yes, your data. Yep, would it [47:18] Kathleen Fillingham: be easier though, instead of you folks worrying about printing it, if we just treat it like we normally would for the select board when we printed everything and we would just update your [47:28] Crystal: book? Yeah, like what we did for, yeah, for budget committee, yeah, and then same thing, budget [47:34] Kathleen Fillingham: committee, so any, you kind of have that chapter ready for you so you can read it ahead of time, but the actual hard copy could be ready for you for that meeting night. Does that work? [47:54] Speaker B (unidentified): don't can't put it on a computer we don't have one right so yeah now you would always want your hard copy available soon she has it ready and quite frankly if I knew there I come down and get it I mean it's not a long ride for my house we would let you know yeah I was gonna [48:15] Speaker G (unidentified): to say we can talk to you when you make a change to the complain and everything else. [48:24] Audrey Swayze: Yes, that's, I as soon as you started saying that I was going to say the end all be all of this thing is the town has to adopt to that. [48:31] Speaker G (unidentified): We can make [48:39] Shane Thomas: the changes independently, we just can't reference the pop plan. [48:42] Speaker B (unidentified): Who has the vote? Right, yes, and if we remember the first one it didn't pass, we had to go back. [48:51] Audrey Swayze: It was another year that we were, so do you remember if that was from state comments or, and that's why I have to say I'm big on the public engagement, because then by the time you get to the town meaning you've had conversations with the community already, and they're not like when'd you do this 200 page document, where'd this come from, and then they might, you know, be a little bit uncomfortable with voting to adopt it. I think if people know what's going on, we're having these engagement sessions. We're doing the surveys, we're making it very open to anybody who wants to be involved. I just tend to see less issues by the time we get to the adoption and. [49:31] Kathleen Fillingham: The website does have this page, yes, it's a page specifically for this committee, so everything will. [49:38] Audrey Swayze: Be posted there as well, and we can link the survey there. 's another thing that I've started doing with some communities on the comp plan page, assuming why are we updating our plan, what's the laws behind the comp plan, and I think that can kind of just be helpful for respect, a little note about let's add that, yes. So truly I found that to be helpful too, because then if people in the community are like what is this, why are we doing it, do we actually need to do this, what's the implications, I think. Just having it laid out is nice, so that again people have questions, it's on there, we're not doing this just for let's do it, there's reasons behind it, and I think it's nice. [50:16] Adam Garland: To just show that from the start, yeah, it seems like people appreciate the justification and. [50:23] Speaker B (unidentified): Well they shouldn't, truly, yeah, and I mean you know they don't, then they really don't give a damn, and it doesn't matter, and it might pass, that's true, in one of the other. [50:37] Audrey Swayze: Municipalities I was told no one's going to take my survey and be relevant, we know what here's all the time, you never know, we did a survey for this one. [50:51] Speaker B (unidentified): Interesting to see, oh I wonder if I could find it in my phone. [50:54] Audrey Swayze: For us Avcon doesn't throw anything now, so I haven't, well it was the Avcon that they were working with at that time, so I'll dig through myself, yeah, because I have all the old paper, I have the newspaper articles cut out in folders, like anything that could be saved was saved, which I'm now happy for because I can look at it, I'd be curious, is it first still comes to my office, he's he's like family to me at this point, but truly he did the work for so long, it was Ferg and John Maloney that it was. Kind of then and there I came after them, and they left me a paper trail of literally everything, and we'll stop by and every now and again, but yeah, yep, all [51:43] Adam Garland: right. So what would, so what would be our best bet here is to stand by, wait for you to provide those materials via email and hard copy for some, yep, look at you, Lois, and then should everybody be thinking about those chapters, not only the depth of the chapters, but prioritizing which ones I think we should attack first? Are there any chapters that anybody on the committee feels as though that is a specialty of theirs or specific interest? Yeah, and that would be the conversation for the next [52:16] Audrey Swayze: meeting is, I think so, yes. So that way at our next meeting we can kind of start to narrow in on what exactly we want to detail in the contract as far as AFCOT's obligation, but I really wanted to make sure I talked about it, explained it, and gave you guys the perspective of what it actually is to see what can be done internally before we move forward into that. So I think that's a perfect idea just to really nail that down next time so that you know after that we just go into the [52:44] Kathleen Fillingham: serving, you know what is this, didn't the select board, they did, yeah, so I mean I [52:52] Adam Garland: yes, I 've talked to the select board about funding and that kind of stuff, so I mean I think after the next meeting, after we have conversations and iron those things out, we'll probably sit down and we'll iron out a contract, and perfect, so that's what I figured since I, you know, wouldn't you love the economic development, yes, yep, yeah, that's what the, that's what the board [53:13] Audrey Swayze: and I discussed, so yeah, this is like the ultimate economic development tool because it prefers you for grants and then you identify objectives in there that make your grant application rise to [53:24] Adam Garland: the top. I wasn't trying to be dismissive about the cost, it's just that having had that conversation I just figured that we should, yeah, there is an opportunity to have some savings, right, but at the [53:34] Crystal: same time that's good. Are you trying to have this together for the 2027 town meeting or would this [53:43] Adam Garland: be a special town? No, I think from my understanding, if I'm wrong, 18 months is probably the realistic thought process, so I'm thinking more than 28 town meeting potentially, yeah, because I As much effort is going to have to go into this, I think a monthly meeting is the most, you know, everybody's going to be all the holidays in there. Right? [54:13] Audrey Swayze: And it smells. Yeah, I had 1 committee who was like, you know. Know we don't want to meet this summer and I was like if you don't want to that is absolutely fine but you got to tell me that they decide we're going to take two months off so we can all go on vacation so I'm variable I'm happy to do whatever you guys want to do and I talked to [54:31] Adam Garland: Some managers that said it took up to two years to get to the other end of the road yeah so exactly [54:38] Audrey Swayze: Yeah and you know by the time you're because you have to have a public hearing on it at the end before you bring it to the boat so you know just even noticing meetings and things like that takes time so I think that can add to the time period of it but like I said I try to just keep ticking through the chapter by chapter so that we keep it going and keep the momentum there I imagine [55:00] Adam Garland: Some of the chapters will actually take longer than others water resources and natural resources [55:05] Audrey Swayze: Are always the ones for me but then you know there's other ones like physical capacity will be something that I've worked with the town predominantly on you know what I mean so very [55:14] Adam Garland: Valuable you know what's kind of I was kind of hoping that if at the next meeting if we kind of put things in order of priority yeah but when you say about working with the town I'd like to schedule you say finances to have a finance director here when you talk about okay great you know water and sewer have folks from the water district and our sewer department so that we can plan that stuff out and make sure they're available so absolutely yeah and I'd love to [55:39] Audrey Swayze: Bring in you know if there's ever a time even you know anybody here aside from outside the town office if there's you know a specific organization and I'll think of them you know some of them along the way if you guys look we'd really love to have somebody here from Oxford County Soil and Water Conservation District I'll see who I can reach out to or Oxford County EMA Anything like that, always happy to get the connections there to bring somebody here to, you know, elaborate on parts if you Guys want. It's usually a majority of the committee. It kind of goes off of what other typical town. [56:19] Adam Garland: So there's five official members on the committee. So we would need to have at least three of those members here. HERE. SO STAFF IS ADVISORY ON THIS COMMITTEE. SO OUT OF THE FIVE, WE NEED TO PLACE THREE. [56:36] Crystal: WE'RE GOING TO PUT YOU ON SAC. THAT IS A GOOD IDEA. [56:43] Adam Garland: OPEN MIC NIGHT. WE CAN WORK THAT INTO THE MEETINGS IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO. [Speaker G (unidentified): IS THAT] PROBABLY A GOOD DOCUMENT? [57:04] Audrey Swayze: For tonight then, I think so. It again though, if you guys ever have any questions at any time, I'm going to send this stuff out, but say you're like, I kind of want to talk through something more. [57:15] Speaker F (unidentified): Feel free to call me, email me, whatever. I can attest I've driven well. I thought I was driving Erica nice during the orange changes, and she was super helpful. It was like probably the easiest. [57:27] Audrey Swayze: Ones I've worked through, because it was so easy to work with you guys. Wow, look at that. So I'm I'M EXCITED ABOUT COMPLAINING FOR THAT REASON. JUST GET IT DONE. I'M EXCITED, Y'ALL. [57:46] Kathleen Fillingham: DO WE NEED TO JUST LEAVE, OR DO WE NEED TO ADJOURN? [57:50] Crystal: WE NEVER REALLY CALLED TO ORDER OUR FLAGS FOR IT. [57:54] Speaker B (unidentified): OH, TRUE. AND DON'T NEED YOU TO DO THAT. [57:56] Shane Thomas: THERE WASN'T A COMMITTEE TO DO THAT. [57:58] Speaker G (unidentified): YES, THERE WAS. NO, WE HAVE A MOTION TO ADJOURN. SO MOVED. [58:15] Kathleen Fillingham: Please. Go nowhere. No thank you. I'm gonna do a whole one. Please. Please. [58:20] Speaker B (unidentified): Please. Please. Thank you Colleen. That was fantastic. Who seconded? Yes ma'am. Shane. Let's see if. [58:29] Crystal: That's tomorrow. I know what I'm asking. I posted in the office test, questioning if we have a meeting tomorrow. [58:37] Audrey Swayze: I apologize, but I didn't know. [58:39] Crystal: Where do we work? And then here, so.