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.
[1:27] Jamie Fish: Hi Jamie, are you there?
[1:51] Casey Cunningham: Okay.
[1:57] Speaker C (unidentified): There we go, okay, maybe.
[2:04] Jamie Fish: we're starting hi pressy can you hear us yes i can thanks welcome thank
[2:19] Speaker C (unidentified): You for this story.
[2:20] Hepli Miller: All right, here we are. Hi everybody, welcome. It's September, how did we get here? Almost October, I know, where did the summer go? Anyway, shall we do introductions since we have some folks who aren't normally with us, so you know who we are? I can start this. Hepli Miller, I'm the chair of the Conservation Commission. Christine Labbert.
[2:57] Nick Lesher: Cage for Duos Table Fun, I'm not vice chair. Jamie Fish, I'm Nick Lesher, I'm the Community.
[3:06] Casey Cunningham: Services Director, I'm Casey Cunningham, Parks and Grounds Winner. Also great, and.
[3:11] Nick Lesher: Still speaks alteration, and then we have online Take It Cressy Mauer.
[3:19] Karen Campbell: And Will said I have the liaison for the Planning Board.
[3:25] Cressy Mauer: Thank you, thanks y'all. We're a little worried we weren't going to have a quorum, so.
[3:29] Hepli Miller: Thank you for being here, thank you for making a quorum. Great, so I'm gonna start us off with a land acknowledgement just to begin. Let us begin by bringing our minds and hearts together to focus on our mission of responsible stewardship of Scarborough's lands and waters for generations to come. For generations before us, many people protected these places we loved. The places where we live and work are the original homelands of the Wabanaki people, including the Oaxaca people who once lived here in what we now know as Scarborough. I honor the care and respect with which they've stewarded these lands and waters. The lands and waters are unseated territory and the struggle for Wabanaki sovereignty continues to this day. Our work to protect the lands and waters reflects our commitment to wise and responsible stewardship for all the future generations. Let us begin by holding this responsibility strongly in our minds, even as we face criticism and opposition. [Nick Lesher: Karen,] do you want to introduce yourself to our guests?
[4:50] Karen Campbell: I'm Karen Campbell.
[4:53] Nick Lesher: I'm Reggie McBesha. Nick Klesch, Community Services.
[4:58] Casey Cunningham: Casey Cunningham, Community Services. Nice to meet you.
[5:05] Hepli Miller: So did everybody have a chance to look at the minutes from last meeting? Meeting, any changes, comments, anything online? Oh good, that's really amazing, I'll fix that.
[5:24] Cressy Mauer: You had your, you had your Zoom meeting while you were sitting in the room, I mean it has.
[5:28] Hepli Miller: It does happen sometimes, but yeah, I'll fix that, thanks. Anything else that we want to talk? Oh, do I have a motion to approve the minutes?
[5:43] Speaker C (unidentified): I move that we approve the minute. Thank you, Kate.
[5:46] Nick Lesher: So great.
[5:48] Hepli Miller: And we need to roll fall because we have people online. Do we want to start with Cressy?
[5:57] Jamie Fish: Yes, I support the adoption of the minutes.
[6:01] Cressy Mauer: Thanks, Cressy. Yeah, Will does not. So, Abel?
[6:07] Nick Lesher: You approve? I do.
[6:09] Hepli Miller: I guess, can we all just raise our hands? Sure.
[6:13] Cressy Mauer: Everyone, all in favor? Perfect. Very unanimous. Thanks, guys. Okay.
[6:19] Hepli Miller: Okay, so today we have low impact development. We're going to talk briefly about the stewardship guide, planning board applications. Do we have anything?
[6:32] Cressy Mauer: No, that's why Autumn is not here this evening. There was nothing that needed commission review.
[6:37] Hepli Miller: Review and then we have pest management question side waiver and community outreach
[6:46] Cressy Mauer: And then updates so any additions changes I'm just wondering if you want to bump the pest management stuff first so that we can get that out of the way that makes sense to me yeah all right great I will hand it over to these guys in a minute but I'm just gonna I'll set the stage a little bit so because I think there are we don't have any members who were previously part of the pest management advisory committee that a couple years ago town council decided to merge pest management advisory Committee and conservation commission and so we kind of assume the duties or the commission assumes the duties of the pest management advisory committee one of which is evaluating requests for waivers to our pest management or organic pest management policy this has only come up a handful of times in the eight years that I've been here that community services has come seeking a waiver to do a treatment on some of the town playing fields and so that this is the situation we're in this evening And I'll let Nick and Casey kind of explain this what's going on one of the
[8:00] Casey Cunningham: Playing fields sure well first and foremost thanks for having us tonight so about two weeks ago we realized that will it really feel we had a pretty massive grub infestation it has caused no noticeable damage already to the term that we have over there so we Jamie let us know the opportunity to come in and ask for a waiver this is not something we take lightly this is something they you know only do really if you have to we said they see that the grubs present they're expanding into areas that could cause significant future damage over there this field is activated by youth groups high school jv baseball and really groups of all seasons it's primarily rested by us from our cultural practices in the summer as much as we possibly can after the jv baseball season ends but it does see heavy use and i just you know from a town standpoint we don't have the ability to arrest fields a lot because we don't have enough fields so that you know something in our future that we're looking at just to maximize our field usage but we are trying to arrest that one because we know in 2014 and then in 2018 we did have to ask for an exemption or a waiver for a similar breath infestation so as you can see kind of the photos in the packet that we provided with the agenda materials we did the proper assessment you know one square foot roll back of the areas to assess the damage and the grubs in those areas like far exceed what the limit is generally yeah I believe 8 to 14 grubs per square foot we're averaging 14 to upwards of 39 in those areas that we assessed we've also additionally took samples as of today or it wasn't yesterday maybe and we're sending those on to the University of Maine for testing for further details on you know your practices or what you know potential other issues we might be facing our team does intend to carry and oversee the area as well to help regrowth the area and, you know, in support with if we get the pesticide exemption for application. Again, so I just want to point out 2014, 2018, similar waivers were granted for this. We're requesting a 10-month waiver. Really, that 10-month waiver is two applications. it's an emergency application now to rid of what we have and then a pre-emergent in the spring of the celloprene as more of a preventive measure for us to get us through the season and then reassess in the summer to see you know what we can do for future options there again you know tape lately using pesticides we rarely ever do it but we feel like we're
[10:55] Speaker C (unidentified): in a situation where you have to may i ask a question at the risk of this being repetitive or if i in terms of this the grubs have you identified the species you know the life cycle of the species and whether it's exotic or domestic or where's the best time to hit it in its life cycle when it's in the diapause or waiting for emergency I mean do you have a bigger picture than the when is the most effective time we 've reached out to Mission Turf Services they're
[11:34] Casey Cunningham: Saying it's a Chinese Japanese excuse me, Japanese grub, so yeah, which is practically naturalized, yeah. So yeah, so the celloprene and spring is going to be our best bet. Oh, okay, well, I
[11:48] Speaker C (unidentified): I wanted to get a big picture of where the cycle is because you can't, it's not, you correct me if I'm wrong here, it's not going to be a one and done, you know. You've got to get, you got to nip it in the, grub bug, so to speak, right? They're Japanese beetles, and is there, and they are, those populations cyclical? Yeah, they do tend, yeah. Okay, so that's, that gives me a better picture of exactly what's happening. Thank you. I think our goal here would be to
[12:22] Casey Cunningham: rid a small combat pre-emergent in the spring and then, you know, work with Jamie as a, you know, better standardized cultural practices, knowing that this is a field that has historical issues. What can we do to prevent, you know, coming to not say we're never going to come back and ask for an exemption, but what can we do in the meantime to change anything that we're doing or be more proactive to
[12:47] Cressy Mauer: try to subside the issue? Yeah, there's some good kind of, this is a decent situation where it gets rest in the summertime, so there is time to do some like building of the soil health and things like that over time to hopefully deal with the grubs better, and probably look into using beneficial nematodes as natural controls in the future, and then also The fact that my train of thought just totally derailed. Oh, John, it's love. Thanks, Kate. I mean, the fact that we're seeing the grub damage this time of year really indicates that there is a problem, because usually we see it in the spring. At this point, grubs are typically really small and start working down through the soil profile for the winter, and then when they come back up in the spring, they're much bigger, and that's typically when we see the damage. Damage, so the fact that there's damage here now really indicates that there is an issue, and my train's back on the tracks. I remembered what I wanted to say. The fact that it's taken eight years between applications for grubs on this field is a pretty good sign, and if we can get, you know, a good like four-year chunk at least where we're doing different cultural practices out there, hopefully we can stay ahead of the grubs and not have to come back for a waiver at this field again, and definitely worth at least giving it a shot. I guess I do have another question. The
[14:16] Speaker C (unidentified): What do, is there a range of toxicity in available treatments? Or, you know how to, how do we choose which treatment and what, first of all, I guess I should back up. Are there options for treatments? This is a foundational question. And are there, is there a way to balance the advantages? Because I think there's obviously attention is to have you something as powerful as possible to kill them up. I don't want to kill quest. And yet, on the other hand, we have to keep it safe. So, how is, just explain to the public listening how we're balancing that?
[14:53] Casey Cunningham: Yeah, the fall application of the arena substance is a little higher toxicity volume, but the pre-emergent in the spring of the acetylprane is a relatively well-level pesticide in terms of you
[15:06] Hepli Miller: know volume and you know what, when would you be applying the arena this fall? Like we would
[15:16] Casey Cunningham: you know, if approved, we would try to do it within, we would obviously get proper notice, get signage up, and then have it, what would you say best time would be? And then actually, oh yeah, okay, I mean I
[15:29] Hepli Miller: guess i'm my one concern is looking at the labeling and seeing that the you know potential harm to pollinators and knowing that we still have you know pollinators moving around could it be later could it be a little bit but that's a great point yes it could be and then because that would what you know I would want to like think about that how we're gonna minimize the damage is done
[15:56] Casey Cunningham: and I mean we're going to get some more damage, the girls are at the top scumps, the crows coming in, they're, they're hard to reach in, right? So I mean we might get a little bit more, but I don't think we're going to get that much more damage that waiting would be right. Yeah, we'd be to that in connection with the general services companies that we could drive down to just to make
[16:18] Hepli Miller: sure that it would take in the right time, right? I mean because the ground wouldn't be frozen until
[16:23] Cressy Mauer: that was going to be another point that I was going to make, because at our home we have like an acre and a third and had a beetle infestation, my husband's a beekeeper, so we went through a long service to try to figure out what our options were. We were not willing to treat with chemicals on long and they made the point about you can try beneficial nematodes. You can try efforts to improve the soil health, which is what we've done over time, is better fertilizing, better aeration, things like that. But they also have recommended to us, and neighbors that have had different issues, to really focus treatment when any pollinating plants were sort of out of their bloom cycle. They actually delayed one of the treatments that a neighbor was doing because, you know, the Japanese knotweed had just come out and all the bees were all over their foraging. So it was just sort of like trying to find that window before it's too late in the season to be useful to you, but when most of
[17:23] Speaker C (unidentified): the blooming pollinators are passed. I do have another question, and usually I'm the girl jumping in with the pollinator questions, but I'm asking about the bio-cumulative effects, the bump on effects of the crows. So they're not enough crows eating enough bugs, but once we've treated them, are we knocking off our crows? It's just quite, I would technically can't speak to that. Oh, okay. Just it would serve because many toxins as you, I'm not telling you, but you know our magnet value magnified in bio. Yeah, okay, yeah, okay. It's like I know it takes a committee, yeah.
[18:22] Cressy Mauer: I did also have a question about the Spurlink headwaters, which are right there, and whether any runoff from treatment on the turf, especially if we have any heavy rains. I mean, you've treated this same park twice before, so I'm just kind of curious what info you have from prior treatments to know whether, you know, there were any sort of downsides to it. I
[18:47] Casey Cunningham: think that was a fact I only got out of town for a year and a half in case we get three. Yeah, we
[18:53] Cressy Mauer: were not okay to pass applications same treatment like arena I don't believe has been used before. A celloprene has been, right, I remember that. I mean, I can pull up an aerial of Willie, I think it's pretty well buffered all around there. There seem to be some trees nearby, yeah, but there's at least one of one point of the walking trails that I know sort of overlooks water, and but the, they're only going to treat, correct me if I'm wrong, in the areas where the grubs are noticed, or is it going to be a broadcast? The springtime would be abroad, would be broadcast, but that again, that's
[19:29] Nick Lesher: a load without abuse. This would be to concentrate. Okay, I should pull, sorry, I probably
[19:37] Cressy Mauer: probably shouldn't have stopped sharing it so we can kind of orient ourselves to where literally surrounded by the Richard Carson. Yeah, so this is the area here where it will be treated this fall. Okay, and so it is pretty well buffered. I would want to, oh, Cressy, go ahead.
[19:59] Jamie Fish: You're muted. I just had a question about, is the, you know, application or the chemical use going to be very specific to beetles, or does it, is it a sort of a broad spectrum in terms of the insects that affects? Just a question about how narrow the toxin effect is in terms of the, you know, is it just, you know, will it affect, could it affect a lot of pollinators, it could.
[20:28] Cressy Mauer: Yeah, it could, which is why we're asking that it not be applied kind of until after a hard frost.
[20:35] Jamie Fish: Okay, thank you. Well.
[20:41] Cressy Mauer: Then I don't know whether the turf company can be this flexible about when they apply it, but I'm sure that they get the question a lot of, you know, what happens if you put it on today and there's a hard rain, you know, for the next few days, like this coming weekend, you know, you know, can they time it so that you're not doing it at a time, yeah, all of a sudden, you know, the field is inundated and running off. Legally, they're not supposed to apply any pesticides within 24 hours of forecasted rain. Okay. Although most of them seem to be labeled for 48 hours, might be 48. Yeah, I mean, there is a specific, a set time frame where they're not supposed to apply, and you know, hopefully that they're there, you know, the applicators are adhering to that. I think it's usually 48 hours before, like just like tough off, like the signs are required to be to stay up for 48 hours, that's kind of an arbitrary.
[21:36] Nick Lesher: Window with.
[21:40] Casey Cunningham: The usage right now too, I think we have a lot of flexibility around and when we can.
[21:45] Cressy Mauer: Apply that was going to be one of my questions too, how it's not used much in the fall. No, I mean.
[21:53] Nick Lesher: It's probably used by general neighborhood, right, just going to the kids, but there's no like scheduled programming or anything there. Well, actually, there is a youth football.
[22:03] Casey Cunningham: Place there right now, so it would have to be, we'd have to go work around that thing.
[22:08] Nick Lesher: It would be better to apply it after their season when you're done using that field. Yeah.
[22:27] Hepli Miller: I guess I would, I would want it to be like as late as would be effective, you know, so that we're minimizing the damage to any, insects flying around. Yeah.
[22:39] Casey Cunningham: From the information that Casey and I can gather from past, you know, documentation, which is relative, but it, we noticed that it is moving, it is in separate locations. So that spring application would be a little, would be more widespread.
[22:55] Hepli Miller: Spread so we'll make sure, and that would be in April. Yeah, I would say like if that could be like earlier, you know, as early, yeah, so that you're also minimizing effects. I mean, I'm not seeing the same kind of warnings exactly for this one as the other for a celebrant. Yeah, it didn't seem to have the B1 in that. Yeah, but I, but I would still want to think about that. Yeah, so what
[23:35] Speaker C (unidentified): do you need from us in terms of a vote, a go ahead, as opposed to let's think about it and come back? I mean, you need to get things in. Yeah, you've got things up at the lab, so you're doing, you're having that looked at, the soil looked at, the grubs, we're ruling out any mistake in terms of identification and prescribed treatments, so that we have all of those dominoes, ducks in a row. So is there anything that we haven't asked that you need to tell us? And you talked about signage and timing, we'll communicate with the school department, protection and neighborhoods, and protection of wildlife within the ecosystem, and we know a little bit about the,, half life of this material. So we know we're not looking at it for another 15 years. Right? So, both, we've had all those assurances.
[24:36] Nick Lesher: I just want to kind of make sure that I report 1 thing. I do want to say that I can't say for sure, but I'm not going to come back to you for 50 years. Oh, no, that's okay. We're hoping for another eight. This is a response to, this is a reactionary event to what we're
[24:58] Casey Cunningham: we're facing right now. I don't notice that we can get rid of it and we'll throw it in
[25:03] Cressy Mauer: and be more proactive with kind of how it's made, managed in the future, so that hopefully
[25:10] Speaker C (unidentified): we won't have, we're gonna bring in more crows. Well, they would love the grubs, but they hate the
[25:17] Cressy Mauer: field, like the field would hate them. So well, I like that idea of doing what we can to improve the soil health over time, so that it's just more resilient generally, and it sounds like nobody really wants to be going this route, but if it's that or a dead field that you've already lost all of your, you know, investment of time and materials, and right, and we're focused on more top dressing
[25:41] Casey Cunningham: Over synergists soil practices in general for our fields because with the amount of volume that our fields get they don't get enough love on the other end supports their health. We're trying this all over the place. I mean we don't put any fertilizer no herbicide no anything so you know we pick up clippings as much as we can we just we leave them when we can. So this is going to be a learning curve for all of us for all of our locations but like we had groups last year in that top right picture. Not nearly as big as that just a little one. The two pictures we saw were that side of the building this side of the building so they're they're average. So this particular location for whatever reason that's why hoping to get the soil samples back and see what kind of we're dealing with in this because we don't have them anywhere else and their cultural practices are the same across the town well.
[26:40] Hepli Miller: And I wonder if like the prolonged.
[26:42] Cressy Mauer: Drought had any impact to like that yeah I mean the plants are probably are certainly stressed the grass is stressed if it's been long periods without range it has so it could be more susceptible.
[26:55] Hepli Miller: Susceptible to the damage and things like that I feel like everything has had more pest pressure.
[27:00] Cressy Mauer: This year because of the so I think we need a motion to approve the waiver request I'm going.
[27:08] Speaker C (unidentified): To move to approve the waiver request is that is that enough yeah we didn't say who it was from and what it was for yeah it's included in the record okay yeah I'll I'll choose it up.
[27:25] Cressy Mauer: Don't lose your train of thought that's easy that's why we're we're recording so if I lose my train of thought it's right there for me pressy do you have a comment or no I'll second it you.
[27:36] Speaker H (unidentified): Know oh okay oh thank you that's.
[27:41] Speaker C (unidentified): Great I just have one more thought that there's an opportunity for education in here and with the signage and I don't it's not part of in my vote but leaning into that is probably part of our mission is letting people know this is out there it's our reality and there are ways to deal with it other than bringing in the exterminator so I would just like to see that as part of the effort that's not true I think the educationally.
[28:15] Karen Campbell: valuable thing that you guys are doing is that this is a last resort is that you follow an integrated pest management approach where it's all about the cultural practices first and soil health building and then you know it's nice that this doesn't happen often that these fields are not sprayed every year and that is not like the reality and i think that's for when we're thinking about stewardship and passing along like messages to homeowners and renters it's you know obviously we don't want pesticides to be used but there are occasions like this where you know we've inherited a situation where potentially like there weren't the best practices in the past and they you know the pesticide is like in a targeted way the thing that's going to solve the problem and then focus on the other kind of proactive approaches after care so great i just
[29:06] Speaker I (unidentified): want to say thanks that's that's our local field i presume you guys were looking at something fantastic i think we're just running manure or something responsible of course but it's yeah fantastic
[29:19] Casey Cunningham: yeah it's a great field we are we are experimenting with the manure fertilizer that we're thinking about putting out manager because it has gone two years with nothing
[29:29] Cressy Mauer: so the soil test should tell you some guidance on those yeah should we get our garbage to carbon i was just thinking that i was like i wonder if they would donate for the town for this for field rehab so ready for to officially vote all in favor of approval and i'll ask cressy do
[29:54] Speaker H (unidentified): you approve yes i vote yes thank you thank you appreciate it thank you
[30:02] Hepli Miller: Well, thank you for what you do, for being a friend of yours.
[30:06] Speaker I (unidentified): We're in touch. Absolutely. Thank you for all your feedback. For sure.
[30:11] Hepli Miller: And have a good rest of your evening.
[30:14] Casey Cunningham: You all have a wonderful evening.
[30:23] Cressy Mauer: And if you find a good fix, I'll pass it along to my husband. I know. But she'll be updated on the fit for nematodes. Hey, I love nematodes. Nemos are great as long as you don't want a nice-looking lawn.
[30:36] Speaker I (unidentified): I don't want a nice-looking lawn.
[30:37] Cressy Mauer: I know. I don't either. I don't care. Domesticate moles.
Unfinished Business
[30:40] Hepli Miller: I might know. That's all sorts of problems. Okay. So back to our old business, which is the LID ordinance update on Seattle.
[30:56] Cressy Mauer: I just have a very brief update that due to kind of other priorities in our office and then also some staff leaving, we've had to push the LID ordinance public meetings again. But we officially have a date, it'll be October 13th at the at 6 p.m. at the public safety building. And so that will be kind of introducing the concept to the community, outlining the requirements from DEP, and then identifying the areas where the town plans or will propose to go above and beyond the minimum requirements set by the state. We're looking at probably not going to ordinance committee until January, just because of the election and then they have to form their new committees and they're usually they won't meet again probably until after the new year at this point. So you said October 13th. I think that the October meeting the calendar online said that it would be. Oh sorry, say that again. You said October. I did seem October 13th. Yeah, thank you. 6 p.m. public safety. 6 p.m. public safety. It'll be in the notes guys. I know calendar yet, but it will be. So yeah, and we'll start getting information out in our newsletter and all of that good stuff. So but yeah, looking at probably ordinance committee in January and hopefully moving on to town council in early spring. We do have an adoption deadline officially of August 2027, so we need to start, we staff need to start putting more of a concerted effort into moving this forward since
[32:44] Speaker C (unidentified): we do have our adoption deadline officially now. So that is my LNE update and we'll attend any speaking parts
[32:54] Cressy Mauer: parts. Yeah, so at this point the public meeting I think it's primarily going to be like information session kind of thing. So I would say this group would really be helpful focusing on like ordinance committee and town council and that process. I'm showing up for those meetings, welcome to attend the public meeting on the 13th as well. I suspect it's mostly going to be the
[33:19] Speaker C (unidentified): the development community saying that they don't want this. Okay, so anybody nodding yes is a good
[33:25] Cressy Mauer: thing. Yes, anybody in support of more responsible development, or I should say developing responsibly in Scarborough, I don't want my words to be misconstrued, responsible development in Scarborough, will hopefully speak in support of the ordinance. But
[33:45] Speaker I (unidentified): so there are probably have to be more just of us going above and beyond not being in the very now
[33:51] Cressy Mauer: Yeah, I would, yes, and I would say kind of the approach that you all took for the wetlands ordinance, where you all kind of had a specific talking point that you spoke to, as opposed to just everybody repeating the same thing, that was really effective. And so that would be like once it's time to start, you know, start kind of coordinating that input. Oh, I agree. Having
[34:14] Speaker C (unidentified): having said on that side of the table, oh, you know, and you shut down at a certain point, so keeping it fresh and, for what it's worth, make it light and amusing, you know, just because you
[34:26] Hepli Miller: really got it. We could, we could write some songs. You could, oh, I don't do that. We could have a show.
[34:32] Cressy Mauer: Yeah, I mean, you guys did an awesome job with the wetlands ordinance. You did an awesome job when we, when we were going through the Sawyer Street process, so that's not bad. Scarborough didn't get mad at you, Kate. Elizabeth got mad at you. No, I think, I think Scarborough Town Council appreciated you all, so, I'll keep you updated on any kind of schedule information once I have
[34:59] Nick Lesher: Thank you so much.
[35:03] Hepli Miller: So an update on the community stewardship guide. I apologize to anyone who had challenges getting into the document that I shared. I was under the impression that anybody could look at a Microsoft Word document if I shared it with a shareable link that gave you access to edit it, but apparently it's not true. So we're going to move back to Google Docs. I already pasted everything over into a new clean document. I took everything from the clean draft, the other brainstorming stuff I'll add to the original document. I just didn't have the bandwidth to do it before this meeting, but I think we're in, you know, we've got a lot of stuff there, and I really appreciate everything that everybody added to it, whether that was like sharing resources or actually writing big long sections. My god, Cressy like wrote this really amazing section on water, and Randy wrote, you know, the conservation piece, and Christine did a lot of really amazing work on the homeowner section, and everybody really did a lot of great work, so I think our next step is that we need to schedule a meeting outside of this time to hash things out and so what I and I see your hand with Presby or I saw your hand I think we need to kind of just look at the document and I think this will be easiest on Google Docs and Kate we'll have to figure out how to well I mean we can like rent you a copy or something to make comments on whatever makes sense but i think like we should all feel free to like write comments and be like this shouldn't be here i think and then when we meet whatever that is we can actually like look at the comments that people have and we're not sitting in a meeting for two hours being like i don't like that part So I think that does that feel like a reasonable process for everybody?
[37:40] Speaker H (unidentified): Yeah, and then you, we can do it on our own time.
[37:46] Hepli Miller: You know, whenever you have space to kind of like dig into it, you can look at it and write comments, and I would, I mean, we're not in a huge rush to do this. So I would say like, we don't even, we don't necessarily have to do it this month even, but if you want to, if we have momentum and we want to meet sometime, I don't, I'm a little hesitant because I have a whole bunch of commitments to, so let me look at my calendar.
[38:16] Cressy Mauer: I'll send some ideas. Yeah. And I was just going to suggest that we will essentially have two more meetings for the rest of the year. We'll have our October 28th meeting, and then our next meeting butts up against Thanksgiving, so we usually bump it at least a week, maybe a little bit more, and then we won't meet in December, because it's December, the end of December, no one needs to meet in the end of December. So, maybe since there will be a little bit of extra time between the October meeting and the November meeting, if you want to try to find some times, good idea, and there to reconvene. Yeah, that makes sense to me.
[38:57] Hepli Miller: Pressy, I see your hand. Yeah.
[39:02] Jamie Fish: So I will, so you want us all to comment on what we have now and sort of just make systemic comments about what belongs where, what needs work, or, and then that'll
[39:13] Hepli Miller: Anything, yeah, anything you see that you think, like, maybe, you know, whatever, this could be shorter, could we condense these two sections, whatever, any kind of comments you have, okay? And I will reshare the Google Doc link with everybody because I created a new, so many documents, but I have a hard time, like, filtering information if there's too much going on the page, so I wanted to have something that I could, like, read through with some clarity, so I did it mostly for my brain, but I will reshare that for everybody else, and then
[39:58] Jamie Fish: make sure that people, just one more thing I did, well, I separated out, I did a, this guide for, you know, families and youth, I did it as a separate document because I don't think it really kind of fits, I put it under resources, yeah, but you'll see, and I just shared a link right before the meeting, you guys can look at it, 's not complete, but I'm about, you know, I finished the first section, I've got a lot more to go, and I think it would, you know, benefit from a lot more pictures and, you know, making it kind of more visually appealing, but anyway, so that's what I've been working on mostly, is there, the other question I had is, are there sections that no one has taken up that need writing, do we still need sections for someone, probably, I mean, in that I
[40:49] Hepli Miller: think that's a piece we can all sort of look at and like if you have something to add at it you know we don't have to take sections at this point but I mean if you have a momentum go for it yeah and I don't know like how you know that's the other piece is like how long do we want this to be what the what is our vision for how this is it going to be a web document like probably right so it could be longer and be okay as a longer document we might want to hand out yeah a
[41:24] Speaker C (unidentified): question buried in there is how many versions of how many, how many access points to how much it was, so you've got, you know, you've got your elevator spiel and you've got your encyclopedia, it's a, so that it's so that keeping in mind that we can actually do all of those things because people are going to access for different reasons and with different appetites for that, so for me that I really struggled and I've done my mea culpa here, but I really struggled because I couldn't narrow things into one little box. Well, the answer is it isn't one little box. And so keeping in mind all of this data can be used and really massaged repeatedly and in different venues is really very freeing for us.
[42:19] Hepli Miller: And I think about like, we can do like one pagers for like, you know, I mean, I feel like cooperative extension does that kind of thing, like, here's those like, here's like a pamphlet, yeah.
[42:30] Speaker C (unidentified): So I'm going to do these two programs. If you haven't seen them, you're welcome to come on the 29th, and whatever the October that would just, this is just promoting, but this is an example of how we're doing this stewardship guide, which is in large part about the resource that is water. So, you know, that can continue to promote that your town really cares. We're working on the climate that, you know, so that there are just so many opportunities to use it and not be limited, which is what I will repeat that.
[43:15] Cressy Mauer: I was trying to do it at home. Yeah, I would say, you know, put as much information in, like, the draft documents that I think is going to be kind of like, the guide that we pull from to make these finished products. That's a great way to put it. Thank you. Jamie. So, Kathleen, you'll look at potential dates for Yeah, I'll send out some.
[43:39] Hepli Miller: I don't know if I could send out a scheduling fold, or I could just send out some potential dates. What would folks prefer scheduling full might be easier to keep track of.
[43:51] Cressy Mauer: Yeah, I mean, I won't indicate your inbox.
[43:55] Hepli Miller: Okay, sounds good. So I will make a poll based on what my wild calendar looks like at the moment.
[44:03] Cressy Mauer: And I think, you know, when we do sort of regroup as a team to work on this, and I agree with you about putting, you know, reviewing, adding comments in and all that. Yeah, I know, at least when I was looking at it, one of those things I just kept going back to is sort of like, you know, what is going to be our first stake in the ground here, like how much information do we want how detailed, and what is the deliverable, if you will, you know, and whether that is like a multi page brochure, or whether it is like a group of fact sheets that can be bundled together maybe one's just a resource list one's the homeowner, you know, one's the renter one's the plant. List what you know. One's the piece on water. I mean, we're, it'll end up being modular, the content, because we can apply it to different things. But, you know, I think we might, it might be hard to sort of get that first one done if we don't decide what the first one done is going to look like, right? And, you know, what's the level of content? Because I think we have some beautiful content in here, but it's also just, it's a lot of words, and I feel like we'll need some infographics and little digestible things, or the people that aren't going to read all the words might get a little lost. So I think it would be good to brainstorm some of that.
[45:22] Hepli Miller: This is like the beginning point, you know, so like, I think we're putting it all in there. I mean, I agree with what Janie said, like, just throw everything that you think.
[45:36] Cressy Mauer: Let's get it down and we can decide what goes well.
[45:39] Hepli Miller: And then we have a lot to work with when we can say, wow, look at this amazing resource on conserving water that we could create for like distribution, you know, however, you know, like, I don't, I don't know what that looks like. But, you know, we could create things that could be soundbites on social media, we could, you know, like, there's so many options for how this information could be used. And I don't think we need to get in the weeds about that yet.
[46:07] Speaker C (unidentified): Is there, they used to be into programs on public access. Do we still do that?
[46:15] Cressy Mauer: I don't, the, I don't think the town does it quite so much for public access, but we are, we can certainly work with our communications manager to do little quick videos and things
[46:26] Hepli Miller: like that for social media. Is that, there are just like the stuff that feature Kate on social media?
[46:31] Speaker C (unidentified): Well, they do. They do take them on. Yeah, put me on tape. So, my presentations are recorded. Yeah, but they could also be, I know how I could just edit them down into like little sound bites, sample sound bites that could keep running on. And my particular one is, we all drank some dinosaur piddle today. But, you know, I mean, so I think there's, in terms of the marketing, is to really that not just right.
[47:10] Cressy Mauer: It's going to take many forms. It'll be multimedia. Multimedia.
[47:14] Speaker C (unidentified): Yeah. So I'm excited about that, because I've got, I forget to say John. Yeah. Yeah. John. John. He makes me up, so we can, we can actually work on something with him to make some mini presentations out of the stuff that we already have. Yeah, I think you need
[47:31] Cressy Mauer: a talk show is what I'll do that, or a podcast. I could see Kate podcasting. Totally, she's like
[47:37] Speaker C (unidentified): In her room, so let's keep it in mind. Let's just put it, yeah, put it in the parking lot, yeah, thanks.
[47:46] Hepli Miller: Kate's podcast, think of a good title. Oh yeah, you drank some dinosaur, thank you everyone. Yeah, so I'm okay, so I didn't mean to, thank you, thank you everybody though, I really appreciate all the, all the work that people fit in, and I think this is going to be a great resource, and I loved, like I was looking at it and I was looking at the climate action fan and seeing like, oh, so many dovetails, because in the climate action plan it's like you can do this at home, you know, and I'm like, oh, there we go. That's what we're doing, so right, so I think that's, there are a lot of great dovetails, and this is exciting, thanks for driving, I know it's
[48:36] Speaker H (unidentified): not easy to try to crowdsource documents like this. Absolutely, I do it, I do it all the time.
[48:43] Nick Lesher: Yeah.
[48:47] Hepli Miller: But happy to, I look forward to seeing what we come up with. Yeah, right, so we're moving right along, no planning board.
[49:00] Cressy Mauer: No, so we can chat tabling at the polls if this group is still interested in doing something on November 3rd. So for those who were at, who joined us last month for our kind of work session, we talked about just having a present, having the commission and have more of a presence at community events, and so we did discuss briefly having a table at the polls for the, midterm election, and so I was like, well, if that's gonna happen, we need to talk about it in September, because October 28th is way too late to pull something together. So we had talked a little bit about if we want, if there was any items that we might, the group might want community feedback on, we could like quick voting, everybody I'm sure has seen kind of like the dot voting thing, and we lately have put a twist on that and made it a little bit more interactive and visually appealing, and ask people to drop items like at the beaches we did sea glass into sand pails and things like that, so just kind of changing things up a little bit for the way people vote. So we just need to keep in mind that we're probably going to be interacting with people for a minute or less, and so keeping whatever, either whatever message we're putting out there or whatever information we want from them needs to be really clear and really brief, and so just having a discussion over around what this group might want, if you want to solicit feedback on like what people are looking for more information in terms of like that may feed into the Stewardship guide, or how are they getting their information, or if they wanted to learn more about how to like grow native plants or some topic like where would you go for that information, and that might help inform the how we move forward with the stewardship guide, just an example. Planning on any handouts potentially, I mean if we have things to
[51:00] Speaker C (unidentified): a handout we can we can hand things out in a month, we need somebody to set it up, we need to sign up sheet and we need shifts. Yeah, I mean I mean people are happy to talk, I mean I have done this a number of times, not for not for us but yeah, you can't just sit there and talk to each other right, and it's a long day because breaking it up two hours is yeah easy enough
[51:29] Hepli Miller: three hours it's kind of yeah. Is Scarborough, is the town gonna have a table again, I feel like
[51:36] Cressy Mauer: there was a table up at June, I will have to ask, I'm not sure like what table, I'll have to ask the clerk's office if anybody, what other groups might be having tables, the library usually
[51:52] Speaker C (unidentified): recently does. Yeah, Kiwanis, Rotary, cookies,
[52:02] Hepli Miller: that might incentivize people to go. Yeah, we could bake cookies and bring them, so this
[52:13] Speaker C (unidentified): and the thing is since you have pull it is a good spot, it matters, it really matters because there's something, but at a certain point people say forget how much they're just not yeah going
[52:26] Cressy Mauer: to stop. So I mean I have a little bit of an in because my husband will be one of the ones setting up for voting, so I can tell him put a table here and say that where we want it, we'll see how that works right by the voting machine, yeah right in a voting machine. So I was trying to think about this question because we it came up when we had our call about the guide, and I guess one of my questions is how far along do we think we will be in the development of the guide at that point, and how would we incorporate feedback if we were to ask it. I mean we might be able to ask you know the question, I'll just call them penny jars for lack of a better thing, beach glass, whatever, but you know if you get whatever five pennies would you put it in the homeowner guide, the water resource guide, the plant guide, whatever it is, like what is the content that you would find most useful to yourself, or do we do one, I don't know that we could do both, maybe we could on like how would they like this information to be made available, is it something that an online guide would be helpful to them, is it educational presentations, is it a brochure, like what's the way they'd want it delivered. Yeah, I just had a
[53:47] Speaker C (unidentified): Little spin, let me grab this thought, what I have, yes. Another way to engage is rather than make, making people think and make decisions, how about asking, what do you do at your house? Do you preserve water? Do you eliminate? So it just makes sense because this is what we're trying to do for you, and that has them buy in. Oh, I do that. Oh, I do that. Why I don't do that, I know. And just so we can say that, you know, our voters are really concerned about water. I mean, it just gives us some bragging rights as opposed to asking. I just think it flips it on into a more positive interaction. Yeah, people, yeah, something that's free, but it's building and it's that's
[54:37] Hepli Miller: just and then we could say like we're working on a guide. Exactly, it's, you know, yeah, exactly, to help people steward our, to do all these things. Yeah, help you do all this more and better. Let us know if you have any ideas, you know, join up, join a board. I don't know. Oh yeah, we have a back and
[54:57] Speaker C (unidentified): see if you'd like to join, getting to the same information, but then in a reverse osmosis kind
[55:03] Cressy Mauer: of way. We still have the tree and the sticky notes. We do step up there. I was gonna say we can
[55:10] Hepli Miller: have them like write their things down. The tree is still at my house, but it's a little banged up.
[55:15] Cressy Mauer: Yeah, I've got all the sticky notes. I feel like it might be easier though to just like maybe have some like sticky notes for them to add additional things on to, but then, but have some preset kind of activities that we're asking about. So we could ask about composting, we can ask about, I don't know, like, I don't like water conservation, like, but part of that, part of that I'm like, what is that? Do you turn off the tap when you're brushing your teeth? Like, what are some things? Because like, do are they really conserving water? Do they, do they know what that even means, or what those questions are? I mean, some, I mean, all most of our appliances are low water use now, so like kind of we're all in a way conserving water, but people who are on wells are much more aware of that than
[55:59] Speaker C (unidentified): people on, you're using, we average 257 gallons a day per person, as opposed to three gallons a day
[56:09] Hepli Miller: say in Mali. I mean, we use a lot of water, well, flushing toilets, like I think that, you know,
[56:17] Cressy Mauer: we're flushing drinkable water down the toilet, which is insane. Maybe not at my house, let's not
[56:24] Speaker C (unidentified): Go there, it's just, you have a composting tool. No, I just, no, I just, it's a whole thing, never mind. I went down an island for a while. I'm with you, I'm with you, so you'll see it. But I think, I think that's the idea, we can maybe polish that about what are the easiest question, the easiest ways to pose the question so they're ready answers are elicited, and you know, and it's not a scientific survey, it's an engagement exercise. That's kind of tough leaving the voting though.
[56:59] Speaker I (unidentified): Right, well usually they're like six or seven tables, it's tough to engage right, people just, oh they stop and say hello to who they know, yeah they'll say hello, otherwise they're just like thank you, I give it the office and just kind of run through it, right, and so you kind of and you set
[57:13] Speaker C (unidentified): up something that makes it look like fun and you give away cookies, I don't know what you do, but yeah
[57:18] Hepli Miller: Or having a cookie for your thoughts. Well I mean not a bad, not a bad plan.
[57:25] Cressy Mauer: Get all the leftover Halloween candy, nobody's gonna want it, he's so sick of it, and then do
[57:33] Speaker C (unidentified): you do you know so you 're using do you have the sea glass pebbles oh yeah we'll figure
[57:39] Cressy Mauer: out, we'll, I'll figure out some like related theme, but I, it would be helpful I guess to have like the, topics that you guys are thinking about so we can start pulling together some of the materials to make it happen. I think composting is a good one, composting is one,
[57:55] Hepli Miller: one native plants is one, what about just like gardening, you know, like do you have a vegetable garden? I mean yeah, so you love native plants that
[58:12] Cressy Mauer: yeah, so yeah, so you can do like pollinators and vegetables or something like yeah
[58:25] Speaker I (unidentified): I always go the other way, too. It's invasives in the out of all our invasives are huge over my side.
[58:32] Hepli Miller: It's. Yeah, they're everywhere,. Yeah.
[58:35] Cressy Mauer: Do you know that being invasive?
[58:40] Jamie Fish: I one thing I think people might like is where are their volunteer opportunities sort of like, you know, something they can just grab quickly. You know we have marsh cleanups twice a year. We have, there's opportunities to contribute and that can just be a little like that sounds like a really great little handout, like plant sales, there's like, you know, if you want to learn more about conservation or contribute, here's, you know, here's where you can dip in and here's some, you know, and become more active, and that's something very helpfully yeah developed after us.
[59:18] Cressy Mauer: Yeah, love it. Yeah. Yeah. And just this won't be ready for the election, but I can't remember if I've mentioned it to this group or not, but we are working on an online dashboard to kind of help us tell the story of all of the plans that we've done over the past five or six years. So it'll public facing, it's going to kind of talk about the interconnectedness of these plans and the work that the town is doing to implement these plans, but on the back end it's actually going to be a tracking tool for staff so that we can track implementation of our plans, because we've got our comp plan, we've got our vulnerability assessment, a transportation assessment, our open space plan, our climate action plan, and upcoming will be the trails and sidewalk master plan, so it's a lot to keep track of, so we're kind of bringing those all together so that we can track them in one place and make sure we're making progress on all of the plans that we have and that they're not just sitting on a shelf. And so we're hoping, I think within the next like six months or so, to have kind of the public facing dashboard available for folks. It's going to be all through sustaining starborough.org, so our existing climate action plan website, but we talked in sustainability earlier this morning about having just a kind of a opportunities for volunteering and kind of getting more information out to the community, both in terms of like the cleanups and things like that, but also like doing storm drain stenciling in your neighborhoods and stuff like that. So that's an aside, but working on developing more opportunities there when you tell your
[1:00:54] Speaker C (unidentified): husband, this is if you get a theme going. So if our tabling is next to the land trust tabling, which is next to, you know, so theme us out and you'll get the people who are interested, and we've all seen this, will go down a row that they're interested in, as opposed to putting us between the, I know the cookies, we won't go. Good, but that is, but it's, you know, Kiwanis, we love them, but we're not going to attract the same group, the attention span, so I just, yeah, but sometimes it's good to have everything intermingled
[1:01:31] Cressy Mauer: so that we're not just getting the same faces that we see over and over again. I agree, so that
[1:01:36] Speaker C (unidentified): no but people are going in a straight line they're just they're not going they're not jumping back and forth the what started that thought was we're talking that we 're not really dwelling on Partnerships we're talking about what the town is doing but the town is engaging in serious Partnerships with the library with the land Trusts with it's I'm not going to die on this Hill I think but if we if we are I think we are together it's going to be an advantage if we're not we're going to be fine so We have composting, we have what else do we have on our, we have native with native plants, garden, gardens in general
[1:02:24] Cressy Mauer: Or vegetable gardens, pollinators, yeah
[1:02:31] Speaker C (unidentified): We'll do native plant and native plants. What about chemicals. Chem-free lawn? Chem-free, yeah, mow-free, chem-free.
[1:02:42] Hepli Miller: I was thinking like also maybe a transportation thing, like walk and bike, or you know, something like that.
[1:02:51] Cressy Mauer: And transit just started in Scarborough this week. I heard the story, that was exciting. Yeah, so we've got micro transit happening in the kind of Oak Hill area in our and beyond, but just it's available here, microtransit, so it's like, it's like the name of it, microtransit, it's Metro Connect is the, I think I saw them parked in the Hanford parking lot, yeah, I wondered if that's what they were, absolutely, blue van, yeah,, so that just started on Sunday or Monday, nice, so it's in trial period, it is free, download the app, give it a try. I'll send you all the information about it. Where does it go? Does it go everywhere? It goes, there's a set zone. So it goes from the South Portland town line to Dunston, from the turnpike to route one, and then just a little bit beyond. It might go a little ways down like Black Point Road and Pine Point Road.
[1:03:48] Hepli Miller: It's not going to take me. It's not going to take you.
[1:03:52] Cressy Mauer: But then the fixed route will start. There's a launch event for the fixed route bus next Friday at nine o'clock here. So officially starts on the 4th. It's going to be free for the first month to get people riding the bus and trying it out. So highly recommend if you have opportunities, like we were looking at the app this morning, like oh I can get to Starbucks in eight minutes, like do we need a coffee run, we're trying to see how it works, there are still some kinks, they're still working it out, so but the first month or so is going to be free so that people can get used to it, so yeah, we can have a transit question, 45 minutes, the fixed route is every 45 minutes. The on-demand, it's, it's basically like Uber around town. It's $2 and 25 cents for a 90 minute ride. So if you can go to your destination, do what you need to do and get back on within that 90 minutes, it's $2 and 25 cents. It's half price for seniors and veterans and youth. So actually last, I think it's a dollar 10 for, those groups. So we
[1:05:05] Hepli Miller: could have a we could have a jar have you tried the metro yeah that's yeah that's a good one
[1:05:11] Nick Lesher: Yeah that's fantastic yeah have you heard anything about how it's going with the gap yeah I have
[1:05:21] Cressy Mauer: I don't know that what they're doing officially for it but I have heard that it's like so many
[1:05:26] Speaker H (unidentified): people are using it 's very good I used to go down there and be quiet you know yeah but like
[1:05:31] Karen Campbell: and now it's it's yeah remarkable yeah because yeah they're really getting out there yeah it's just like you know the following week like yeah I would run to the bridge and turn around and the following week it was just like remarkable yeah people there were eastern trail alliance
[1:05:51] Cressy Mauer: usually does their kind of like traffic counts on the eastern trail in the summer because that's the peak time so I don't know if there's if they I don't think they do it every summer but I would think that they're going to do it this coming summer with now that the gap's open
[1:06:06] Speaker H (unidentified): to see like the difference in user levels let's see yeah so do you want each of want somebody
[1:06:15] Jamie Fish: to claim one of we're doing a handout is that what we're talking about no so these are all
[1:06:21] Cressy Mauer: just kind of like people to give their like not really vote but give us feedback what are you doing at your own home and so these are just like things that we are coming up with that they can like drop their penny into or their shell into a bucket or something like that just so we have a sense of like what people are doing and we can basically say look at how like what the community is doing to help sustain scarborough we should have name tags and what are
[1:06:48] Speaker C (unidentified): you doing and how can we help more yeah well I think that's yeah what are you doing and how can we help keep wanting to help doing more kind of thing yeah I think that's a two-part okay
[1:07:00] Cressy Mauer: You can totally promote the climate action plan. So I think we will be looking at town, hopefully town council adoption the following evening at the town council meeting, the climate action plan. There is a town council workshop scheduled for October the twenty first. And so we haven't set a definite public comment period yet. Public comment periods open. Now we've been getting some good feedback on it. So I think we'll probably try to close it shortly after the town council workshop. Give people a couple days if they haven't heard about it before the Council workshop. If they hear about it at the Council workshop, they'll have a couple days to kind of review it and provide us. Their comments, if they have any, and then we'll finalize it with our consultants for adoption, and hopefully, or hopefully the first meeting in November, but possibly the second meeting in some of the items that we talked about for of the election table seems like they would overlap with sustainability. I'm wondering if we should share a table or something and kind of broaden the questions because there's also things like you know are you using solar and other energy efficiencies and okay solar heat pumps right exactly. Yeah, I can put this out to the sustainability committee to see if they want to share the table. We've got lots of kind of like materials are like tabling type stuff with the sustaining Scarborough brand. And so my goal moving forward is to have any kind of events and stuff like this falling under the sustaining Scarborough umbrella so having that kind of at the forefront as much as possible. So we can get the table set up with like our sustaining Scarborough tablecloth and all of those other good things. We can have some of the sustaining Scarborough materials. We've got stickers, we've got handouts, I've got, I think we're all out of the reusable, we have some cups for left from sustainable Scarborough day. I have reusable produce bags for people going grocery shopping and don't want plastic bags in the produce aisle and I had reusable utensils for like lunch boxes and stuff and I think we're, I think we handed them all out. I might have a couple but we could do some of those for give a random giveaways too for people who stop and chat with us during the polls. Yeah, I think we might have, we had bike bells too. The transportation committee had bike bells. That's cool. I'm writing ride bike to school or work
[1:10:00] Karen Campbell: do you shop at the farmer's market this is
[1:10:05] Hepli Miller: Seeming to me maybe like not like buckets anymore, but like a grid where somebody would put a sticker, or like a bingo.
[1:10:19] Cressy Mauer: And if they get bingo, then they get a prize. Oh, there you go. Yeah, what's the thing down at the lot where you took a picture of me pointing to? Yes, oh yeah, the self-evaluation. That was, that had a lot of good stuff. I'll pull some of the stuff from that too. Yes, I like a bingo card, that's a good one. I love the bingo card idea, and then we can give away prizes for people who.
[1:10:41] Karen Campbell: Think that some of these things we've put out here are, there's a hierarchy of who can access these activities. So I would maybe shy away from like a self-ranking thing, especially because these activities aren't all, I guess they all have different weights. And the other like thing that I think we're missing here is that all of these are like very individual actions, but ultimately like we really want to incentivize kind of like collective actions. And that is like what, it's not our individual actions that are ultimately going to like deliver the outcomes that we want. Want, and so I'm like wondering if there's a way to reflect that in this, whether it's like the.
[1:11:25] Hepli Miller: Buckets or the, you know, I feel like having a question of like, have you contacted a legislator about an environmental issue, or have you come to a town council workshop on, you know, whatever, yeah, or sustainability issues, have you volunteered for me, right, if you have, if you haven't, here's.
[1:11:47] Cressy Mauer: Power, yeah, and I like, and I think we can sprinkle in some like some easy ones, like I took a walk, I visited a Scarborough Land Trust property, or I went to the Starborough Marsh or something, like recognizing that some of these are more difficult for like non-homeowners to do, microtransit, yeah, I have, you ridden Metro, on right, well microtransit is still Metro though, so we can, but yeah, so yeah, I think, you know, we can come up with a whole, if we are going to do the bingo, and we can do just maybe a. Mini bingo, we can have a lot of different activities that people may have engaged in that are conservation and sustainability oriented, and trying to make it so that the cards or whatever it's produced is like, there's something on there for everyone, getting people thinking about how they can be.
[1:12:53] Hepli Miller: I really appreciate your comment though about, cause I think also it's election day, so it's a good time to- Did you vote?
[1:13:01] Cressy Mauer: Yeah. That will be the center square.
[1:13:03] Nick Lesher: Yeah, that'll be it.
[1:13:07] Hepli Miller: You know how are you advocating? Like this is an opportunity also to kind of say like there are ways that you too can advocate for better policy, right? Yeah, I wonder if there's
[1:13:22] Karen Campbell: a way to, I'm not a designer in this sense, but like if we do a bingo card like make it seem of like sort of a collector like this is the town of Scarborough and like look at how we are like achieving as a town and all of these activities, these conservation goals, yeah
[1:13:42] Cressy Mauer: Yeah, I wonder if we might have to have like a master bingo and like put a towel, put like tally marks or the stickers or something in those as people like hand in their cards and we can transfer them on to like the master that has all of them. Oh, I like that idea
[1:13:59] Hepli Miller: That would be, I think that could draw some interest, win a prize. Yeah, I love it, I think it's fun. All right, so we will need to, does anybody want to make a schedule
[1:14:26] Cressy Mauer: I can work on, I can work on pulling together kind of the two hour blocks and send it around, hopefully you all will find time in your day to be able to sign up. I can, I think I can help, I have to look at my calendar to see what if I have anything else scheduled on that day, but certainly help at least get things set up and get things going and I'll pull together, I can pull together like the materials and all of that stuff for this and we'll see how things go, exciting, fun, awesome. Yeah, and the polls are what, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., so yeah, maybe not seven. Yeah, I'm not gonna be it, I'll be here in seven, I'll keep like I said, I'll get everything set up, but well, we don't necessarily have to do all 13 hours, no, yeah, no, for sure not, but you know, morning and evening are going to be the prime time, right, that's true, before work, before and after work. Yeah, although early voting too, I don't know once that's, I mean, I have a feeling early voting is
[1:15:30] Hepli Miller: going to be really popular this year, I hope so, vote early days October 24th, that's, I mean, I mean, that's a Saturday, so it's a lot helpful, but they should have had vote early day on a weekday
[1:15:45] Cressy Mauer: I mean, I feel like for people who can't make that, make it on a weekday, it's good that there
[1:15:52] Nick Lesher: is the push on the weekend, so yeah, I think they should have voting day on Veterans Day, yeah, I agree
[1:16:00] Cressy Mauer: Yes, no better way to honor veterans than to exercise your civic duty
[1:16:04] Hepli Miller: Today for her, look, now we are exactly on time, do we have, we don't have Karen with us for
[1:16:14] Cressy Mauer: town council updates no although I will say data centers will be going the data center it'll be a band they're proposing a band chain updating the zoning ordinance to define fine allow what you know uses are allowed and basically saying that data centers are not and it will exempt like server rooms and things like that things that we're we already have so I believe that is was before town council last week for first reading it's being referred to the planning board for a public hearing Which will happen in October, and should be back before the Town Council for a public hearing October 21st, and then the final second reading vote will be November. I do believe it's the schedule. Okay, wow, so.
[1:17:15] Hepli Miller: Is that the same schedule as lid?
[1:17:18] Cressy Mauer: No, different, sorry, no. Lib will not be before Council before 2007. Oh right, what did you say was happening November? Oh our the Climate Action Plan will have a workshop. Okay, thank you, I was like something is happening at the same time.
[1:17:35] Hepli Miller: We talked about tonight. Okay, thank you, sure, great, okay, and you're gonna include those dates in a minute? Yeah, so I don't absolutely, okay, great, Parks and Conservation landlords.
[1:17:53] Cressy Mauer: I do not have an update for that. Christine, do you have any updates about SLT that might one thing that I think it's been since then that they are recommending to Council that they're going to fund the Blueberry Preserve, so we'll see how that goes, or they're requesting, yes, for land bond funds, land bond funding for, oh and the Parks and Conservation landlord is recommending to Council, gotcha.
[1:18:27] Nick Lesher: It is, I don't remember the exact time, so I can't tell you what part of them.
[1:18:34] Cressy Mauer: It's on Blueberry Lane, which is why it would be called Blueberry Preserve. So hang on, it is western Scarborough, but might be off of Mitchell Hill Road somewhere. I can't remember. It's off of Burnham Road. That's a good question. I mean, it's certainly been spent out of, but it was a $100 bond. So I think that, you know, it's still going strong and should be for a few more years. And I think that depending on how grants work out with Scarborough Land Trust, Some of the money that was given to them may be returned to the funds. Yes. if the grants are successful. Oh, yes, actually, there's quite a backlog of funding that we have applied for that. We'll reimburse in the town land bond when it comes to these are like state federal grants. Yeah, who 'd have thought that there was a roadblock with federal funding? I can give a transportation excuse me Transportation Committee update. So first one is that Metro we've got transit in Scarborough starting started very exciting. Second one is that Maine DOT has started up the process public process for they're calling it the Portland West connector. So this is the new VORM connector process. There was an in-person public meeting yesterday in VORM where they presented kind of their four concepts. There is an online public meeting tomorrow talking about their four concepts. One I think is like do nothing. One is light. I don't know what that is. One is like a two lane solution. One is a 4 lane solution, and so kind of just providing information on concepts and asking the community. All communities involved to provide input on what their preferred solution would be, or what one they support at this point. Transportation committee is reviewing those and coming up with questions that they have, and hopefully we'll invite dot to a future meeting to kind of address some of those. I can send information about the online meeting if anyone is interested in there. Also, if you just Google Portland West main dot, it should pop up. They have a project page for it, but there is an online zoom meeting for that tomorrow. Our sustainability committee is working on reviewing the climate action plan and identifying the kind of priority actions that they want to address, and it will help kind of inform hopefully inform the town council's goal setting process in January. So we spent a lot of time at today's meeting going through the goals, strategies and actions, and the climate action plan. And then the climate action plan is available for review and comment and thank you to creighton for no thank you to abel for your participation i was just looking at you i'm not sure because thanks to abel and kathleen who participated in the advisory group for that process feel free to review it, share it with others who might be interested. I've already gotten a handful of comments. So please, any thoughts, ideas, we're not going to be able to really do substantive changes at this point, but definitely can incorporate, you know, your feedback as much as we're able. Love to hear from people who are, and know that people are at least looking at it. And I do appreciate the feedback that it's beautiful. I can really claim no credit for that. Our consulting team is amazing, but I mean, that helps a lot. They've been wonderful to work with, and like I said, we're going to continue working with them to do more kind of do a better job to tell our this the town story for all the work that the town is doing related to this and
[1:22:57] Nick Lesher: and other things too, so hard, yeah, wonderful.
[1:23:07] Cressy Mauer: I that's a good question. I haven't heard from Garbage to Gardens to know kind of what our the rate is. I do need to get that information though. Yeah, awesome. I know people have been asking for it for years and years and years, so I am super excited that it's available, and I do hope that people are taking advantage of it. I saw somebody in my
[1:23:29] Hepli Miller: neighborhood with a bucket, which I was surprised about. I was like, why don't you just have a
[1:23:33] Cressy Mauer: compost pile? But I mean, I have a compost pile, but I've never actually gotten compost out of it because I don't I just throw the stuff there. I'm not turning it. I'm not taking the air of it, but I'm not putting it in the trash either, so I'm feeding the squirrels. There you go. Raccoons
[1:23:49] Hepli Miller: more likely, yes, and all that good stuff. Yeah, we're great. Well, we're 10 minutes, not quite 10 minutes early, so that's exciting, a little bit of time. Anybody else have anything
[1:24:07] Karen Campbell: before we move to adjourn? My wife is pregnant and we're expecting our first child in November. So it may limit participate in this group. I want to, like, be present as long as it's, like, reasonable, but I'm just kind of putting it out there. It may not my involvement may not be your priorities.
[1:24:36] Cressy Mauer: That's understandable. Blow congratulations. We'll be excited for you if you miss the November meeting.
[1:24:48] Karen Campbell: I'll say congratulations, and it's a great reason, and I keep my monitor here, so I'm home right now because I am on 18 months duty, and same for Planning Board earlier this week, so
[1:24:57] Cressy Mauer: it is possible still, and congratulations. Thank you, thank you. I was gonna actually ask about whether we are still looking for new members and whether anybody is going to be coming off at the end of the year, but like how many like slots do we have open for other people that we should be, nobody is terming out. So nobody is going to be forced off. Let me see who is whose terms are technically up and we'll need to renew. New it looks like on the website that's where I was going Andy me Kate no we are all 2026. Okay so didn't that happen right so if you are planning to continue serving on the commission you'll get a you should get a letter from the clerk's office but you can preemptively go in you'll just need to fill out the volunteer application again and then we do have an alternate spot open so we are still looking for a member for this group we have you heard about
[1:26:08] Speaker C (unidentified): the tree board I haven't no I was going to say because we were waiting to be appointed by the
[1:26:14] Cressy Mauer: council so I don't know the appointments committee has met yet but you both submitted your applications I meant to as well yeah so it's so that's what I thought I thought
[1:26:27] Speaker C (unidentified): It's only one person applied. Well, that was as of July. Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So that was when I checked in July. Andrew and we three are it so far as I know.
[1:26:38] Cressy Mauer: Okay. So we need, we needed a total of seven. I think that they could probably get underway with five appointed members because that's kind of, those are the, regular members and then there's two alternates. So if you're recruiting continue recruiting but yeah I was talking with Autumn about it today she's like no I think we only have we still only have one I was like I know we at least have three so good we should have at least four now I feel like there might be one other person that I whose name I didn't recognize let me just look at my emails you'll find that you see us just let us know if we need to like reset or something you shouldn't it's just I think they haven't [Nick Lesher: Yeah] There's another so as of on August 20th the clerk let me know that there were three people both of you and another woman named Deborah Words and then so then there's Andrew and there's you so it looks like we're maybe it's fine we're well on our way we've got five we still need two but we've got five we just need the appointments committee to meet and officially
[1:27:44] Speaker C (unidentified): Officially okay so it's like I falls in there right which is fine although so here's a question what do we do will we have a staff liaison and it's and it'll be Autumn it'll be Autumn okay
[1:28:02] Cressy Mauer: Most likely at least initially I think eventually it the thought was that it would move to either Public Works or Community Services because they are the ones that are going to be most likely taking care of the trees in the public right-of-way but at least to get things going mm-hmm I think Autumn will be the point person okay
[1:28:23] Speaker C (unidentified): Those eager to get started, you don't want to create more work for people who already overwork, but it's our mission, no board except
[1:28:37] Hepli Miller: Anything else there are motions, great, everyone motions to