Speakers labeled via automated voice-based diarization + AI name-matching against the city's official roster. Automated transcription can still mis-hear a name during fast speech (e.g. a rapid roll-call vote) -- clear near-misses are auto-corrected, but this is not manually verified line-by-line. Treat names as a strong best guess, not an official record.
[0:09] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): This first meeting of the Comprehensive Plan Implementation Committee, I don't know if we're going to formally change our name or not.
[0:16] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): We already have. We were the CPIC for years, but that changed about two or three years ago. So we've been the CPC since anticipating drafting and now implementing. So you wear both hats. Very good.
[0:31] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): So calling this meeting on September 30th to order. Order. We'll start with attendance. So is Marty online yet? Not yet? Still not online. Bob Foster? Here. I know Kathleen wasn't going to be able to make it. Peter Stanton? Here. Ann Jordan? Here. Jennifer Kinney? Here. Mike Hulsey was not going to be able to make it. David Cohen? Here. And welcome David. thank you Pedro Vasquez no I know Jeff wasn't able to make it tonight councillor West yes and councillor Tipton yes and I'm present so I think that covers everyone I believe between the folks who are here and people online line we do great yeah I was wondering about that late this afternoon it's the emails about not being able to make it we're coming in I crossed my mind for just a second behind I think we're good first order of business will be to approve the minutes from our last meeting of March 25th. Okay, do I see a second? Seconded. Okay, since we have folks here and online, we'll have to do this as a roll call vote. So Bob? Yes. Peter? Yes. Ann? Yes. Jennifer? Yes. David? You're okay. And I vote yes. So minutes are approved. The next order of business is elections for the coming year. Since we anticipate that this is our last meeting before the end of the year, and we have to have elections for new leadership positions for the coming year, we need to do that tonight. So floor is open for nomination.
[2:55] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): I think we're actually one short without Marty on votes yet, because I was just looking it up to make sure we're on. But we need seven. We've only had six without Marty. Ah. Right? Okay. Because our two council reps are not voting. So actually, we won't be able to hold that vote, but we can move the minutes to the next one, and then maybe if Marty shows up, we can come back to the Senate. Fair enough.
[3:27] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): And while we're doing that, and before we move on, just to mention that we do, there's an open seat for district three, but there is someone who Counselor Pride is intending to put forward to the council on the October 13th meeting, and someone who we also hope will be joining as advisory member, but that's not, that's not finalized yet, so hopefully we'll have some new members for our next meeting. So we'll put that aside. Just everyone should have noted that the South Portland 2040 website is going to be retired by the end of the year. The comp plan is available now on the city's website, so you can link to it directly through the agenda here, but in future, if you want to go, the under planning department and under approved plans is where you'll be able to find it. And then there's a question of the youth representative seat, so I don't know if we want to table that discussion since we don't, we can't actually vote on it, but folks feel about that. What's the question, whether we want to continue to have a youth representative and how to go about recruiting one, so
[5:13] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): right now the committee said that they do want to have the youth. You could talk amongst yourselves about recruitment. I don't know if it needs a vote, just because I think the last discussion we had was that people were gonna sort of check with their friends and family and others that they know that might be, you know, in that youth category, and, you know, basically try to draw up support, but I don't know if there's more strategies or ideas that you might have about that. Yeah.
[5:43] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): What age range are we talking about?
[5:46] Speaker C (unidentified): In high school, early college?
[5:49] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): Late high school through college, I think.
[5:53] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): They have to be 18 in order to qualify to serve.
[6:04] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): Any thoughts? We've been in contact with anyone from local high schools,
[6:14] Speaker C (unidentified): guidance counselors who might have ideas about motivated students, I
[6:21] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): have not, and I'm not sure, I'm not aware that anyone has. I'm happy to do that. I'm happy to make that outreach, so let's
[6:30] Speaker D (unidentified): see. Yes, do we do anything in addition to that last
[6:33] Speaker E (unidentified): time? It's trying to remember what the process was, but that's
[6:44] Speaker D (unidentified): I guess my question is, can we revisit what we did last time and try and redo it? Okay.
[6:50] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): I will look back in the minutes to see what we did, see if I can figure out what we did, and I'm happy to duplicate that.
[7:00] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): I think there's maybe only one or two, maybe three committees that formally put on or accepted the position of youth rep. Out, so it's not like we're, you know, looking for a ton of kids, and we can reach out to our communications director Shara to post on social media and that kind of thing. But yeah, putting it in places like SMCC would be great, and just to confirm Marty's with us now, so if we wanted to revisit the minutes vote and the elections, you're free to. On that, terrific. Welcome, Marty.
[7:33] Speaker C (unidentified): Thank you.
[7:38] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): So let's, let's go back to the minutes. With again, we'll, I think we have a, we had a motion and a second, so we'll go to a vote. Marty? I approve. Okay. Bob? Yes. Peter? Yes. Anne? Yes. Jennifer? Yes. David, you were going to abstain. And I will vote yes. And that motion passes. Motion passes. And so now elections. So we have to appoint for the three committee positions, chair, vice chair, and secretary. We start with chair. We have any nominations? [Speaker C (unidentified): I second. Second.] I don't know how this is supposed. Do I, since I'm, I'm being nominated, do I oversee the
[8:52] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): vote for this? Yeah, you oversee the vote, and then it's up to you whether you want to abstain, but
[8:57] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): okay, you can vote. So we have a nomination in a second. Marty? Oh, yes, sorry, you had to think for a second. That's a, Bob? Yes. No, I thought I was, I thought it's already said yes, sorry. Yes. Ann? Yes. Jennifer? Yes. David? Yes. And I will abstain. That passes. And do we have any nominations for vice chair? I would like to nominate Marty if she's willing to continue to serve in that role. Second.
[9:53] Speaker C (unidentified): All right, I am, I think
[9:58] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): we had a second for me, we
[10:00] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): have a second for man, and so to vote. Marty? Yes. Okay. Bob? Yes. Peter? Yes. Ann? Yes. Jennifer? Yes. David? Yes. And I will also vote yes. Okay, and so that passes. So we have a chair, vice chair. Now I will now vote for secretary. Bob, are you willing to continue in that role? Okay. I'll nominate Bob to serve in the role of secretary. Do I have a second? Peter? Second. Yes. Okay, so we'll vote. Marty? Yes. Bob? Peter? Yes. Ann? Yes. Jennifer? Yes. David? Yes. And I will vote yes. That business being taken care of, we're gonna move on now to the committee business for this evening, which is to discuss the role of the committee moving forward and schedule. There is
[11:28] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): Something well just to mention about the website, it's in the agenda. We have a couple people in the audience, but we did for the whole time of our conference, it's a plan writing process, have a comp plan website. We've now migrated that to our city website, so it's just one stop shop for, I didn't mention that. Oh you did, yeah, I'm sorry. That's okay.
[11:45] Speaker E (unidentified): I apologize, okay, can I ask one quick question though? Will you be able to circulate to the committee members a direct link to the posted plan that is on the city website? Because that could be useful for us to circulate. Yes, we can do that, thanks so.
[12:15] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): They said we want to discuss the role of the committee moving forward and the schedule related.
[12:22] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): To that and I think Milan you will, we're gonna present. Yes, so we have a short presentation to walk you through. We've adopted the comp plan, we now have the job over the next 15 years or so to implement it, but we also have within the first two years and kind of a mandate or requirement with the state to make sure that our zoning lines up with the comp plan. So we're gonna be talking about that two-year period primarily, but also touch on the longer time frame, and then there's a conversation in that. About the frequency of cpc meetings and we'll, we'll get to that discussion as well. So keep an eye on just hearing the information, you know how often you intend or you expect to meet or want to participate. We obviously have recommended path forward, we'll be looking for the committee to confirm that you're comfortable with that. So I'm going to put up a few slides just so we can flow through, it's showing here, okay. We're primarily looking for guidance from the committee to staff on implementing the. Comprehensive plan, the council has already delegated to the comprehensive planning committee the role of implementing the plan. So your role tonight is figuring out how we're going to do that. We are obviously making a suggestion to you, but I did want to say you're primarily, you know, guiding staff in this rollout, but we do want to keep the counselors involved. We obviously have two council representatives here that will also carry the message forward, but if we can agree on the two-year rollout for. The implementation just that early two-year requirement tonight then we'd be looking for the next available council meeting to report what that two-year plan is going to be to the city council. So this will eventually be communicated to the city council if they also have you know thoughts or they want to peel off and have a more council oriented conversation and guide us further. It'll be up to the council to decide to do that or not, but really your guidance is to us. We're going to assume we're rolling with that guidance unless council decides to intervene and we're going to keep them in the communication as well. That'll be the next report out. So just understand this is wrapping in the rest of council formally will happen and then I said committee meeting schedule and then we do also have the annual report and that's tied to your meeting schedule. So if you decide that you want to meet in December which you'll see in a second we're not we're not requiring or asking that you meet but if you decide you want to meet we'll have December as an opportunity to talk about the annual report in which case let's do that then. But if you are comfortable with what we're proposing and you're not intending to meet in December then we should have the annual report conversation tonight. So let's cross that bridge when we get there but just keep that in mind. Okay you have a memo in your packets that describes what this schedule is based on. As I said, the state issues kind of rulemaking guidance when statutes are adopted. Statute that gave us the ability to create comprehensive plans was what guided us developing the plan. But then the rulemaking from the state tells us more detail about that statute. And in that case, they're talking about a two-year window where communities pass a comprehensive plan, and then they have two years to make sure that the actual laws of the city for land use purposes zoning align with that comprehensive plan and we happen to be in a position where this new comprehensive plan we've adopted has made some pretty important changes to what we want to see in some areas of town and the zoning today is not in line with the comprehensive plans policy so there's Definitely some housekeeping that we have to do, and we have two years to do it, and we need to game plan, so that's what we're tackling. Zoning is a big thing. It tackles many topics. The state requirement is primarily on, like, the core of what zoning is, and that is a land use ordinance on how people can use and develop land. And in the memo we just talked about what that really means. Zoning can tackle any number of things that go beyond but are related to land use. What's obligated for us is that we get our zoning district boundaries mapped out, how we need to map them out, and then each zoning district that we define, what we call the space and bulk standards, setbacks from property lines, building heights, how much of the land can you cover with buildings, how much of the land can you cover with impervious hard surfaces. Those are core space and bulk metrics every zoning district has to touch on and that has to be aligned if the comprehensive plan tells us something specific on that many if not most communities don't get into specifics about setbacks and height and whatnot in their comprehensive plans it's too in the details but in certain cases as you know we've needed to do that because it's been important to the community to talk about height 's primarily the one but we've also touched on density if you remember there's some areas where we really wanted housing, we set minimum densities, so we do actually in the comprehensive plan dip into some high detail stuff, and we will have to make some updates to make sure that the space and bulk conforms with that. If the plan has said that land uses is the basics, and that is can you put a retail store here and can you put it over here, can you do industry here, can you do residential here, our comp plan mapped all that out, so that we have to touch on. And then there's certain development standards as well. Our comprehensive plan had some explicit requirements around things like how much open space should be provided, sometimes where that open space should be provided, like access to the shore we've been talking a lot about. And so there's some, again, where the plan goes into specifics, that should be reflected in zoning within this two-year period. Everything else that still may be a zoning item can come later. We have policies about supporting affordable housing. We have policies about incentivizing development. We have policies about supporting economic development and creating ways to streamline the development review process. That can express itself in zoning, but it's not something that has to be done within the first two years. years. So what we're going to be looking for is this, let's get the core basics done and then spend the next, after the two years, filling in all this extra and further policy guidance that we've received. It's not always going to be easy to draw a line though, because if we say, for instance, we want economic development in some area, but in Pleasantdale, for instance, we were trying to be sensitive to the residential neighborhood in there and we talked about buffers it to support economic development we could just open up space and bulk standards and say you can do a ton in this part of town but then we are gonna butt up against that standard about buffering so we're gonna have to pay attention to those policies and see how they work together that'll be the job of staff eventually coming to the committee to making sure that we're getting core pieces in a good example might be the RC zoning district which we developed while we were doing the comprehensive plan. The goal was to support housing there, and we could have just said, well, okay, density is going to be doubled. But looking at that area, in order to get density to be higher, we need to pay attention to some critical congestion and traffic safety issues that were there, and we had to fold in some development standards to do that well. So there's going to be some of those minimum standards that have to come into.
[20:28] Speaker D (unidentified): Would you remind us where the RC district is?
[20:31] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): Yes. It's on Outer Broadway. The intersection is colloquially known as Crockett's Corner right at Broadway and Western before you go under the bridge to get over to the mid-mall area. So right at that intersection and then moving towards Scarborough on Broadway, there's a stretch of houses. It was a corridor zoning district that we were interested in giving more allowance to add housing. And it wasn't just a simple again increase the density and allow the housing. It was let's do this thoughtfully. So again the other policies will be looked at in more detail. So here's an example, here's a simple cut sheet, Pleasant Dales key land use policy area. We took the time in the comp plan effort to make this easy for us, or as easy as we could, and we also had the big heavy debates, right. So we're hoping that now through zoning we're lifting the information off this page and relying on it that it is the thing we want to do, but we have the convenience because this committee took the time with us to say things like in Pleasant Dale we actually don't have too specific of a concern about density and height. Well we're gonna do that through zoning. We don't need to set a you know sort of minimum floor or minimum height in there, so we're going to do that through zoning. That tells us it's not hypersensitive, but we have to be mindful of the context. We know we wanted to have certain land uses allowed in that area, so we'll be looking for those land uses and anything that's complementary to those land uses. And then we have, we always structured it right, as zoning specific strategies, these have to express themselves in zoning, and then other kinds of strategies that may or may not be zoning. And so we're primarily in the first two years looking at these very obvious zoning items and try to develop the zoning districts and the standards that go along with those. The second thing, and this actually kind of pulls from citywide policy, is we had policy from the get-go of saying some of our bigger roads through the city actually should do a little bit more, like they always historically did. The roads were the crossroads, the intersections, you'd see your local pharmacy, you see your hardware store, you see a bigger building, maybe it's four units instead of mostly single families, that's common for corridors. And we've now adopted a policy that says whatever we're going to do around a neighborhood, a corridor that might be coming through that neighborhood can get a little bit more flexibility and do a little bit more. So we're going to be also looking at corridor overlay zoning in this two years to allow those corridors to be the thing that the comp plan asked them to be. This is a map of those corridors that within the first two years, it makes sense for us to tackle. These are mapped not to say we're not gonna do anything with the other corridors, but what we're mapping here is corridors that are not in key land use policy areas where in doing the zoning for that area, it's going to address the corridor. So for example, you notice the main mall area is noticeably doesn't have a corridor and it's because we have this giant key land use policy area that wants to lift up the whole mall and the density allowances are going to be quite high in that whole area and the corridors are going to be the same as the interiors that's just the unique to that area but for example in fairy village we used this was one of the things we I think in the first days of comprehensive planning we talked about how Sawyer Road has more variety it has a four-unit building it has a little coffee shop it has the Rio marine industrial building on it 's always had more going on than the single-family neighborhoods around that corridor could be one within this k-lupa where it's got a little bit more allowance or some more flexibility and so that's what this is trying to map the color coding you'll it'll make sense in a moment when we get through later slides corresponds to the stage in the two-year process where we would present certain of these corridors so we're going to be looking at corridors and asking okay are we ready do we do we want to have everything going on around it what's going on and then the corridor doing a little more then the final thing is we do have some city-wide policies that speak directly to zoning one we've already done is the coastal resilience overlay zone we just brought that package to council it was approved it actually goes into effect in five days and that's the first early implementation of the city-wide policy to deal with sea level rise we also at the same time brought a pretty significant housing package which does a number of our housing city-wide policy goals so there are going to be city-wide policies and here's a few examples that we talk about where in some cases we talk about preserving open spaces or looking at traffic and managing traffic and managing or updating our parking standards we talk about density bonusing specifically these are All classic zoning items, and so if those exist, we're going to pull those out within this two-year process. Here's a list, we don't have to linger on it, but and can turn back to it, just additional examples of citywide policies that are clearly just zoning. They're not funding strategies or TIF plans or anything else, it's just it has to express itself through its own standard. Okay, our schedule, which you'll see in I think it's the following slide, is taking the two year period and breaking it up into six month chunks so that we can develop an ordinance, review it with you, present it to the planning board and the city council. All zoning ordinances have to go to planning board and then two readings by city council. To make time for that schedule, we're giving us six month chunks, so we're not going to spend two years working on something and then you have to review everything. We're going to try to make it a little more digestible and more frequent visits. It also lets the community engage and also for people to just wrap their head around all the topics that we're discussing, and what we're going to try to do is at the time that we present an ordinance, so the first six month cycle will come with a presentation of an ordinance, and it will also come with a workshop to talk about the next six months set of ordinances and just the topics in there that might be a little more complex or you might need a little bit of guidance to see if the city council wants to weigh in and set any parameters so there's going to be a here's the ordinance for review and then also here's a you know an opportunity for us to get into the next set. So this is what that kind of sequence looks like. These are fuzzy dates and we've had to be that way just because we've got to meander a variety of things, the springtime the springtime cycles have to compete with the city's budget process which consumes a lot of the council's agenda, so you could think about these as probably an April May timeframe for spring and then in fall looking at probably before elections so that we you know we have a consistent council, so we're probably looking around the October timeframe for those ones, and then in the respective years in the memo we talk about the specific areas we'll tackle. We're going to see a map in a second. So there's the certain K-Lupas are grouped into each one of these six month cycles. There's going to be some standards, citywide standards that we'll try to tackle as well. And the corridors are going to slot into this schedule as well. We're trying to triangulate a few different things. And I think I said this in the memo that, you know, we could just go left to right east to west north to south and kind of move through but that doesn't quite make sense because we know being in the office that there's certain areas where people are calling us people have been looking at properties the city clearly has a very different desire for an area than what's currently allowed there so all of these things contribute to some areas having more need for getting our new zoning in place than other areas that might be quieter. A good example is the Nutter Hill Tank Farm. We've obviously talked about it a lot. The community's very interested in that area. We've been engaged with this whole process of maybe it has a new buyer, maybe it'll be redeveloped. There's a community discussion about it. You know, what's the vision for the area? But so far as we know, and we keep reaching out on this, there is no indication that any sale has happened. So having that dialed in the first six months doesn't sound like it's as urgent. If we learn something new, obviously we can move things around in this schedule, but where we identified that an area is going to be relatively calm, its current zoning is okay, it's not going to be disappointing to see the current zoning used in development, we've allowed those to be a little bit later, but where we see areas where the community really wants to see change happen and people are interested in making that change, then we want to try and prioritize those. We've then balanced that with just workload okay so when we put places when we put different zoning initiatives into this four cycle process which ones have room to take up some easy edits you know one of our policies for the bug light K lupa is let's preserve pub bug light there's not a lot of zoning work we have to do in order to do that because it's quite well protected as it is but there's a couple of tweaks it's going to take a few sentences that's an easy one for us to do and bring to Council, so it's slotted in, so it may seem like a mishmash, but it's trying to balance all these different both capacity and urgency. Here's the just an example calendar. This isn't actually real dates on a calendar for February, March, April 27 or 28. It's just in your brains, think about this sort of three month schedule. We're going to develop the ordinance, as I said, probably around two to three months to develop it, and then when we get to the process of actually bringing it forward, this is what that might look like. And early in sort of the first of the last three months in that six month period would be a conversation with the CPC to present to you all where we're landing with the draft ordinance. Here's what we're doing with the height standard in the Mill Creek zone based on what the comp plan says and the rest of bit. It'll be a pretty hefty package. The count, the CPC will get the opportunity to review it in one meeting. We then have to schedule the planning board public hearing, which requires a legal ad that has to be published two weeks prior to the meeting, so almost three weeks before the actual hearing of the planning board. We can't really be doing anything because the ordinance has to be fully dialed in and available if anyone wants to read it. But that means with the CPC we would focus one meeting on reviewing that ordinance, and we have the following month or two to three weeks later an opportunity if you like for us to sit and have a workshop discussion for the next ordinance package that we're going to be working on, so that you can give us guidance, early guidance, and then four months will go by and then we'll be back to what this February meeting would be, which is you guys reviewing the next ordinance package. When you have your workshop, the planning board can hold its public hearing on the ordinance you reviewed formally the month prior, and then, depending on what the planning board's guidance is, it could be ready for Council's two readings the following month. So this is kind of like what that three-month sequence would look like for us to have an ordinance and have it go through your vetting and the formal review process. Process. This map, these slides we can turn back to. This is just so you all can have a visual of the future land use map with the key land use policy areas located, and then what the implementation schedule is that we've drafted that's in your memo. So I'm just going to want to dive into that schedule a little bit. So our first six month period would be sometime again in spring 2027, and that would be to bring forward these or these areas, these key land use policy areas in blue. Some of these are quite easy, straightforward, you know, the airport is not really revolutionizing zoning over there, but there are a couple things to pick up. The forest city cemetery is mostly a conservation district, pretty easy. Some of the dynamic ones that we, why we wanted to put them in early, would be things like Mill Creek, downtown, where we have development interest, and we have particularly these areas on the shoulders of the downtown Peninsula along Broadway. These are areas where the current zoning is quite mismatched from what the Mill Creek guidance is in the plan. Our Sable Oaks area, we have, I feel like we have some urgency on that one because the committee was very clear and our policies are very clear that we don't want that to be a missed opportunity and end up as low density residential. We want to see with maximized development out there and really send that signal out, and so getting that zoning dialed in would be important. There's also some real restrictions on housing out there that the current comp plan doesn't support. You see this hatching over the eastern waterfront, K loop is 21 and 22. The hatching is just to represent that this is going to be tackled in to two stages. The first stage, which we think we can do within spring 2027, is to just get out of the shipyard zoning district certain land use allowances that we know we don't want to continue supporting out there, particularly petroleum storage. That's an easy one, I think everyone in the community is on board with that. It doesn't mean the current storage tanks have to go, rather than non-conforming, but that's very clearly a policy, and so that kind of early cleanup work we think we can do on the eastern waterfront. I think a lot of people will be happy to see that happen early, but then some of the more difficult ones like those related to housing and the density pieces that are going to need more time, possibly more community engagement, we're going to push that to the second half and give us time to do that. The second stage in the fall of 27 looks at the green key lupus that are flagged in here, and then starts to introduce the first corridor overlay that covers most of Broadway west of the downtown, not going out to the eastern waterfront area, but west of the downtown, looking at the corridor zoning there, and then on The outskirts of Cottage heading over to the Cape Line. We already have direction to do a zoning update in that area, but it's sort of a light version of what the comp plan actually asks for, and so we're gonna fill that in and round it out by fall 2027. There is some important protections that we want to bring in for the Pleasantdale neighborhood, which is the primary reason the industrial area over here is flagged in, because again I mentioned earlier the buffers for the residential neighborhoods are pretty important, but it's also not, those are not lands where we see the industrial users wanting to double down and go further, so we can, we feel it's okay, and there's not a lot of risk if we move that to fall instead of the spring, the second or the six, you need a third cycle would be spring 2028, and by then we think it's possible we could actually know that there is a sale of the inland tank farm, and the new developer is going to need guidance from the community on what the zoning is comfortable with, why we again push this to spring 2028 is we currently don't know that a sale has been finalized, we do know that there is still interest and it may be that there is a preferred buyer, but we also know as far as I'm aware that the Portland pipeline or Suncor are a Sunoco are, excuse me, Suncor is aware that they have to do the remediation work on the property before they transfer the property, and so that's going to take some time, and so even if tomorrow there was suddenly an announcement that a sale, purchase and sale agreement has been penned, we know that there's going to be a lag before any kind of development proposals are going to come in, and so again if we learn something new and this becomes urgent, obviously we can pivot, but that's why this is pushed out, and I know there's been a lot of community conversation about it, but I want to explain that one a little bit more, the public safety bond is going out in November, but the broader conversation about civic facilities is going to continue, we kind of wanted to see or let that sort of play itself out, and again that's why the Hamlin Square is pushed out to spring of 2028, because hopefully by then we will know what's happening with the city facilities over at Hamlin, and we can kind of fold that into the conversation and then the last grouping is in the fall of 2028 and that is main mall rigby yard and the ligonia areas ligonia industrial area and rigby yard are economic development opportunity areas but they're also quite densely developed and the current zoning is pretty aligned with what those current property owners and potential infill developers would want to do so it's pretty permissive they're not really restricted with what's there but there's a little bit of work to do so that's why they don't have urgency and they're pushed further out and then main mall this was seems counterintuitive because everyone is really keen for the main mall to be developed and to see the investment happen we've just approved a TIF to help support the development of the main mall. The reason why this is further out is because we've gotten council support for a main mall master plan and we're about to issue the request for proposals on that to get a consultant on board to help figure out the infrastructure barriers and any of the other barriers to investment out there and we'd like to see that completed so that we can build the zoning off what we learn in that process. And that's an 18 month process, which jives with this fall 2028. We can come in with zoning development standards, possibly even other complimentary things that might come out of that master planning effort. Even having said that, though, the main mall zone that's there today, the CCR zone in the housing package, the council just approved and goes into effect in five days address the housing issue in the mall area so we've already allowed housing at the mall which is a big missing piece between current zoning and the comprehensive plan so it's not that we're not doing anything at the mall but doing all the little bit more detailed zoning work can wait for that master plan the mall can now be a host for residential and it wasn't like that before. So I think that gives us the ability to push it to 2028. And then there's some corridors that get folded in the 2028 period. So Evans, because it would learn from what we decide in the spring of 28 for the inland tank farm. The remainder of Broadway, which is more residential oriented and not as dynamic as some of the other portions of Broadway. The Lincoln area because it's tied to those industrial areas and what we want to zone out there. And then at that point, we'd be looking at the remainder of the eastern waterfront shipyard. And obviously that has its connection to Broadway and what we want to say on Broadway. There's a very explicit policy about how much road usage on Broadway can happen because of the developments out on the eastern waterfront, for instance. And then Evans, excuse me, Prebble is also a reasonably prominent artery in that neighborhood. And not a ton of development opportunity out there, but there's some discussions to be had. So that's why that's been pushed out to the fall 28. So that's roughly speaking why we've designed it out. I don't really want to go into more detail, and but I'm happy to answer questions and see, you know, how you might want to move things around if there are preferences around that. We do have some dates to filter in here. Probably the council members are going to be the ones most keen about these dates, or most needing to attach themselves to these dates, because this is when the designers would come forward. So you maybe check your calendars, but please understand these are these are fuzzy and we've got to see how it goes as we're bringing it forward we do have some workshops that we're hoping to hold with the council as i said bring an ordinance forward and then do a workshop on it 's likely we'll bring the ordinance for reading one do reading number two on the ordinance and do the workshop combined with reading number two because usually we would have identified the issues already at reading one and reading two is a little bit smoother. There are a couple of other things that we'd like to slot in between and keep an eye on, sort of a winter 27, 28 period of community engagement, and that would be primarily to get into the Nutter Hill tank farm and build off of what the community's already done for community engagement. That was more visionary work, and now we have a little bit more of a meaty conversation about how zoning will try to express that community vision. And then in the winter of 28, 29, nine community engagement Building up on any of the other topics that may have warranted it, possibly even like the eastern waterfront. We may do a little bit more than just staff working and then eventually coming to the CPC. We may be out in the field a little bit more just because obviously that's a hot area, hot topic area on the schedule for the CPC. We're, we're assuming that we can keep rolling with how we've been doing. Most of the CPC membership is quite similar from before, but it's good for us to just check in on people's schedules and is the 6 p.m. on Wednesday still working? That's, that's still our assumption. So when we reach out on all right, the ordinance is getting ready and finalized, here are the Wednesdays at 6 p.m. that are available, that's what you'd hear from us unless you're wanting to guide us otherwise. And again, you would see us twice at least before we are presenting ordinances of the council, one for the ordinance reading and second time to look at the next batch of ordinances in a workshop format. It's possible that as I keep saying, if we learn something new, we may get interim ordinances in the six-month schedule. It's just we need to be responsive to the council into the community if something comes up. There's an air quality meeting with the City Council on the 27th of October. That's obviously an important one for us to track. Some of the zoning feeds off of that information. Nutter Hill, I keep mentioning Sable Oaks, you know, the property owner may be looking at sale, we may be dealing with different people. So anyway, if that information comes in, we'll obviously click back in with you and see if you want to meet, move things out of cycle and keep you informed if we need to do that. All right, and then we're off to the annual report, but I'll, I'll pause there just to bounce back to this map and we can use the future land use map as well if we want to discuss and move things around if the schedule feels off in any way. Thank
[44:51] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): you Milan. Yeah, we'll have just committee questions for Milan right now before we get into discussion and then we'll move after the, if there are any questions after that, we'll open it up for whatever public comment there may be. I don't know if there's anybody participating online who might want
[45:11] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): to comment. I think I just saw Councillor Scott, still just Councillor Scott with us. Okay, so
[45:21] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): questions Peter, you, I
[45:24] Speaker D (unidentified): think most of my questions are for discussion more common any
[45:37] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): Other questions right now for Milan on the presentation? Okay, we'll open it up then for public comment. You know, okay, thank you. Anyone online you're
[45:56] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): interested in speaking online, just raise your hand and I can bring you into the meeting, okay.
[46:04] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): Well, that's a different experience for us. They want to watch the Red Sox to still. It's still an hour and 20 minutes before the game starts. All right, so let's move into discussion.
[46:20] Speaker D (unidentified): So, Peter, you head. So, first thing, which is simple. On our forward meeting dates, you said Wednesdays. Can we make it first Wednesdays? Because if you're planning to be away for a week, it's nice to be able to just know that first Wednesdays, first weeks are off. I think that would be helpful. Yeah, sure, you will, yeah. Is that anyone
[46:52] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): online have a for those online just because I'm putting up the slides, if you wouldn't mind just chime in. I'm not looking for hands as readily for the committee members online and I think you need to come off mute. I'm
[47:26] Marty (remote attendee): fine with the presentation is made. I think it's terrific and
[47:31] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): then Wednesdays is a the first Wednesday is a meeting date that's fine with me too. All right, so yeah, so let's go with that. Okay, thank you, Peter, did
[47:47] Speaker D (unidentified): you have other? So I guess my other point is a bigger point and that is I'm not that comfortable with the way you're handling shipyard zone. I feel like we have had these discussions, we've voted on them and we should get them through in the first year while we basically, I'm concerned about council changes over time and introducing, I think we should get it through while we have more or less the same council that voted on the plan to begin with and I think you're just asking for trouble if you let that become an election issue. I think it's that hard, I mean at least getting the uses in there, yeah.
[48:48] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): Our main reason for pushing that out is to, you know, allow time to nuance and possibly have some community engagement that we can just, I have, there's no issues with moving it up. Spring of 27 is probably too full, so it would be looking like fall of 27, if the suggestion is to do it in the first year.
[49:17] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): Anyone else want to have thought about that, or anything else? Well, it kind of relates.
[49:24] Speaker G (unidentified): Can I start off by just saying that this is a huge amount of work for the staff, and it's been a huge amount of work already to even do this and figure out how to adjust it. If you were going to do, now I'm segwaying. I thank you to the staff for the work that's done. And I hope that the work of this committee will be pretty minimal going forward because we have spent so much time and work and really going back over the comp plan after not reading it for a few months. I'm very impressed with our work and the good job we did, and I think that the community can be proud of our work. So there's not a whole lot more for us to do as far as I'm concerned, and I just want to make that clear to the committee members and to people in the community that are listening. The comp plan is the comp plan, and what we're going to be doing now is adopting ordinances that implement our comp plan. We're not going to be re-examining any of the assumptions, but if you are going to move up the eastern waterfront business, it doesn't make too much sense to do a partial implementation in the fall and then more of it in the spring. So yeah, the
[50:43] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): main one for the spring was to the petroleum storage tanks and to just remove that, so it would
[50:51] Speaker G (unidentified): being, I mean the spring and the fall, sorry, I'm reading everything wrong. Yeah,
[50:55] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): but you know it's not exactly an industry that's looking for expansion. The properties are there that are there. We already, we have the voter referendum that was passed, what, 2017, that said no new properties can be brought into tank storage, but the zoning still allows maybe certain like auxiliary type activities. So yeah, I'm okay. Yeah, if we take some stuff out of spring and
[51:22] Speaker G (unidentified): just do the whole thing in fall of 27, I think that depending on what the other committee members think, I think that might make sense if the staff can handle
[51:34] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): the workload of it. Yeah, I think so. Okay,
[51:40] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): any thoughts from anybody? Yeah, I mean my
[51:45] Speaker D (unidentified): My thought would be, is there something else that you could table, because you're working already along that stretch of waterfront, and it would seem more logical to do that whole area as a package, and maybe leave Sable Oaks or some different area that was kind of its own thing.
[52:10] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): Well, Staple Oaks would be our spring, and that's not a terribly complex one. I think the CS zone that we already have out there currently allows unlimited density, and so there's quite a bit already done in that regard. It's basically fine-tuning that. I think probably what we'd suggest is we do take the Lincoln Industrial Waterfront and the Rigby Industrial Waterfront in pieces to some degree as well. And so there's a fall work on those. And then there's some more nuanced zoning work with both of those. There's some language in there about, for instance, examining licensing and other development standards for making sure the shoreline is protected from the tank farm erosion that might be happening. And some of that can have a zoning component, so since we're tackling that and sort of two pieces, maybe what would work here for us is to take the eastern waterfront, K lupus, do that all of that in fall, take them out of the spring, so just it's it's one presentation, and then same thing with Lincoln and Rigby, do those entirely in the fall of 28, a little bit later, because the industrial zoning already does virtually most of what they want to do out there, but we try to create some economic development opportunity that feels comfortable from my vantage point, just in terms of workload and moving some stuff around.
[53:49] Speaker G (unidentified): Okay, I'm sorry, but you just lost me, because Lincoln and Rigby are already in
[53:55] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): the fall of 28, aren't they? Yeah, there's two pieces of it, there's fall 27 here, and then they're in fall 28, so we were going to do sort of a easy low-hanging fruit, and then get into some of the little bit more complex zoning stuff later, and what I'm just suggesting is that we don't do it in two chunks, we just do it all in fall of 28. Yeah, and that frees us up with a little bandwidth to do that eastern waterfront work. I think Peter's observation is
[54:21] Speaker G (unidentified): a good one, that it would, that splitting up these things doesn't make too much sense, because it, that we've got to be as efficient as we've, not just these ones, but any of them, that we are just, we're gonna deal with it and we deal with it, and then it's done, because otherwise we're going to get, I'm very worried about getting bogged down. Let me just be open about this. I'm very worried about, we've got, the planning board has a statutory function they have to carry out, and their input and review is gonna be very important, and it has to happen, and the council's review has to happen and we have to have the two readings and I guess we'll just see how it goes and we'll all work together to make it a
[55:03] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): really successful process. Those are the only two that are split. So if we make this adjustment, then we get in line with we only do each area once, one go. So I think what I'm hearing, and knowing as a reminder, right, this committee works if no one's opposed to it, and then we're taking that as guidance, right? So
[55:22] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): So let me check just to make sure if anyone online has any thoughts or comments.
[55:29] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): So right now it's moving all of Lincoln Industrial and Rigby Industrial to fall of 28, doing all of the Eastern Waterfront and shipyard terminals in the fall of 2027.
[55:45] Speaker E (unidentified): Milan, can I ask one quick question? Yeah. Yeah. Just fall being a big term and also hearing Peter's concern or question about changes due to an election on council every year. What does fall mean to you? Does it mean pre the first week of November or what does that mean for you?
[56:11] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): Yeah, we would want to do this to not be in the midst of, you know, counselors seeing through their final two, you know, not a late November or December. It would be October, by the end of October at the latest. All right, if it works for you, maybe you start
[56:31] Speaker E (unidentified): relabeling fall to September and October. Yep. Anyone
[56:48] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): else online have any? So yes, if there no objections and we'll move forward with that. Great.
[57:14] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): Okay, so the schedule's dialed in. We will share that with council at the next report out. There won't be council discussion, it'll just be sort of informational report out, and we are moving to CPC meetings first Wednesday 6 p.m. How about your, so that schedule did not require the CPC to meet in December. We would now be launching the staff work and we've come back to you all probably in the kind of January timeframe. So unless you want to have a December meeting for other reasons, then we should talk about the annual report, and the suggestion here is that the annual report will talk about the work to adopt the, this is the 2026 annual report, so it's the adoption of the comp plan, the certification of the plan, and now the Adoption of the implementation schedule. Those are the primary things we'll be reporting in that, and I think because it's pretty cut-and-dry and you all know that material quite well, our suggestion is that maybe the committee is comfortable delegating to the chair or vice chair to draft the annual report with staff and submit it. But again, you all want to see it, participate in it, that's up to you all the way, you know.
[58:39] Speaker D (unidentified): I guess I would ask if, I know there's the air quality thing at the end of October as well, and I mean maybe you're aware of what's in that, but if there's any bombshells in there that might be something that we would want to sit down and have a meeting about, and could do that and annual report at the same time. In December.
[59:13] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): What sort of bombshells are you thinking about?
[59:21] Speaker D (unidentified): Well, we've been waiting for years for air quality stuff, especially relative to the eastern waterfront. And I think there's, I mean, we went forward with residential there with certain assumptions. But you might find, I mean, that's always been the point of doing the actual air quality work, that it might change how you think about an area. Yeah.
[59:51] Speaker G (unidentified): I would just ask, Peter, what role do you think this committee would have, depending on no matter what is in that report? This committee has finished its work with regard to the comprehensive plan. I suppose that's true. Yeah, so I don't see any role for this committee and no matter what comes out of that report in October the information report would be addressed in other ways than by this committee.
[1:00:28] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): Well, if I may, one thing that I've spoken to the city manager about on the air quality report is that the comprehensive plans policy says no significant residential near areas that have VOC emissions and we have to analyze full potential to emit and not just one potential health hazard but you know all the ones that we can reasonably analyze. This report for the 27th I have asked and the city manager supportive so the council will see a memo from me just sort of reminding the council on what the policy is and how zoning is impacted by what we find and one thing this committee had talked about was using a proxy separation from the emission source as a way to say certain areas are okay for residential and we had talked about and some members of the public had talked about a 1,000 foot separator so one thing I think that it would be helpful for the council to weigh in on possibly for the CPC to then reflect on is the question the council will be based on the information that you've seen And looking at the comprehensive plan policy first, are you, based on this information, ready to say we are comfortable that there's no presence of a health risk and we're comfortable seeing residential? I don't think that's going to be a yes, shouldn't, because the analysis has not looked at max potential to admit, it's been actual emissions, right? But failing that, is the idea of a 1,000 foot buffer, which primarily I think we were talking about in the context of the high property on Broadway and Ben. Pickett and at that intersection, which is Portland Pipeline right next to Betsy Ross, that one was 1,000 feet, most of the property was 1,000 feet away from the nearest tank. And so there has been some discussion with this committee about, well, okay, if we're going to be doing shipyard area rezoning, is that parcel okay to see residential added because it's got that separation even with the data that we have and its limitations and is that a number or is that a proxy separation that is comfortable to the council and the comprehensive plan policy so I know that 's one question that we definitely want to discuss it as a clear intersection between zoning and what this Report on air quality might bring up, but whether it needs to come back to the CPC I think is, it I don't know what.
[1:03:17] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): What do you all think about that?
[1:03:19] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): But that's one question I know I have based on the 27th.
[1:03:24] Speaker G (unidentified): Wouldn't your schedule be the fall of 2027 that we would talk that over?
[1:03:30] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): The fall, yes. I mean, under the schedule, we would be receiving all the information that we receive up until that point as we develop those ordinances. So staff is going to be doing this, but the question is whether the CPC wants to reflect on it. But to your point, I don't know. There is one question at the end of October that we will be imposing to council that has a real direct zoning, and it's based on comp plan policy.
[1:03:56] Speaker G (unidentified): So the decision makers are going to be the council.
[1:04:00] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): And the CPC will see that ordinance package as it comes forward.
[1:04:04] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): And unless I'm wrong, the results of the air quality study won't necessarily affect, I don't have a direct relationship to whatever density guidance is in the
[1:04:17] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): plan but those are really two distinct things yeah if I understand I think I would agree because it was made basically a yes or no it's either we are allowing housing at the densities that we're comfortable with or we're definitely not allowing it because we need more information so December's not
[1:04:46] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): not required so i don't i think given that december wouldn't be required and
[1:04:54] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): chair you always have discretion to you know pull the group if something new comes up and people are saying hold up we really need to talk about whatever there's always that option but we're going to
[1:05:02] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): assume right now the schedule doesn't include okay if i miss you all too much we'll we'll meet
[1:05:07] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): in december i'm our party yeah we'll have to bring holiday cookies and then the business of the annual report is that then you're all comfortable delegating okay thrilled to go you're welcome to help it's okay all right if in fact you would like some editorial help professional editor you okay i appreciate that thank you we have in the past and then because if we draft it obviously together that we then send it to the committee and say here's where we've landed you know unless anyone has an objection or wants to meet to discuss this we're gonna you know move forward editorial you know tweaks and stuff like that we can definitely fold in because it's sort of non-substantive but okay before we move on to just a couple of other things on the sort of longer range and other work we're going to be doing with the compliment there is one final one and I want to kind of bring it back to this schedule and this is introducing a fifth ordinance package certainly the council counselors are familiar with this the Planning Department has for many years as we've been building this comprehensive plan doing what we call miscellaneous ordinance amendments we've been trying to do them in four to six month chunks and it's basically our ordinance is so old and it's been cobbled together there's just so much to clean up rather than wait for long periods we've been doing you know chunks of edits and for the most part they are pretty benign you know it can get to the level of removing an Extra apostrophe here and there, but sometimes they're really important because they're actually confusing language, and implementation technical interpretation is different than what the zoning ordinance says, and we have to clean things up, or state laws pass and we have to change certain things. These have been really important housekeeping items, and but the premise here is it's sort of low hanging non-contentious typographic cleanups and clarifications and not getting into broad policy. Objectives I said for now a few times, we're not going to be doing miscellaneous ordinance amendments anymore because we're now into comp plan implementation. When we discussed internally this with staff, this sequence, I do just want to share, and I agree with this feedback, our economic development department had a recommendation that there is some zoning allowances under current zoning districts which are really unfortunate given the policy direction where we want to go. An example is in our. Downtown area, particularly now that we've expanded where the Mill Creek zoning goes, cursor to show you, we've broadened out these shoulders on loops on Broadway, and we now have a much more mixed-use neighborhood orientation to that area. You've heard me talk about the Main Street area up here, which we call Gash Corner Main Street North. There's a lot of interest in redeveloping those properties. The current zoning is very industrially oriented. Some of those properties are for sale now, some of those. Properties have had prospective developers that want to come in, and they're looking at the current zoning, and they're seeing sort of once-in-a-generation sites that are really opportune, and they would like to do development under current zoning laws. This is just something that we kind of have to accept in this two-year rollout period. We've got to develop the zoning, but it's sort of unfortunate that some of the properties that are for sale are really kind of important and in your face, Broadway. Bowls one of them, the Main Street has several properties up for sale. There's several cases where low-intensity industrial uses are technically possible today, and we've got this schedule to roll them out. And so in talking internally, the Economic Development Office is recommending that we try to squeeze in one early implementation ordinance within the next two months as quickly as we can to just address the most egregious noncompliance that we have in existing zoning with where the vision goes, particularly where there are sites that are, you know, open for purchase now and people are occupying or interested in developing. It's not purely a defensive thing. It's also sort of a fairness thing. If we're in the middle of rezoning and someone's proposing a development, there's going to be a race to beat the clock, if you will, and it's just uncomfortable for everybody. So we can just roll with this schedule it is what staff can do you know capacity wise but if there is a small subset of a very clear misalignment between current zoning and what the k lupa policies say like industrial zoning in some of our mixed use areas where we want to see neighborhood style new residential developed that we would like to propose that within basically as quickly as we possibly can We've actually already done this as a miscellaneous ordinance edit once under the old comp plan because it had some zoning wasn't implemented according to the old comp plan and actually it was this main street area north under the old key land use policy areas. These were named K lupas and it was commercial zoning was applied there because it was the closest to some of the things that already existed in the past but if you read the comprehensive a plan for what they wanted to do there they wanted to do similar to what we are advocating now which is sort of mixed-use development but then they allowed gas stations petroleum storage petroleum refining and several other heavy industrial uses and you may remember counselor that we brought that forward just to clean that up and take it out of the c district so these are really targeted small edits that would fit into that miscellaneous ordinance category that we would strive to put together directly with the economic development office where they see opportunity for infill development opportunity for significant investment that may be missed if we allow some of these properties to go to things that are not compatible but also things that are not necessarily the highest best use as far as our Vision goes, this is a conversation that's happened relatively recently, so I don't have the ordinance to show you and exactly what it is. I'm trying to give you a few examples to give you a sense of what we're talking about. What I'd like to see is if this committee is okay recommending that staff identify any of these significant straightforward miscellaneous ordinance cleanups between policy that we can bring forward and go directly to the planning board and the council on outside of this sequence of the six months, so
[1:12:39] Speaker D (unidentified): this is specific to implement your own implemented things that are already envisioned in the comp plan and have been passed by this committee and council, and I think that's really important, and I'm glad to hear the economic development office is on it, and yeah, I think, I think put those fires out right away, they were my opinion, I
[1:13:10] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): support it too. Yeah, I think that makes, that makes a lot of good sense, I agree, and
[1:13:22] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): I, this is a little bit of term of art, and again, I think the councillors are familiar with this, but we're working within the framework of miscellaneous ordinance amendments as it's understood, so again, they're trying to be very non-substantive and very clearly stated in the comprehensive plan, and so there's not a lot of brainpower to figure out how to get them right, and it's only in the realm of land uses. We're not going to be developing new standards, we're not going to be modifying many new standards, it's just which uses are allowed in certain areas are not allowed, just in that arena. Thank you for that. Good, thank you. Okay, then work plan beyond 2029. After this two-year rollout, we talked about this a little bit in the memo, but just as a quick reminder, we still have 300 strategies in the comprehensive plan to go after. They're not all zoning efforts, some of them are just coordination among staff, you know, streamline the development review process, develop incentives, develop educational materials, work on social programs for the community, work on parks and recreational programming, we're going to Continue working with the department heads on that. They will be guided by the implementation plan of the comprehensive plan, so you all weighed in on those already and gave it these broad short, medium, long term designation. So we're going to try and carve up the next 12 years into the four year chunks and work on those 300 remaining strategies that are not purely zoning in that schedule. Obviously if something, these are guidelines, so if something comes up and the council certainly directs us to do something faster, slower, we'll follow that direction. These are again zoning and non zoning strategies. One of the things that we're really keen to be working on and set up and we'll do it in tandem with this two month, two year period is developing a dashboard so you and the public can track our progress on the policies, which ones have been implemented, which ones are we currently working on, who's working on them. So the planning office is doing all the zoning work. We have three planners. They'll be assigned different of these pieces and we'll have contact information so that people can connect with the planners responsible, find out information if they want it. This example is One Climate Future has a dashboard of talking about which policies have we started, not started and so on. It'll probably be a little different than this, but just to give you a sense of what that is because we think it's really important that we stay on top of what the policies were and what we're responsible for implementing. We'll obviously have more detail for the two-year period just because we're in, we have more detail on it and then kind of continue to massage and maintain this. We report to the council annually in the department annual report on what we're up to, so the comprehensive plan will have a section in there. The CPC has its annual report so you'll also be providing counsel and update on how it's going there and as we move beyond 2028 and get into the rest of these strategies will also through the CPC need to have discussions about what we think will need to come to the council with in a workshop format and have focused conversations about complex topics, not this basic zoning stuff but broader master planning efforts and so on. So that conversation is going to come, and we're going to try and keep some good reporting and transparency on that so everyone can keep tabs. I know the city manager has been working on a task tracker tool to help counselors be able to have a window into that, and I think we're exploring some AI tools for that. So that whole project management, project tracking, policy tracking side of things is very much part of what our implementation plan is because if we can develop that to-do list it's easier to do it. That's all I have, so I think we've got all the guidance, so that's
[1:17:29] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): the 300 strategies and 20 city departments overall that are responsible for implementing them. So in case any of us were concerned that we weren't comprehensive enough, I think we were, Peter. So in the interim
[1:17:46] Speaker D (unidentified): before that dashboard is complete, did you, did I understand right that it'll be at the annual report that you will show who's working on what and whether and what they've accomplished? Is there some place where we can still monitor that, the public can monitor that? So in the
[1:18:06] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): comprehensive plan, the implementation plan, so here's the policy, here's who's responsible for it, and it's department heads right now. So you know, if you ask the public works director what are you doing on these transportation policies you're assigned to, they're probably not going to have an answer for you just yet because we're going to now need to road map it with them. The priority right now is this first two years, so you'll be able to see who's mainly responsible for that policy. They're all familiar with the policies, so if you need to reach out to someone you can feel free to reach out to us or those department heads for sure. But in the next two years as we're working on zoning, we're also going to be spending the time developing these work plans for the rest of it. So this two-year schedule will go on the website so everyone will see what we're up to for the next two years, and then as we get some of that material dialed in with the different department heads of when they can slot it into their scheduling and build out these dashboards towards, those will also go live on the website. So I don't know if that answers your question.
[1:19:08] Speaker D (unidentified): I guess what I want to make sure I understand is that they will be working towards those goals
[1:19:14] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): during those two years. Yes, but we have to first meet with them to come up with their, you know
[1:19:21] Speaker C (unidentified): More refined work plans. Yeah, okay, as an example from Economic Development Committee, we've already, you've been meeting on the plan and what does it mean for us and how we're going to take it forward, so I'm sure other departments are doing the same thing. Thank
[1:19:46] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): you, Marty. Good.
[1:19:49] Speaker E (unidentified): Hi, well, I've had my hand up. Yeah, yes, thanks. So, Milan, it's interesting to hear you talk about how the other departments may be tasked with trying to keep track of some of the things they're doing that are part of the plan, that is more maybe even values-based ideas of how South Portland wants to be as a community. So it sounds like you said that potentially with a little bit of AI help, you would figure out how to make that kind of thing look actionable, and that some of the departments would be trying to keep track of those as, you know, what fits with this category that may not be easy to measure but is still an important part of the plan. Am I making that up entirely, or did you really say that?
[1:20:54] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): Well, we all of the policies have been vetted with the department head, so they knew the context and they knew what it was that we were generally trying to achieve, but obviously there's details in those, so we now need to meet with all the department heads who are responsible for whatever policy and allow them, give them some guidance on structure, how they might roll it out, but also give them some framework on when they need to roll some of these things out. So our Community Development Department is responsible for certain of our social support programs. There's not many of them, but there's a few in them, so we'd be meeting with Chris and going through, okay, here's the near or short term, medium term, long term policies, when do you think you can do x, y, and z, and let's dial that in a little bit more. When do you think you might be presenting council with some capital improvement budget requests or whatever else is needed in order to make the policy work? We have to have those discussions so that they understand what they should be thinking about. They'll also be educating us on what's involved on their end, and I think together, my hope is that we can kind of let those department heads run it, but I think we'll have to kind of give guidance as much as we can so they understand what the point of it was. They weren't here and all the CPC meetings, but you primarily then be hearing from the department heads or from directly from the city manager on how they recommend rolling out, you know. There's a policy that is support, I just wrote a letter of this in support of a CDBG application that eventually councillors will see too, for a new futsal arena over in the Red Bank area that's in partnership with the U.S. Soccer Association and Hearts of Pine. The letter talked about where it had alignment with the comprehensive plan, and we have a number of policies that support active living, which is a fuzzy concept to your point, right? So fuzzy is what I'm looking for, you nailed it sometimes. We're fuzzy, but it'll be up to the parks department to say, well, we don't have a futsal arena, everyone's really interested in it, and we've got this opportunity, and oh, by the way, you talk about creative partnerships, this seems to be what the city is asking for, and then we'll have some initial conversations. Are we, are we on the right target? So that's how this stuff is going to kind of manifest. Some of it we can predict, some of it will be opportunistic, but the department heads are going to be there. The subject experts in whatever they're assigned to, sometimes it'll be the scheduling and the detail will have to be decided for us. For instance, in the transportation realm, transit realm, we're so beholden to the funding that's available through the federal and state governments and Metro, you know, so we have to work on their cycles of when we can submit stuff. Sometimes we have to do that in coordination with other municipalities, so you know, we have to be responding to all these inputs, and again. The directors are supposed to be filling that information in as.
[1:23:51] Speaker E (unidentified): Much as possible. All right, thank you. I guess my larger point would be that the comprehensive plan sketches out ideals for South Portland, and to the extent that it is possible to maintain some kind of tracking of how we're living up to our ideals, that would be interesting. Thanks.
[1:24:13] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): Yeah, not all of the policies, like the one about healthy active living, are really going to be checkbox policies. There's a policy in there I can just recall off the top my head about coming up with an evacuation route plan for certain areas that don't have it. As soon as the fire department does that together with the county emergency response group, we can check off that policy has completed, but healthy active living is going to be an ongoing thing. We'll never complete that task, it'll be, you know. However many good ideas and ideas we can fund come forward in the next 12 years, they'll all be contributing to that policy, so yeah, it'll be a.
[1:24:52] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): some of them will be ongoing discussions will there be space then to put in specific examples where the where it is something like healthy living that 's it's not specific oh yeah will there be space to put in specific examples of how that policy is being implemented yep yeah
[1:25:09] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): You know, and we also may learn from the CPC or the conservation group or the council directly that, all right, you know, we've done enough on whatever policy, an ongoing policy. Let's consider that one complete for this 12-year period. We now need to move on and focus on other stuff. So the dashboard, I think, will report this policy requires ongoing work for active living. This policy on building the trail, actually we've built the trail, it's done, and you know, here's a click link to go see what the trail route map is. Our hope is that we can help navigate people so they can see what words on a page mean, you know, in their community, and report as best we can some things. Again, will be ongoing reporting, but we'll list examples of ways we've contributed to it all.
Public Comment
[1:26:03] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): Right, anything else? Anyone have any questions, any comments? I'll open it up for the last public comment period. Thank you both for coming. Guessing there's no one online, but yeah.
[1:26:24] Committee member (CPIC/CPC veteran): We've got one hand raised from Counselor Scott. Okay, counselor, you're coming in and I see you on mute, so just if you come off mute, introduce yourself and you have three minutes. Just
[1:26:43] Marty (remote attendee): can you confirm that you can hear me? Yes. Okay, sorry, that's a long technical process. I really don't have any comment. I just really wanted to appreciate everyone's contributions and your attendance tonight and thinking about this plan and moving it from the comprehensive plan into implementation. So just really appreciate everyone's contributions and really looking forward to the next many years of bringing this plan and our city forward. So that's all I have to say, thank you.
[1:27:15] Chair (Comprehensive Plan Committee): You thank you. With that, we'll close public comment and I think we've completed our business. So is there a motion to adjourn? I see two hands, so Bob and Peter. Second. We have to do the roll call, I guess we do. We can let that slide. Adjourn. When adjourned. Okay, just a second, where is it? We're adjourned.