were charlie baker on the executive director of the china county regional planning commission and glad you could join us tonight we're going to go through all exercises over here will love pick up after me and give you a little more detail about the exercise we want to go through i'm just doing a little bit of the introduction about what the ecos project is eco stands for environment community opportunity and sustainability and we started it just about a year ago pulling together a partnership of all kinds of organizations including all the municipalities and chynna county to really focus on pulling together our priorities for making the county better in the future the federal government came together with a partnership of the housing department the transportation department and the e p a and what they call the partnership for sustainable communities basically the three big federal agencies that focus on places you know housing transportation and the environment and so they had some competitive dollars that they made available we applied we won here you are so thank you and we've been really walking through a five step process one of our pitches to the feds was we've really done a lot of planning in vermont and in the county in particular so we don't need to redo a plan from scratch but when we looked at it there were i think at the time thought about forty planning documents we really look over there about sixty planning documents state agencies municipalities other organizations that kind of apply year so we're trying to kind of synthesize all that that was phase one we looked at the plans and pulled out the coal statements and then we looked at twenty five hundred coal statements scout it's down to about forty a lot of overlap and as you can imagine and then the second phase was we also wanted to make sure that our priorities as a community is a broad community really reflected real data and were based on real data in our communities over the winter we focused on analysis in the areas of housing transportation land use energy natural resources education and health and of course there are a lot of others subtopics we could have gotten into but those were the big topics we focused on  then from that we started to prepare indicators so that we could actually track our progress against those goals the indicators we finished a month or so ago at this stage as far as we could take them and now we're kind of stage of ok that's that's good that we have a sense of our goals of what's in all those plans in our shared goals we have a sense of the data that should drive decisions now let's get down to the what to do and so that's really the exercise we'll go through tonight and i can show you a video just to give you a little introduction and make you think a little bit more about these issues more when we feel our conversation today is really going to be in the context of that growth so fifty thousand more people is an awful lot so what we're going to do is we're going to work in small groups for in phases for exploring different ideas and then we're going to report out together and matt matt hayward from image farm is going to illustrate your ideas as we go along so by the end of the evening you'll have a visual representation of what is important and what you feel should be acted on and then to work on them some more and will be part of the permanent document for this whole process and as charlie mentioned at the end of the at the end of the day we want to know what's important to you to make sure we preserve make sure we act on make sure we steer in the right direction because there are many many priorities so we want to hear what your priorities are so this is my little move on to also there's lots of things we want you to touch on and the  first the first for the first ten minutes or so we'd like you to brainstorm and discuss amongst yourselves and having a secretary to take notes is great what is it that you love about living here what is it about what is it that you really appreciate that makes you want to stay here and make a contribution like you are today and along the left side of the sheet are just areas to think about you don't have to fill them all in if you don't want to but there are things to get your job your ideas towards what's important and then the next step when we're done reporting on is what what what needs to be improved and if you're having a discussion where you're talking about something well this is good but it also needs to be improved you can make notes of that now you don't have to save it for later you can  know well richmond huntington is in the county so it's why you choose to live here why you choose what is it here that work is working for you also important right so richmond is only rich and because it's so far away from birth to so invite you to start and this year be rattling that's a little shaker it just means maybe you could move on to another subject area because we want to try and have this much coverage of tough things possible you want to look like in general love first but if something comes up in that discussion that you need to make a note of improvements you can definitely do that  we don't necessarily have to read it as a list if there are things you want to you know you can say a few sentences or help us understand the shorthand you wrote down on the list but somebody want a little bit more about that there's a lot more i want you to talk a lot more about the idea that richmond it is a village surrounded by farmland role farmland can you links perhaps between education and you you mentioned access to here legislators or the government or getting involved drugs or anything in there that you'd like to help us understand better of governors and heads of departments i mean how how much do you feel do you feel people access at every level if you wanted the great stuff so well mats catching up on your great ideas about what what you really love about here we're going to have you around to that next column called what needs improvement and in some cases some of the things you like touched off ideas that might be new areas but now the time to focus your attention a little bit about what needs to change what needs some work to make it even from down the road of a neighbor you know getting being able to make those connections to our food into the products into the people around us to think is very important right and i think that the local character miles really looks right one thing that's i'm sure you could go on and on and on so there are the huge cost of maintaining highways gasoline costs emissions pollution and polos recreation is something that could cure that one of the most wasteful most destructive things that americans do is positions i was very lucky to be able to find that true love that i am area of interest a lot of my friends weren't i just graduated last year and many of my friends had to leave many of them from odgers had to leave to go out of state find something right i was lucky enough to find something in the  with like likely bike lanes or biking trails or better access to walking trails within the community i think be very important as far as working lands i think we need better incentives for a local for street local farming being able to make it profitable for these for dairy farmers throughout the county to be able to thrive and to be able to actually make money in the struggling  election plane that we've been seeing for the past couple of years and it was of the main points excellent thank you ok but you folks so we're i want to make sure we get to the next range of post secondary education so there but isn't that good academic college they can get training in jobs that are important and see better access to green energy from low income more affordable housing need to have we also are talking about sidewalks and by the way facilities to support commuter bicyclists like a place to take a shower or store a bike  good so now the opportunity is to say ok of all the things that you've talked about that made him that you love need improvement what should be done first what should we actually do and there's room on the other side too to write this or you can just can't make notes or circle things that you've already noted on this side and we want you to think about it in terms of who might actually do implement these changes do you make these improvements is it an individual who should take the initiative and be responsible for making these changes is it employers or businesses that will move this initiative forward or is it the government and we understand that you are you pay the government so it's you as individuals but organizationally they make the government buy for a certain initiative forward like a tax incentive or something like that so for the next few minutes to sort of summarize what you've been thinking about in the past hour or so what should be done and and think in terms of those priorities because i'm going to ask  story so i hope this last phase of the conversation took you out of working and focus your energy a little bit more on what can be improved what can be done and what should be done so we'd love to hear some of your thoughts about that and the stickers when we've gone through explaining what everybody is i do years ideas are the stickers are for you there are three and i for individual b for business and g for government and we're going to ask you to take those stickers and go put them on the wall on your area of prioritization of what individuals businesses and governments should should do so if there's something a big area that we missed that you'd like to see up there this section would be a good time to let us know because if you talk about  improvement and it's not up there at the end and you won't have anything to stick around so would you all like to start telling us what we should do first i treated different  if we had anything else i think those were her top three trying to perhaps large businesses big box stores and other types of very large businesses are trying to come in from out of state and trying to change you know and alter  and take take away full small businesses that outcompete and compete so i think it's i think it's very important that we can be able to catch apples from california and be able to give tax breaks to apple farmers here in vermont and be able to make it more economical more incentive for for people to be able to afford the products and i think if we can be able to sway people into you know that direction to feel ma the public works project run by the government which would give a lot of people simple labor jobs that you entry level positions that any pretty much anyone unless they're physically able to do room you know people could produce energy of the road property and then sell back to the grid so if there were something set up with you know power companies where they would offer that they would offer you know to pay people for producing to helping us do that so for the year last activity is to take those stickers the individual the business and the government sticker and to find something on the wall you think individual should do and things that or the thing the first thing you think businesses should do the same for government what's the first thing you think government should pay attention to as free advance in our planning just fabulous so this is the richmond and the richmond near all that came out of our meeting today and we'll just give you a little tour of what some of the concerns were some of the things people love about living here as well as some of the things that could use some improvement and new ideas to move forward there is a lot of discussion around transportation and jobs and housing and the link between where people live and where people work and how they get their transportation came up in several different ways the suggestion of rail came up but also more bike pedestrian access and fluidity in town as well as connecting to other towns with rail in particular as well as buses yes little stickers we asked people to prioritize what they thought should be done by and in first and the blue is government the orange is businesses and the purple is individuals so what are the things that individuals should be responsible for and take and initiate what are things that businesses should take responsibility for and initiate and what are the things that government should take responsibility for and initiate having a village a central village with many of the amenities that people need without having to leave town to get them with rural recreation and community all around it so a real sense of a place with richmond and the value of community and the individuals that live here and sense of wanting to maintain that talk about energy stuff i was just energy there to her energy efficiency of homes here bunch of people put stickers there this idea is just trying to get more local skilled individuals skilled renewable energy through baby tax credits or other incentives and the idea of a homeowner having renewable energy source feeding it to the grid getting paid back for their surplus energy just being able to to make the investment in renewable energy and the individual level a couple people thought a local pharmacy would be great but not a big  chain just a locally owned pharmacy would be a great addition to the to the village here and that that was the initiative of the business to do that and that good doctors existed already in the area talk about the bus not actually stopping in richmond and then it's hard to get out to a park in particular if you don't have a car private schools but also recognizing that there's high cost secondary education private education but also public schools and you know too having a role in protecting protecting the lands protecting helping farmers not allow their runoff to the lakes and streams perhaps by planting buffer zones or some other mediation to protect our so that we can continue having a working landscape of both the forests the farmlands