Freeport council sets hearings on downtown TIF, Island Rover petition

[0:02] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): We will get started. This is Town Council Meeting 19-26. It is Tuesday, October 6, 2026 at 6.06 p.m. We are in Town Council Chambers at 30 Main Street in Freeport, Maine and streaming online and on the community television station as well. Our first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance. Please stand. I [0:29] Speaker B (unidentified): pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America [0:33] Speaker C (unidentified): and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, [0:38] Speaker D (unidentified): indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [0:45] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): All right, and next up we will do roll call. Councillor Pillsbury. Present. Councillor Sparta. Here. Councillor Lawrence. Here. Councillor Brown. [0:55] Speaker D (unidentified): Pleased to be here. [0:57] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): Councillor Smith. Present. Councillor Benoit is present. Councillor Pilch is excused. Our next order of business is to waive reading and accept as printed the September 15th meeting minutes. So moved. Any discussion? All those in favor? Moving on to our announcements. I have a couple. Absentee voting is now available for the November 3rd election. Registered voters may vote at Town Hall or take ballots home to return later. The town will hold a public hearing on Thursday, October 15th at 6 p.m. in council chambers to discuss the citizen initiative referendum, an ordinance to launch the Island Rover version 2.0. We'll be calling that public hearing tonight. Looking for a way to get involved in your community? The town of Freeport has several openings on volunteer boards and committees and is seeking residents who are interested in sharing their time, experience, and talents. Whether you have a professional background, a personal interest, or simply a desire to serve your community, we would love to hear from you. Current openings include Board of Appeals, Board of Assessment Review, Cable Advisory Committee, Complete Streets Committee, Conservation Commission, Freeport Sustainability Committee, and the Shellfish Conservation Commission. All right, join your counselors for a community conversation. We've had two of our district meetings and there are two remaining opportunities in October for districts one and four. Counselors Dan Pilch and Chip Lawrence will be at the Main Coast Waldorf School on October 29th and that will be at 6 p.m. So just to clarify that is at the main coast wolder school at 6 p.m. on october 29th for districts two and three. That will be hosted by counselors smith and pillsbury. That will be october 13th at 6 p.m. at wolf's neck center. All right and that is it for my announcements. Does anybody else have any announcement they would like to share? Counselor brown first i'd like [3:34] Speaker D (unidentified): to shout out to our town clerk Chris wolf who last night attended a was a part of a panel that addressed the topic how main elections work a community conversation. She was what we've come to expect fabulous. She was accompanied by her by the Pownall Town Clerk Becky Taylor Chase and in addition Shana bellows attended and filled us in on things that are really helpful to know and then also Chrissy Hart the executive director of the League of Women Voters. It was it was a good evening and you'll be able to watch it because Tom Pierce is amazing. It's on the two page tonight. Awesome. Great. Anyway. The other thing I wanted to just bring up is we are in the middle of pre-election time and with that come signs, whether you like them or not, and I just want to say one basic thought about the signs. It turns out there are rules for how these signs are to be placed. If it's on your private property, you control where they go and no one should touch them. If it's on the right-of-way, it's public property and there are certain rules you need to abide by, spacing of the same sign, have to be 30 feet apart, it can't be on the entrance to a highway, a number of other things. and then there are gray areas and I've actually experienced this where there was a misunderstanding so I'm gonna suggest that we all sit back just a little bit give a little grace to our fellow citizens who we might not actually agree with pretend the sign is the person and you're looking them in the eye and treat them with the kind of respect that you would hope for yourself yes [5:55] Speaker C (unidentified): I mentioned this because we addressed it at municipal facilities committee in terms of conversations that are happening between a number of organizations in the town about the future uses of the First Parish Church building on Main Street, 40 Main Street. Meeting House Arts is inviting folks to come from the community and give voice to their thoughts about what is possible for the use of that building. And then First Parish Church, the owner of that building, is also participating in those community conversations. They're going to be held on two Wednesdays, Wednesday evenings, first on October 28th and next on November 11th, both at 6 o'clock. And it'll be a conversation about how that space is used now, how it is used in the past, how it came to be used by Meeting House Arts, and what the possible future uses are. So anyone who has any interest in that is welcome to attend those community conversations. Any [7:11] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): other announcements? All right, we're kind of rolling right into information sharing, which is just an opportunity for town councillors to share any other information about town related conversations, events, constituents. Councillor Brown, the Freeport [7:28] Speaker D (unidentified): sustainability advisory board met recently to discuss a tree ordinance, which involved work that was begun a number of years ago, and our future will be willing, will entail essentially creating this tree ordinance from that work, but putting it in an ordinance form, which is sometimes different from other forms of rulemaking and so forth. So I guess Caroline can add to that perhaps, but I think, I think that covers it. Yeah, thanks. Last Tuesday, counselor [8:11] Speaker C (unidentified): Pilch, as well as the manager and the assistant manager and I, all attended a meeting at the Falmouth elementary school along with elected officials from Falmouth, Yarmouth, Cumberland, North Yarmouth, Freeport, and also from Pownall, that included both select boards, town councils, public safety staff, as well as school board members, really to discuss ways in which those various entities are already cooperating in terms of resources, equipment,, PERSONNEL, RESOURCE SHARING OF ALL KINDS, AND THIS IS PART OF AN ONGOING CONVERSATION, SOME OF THEM BILATERAL, SOME OF THEM MULTILATERAL BETWEEN COMMUNITIES, TO REALLY CONTINUE TO INVESTIGATE HOW WE CAN SAVE MONEY AND STILL DELIVER QUALITY SERVICES. AND KNOWING THAT THERE IS ALWAYS A TENSION BETWEEN SERVICE LEVEL AND RESOURCE EXPENDITURE, but also a tension between cooperation and local control. And so while there was not a particular outcome of that meeting, it was a lot of information shared about what is already being done and a lot of interest from many of those elected officials in continuing those conversations. So Sophie's been already quite involved in that, and I'm sure will keep us posted as those conversations continue. That's okay. [9:56] Speaker E (unidentified): Last Wednesday, we had the third meeting of the RSU-5 task force to talk about how the district's going to support three- and four-year-olds, specifically three-year-olds with special education needs in the district now that CDS is not going to be handling that. So we're already doing four-year-olds. That started on July 1st. The three-year-olds are more complex, as you can imagine. I think we're leaning toward a hybrid approach. With services both in the school and our providers going to where the kids are. I think there are some challenges there. The recommendation will come back to the board, so if anyone wants to be engaged or hear more about it, I suggest you go to the upcoming school board meeting or talk to school staff. But I mention all this because it was a really good discussion with a number of key stakeholders from the three towns, from the school district administrators and parents, but one of the overwhelming things is that we're trying to put into place a plan that will meet the need given a tight timeline. This has to go into effect July 1 of next year, but that we should also be thinking about an ideal solution and how and what resources are needed. The school district's going through a sort of sustainability exercise at the moment, and there seems to be willingness to collaborate and to explore options to partner with towns and other organizations. So I just think it's another example that the administration has changed. They're willing and want to be more engaged with the towns and figure out how we can pool resources where applicable. So I share that was on Wednesday. So I couldn't go to the candidate forum, but I heard it was, it was a good discussion. So thank you to the town staff for putting that together. And then Eric and I had the pleasure of hosting district two and three meeting last week at the church in South Freeport. It was fairly well attended. We probably maxed out at like 18, so not our, nothing, not the usual showing, but it was a nice warm evening, so I think people had better things to do. Steve participated as well, and Brett did a great job representing the town. So thank you to everybody, and we heard a lot of good, had a lot of good discussion and questions. We had one particularly engaged resident, but it spurred a lot of other discussion, so it was great. Yeah, thank you for mentioning. [12:39] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): The candidates forum, so that was last Wednesday, and it was hosted by the town and also So RSU five community programs as sort of an extension of their civics one on one course. And that was to hear from candidates from the school board, the council and the sewer board, and folks who weren't there provided answers that winter. Our director of the library read aloud and I found it great. It was informative. Yeah. [13:04] Speaker D (unidentified): And it was recorded and will be up pretty soon, like maybe tonight. I'm not sure Tom will be able to tell us. [13:14] Speaker C (unidentified): One of the things we certainly had some conversation about at the district meeting was downtown infrastructure of course, and congratulations to Visit Freeport on another very successful Freeport Fall Festival. I have come to think of Fall Festival as the annual pressure test on our downtown infrastructure. It is the, I believe, the highest volume density over those few days in terms of parking and pedestrians, and I know our public safety offices, particularly the police department, had feedback or received feedback from folks about all kinds of things throughout that, and I think it is helpful for us to have those days when we can really see where some of the week links are and we can address those, so it's great. Yeah, it was a great event, great weather. [14:13] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): I also want to remind folks that the first Monday of every month from 8 to 9 30 we have Coffee with Council, where several counselors are there to chat, so we'll be here in the chambers the first Monday of every month from 8 to 9 30, and then my last thing I want to share is just a heartfelt thanks to Chief Bernard. He has embarked on a new adventure and he served as our chief for about two years and really helped the department in a time of significant transition. So just wanted to wish him well and thank him for his service here. Any other pieces of information? Okay. Oh, before we move on, we did have district meeting updates to share, which I know Councilor Pillsbury touched on a bit, but if there's any key points to bring up that were mentioned during those meetings, it'd be great to share them with the council one [15:17] Speaker C (unidentified): thing I will measure mention that did come out of the district two and three meeting that was last week as Matt mentioned Brett did a great job discussing many of the downtown plans particularly the tiffs and how we're progressing with those what our plans were there were some questions about the differences between the downtown transit oriented development district versus the concord gully district what's happening with that and more generally related to planning one question that came up was where is the council with the climate action plan? Is that being actively engaged as we do all of this other planning? And we were able to talk about the fact that many of those issues that were part of the climate action plan are in fact baked into the village corridor initiative, into the comprehensive plan, and certainly come up as we go through the budgeting process as well. And then of course as Steve was mentioning in terms of the sustainability advisory board, we are looking to them to bring us individual priorities out of that climate action plan each year for us to consider. So I don't know, Matt, if there's anything else in particular you would highlight. No, I [16:54] Speaker E (unidentified): I mean, there were some concerns around some of the road projects that I think we can have staff kind of investigate and follow up. But other than that, there were pretty general questions around sort of the direction of the town, what's happening, nothing too hot topics, I think. Steve, anything you might want to add? [17:31] Speaker D (unidentified): This intersection isn't working, we need help, and that did come up about one particular place in town. So it feels like they're more eyes on the problems, and that's great. That's that type of citizen participation is just really helpful. There were a bunch of questions, and it was all in all a great evening, I thought. Yeah, district 104 had the same similar experience where it was [18:00] Speaker B (unidentified): more understanding what we're trying to do. Everyone was a little upset with the downtown revisioning, but it was well, this is a plan, it's not, it's on, is he not hearing me? No, anyway, so it was more of an oh yeah right, how's the magnet? Yeah, so it was just more understanding what's going on, and I think overall it went really well. [18:34] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): Okay, then moving on to our committee information sharing portion, which today is the Freeport Economic Development Corporation with Tawny Whitney and Mary Davis, and Brett as well. [19:11] Brett Richardson, Economic & Community Development Director: Brett, we're here. You know, as this being the, you know, the folks are always like, yay, rah,, here we go, going forward. Thank you, Matt. As Matt had said to us one time, but we also want to know, like, really what's going on, and we want to know the things that you're concerned about or that you're worried about or the trends or things. So tonight we're going to try to balance with some of that, well, look at how things are going really well, and a couple of here's some things that we're concerned about because we think it's important that you all understand and we can help to illustrate for you some of the things that we're concerned about. Now, part of what we do, as you know, is pretty confidential because Tani does a lot of work with potential tenants, with what the owners want to do, and so much of that like behind the scenes work is pretty confidential, but we're going to try to give you kind of an overview of where we are so that we can explain where we're at. So great. Go ahead. So the first thing that you might notice is, wow, we have really been in the news. And this is a wonderful thing when it comes to trying to bring people to Freeport because, of course, those businesses are watching this media as much as we do. And you can see everything from, you know, this is wonderful. You talked about Visit Freeport. We were voted in the top ten best fall festivals in the U.S. Visit Freeport, you know, add a person. This is just wonderful because it brought so many people here because this newspaper gets a lot of media press. So we also had, you know, the openings of the housing. We had the opening of Bean. Lots of information about Bean's opening, information about what Brett and the team are doing down here in Freeport. And also, isn't this wonderful, Bean gave us a little bit of information about they're doing new marketing things that is creating like this fever on Instagram and social media. And one of them is they've aligned with Dunkin Donuts and they're making these little Dunkin Donuts sweaters that you can put on your coffee or on your cold cups and apparently it's completely sold out. And it's like so they're trying to also bring people into Freeport that are younger crowd, which is really cool. [21:23] Speaker G (unidentified): They've done several things around this and Drake,. [21:26] Brett Richardson, Economic & Community Development Director: And so again, this media is super good for us. And also, because the media is watched by a lot of people, it's also incumbent upon us to really be careful about how we're working with media folks. I laughed at Tawny when we had our very first media visit just years ago. Tawny looked directly at the reporter and said, now you're going to say something nice as your headliner, right? And he kind of repeated what he was going to put, and she's like, no. You need to have something that's true, but also have something that is not just the bad news media that isn't really crisp. So it's really interesting that this still holds true now, and you can see we've had some great headliners out, so lots of media on that. Go into the next. So as we started looking at all the things that are going on, we started looking at data for you and the to say how is retail really doing, what's really going on in Freeport, how is it really going. You can't read all these words, I don't expect you to. However, this organization, Christian Wakefield, is a well-known retail data provider, and so they're always looking at what's going on, where are the trends, what's up. And so what they're saying, the first thing is that our vacancy rate is about the same or a little bit lower than what they see nationally, that in fact they're still seeing continuing spending, that retail sales rose six point nine percent year-over-year, which is kind of amazing considering where we are in the economy now. Most of the spending is from the top twenty percent of earners, and we certainly don't know where this is going to go. However, again, what this organization is saying is retail is still okay. So unlike one of the headliners that said before that we're not relying on retail anymore, we are. So go ahead to the next slide. [23:12] Speaker G (unidentified): So yes, we do the dance. And so we look at national to compare ourselves to see what our health is. And we also directly speak with our business owners. So I spoke with several of our business owners to figure out how the summer went for them. And it was great, it was great to hear from them directly, you know, hearing from, they've been up 20, hearing from a food beverage that it's the best summer that they've ever had, they've been long standing with us, hearing from, you know, some nationals that they're up 20, hearing from some other nationals that they're down 20. But with Beans opening, it has, it has been an incredible experience. One of the, one of the food places that I was with today actually said that since Beans opened, they're up 70%. They thought it was just gonna be like, as Beans opened, big woo-hoo-ha, and then they'd settle back down, but they haven't. So that's been incredible. And again, our natural cadence is to celebrate and say how great everything is. However, we also lost a very big national tenant with Polo Ralph Lauren. And with nationals, this has a ricochet effect. National retailers have a herd mentality. And so if they're going into a new place, then they all want to go, and when they leave, they also all want to leave. They don't have time to talk to the hot dog guy and see how he's doing on a day-to-day basis. They have to make big decisions, and they're often looking from a much larger standpoint. So this is, has been a challenge, and it's something that, as you, again, to point to you, Matt, it's something that we are concerned about and getting ahead of, and I'll touch upon some of that a little later in our [24:53] Speaker E (unidentified): our presentation. So do any of the national retailers hold more weight than others? Like, is it a big loss that, like, does Polo lead the pack when stores come and go? Or I mean, that's a [25:11] Speaker G (unidentified): good question. So some of the, some of the closures that you'll see are national closures, you know, Orvis is an example. It's not Freeport, it wasn't a Freeport problem, Orvis was, that was just happening. And then, but a retailer like Ralph Lauren isn't, that is not a trend nationally. So it depends on what, and they all know that. So, you know, if we lose Orvis, it doesn't really shake the meter that much, but when you lose somebody like Ralph Lauren, who's actually becoming more exclusive, they're paying attention to that. [25:40] Brett Richardson, Economic & Community Development Director: Being spending as much money as they have in Freeport in the last little bit is a very positive message that goes out to other national retailers, when not all nationals are spending that amount of money. So one of the things that the nationals also look at is there's this information called Placer AI, which actually, hold up your cell phone, when you walk around, it's showing us where you are. And so Placer does a recording of how many people are coming in and out of Freeport on a year-by-year basis. And of course, one of the things that we're concerned about is, oh my gosh, the traffic in Freeport is going down. Placer says that is not true, that over the last 12 months, we've had about 4.8 million visitations. About 1.8 million of those are unique people, so they're coming more than once. And we're up year over year. Not a lot, but we're up some, especially in a year where we were worried that the Canadian visitation would be way down. So we're still up a little bit, and we're up a little bit over the last two years and such. So this is saying that our traffic is staying somewhat similar. Similar. The question is also not how many people but how long do they stay. Of course, as Kathy Smith used to say, it's heads and beds. We want people to stay here, stay overnight and stay longer because then they're spending more dollars. So average stay of 73 minutes, we'd like to see that higher. And again, the answer is the same drum that we've been talking about. It's that experiential retail, it's the restaurant food experiences, it's arts, it's in cultural programming, it's outdoor activities. So again, PLACER is saying things are steady. [27:15] Speaker C (unidentified): Can I ask you a question about just the PLACER data? We know that 's cell phones, and we know that cell phones have profiles of who you are also, it's not just a dot, it's a profile. But I'm guessing it doesn't measure people that don't have cell phones like kids, and I'm just curious about that, whether you have a way of getting a sense of who is coming. I just, one thing I've noticed anecdotally this year in particular, and I think it is tied to the LL Bean opening, is that it used to be when school was in session the demographic would shift significantly in September and October. I have not seen, I've seen lots and lots of families with kids all through September and October. Right, we actually learned [28:06] Speaker G (unidentified): from Place, so that Mary and I were kind of like, we should probably know that, but our best retail months are ahead of us. And so to your point, it's September, October, and November, December are actually our, will be the highest sales for many of our retailers. Right, that's right, Placer does. [28:21] Brett Richardson, Economic & Community Development Director: Track demographic data for individuals who carry the cell phone, so it talks about where you're from, so a place or data will also say here's where people came from to come to Freeport, or here's where they go after they leave Freeport, which is also kind of interesting. It gives median income, and the median income that come to Freeport is a little bit on the higher range, so it does give you some demographics like that. But you're right, because kids don't have cell phones with, well, they're getting younger and younger, it doesn't track as much. I think that has to be anecdotally. That's what I'm seeing in Freeport as well, is there's a lot of families with kiddos, which is wonderful because, of course, that's where we're trying. [29:05] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): It would be interesting to know who's local, right? So how many of those four-point locations are local? [29:12] Speaker G (unidentified): We have that as well, yeah. We didn't want to overwhelm you. Placer is like my love language. It's unbelievable. I could have just filled every screen with this information. [29:20] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): The question I did have is, so what counts as a visit? That, you know, people driving through, I'm assuming they know there's some algorithm that [29:28] Speaker G (unidentified): calls that, right, because they have to stay a certain amount of time to be counted, and that's [29:32] Brett Richardson, Economic & Community Development Director: right, that's right, and again, there is, it tells you what zip code they came from, what zip code they went to, there's a lot, how long they were here, how long they were here, and thankfully, we've had a great donor who has given us that information free, it is extraordinarily expensive, and we now have another donor who is going to help us going forward, so thank you, thank you for our donors who give us free things. It's very important because, again, this is incredibly expensive. [29:59] Speaker G (unidentified): From cheeseburgers to placer. Take it all. [30:01] Brett Richardson, Economic & Community Development Director: Okay, go ahead next. [30:03] Speaker G (unidentified): So I have the privilege of attending a conference in Boston called the International, it's ICSE short. I speak of it often. It's an incredible conference where we learn so much about the trends in national retail. So this group here, these guys were incredible presenters talking about the national behaviors. Behaviors. And I was actually too shy to actually, you know, when they say, does anybody have questions? I was, they bring the microphone around and I couldn't do it. But I said, I'm just going to go to them as soon as they come off the stage. And I'm actually, it actually worked because I was actually able to have a conversation with all of these guys. And I said to them, you know, I, well, you know, Freeport is experiencing some shifts with our nationals. And I said, is this national behavior or is this a Freeport problem? And unfortunately they told me that it was a Freeport problem. And the reason being is that Maine is already a relatively small state in competition. But in fact, I think I've also told you sometimes people think we're part of Canada. So we already have some challenges in that of ourselves. But as Maine has started to grow, it's actually created quite a bit of competition for Freeport. So with having Rock Row and the Downs, that's direct competition that we never had before. And it's tricky. If you're a national brand, are you going to go to Freeport or are you going to go next to Market Basket? You know, it's much less risk if you're going to go next to something that already has guaranteed foot traffic like that. So it doesn't end there. They said that Freeport's still really well-known, though. And so they advised us to something you haven't always wanted to hear, but they advised us to lean into the outlets. They said that there's a lot of trendy new outlets that are coming out, and those outlets want to be in Freeport. Those outlets would pick Freeport over your Rock Rose and your Scarborough Downs. those outlets would also fit our vacancies they also said to lean into the becoming more of an outdoor destination let that be our marketing and lean into our mothership they said lean into ll bean and these all these elements seem to line up with that so that was incredible information for us and then i also attended a marita event in portland and they had an economic expert there who basically said that you know maine's economy is not dreadful but thank you very much town and brett because They though some of this recommendations that they gave you guys are well ahead of, and that's keeping housing as an investment moving forward, and then working in your zoning code processing and the TIFF, those things are all extremely important. And then the speed of which you can assist with all of this, which again, we've been told that we have the red carpet can make a break a deal. So that's great. And so thank you for doing that. It makes a big [32:39] Brett Richardson, Economic & Community Development Director: difference so how are our vacancies doing so you will see that we have been trending in the downtown in the kind of four range we've been trending down we're now at five point nine percent and that's with polo leaving it's a very large space and so again we're still underneath national averages but it's something that we're paying attention to and we're not lightly flowing over the top of this we're trying to understand how then can we make sure that with some of the other larger vacancies that we have how do we make sure that we're ahead of that how do we make sure that we pull in resources to help us convince people to stay what we're seeing now with the new traffic around being again it's very hard to capture what's today or yesterday and these businesses don't know that so we're fortunate and Tony will talk about this and that we have partners who really want to help us because it matters to them that these folks stay as well so again up a little bit but we're continuing to track it so [33:42] Speaker G (unidentified): how do we get ahead of this because you know again losing a national like that we tried honestly we tried and we were just slightly too late because you know we have been told that they actually Ralph would have potentially stayed you know and so we're working with another national right now that had given notice but not publicly so that was good and so they space signed a short lease extension very short but enough for us to see if with the changes that we have been doing and most importantly with beans if they would see the results that would make it so that would be allowed to stay so being able to get ahead of some of these is really important and again one of our partners that we're working with I've often said to you know I have a decent reach locally and regionally but nationally it's more challenging for me but we have John monahan from ll bean on our board and he has the national connections and so i am john and i are meeting with property owners one-on-one to talk with them and give them the insights that they might need whether it's to just give comfort to those that are here or if indeed we know that there might be a threat to leave sometimes having that insight from a big you know mothership such as ll bean that has insights and can share some of what they're doing can make a difference and we have seen that it has. But again, even with that, you know, our odds are not great that we'll be able to keep everything. So it is a concern that we're having. [35:06] Brett Richardson, Economic & Community Development Director: And let me say one thing. We also when we went to the Bean opening, we were fortunate that we got to interact with some of the very senior members of Bean. And they very much said to us, call us for help. We want to help you help the good folks stay in Freeport, which is fabulous. It does make a difference to have somebody from being call you and say, hey, you should stick around. [35:28] Speaker G (unidentified): Yeah, and yeah, and it does go on. You know what I like to say, I can't even say it anymore, it sounds like such a dumb slogan, but we are better and stronger together. But so that it is, so that our current vacancies are large spaces, and, you know, we've talked about like how we go about that. We've been paying for you. Thank you. You know, the thing is, that owners have decisions to make. It's not like we can just say, oh, they should just chop them up into little spaces. Well, that's extremely expensive, and then after they make that investment, how many years does it take to make up into that extreme cost, so they have a decision to make as well? So we have to temper not only the businesses that are there but the property owners themselves, you know. Maybe they've had enough time in Freeport. Maybe they've invested and done as much as they can do, or maybe they can stay, so it isn't as easy as that, and that's why I boots on the ground is ever so important right now, and I do wish I could just go back to my cheerleading because it's way more comfortable than presenting this information. So I do have a little bit here. I can go back to my comfort zone. [36:27] Brett Richardson, Economic & Community Development Director: One thing I will say, and with the TIF, one of the things Brett has talked about is, can we make monies available to help businesses do these sorts of things? And so we're not exactly ready to do that now. However, as we think about ways that we could help our businesses stick around, this might be one of those ways, because splitting those spaces up is extraordinarily expensive. [36:48] Speaker G (unidentified): Right, yeah. If you know from being in the market yourself. So one of the things that I do have to report is that it's L.L. Bean, again, their engagement has been huge. Like I said, we had a pizza shop today say they're up 70%. Businesses are just saying wahoo. I mean, my gosh, you guys, I think we all kind of forgot that we used to have this national retailer that's open 24-7 and doing all this engagement with concerts and events and so forth. We got by, but now that they're back, it is incredible. You know, seeing town this past weekend on gorgeous fall weekend, I don't remember it ever being so busy. It's absolutely amazing to see. And the beat goes on. One of our wishes that we've had for a very long time is to have a trolley to sort of enhance the experience, as we said, to increase that dwell time, to just kind of highlight the charm of Freeport, and we now have one. One of our local businesses purchased one. We met with her, and I think she texted me like two weeks later, and she goes, well, I bought it. Oh okay so we met with her today the desert of Maine purchased this trolley and we are coming up with a plan to get this out on the road and it looks like it'll be out on the road in May and so we've just got work to do to figure out routes and all of that but it will be it's it's just a joy I wrote on it this morning and it's just a joy to actually just sit in it and it does that little toot thing that all the classic trolleys do so it's pretty amazing how long we've talked about wanting a trolley and it has arrived. And we also have a new restaurant. So the Lobster Crookers lease ends and we have a new owner, a new local restaurant owner that will be taking over. They have a restaurant in Yarmouth now called Rambler, so he's a local user. He will be opening a higher end seafood restaurant in Freeport and it will be open year round, which is very significant for us. It'll also have and it sounds a little funny, but it'll have a bar. We also need that so those are important things for us. You know, we think about the mix of visitors and residents. We were starving up here. So this is a great a great thing for us. So [39:01] Brett Richardson, Economic & Community Development Director: With that 's great so I think the messages for us is We still have a lot of media coming in which again is really great and with Sparkle weekend and everything that goes on over the holidays days, there's still a lot of it. So pay attention to the messaging. I was talking to Margaret from Visit Preport over the weekend and she said, you know, if you all ever decide you want to have media training for a larger group of people, she said, I have a resource that has done that for us and it's really helpful because it helps you understand how to guide what appears. So she has offered that. It's about retaining the current businesses. Tani spends a lot of time doing that, but my encouragement to everyone is when Tani calls and says, I need you to help me with this one, jump in with all hands. It really makes a difference when we get people rallied around. We have to work with the owners because again, we can't just take these spaces and do what we want to with them. It really is working with the owners to say this is important to Freeport, it's important to you, how do we work together to get this done? And it's really that focus of staying longer, exploring more. I love this quote, downtown Freeport doesn't have a visitation problem, we have an engagement and conversion opportunity. We are a beautiful location with so much wonderful property around us and live space and free space. And yet we haven't brought people here to say you can shop and play and eat and bike and walk and hike and stuff. So that's us for tonight. [40:27] Speaker E (unidentified): Questions? Can you go back one slide, Brett? Do we have a sense of, I love the data that you're presenting, and I think it's really important to present the non sort of positive side of things because we need to get ahead of this stuff. Do we have a sense with the vacancies in the square footages, like which spaces are really conducive to be split with minimal cost? And like, are we targeting those first? Because, I mean, there's some spaces that I'm sure it would be a lot of effort, time and money. Right, and like that seems to be a you know, you can chase one whale, but you need to try to go after this stuff [41:07] Speaker G (unidentified): Yes, great questions because I was just in spaces today and had that very that exact hat on and so there are spaces. Though this one that's empty now as to give an example crystal where crystal joys was, it's a really difficult space to divide. You know, it's it's it's a large high ceilings, you know, two stories. How do you divide that space? space. That's a very difficult one. A space that would be easy to divide would be where the former Ralph Lauren was. That's a very wide, long space, and I've seen renderings of what that would look like if it was divided. So that's an example of one that's easy to divide. But some of these big boxes are more challenging, but none of them are without the cost. And that, I think, is something, as we've started to look at it, and we're starting to get some estimates, those numbers are really big. We looked at one space, which was a tiny space. It was like 350 square feet, so it's unfinished. And it's $75,000 just to get it a vanilla shell, and that's a little space. And it would take this landlord 10 years to recover the cost of that to get a tenant into there. [42:12] Brett Richardson, Economic & Community Development Director: And, of course, then if you're going to add a restaurant, even more so. I mean, if we look at Steve's former building, the amount of money that has been put into that building to turn it into a place that has cooking capabilities and all it's it's quite expensive so but there's also creative thinking that comes into this and the creative thinking of are there other uses or other alternative possible tenants that do things versus just selling things so you know there's Tani's always got her hat on about how could this be a space that's you know people are doing things and so we're trying to balance both of those and again working with the owners of the buildings because they have ultimately they're they have the pockets yeah [42:58] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): One just comment the visitation numbers are very helpful. I think we've been saying three million it's like a blanket for a long time so this is really the 1.8 unique and then the 4.8 million total is wild and one thing that just stood out to me is the population of Maine is 1.4 million. Yeah isn't that crazy. Yeah I know yeah more unique visitors are coming to downtown [43:22] Brett Richardson, Economic & Community Development Director: Freeport than live in the entire state. It's crazy and you know again too I know Tanya and I have always kind of bell rang a lot about being what L.O. Bean is doing right now is they have a whole different marketing plan that's in place about who they're drawing and where they're drawing them from and how they're drawing them in. I think they had three new openings on top of what was down here in this last little bit they have more openings next year but they're doing all this marketing that's focused on like putting your Dunkin Donuts in a cozy cup koozie cup or are talking to folks that are sports advocates so it's also trying to bring a different clientele into Freeport that's families and kids in a younger population and all those to things that help us so it'll be pretty interesting we can't wait to see the place or data from the last about month or so because we want to see what happened. Yes it's been it's been open seeing a lot more embroidered totes [44:16] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): around. Yeah any other questions for this is great. All right moving on to the town managers reports the short one this week I will immediately call out Goose our new puppy [44:51] Speaker H (unidentified): Just say that part of what really struck me with the decision to go with Goose, our new puppy, was the amount of evaluation that the canine program staff and sergeants had put into creating a proposal to change the direction of the specialty of our canine and to look ahead so that what we were getting was a canine that costs about a fourth what we had been spending before and will utilize training resources regionally, locally, and then of course officers. Stubbs, who has a lot of experience training police canines. So I'm kind of excited. We probably won't really see Goose for 18 months or so, but we wanted to introduce him so you could be excited about him coming. So the thing I wanted to update the council on, two things. The first is that as of six o'clock this evening, we had already issued 11.6% of the registered voters in Freeport absentee ballots. So we have 7,444 registered voters, 861 absentee ballots have been requested and sent out. That is very fast. I'm not sure I've ever seen absentee voting start quite this fast. [46:37] Speaker I (unidentified): And Chris is nodding her head in agreement on that. [46:40] Speaker H (unidentified): I will just bring council's attention to the fact that because we are seeing a higher than usual voter turnout and also because the clerk's office has taken on more baseline work that they are having to do every day outside of election, we have brought on two of Chris's ballot clerks to help out in the office, so you'll see a third body in the clerk's office that's a ballot clerk that's coming to work and assist us as needed. I think that is all I really need to add, but I'm, I'm happy to answer any questions, any [47:28] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): questions for the manager based on the report? I [47:36] Speaker C (unidentified): guess I would just call out because I wouldn't mention this in information sharing, but the council had a workshop with Winslow Park Commission and one of the end in which included Winslow Park staff and some of the details in the manager's report just speak to the fact that Winslow Park is closed for the season, but we were really able to celebrate with Winslow Park Commission and staff what a successful season that was, and I think we were able to identify also a number of needs that will hopefully make the next season even better. So congratulations to both Caroline for taking on so much of the responsibility for Winslow Park this year, but also the superb team on hand in the park. [48:26] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): And one of the outcomes of that workshop was developing a work plan for the strategic planning process to align. There's just so many moving pieces, and it's a huge puzzle. So putting it down on paper and making sure we have a plan of how we're tackling it. So I think, Sophie, you were going to work on that for the next commission meeting. [48:45] Speaker H (unidentified): Yep, so a draft of that will go to the October 19th commission meeting, And I'll share it with counsel after that. All [48:59] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): right So now we're moving on to the public comment period. This is the first part for folks who are here in person This is for items that are not on the agenda And we just ask that you please keep your comments to three minutes or less and when you are up at the podium Please introduce yourself [49:18] Michael Dillahunt, public commenter: Michael Dillahunt and I am here to just place two things in the public record The first is a paper that everyone has received, and what that indicates is that there is a falsehood in the initiative. So I'd like that to be placed in the record, and you can read it for yourself that is a concern. Number two is a piece of paper that indicates that there was a case in the state of Maine, Jortner v. Secretary of State, in which the Supreme Judicial Court stated that the parties met their burden to demonstrate that a ballot question for citizens-initiated legislation was not understandable to a reasonable voter regarding the question for the first time and that it would mislead and a reasonable voter under main law. So those I am giving everyone there. So it's just in the public record for my concerns as to how the ballot is placed before the public. And then there's quite a bit of other information I provided for you folks that just goes into concerns about how the initiative is misleading also in the five pages that it's been written. Do you have questions for me? [50:56] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): I know it's unclear. This is on the agenda, item 122 slash 26, so please continue your comments. But other comments about the Island Rover should be held for item 122-26 and also our public hearing on October 15th as well. [51:14] Michael Dillahunt, public commenter: So I could speak during that time? Yes. Yep. Absolutely. [51:24] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): Any other comments for items not on the agenda? Moving on to the new business portion of our agenda, this first item is item 118-26. This is our consent agenda. We have several appointments and a few donations. Is there any discussion? All [51:56] Speaker C (unidentified): right, Councillor Smith. Be it ordered that the October 6, 2026 consent agenda be adopted. [52:03] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): Second. Is there any question? All right. All those in favor? Aye. That's everybody. Everybody, moving on to item 119-26. This is to set a public hearing relative to the new downtown tiff district, the omnibus tiff district, and we have Brett Richardson to introduce the item. [52:31] Brett Richardson, Development Director: Thanks everybody. Development director with the town, Brett Richardson. We're gonna keep it somewhat brief tonight because we've talked about this item a fair amount and happy to do another presentation before the public hearing, but this is the continuation of the community's work over the last several years. The community's reached consensus on land use, transportation, public space upgrades, and in order to make those good investments, dedicated funding source is critical. This downtown tiff would leverage the new value that's created from the housing projects on depot street for example and other development projects essentially in the downtown south on route one to roughly the main beer company breeze stop it's consistent with the village corridor initiative geography that we've learned a lot about what the community would like to see there as well as what the capital cost to make those improvements will be required and so by leveraging new tax dollars from new development we can support those investments without having an impact on the current value in the town and the taxpayer. So the idea tonight is to set the public hearing for the October 20th and then following that we've been working with Bernstein, sure we would submit this application to the state for their review and approval. We would need to get this completed with state approval by early 2027, February or so. We're in pretty good shape on time, and so the action tonight is to set the public hearing to move that forward. [54:10] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): As Brett has mentioned, we've discussed this a couple of times at this point, but are there any other questions for Brett? Okay, and again this is to set the public hearing, so counselor [54:22] Speaker D (unidentified): Brown. Be it ordered that a public hearing be set for October 20th, 2026 at Freeport Town Hall Council Chambers, 30 Main Street, starting at 6 p.m. to discuss the downtown revitalization plan as a union of the Village Corridor. Oops, sorry. All right, I'm gonna start over. Be it ordered that a public hearing be set for October 20th, 2026 at the Freeport Town Hall Council Chambers, 30 Main Street, starting at 6 p.m. to discuss a new omnibus downtown [54:58] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): tax increment finance district. Second. Any other discussion? All those in favor? Don't go too far. Item 120 S 2 6 is it to set a public hearing relative to the [55:17] Brett Richardson, Development Director: downtown revitalization plan. Thank you, and this is really part and parcel with the previous item. The downtown revitalization plan is a document that's, it's attached into the council packet. It's pretty extensive. I think it's 50-odd pages of content. But the key takeaway is there's really nothing new in there. It is a summation of the Village Corridor Initiative, the Comprehensive Plan, the Climate Action Plan, the Downtown Vision Plan, and the Active Living Plan. And this Downtown Revitalization Plan is essentially a requirement from the state. So to enact the downtown TIF that we just talked about, which has significant advantages from the state? They would like to see that some thought has been put into what that means and how the town envisions using the new value from development, and so this downtown revitalization plan is a complement to the TIF application in the packet and basically summarizes all the great work that the town's done over the last several years to create this consensus. And lays it out in terms of what the goals are around enabling infill housing, using local dollars to match state and federal dollars for investment in transportation, delivering business development programs. We just heard about some potential needs from FEDC to keep the downtown revitalization going. going and then to also upgrade public safety and environmental protections in the town so this plan essentially articulates that vision that is attached to the tiff and submitted to the state for approval and [57:03] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): I can't stress enough that, you know, these aren't new plans. You just said that, but I really want to stress that they're not new plans. It really is sort of the coalescence of all the work that's been done that's setting us up for smart financial decisions. That's right. Any questions for Brett? [57:23] Speaker L (unidentified): Okay. Councilor Lawrence. All right. [57:25] Speaker B (unidentified): Be it ordered that a public hearing be set for October 20, 2026 at Freeport Town Hall Council Chambers, 30 Main Street, starting at 6 p.m. to discuss the downtown revitalization plan as a union of the Village Corridor Initiative report and the Downtown Vision Plan. Second. [57:44] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): All those in favor? Aye. That's everybody. Okay. And continuing on with setting public hearings, this one is relative to the General Assistance Ordinances Appendices A through H. Sophie. [58:04] Speaker H (unidentified): So every year, the State of Maine, after working with Maine Municipal Association, provides towns with the general assistance maximums, program maximums, that the council then has to hold a public hearing, get public input on, and adopt. If the general assistance program is a local assistance program to people in need, it is designed to be a stopgap while they are applying for other state assistance. If we follow the ordinance, which we use the model state ordinance, and work within the guidelines that they provide, we receive a refund of 70% of our general assistance expenses. This is something we have to do every year. When you look at the difference between last year's rates and this year's rates, they are very similar, within a couple percentage points. And I spoke with our general assistance staffers, who believe that these work with Freeport's needs. [59:43] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): Do we have any questions for Sophie? All right, so again, this is for setting public hearing. Councilor Sparta. [59:56] Speaker M (unidentified): Be it ordered that a public hearing be set for October 20th, 2026 at Freeport Town Hall, Council Chambers, 30 Main Street, starting at 6 p.m. to discuss the repeal and replacement of the October 1st, 2026 to September 30th, 2027 General Assistance Ordinances, Appendices A through H. Second. All those in favor? [1:00:17] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): Aye. That's everybody. All right, moving on to item 122-26. I have a feeling folks may be here to share some thoughts on this one. So the way that we typically will do this is we'll introduce the item, council will discuss, and then we can open it up for public comment, again with the understanding that we do have our official public hearing on October 15th, but public comment is welcome on any agenda item, so I've been [1:00:46] Speaker H (unidentified): through this with council a couple of times, but just to make sure everybody is on the same page, when using the citizen petition process that is allowed or outlined in the town charter, after the citizen signature period, the opportunity to collect signature period expires, and then the clerk's certification of the signatures, the council then has to set a public hearing. While we say considering, under the charter you have to set a public hearing. If you wanna do it on a different day, you can. That day has to be, I think you can go as far as Monday of the following week, but that's as far as you could take it. Because, oh, you, yeah, because of the way the Charter is written, we have already, I have heard feedback from people, when we have already issued 800 ballots, why are we now doing a public hearing? The public hearing is not about whether or not to have the initiative under the charter. The public hearing is to allow people to have a forum to give feedback, positive and negative, or whatever they want to say about the hearing. That feedback will then, it will be taped like any other council meeting and put up online with a link from the current citizen initiative page where we have other discussions and commentary. We'll put a link for the public hearing for people to learn more about that. The intent is to have the town attorney at that public hearing to be able to answer any questions or concerns, which I, based on my inbox, will probably have questions and concerns on both sides of this particular issue. But that's kind of where we are in this process, and this is just my plug for when this is all over. I hope that council can consider working with the town attorney to start the process for changing the charter to better align with state election law. [1:03:13] Michael Dillahunt, public commenter: Any [1:03:19] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): questions? That's okay, and I will say, you know, the whole, just to kind of back it up for public understanding, you know, the citizen petition really is, it's like, kind of like a checks and balance where, you know, it doesn't leave council with much opportunity on purpose. You know, it's meant to be, if your council is doing something that you don't agree with and not making the changes you want, so that's why it's been a little bit prescriptive and how we've had to handle it, because it really is meant to be a checks and balance of the council. I [1:03:55] Speaker C (unidentified): I would just add that as Sophie was saying, we're, we're threading this needle between what the charter says that the initiative process is and what state election law is, and both state election law has changed significantly since the, charter, but also even just in this season, as Sophie mentioned at the beginning of the meeting, how many people are voting early these days, which was not really the protocol for most people back when this part of the charter was written. Election day was election day, and if you were out of town, then you would vote absentee, but it wasn't 11% of the voters within the first couple of days of ballots being available. So I would just reiterate, I think that the Citizens Initiative process, while it is designed to, you know, be direct access to the voters, it really is overdue to be reimagined, not to limit that, but to align it more with the other schedules that we have to follow by the state. [1:05:15] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): And with that I'll just give a shout out to Chris and her team for doing a phenomenal job with making sure we were compliant and on track and did everything the best we could, so thank you Chris and your team. Any other further questions? All right, counselor Pillsbury. Oh I'm so sorry, thank you, I totally offered public comment and then almost blew by it, so we'll open up public quick comment for this item. And the same rules, please, three minutes, introduce yourself, and keep it on topic. [1:05:52] Michael Dillahunt, public commenter: Michael Delahunt. And so I first saw this ballot this morning, and I've been studying the initiative for three months, six months, and to see it shortened to this abbreviated form where it's hard to even get your hands around what is being stated, but the question I have, I don't want to waste your time, is who writes the ballot, so I just want to be educated, I'm not here to write so [1:06:27] Speaker H (unidentified): Yeah, per the Charter the town attorney writes the ballot question and I also to [1:06:36] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): That and to it is complex a long document right and it's hard to synthesize but for access there's copies online the town clerk has copies as well [1:06:47] Speaker L (unidentified): For those who want to access the full document yes summarizing 33 [1:06:57] Michael Dillahunt, public commenter: Zone changes is difficult and the fact that this town allows a citizen to create a zone change is something that may or may not need to be looked at. I don't know, it is very unique and good luck with that. [1:07:21] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): Would anybody else like to speak? [1:07:27] Speaker H (unidentified): Is anyone online? Nobody wants to speak. [1:07:31] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): Okay, with that, I'll go ahead and I will close the public comment. And now, Councilor Pillsbury. [1:07:38] Speaker E (unidentified): Be it ordered that a public hearing be set for October 15th, 2026 at Freeport Town Hall All council chambers, 30 Main Street, starting at 6 p.m. to discuss the citizen's petition to launch the Island Rover, version 2.0. [1:07:49] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): Second. All those in favor? Aye. That's everybody. And just to reiterate, that public comment is allowed on any item on the agenda. I can do a much better job at explaining that. But if there's an item on the agenda, folks are welcome to comment on it. All right, moving on to item 123-26, related. This is relative to certifying the citizens petition to launch the Island Rover version 2.0. And Chris Wolfe, take it away. [1:08:28] Town Clerk (Christine Wolfe): So I'm not breaking any news here that we are going to have that referendum question on the ballot. The petitioners turned in 33 pages of petitions with 907 signatures. Signatures. My deputy and I both looked at every signature on every petition. We pulled up everyone's voter registration signature, did a visual match. The results were that they needed 744 signatures. They had 812 valid signatures. 95 were determined to be invalid, with five of those being voters that had signed twice so the clerk has any [1:09:22] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): questions thank you again Chris nice I have seen how you do it and as a tedious process all right and again this was completed on September 29th all right [1:09:37] Speaker C (unidentified): Councilor Smith be it ordered that the town clerk certification of the citizens petition to launch the island rover version 2.0 completed September 29th 2026 be accepted second all right [1:09:53] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): All those in favor all right that's everybody all right moving on to item 124-26 this is relative to endorsing a community development block grant application for the Wartown Mobile Home Co-op. While Brett walks up to the podium, I'll remind council that we had an informative presentation, I think, earlier this year or last year about the need for this infrastructure and the way we can support as the town. So take it away. [1:10:30] Brett Richardson, Development Director: The community development block grant program is administered relevant to Freeport by Cumberland County it's an annual program that supports great investments throughout the county tonight we're joined by Kristen Brewer Kirsten Brewer rather and Michael game on from the war town cooperative and they're here to present a project that's critical to maintaining attainable housing in Freeport with a great project that will keep residents in their home for the long term future. So turn it over to the team. Thank you. I didn't recognize you before. Good to see you both again. [1:11:08] Kirsten Brewer, Cooperative Development Institute: Hello. My name is Kirsten Brewer. I work for the Cooperative Development Institute and we're the technical assistance provider supporting the Wardtown Co-op. I'm [1:11:19] Mike Guimond, Wardtown Co-op operations director: Mike Guimond, operate director of operations for the community, and we have revitalized that field. It started to fail and we had to peroxide it, and that was a year and a half ago. I think I've got so much going on I don't know which way the winds blowing right now, but I want to keep the residents in their homes if we, and I want to keep our rents so they're affordable. 80% of our occupancy is low income, so it keeping the rent at an acceptable rate is first and foremost. This community block development grant would go a long ways to keep these people in their homes and keeping our infrastructure viable for the next 50 or 60 years, however long that's going to be. I won't be here, but this system was put in 50 years ago, so it's due for replacement. [1:12:39] Kirsten Brewer, Cooperative Development Institute: It's a pretty expensive leach field. It serves 10 households in the co-op, but it will benefit fit the entire community of 60 households because the entire community pays for all the infrastructure. And typically there's a capital improvement plan, Mike and his team are doing improvements, but this is just a very expensive leach field. So any grant funding, we're seeking $200,000 from CDBG, any grant funding will offset the loans and the reserves that the coop has to use. So no ask for funding from Freeport, just your endorsement so we can do this application. [1:13:11] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): Is there an official letter of support we would be submitting I would Brett and [1:13:18] Speaker H (unidentified): I would craft one as well but we're actually we're actually endorsing this correct aware great and I would just want to add that this is not an exception the town has assisted both Ward town well Ward town in the past seeing the uniqueness of the cooperative and the fact that it's low-income housing as being a really important project for us to support. [1:13:53] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): Yeah, and it's absolutely in line with, you know, diverse housing offerings, making sure we have affordable housing options. So it makes sense to me. Any questions or comments? [1:14:07] Speaker E (unidentified): Just curious. You mentioned that it doesn't service all homes. How are the other homes serviced? [1:14:15] Mike Guimond, Wardtown Co-op operations director: There's 10 homes on that leach field. There is 11 homes on another one. There are several homes that have their own. And then after the residents bought the community 12 years ago, two years after we bought it, we invested somewhere in the neighborhood of $275,000 to $300,000. But at those prices then, which would probably be $3 million today, in a brand-new leach field that services 26 homes. We've invested out of our own money, and we put budgeted in, and we've replaced Schedule 20 sewer lines from 50 years ago with Schedule 40 today to meet code. And everything we're trying to do is to bring it up to today's code so it'll last. Any other question I can answer for you folks? Great. Councilor Brown? [1:15:46] Speaker D (unidentified): Be it ordered that the Town Council endorse Cooperative Development Institute's CDBG application to Cumberland County for funding to support septic upgrades at the word town [1:15:58] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): mobile home co-op. Second. All those in favor? That's everyone. Good luck with the application. All right, moving on to action to award a bid for siding replacement for the Freeport Community Library. We had a staff memo, and we also have Public Works director Earl Gibson here, who I just heard is supposed to be on vacation. [1:16:31] Speaker Q (unidentified): I won't answer that tonight. Give you a real short briefing because I have a little bit of a sore throat. We started looking at the library siding about two years ago. It's 29 years old and in desperate need of repair. So we started looking at replacing it. We went to the council and FY 27 and asked for $400,000 in the municipal facility capital budget for the removal, and we got the money. So then we put an RFP out, we sent it out. Oh, I need to back up. We started looking at a different material than what's there, so we come up with a composite, and it's very long worded, but basically what it did is a board that looked like cedar plank. So with some help with Nick Adams, our code enforcement officer, he was familiar with it, so we done some research and went that away. So we put an RAP out and come back. You can see by the, I think everybody has a memo, the low bidder, Main Highland Construction. We've done some background on their company to make sure they were a reputable company and reached out to them. And what I am asking is for us to move forward with that bid. [1:17:53] Speaker H (unidentified): The only thing I would add to what Earl has said, all of which is true, is that this has been a journey that we've taken with the Municipal Facilities Committee. We talked with them when we were looking at alternative materials. They have seen a piece of the actual material. We have shown the color that we're looking at, which should look remarkably similar to what you see now. And Earl has done a lot of work for this siting job. [1:18:33] Speaker D (unidentified): I just say at municipal facilities, we got into the weeds about a lot of things, including the best practice for installation. So with Earl's help and Nick's, we really dug into it. But so here we are, time to vote. [1:18:52] Speaker C (unidentified): And I would just thank our library director, Winter Giddings, as well, because I know she worked closely with Earl in terms of what the needs were for the building, but also worked on looking at references for the company and understanding their previous library experience. I [1:19:14] Speaker H (unidentified): think it's important to just note that the intent here, And part of the reason that we were so specific is we expect that the siding is going to be installed without losing library hours to the public. So we'll be working around the public. If [1:19:35] Speaker Q (unidentified): I may, I'd like to mention two other things. I know we had a little bit of feedback when we removed some trees at the library this summer. The reason that was done is to let the building dry out a little bit. When you get rain and you have the trees around it and you have it on the roof, it's hard on everything. I'm going to hold my next comment to once you take your vote, but I do need to update you. [1:20:03] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): Okay. Any questions other than what is that? What's the update? Dying to know. [1:20:10] Speaker Q (unidentified): Well, the update is I wanted to make sure that town council was happy with the contractor that we had chosen. But that contractor reached out to me yesterday afternoon. The vendor thought they had the color in stock. They did not. So it will be four to five weeks before we get to work to five not forty five That's fine, I just wanted to be sure we had accepted them in [1:20:34] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): All right, that's manageable. Thank you. Any other questions? counselor Lawrence [1:20:46] Speaker B (unidentified): be it ordered that main Highland construction be awarded the bid for siting replacement at the Freeport Community Library in the amount of three hundred eighty eight thousand seven hundred and fifty seven [1:20:56] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): dollars second all those in favor hi that's everybody thank [1:21:05] Speaker I (unidentified): you thank you earl well thanks [1:21:07] Speaker C (unidentified): for spending your vacation with us freeport's a lovely place to vacation all right item [1:21:17] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): item 126-26 this is to approve the certificate of settlement for fiscal year 25 [1:21:27] Speaker H (unidentified): So when the tax commitment is completed, it actually commits the collection of the taxes to the tax collector, which in Freeport is me. And as you go through the process of those collections, once taxes go to lien, they actually become the responsibility of the treasurer. So you do the certificate of settlement to reconcile the current outstanding taxes and to assign them to the appropriate person. So if I were to leave tomorrow, I'm not trying to find funds that are not under my control. They're now under Jessica's control as treasurer. So this is truly a housekeeping matter and one that Freeport does every year. Well I have nothing more to say. It was a pretty simple item. Any questions [1:22:45] Speaker E (unidentified): for Sophie? Can you, sorry I'm just curious, what are the supplemental commitments and what are the abatements? [1:22:56] Speaker H (unidentified): So after the taxes are committed, they're They're committed based on the values or assessed values that are on the books as of April 1. When people get their tax bills, they might bring to people's attention, for example, with supplements, what they might be is a transfer that happened before April 1, which is the magic cutoff date. and so perhaps we assess the former owner when we should have picked up the current owner. When that happens you abate the current owner and you supplement the other owner. That's one situation. The other time that you would get a supplement would be if there were some sort of tree growth penalty or item like that gets committed after the fact under maintenance law. If we commit taxes on a parcel and a building we cannot then go in that year and say oh we missed this brand new addition that you put on we can't supplement that. We can, however, if you had an addition that you demoed in February and you could show that you demoed it in February but we taxed you for it, MIN could go in and abate that. So the supplements and abatements are really a function of corrections in the initial commitment. You can also find an abatement slid in there if we had poverty abatements that would also slide in there. [1:24:52] Speaker E (unidentified): And are those amounts and percentages relatively normal? [1:24:55] Speaker H (unidentified): For a community with a $3.4 billion value, I would say those are pretty small, very small. Any [1:25:12] Speaker M (unidentified): other questions for Sophie? All right, Councilor Sparta. be it ordered that the certificate of settlement for fiscal year 2025 be approved second all those [1:25:28] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): in favor all right that's everybody all right item 127-26 this is action relative to amending our fee schedule for planning fees and hunter road field user fees wow that was hard to say [1:25:45] Speaker H (unidentified): Person, this is an item that has gone through Finance Committee and is coming back with their recommendation. The first change is to add the cost of legal fees to the 385 dollar application fee for applicant driven zoning amendments and zoning map amendments, so those are actual costs. We're also recommending to increase the public hearing advertising fee from $150 to $250 to, quite frankly, to just recapture town costs for those. The second thing is the Finance Committee had initially asked the Hunter Road advisory, the Hunter Road Fields Advisory Committee to look at the fees that are charged to use Hunter Road Fields. They hadn't changed in a very long time. And we were bringing in about $6,000 a year to offset an annual maintenance contract with RSU-5 at about $111,000. The committee came back with a suggestion to increase the fees by five dollars per team per season. The Finance Committee sent it back with a request that they maybe look at look at that a little bit differently. The committee brought back I think a very well thought-out fee schedule that really looked at how the fields are used. They are suggesting moving tier one rates whoops Chris you've got me on this one [Speaker I (unidentified): to] per game practice would be 50 for residents and club, school, and RSU community programs and $100 for out-of-town groups or for-profit or fundraising. And looking at, I'm sorry,, seasonal team play will go up, yeah, 200 to 500. [1:28:50] Speaker C (unidentified): What's 200 and then additional? [1:28:53] Speaker H (unidentified): Lock is 50. I'm sorry, it's just a spacing issue. [1:28:56] Speaker C (unidentified): Yeah, I think that's what it is. [1:28:57] Speaker H (unidentified): The key here is that what they're really shifting, it's a major shift in how the field will be scheduled and managed will actually be looking at entering into an agreement with RSU five community programs to use the software that they have, the program they have to actually go on and reserve the fields, pay for the fields, and then the town will get the full amount of money back from that. It is a shift and it's a shift that we anticipate will add about $10,000 of revenue. So they're anticipating this will go to about $17,000 a year if we had the same use in the previous year that they compared two complete years to each other. Phil Wagner did a much better job than I am doing at this moment, but here is what we have. Anything [1:30:07] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): to add, Matt? I can't think of anything. Any questions for Sophie? Thank you for recapping that. All right. Well, with that, I'm just with Councilor Pillsbury. [1:30:26] Speaker E (unidentified): In order that the Freeport fee schedule be amended to increase planning fees and add Hunter Road field user fees. [1:30:33] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. That's everybody. All right. Also up for SOFI is item 128-26. This is relative to a request from the Freeport Gridiron Club to place a storage shed at the Pownall Road fields. [1:30:55] Speaker H (unidentified): So I had briefed the council in a previous town manager's report that we had a wonderful community effort where people got very excited and put a shed on town-owned property without talking to the town, which that created a few, it created a ripple or a cascade if we may call it. So Doton's construction put a 10 by 20 shed up on the Pownall Road fields. The issue with that shed is it was installed, number one, without a building permit. Number two, we are already capped at our impervious area that we're allowed to develop on Pownall Road fields, Hunter Road fields, and the recycling transfer facility. Those are all subject to a single site location of development permit issued by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. And we learned when I first got here that we were at the per inch, to the inch max, based on some things that had happened out at Hunter Road Fields. So we had kind of a few issues. I was able to make contact with a representative of the club, Rebecca Beale-Lucier, I think is how she says her name. And we were able to figure out a few things. The first is that the previous, there's an old shed and their intent is to take that old shed down, that I think the hope was that would happen over the weekend. I'm not sure if that actually has occurred yet. I haven't been able to get out there yet, but to take that one down and now is 204 square feet, which means we should be fine on the site location of development as long as that shed is removed, which then leaves us with the new shed. However, the new shed is not on the site plan where it belongs because the old shed was in a different location. So we are going to have to look at likely going back through a site plan amendment process, depending on how we do that. The application goes to Kyle and he can review it, and if it falls under staff review, he can do it. The problem that we run into is that the counts the council has through ordinance exempted the municipal process, processes projects from being able to go through, not exempt, they don't allow them to go through staff review. They all have to go to the project review board. So it really becomes a question of, is this minor enough for Kyle to simply amend the site plan? We're not sure that can happen. It all starts with them needing right title and interest in order to submit for the review for the planner and also an after the fact building permit. So what you have here is the Rebecca was kind enough to work with me, we got a letter together for you to consider giving them the right title and interest so that we can get the shed that is on our property but that does not belong to us on, we can clear up the fact that it is not currently legal. So that's one issue. I'm just gonna keep going with a couple issues that are somewhat related, if that's okay. The next issue is that it is my understanding that many years ago, when the town and the school split, that this property that was owned by the town, but was used extensively by the school, there was a whole bunch of community discussion about what to do with this. And ultimately, the decision was made by the council to maintain ownership of Pownall Road fields and that the school pretty much has exclusive use of it, but their job is to maintain it. The problem we have is that there is absolutely no agreements in place between the town and the school, between the town and the Freeport Gridiron Club, which is not affiliated with the school. So we definitely need to get some basic agreements in place. Our insurance company wants to see that as soon as we can get that done. So this is also the time that we need to kind of begin to think about that. And then the final thing is 20 years ago, when that property was really used by the school, a playground went in, and it was funded by grant funds. But the grant funds went through the school, the school managed the process of the playground. The contractor, we've gone back and talked to the contractor. The contractor worked exclusively with the school to put the playground in. And staffs, the Freeport Public Works staff, building and ground staff, had seen that as a school responsibility, but the playground has not been maintained. And I don't know that the school necessarily knows that the playground is supposed to be maintained. I've been doing research. I think I'm ready to reach out and have that conversation with the school. But we're gonna have to think about what happens next with the playground, which will be a municipal facilities conversation that I'm hoping to invite the school to be part of. So that is my download for Pownall Road fields. The question in front of you is whether or not you will allow the Gridiron Club to utilize the field, to use town-owned property to put their shed. In [1:37:42] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): terms of the playground, that has seemed to be sort of a, people are, the community is disappointed, for sure. [1:37:50] Speaker H (unidentified): Yeah, there's, we had the playground, I wish that I still had Earl, I should have hollered at him. We had a licensed playground inspector come and look at the playground. The rules are pretty clear with municipal playgrounds, there's a pretty high standard you have to meet. We have not met that standard, and I don't know that it makes sense to put 300 yards of appropriate chips and spend about eight grand on what the certified inspector is telling us needs to be repaired in order to have a playground that meets the safety standard that the insurance company would be and the town should be looking for. So I just got that information yesterday right when Earl was heading off on his vacation. So we're kind of working through that. But right now it might look fine, if somebody got hurt on that playground, if somebody came down off a slide and cracked their head on the exposed concrete, or had some of the places that are very worn can easily scratch and cut an individual, those would be considered negligence if we opened the playground up. [1:39:19] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): It's my understanding that what happens if folks are using the playground [1:39:22] Speaker I (unidentified): even if it's closed? [1:39:24] Speaker H (unidentified): As long as we have said it's roped off, we have it roped off, we have it reasonably closed, we have, I think the snow fence wrapped around it and the sign that says closed is a pretty good indication that it's supposed to be closed, then you have people who are doing something they're not supposed to do and they could try to sue us, but we would have at least a defense. If we don't have it well signed as closed and somebody hurts themselves, our immunity defense kind of goes out the window with [1:40:04] Speaker D (unidentified): something like that, you document it with pictures probably. Yeah, cool, and it sounds like they're asking for the shed, but then we have to go to the DEP for [1:40:16] Speaker H (unidentified): approval after no I don't think we have the DEP issue because we will we might have to amend the site plan but at this point the first domino that needs to fall is knowing whether or not council is going to give them permission to have the shed their council could not saying you will I'm not recommending it the council could say no we didn't give you permission we don't want to deal with this come have somebody pick up your shed and well we're happy with going back the way it was I am NOT making a recommendation on this, but I am saying the first domino for me to do any of the other things is I need to know that they have permission to be there. So carries the liability we do. So the issue that we have, it's the domino thing, right? If I know that you're good with having the shed there, then I go and I get an agreement with them for the shed. We make the shed legal, we amend site plans or SLOTAs if we have to amend that. I don't want to engage our person, so we have an engineer at, it used to be Goral Palmer, I don't keep up with, they've sold, but Will Haskell is our engineer that has been managing that SLOTA. I have not wanted to engage him and spend time on that until I, number one, understood what we needed to do. Number two, had the Gridiron Club actually asked for permission. Number three, got the permission from the town council. [1:42:13] Speaker M (unidentified): So the Freeport Gridiron Club, what kind of an entity is it? Does it have any legal standing? [1:42:21] Speaker H (unidentified): It is registered with the state of Maine as 503C, 501C3. But I did, in order to find the person to talk with, I did look them up and they were in good standing with the state. [1:42:43] Speaker M (unidentified): And what sort of liability insurance do they carry? No idea that [1:42:51] Speaker H (unidentified): that would come with an agreement that the council would have to agree to and a little league like young kids go and [1:42:59] Speaker M (unidentified): play soccer over on Hunter Road because we just went over this cost some money, right? Yep, little kids want to play football over there on that field. What does it cost? We don't get anything [1:43:12] Speaker H (unidentified): for that. My understanding is that practice has been that the school has exclusivity. We do some weed whacking and we pick up some trash there. And other than that, the town has a very hands off approach. We can change that. We can do whatever council wants. I think it's a practice that has kind of just been chugging along like so many of the things that we find in Freeport. [1:43:40] Speaker M (unidentified): Sure, I just, I'm looking at you know the potential cost of replacing that playground and things like that. Yeah, so [1:43:50] Speaker C (unidentified): As we've said, there would be, what you're asking for tonight is a, even though it's a formal action, we're saying we're okay with the shed there. But what that's going to trigger is you reaching out to establish an actual formal agreement with this entity for the use of that, which would usually, with permission to use town property, come with a certificate of insurance and detailed specifications of a time limit. And so I'm thinking, for example, when we do the annual renewal of use for Memorial Park with the Hilton Garden Inn, we do that every year, and I would think that with this would be similar. Maybe it's not every year, maybe it's your, but there would be a period of time that we review because I think as Sophie has detailed a lot with Pound Road field is a holdover from how it was originally set up with the schools when the schools were a town department and there were a lot of things in the creation of the RSU 5 that didn't really, we're not foreseen, and I think this is one of them [1:45:14] Speaker H (unidentified): that we're still trying to clean up. So I think with both the gridiron club and RSU 5 we will want to have a tenancy agreement. It would look a little different than the use of town-owned property but would have many of those elements. None of the infrastructure there belongs to the town or is seen as belonging to the town, so if something happens the only thing we are really covering there is the liability, which is concerning because if it's not maintained we own the liability, so [1:45:58] Speaker M (unidentified): that leads one to that question, why would we own the liability. Why wouldn't we require them to do that? Why wouldn't it hit their insurance first? I think it should be required for them to have that insurance to protect the town. [1:46:12] Speaker H (unidentified): So once we get past this conversation, my next step will be to have those conversations. But I, as with all of the little things that we find that are past practice and we want to bring them up, I always want to get the council's view. [1:46:31] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): So it's really, it's like, it's like less about, we're using the shed as the vehicle to formalize the relationship. [1:46:41] Speaker H (unidentified): So we're using the shed as the vehicle to have this conversation. The shed brought to my attention the total lack of formality with that. I don't even have it list, like Pound Road Fields was not on my radar at all. I really until this came up was under the impression that it was a school property that we had a joint relationship with, so it is not on anything because we don't cover any of the development on our insurance and so [1:47:20] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): I think that's a great point to bring up, Ken. And but so it sounds like after we kind of give the okay to start that conversation via the shed, it will come to municipal facilities, which will then make sure things like that are considered in the agreement, so yeah. [1:47:42] Speaker D (unidentified): So granting approval doesn't magically present a shed that's immediately in place, their times to line up are ducks, so I see this as. [1:47:52] Speaker H (unidentified): So the shed is there. [1:47:54] Speaker D (unidentified): Oh, that shed, yeah, that shed's gonna go. [1:47:56] Speaker H (unidentified): Is there Carolyn's trying to give me a message but I can't see my stuff so they [1:48:07] Speaker I (unidentified): have a scoreboard building that was properly permitted they have for the to make it on the record they have a scoreboard building that was properly permitted also on site so Steve this is number one I don't [1:48:25] Speaker H (unidentified): like to have the town violating the very ordinance that we are charged with holding other people accountable to so I'm trying to get the ducks in a row to be able to fix that at the same time I have had conversations with Rebecca about needing to have an agreement and I need to also reach out to the school because I think we also need an agreement with RSU5 for the general use just [1:48:59] Speaker C (unidentified): to answer your question Ken Freeport Gridiron Club is a 501c3 they were issued tax exempt status in January of 2015. So they are registered charity the [1:49:15] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): strategy makes sense to me [1:49:17] Speaker L (unidentified): it seems like it's one angle to try and get this I also think the only other strategy [1:49:25] Speaker M (unidentified): is to go and tear down the new shed that they just put up you said [Speaker H (unidentified): doesn't right no] No, it does not, it does not, yeah. [1:49:35] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): That's definitely, you know, good faith. All right, is everyone, does that sound good? Make sense? Okay. With that, Councilor Smith. [1:49:47] Speaker C (unidentified): Be it ordered that the Town Council approves the placement of a storage shed on town-owned property at the Poundland Road fields for use by the Freeport Great Iron Club. [1:49:55] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): Second. All those in favor? Aye. That's everybody. All right. The next item is to confirm the town manager's appointment of the acting fire rescue chief. As I mentioned in the information sharing, Chief Bernard has pursued another opportunity. [1:50:21] Speaker H (unidentified): So our deputy fire rescue chief who has actually been here a few months longer than Chief Bernard was is Luke Vachon and I have appointed him as the acting fire rescue chief it says for an indefinite term because I want to go through a process when this was being written I was in the process of having conversations with the town of Yarmouth and the town of Brunswick. When a head of a department leaves, especially in a public safety venture, if you're going to look at consolidation or collaborating in administration, that is the time to do it. So I did reach out to have those conversations. Brunswick is really stretched. They had asked for four additional people already for their department, and that they did not get during the budget process. And while they're open to collaboration in other ways and would very much like to start a group to begin to have those conversations, right now they are not in a place to be able to support Freeport any greater than the mutual aid that we already do back and forth. I reached out to Yarmouth and got to meet the new Yarmouth town manager who started last week, as well as the old town Yarmouth town manager there, back to Nat Tupper, who I will say was, he was part of the landscape when I first started in managing, is really highly regarded. And so it was a great opportunity for the four of us, because Caroline joined us in that conversation, to sit down, and I think there is an opportunity for us to sit at the table with Yarmouth to think longer term down the road about what more consolidation or collaboration might look like between our two communities. I'm not saying that it's something that would work or would not work, but I think there might be some interest in trying to map out a path that we could look through and ask questions and have the councils have that conversation. But for now, they said that they're probably in a three, really mapping it out, that's probably a three-year process. So hearing that, I moved forward and posted internally for chief. We had either four or five people on staff that would be considered internal that had the qualifications to be chief. So we posted that. We have two applicants for that position, and we're going to move forward. And depending on the outcome of that, we'll either have a chief or we'll go out of house after that, depending on how that works. So that's the reason it's an indefinite term, because I need to have an acting department head until we have a full-time one appointed. I will tell you, as part of this, we've also pulled Nate Goodman in, police chief in, to provide some formalized mentoring and supervision with regard to management supervision and some of those tasks that would be a little bit perhaps new in this organization for our deputy. So I think that is working well. My goal at the end of this process is to have a police and fire department that are building a really strong relationship together, to look more like a team and as a public safety lens, as opposed to kind of siloed in the same building, which is the goal. Questions? [1:54:38] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): For the manager, I [1:54:41] Speaker H (unidentified): should just add I have a lot of faith in Luke. He's been doing a good job. His communication has been great and he has been really connected with Nate. So I don't want you to think this is just because he was the next one down. He is he is he is very qualified. Yep, I asked like he's been [1:55:00] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): very present with council, so I think most of us have had, I mean I can speak for myself, great interactions with him. Yep, all right, Council Brown. Yeah, I met him this morning, [1:55:10] Speaker D (unidentified): seemed like a great guy, so very much weight. But be it ordered that the town manager's appointment of Luke Vachon as the acting fire rescue chief for an indefinite term, effective October 1st, [1:55:24] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): 2026, be confirmed. Second. All those in favor? That's everybody. And it's retroactive because that is when we had the need. Yep, all right, item 130-26. This is to renew the automobile graveyard and junkyard permit for DAB, and we have Chris Wolf. Hello. So the town of Freeport has one [1:55:54] Town Clerk (Christine Wolfe): automobile graveyard and or junkyard. That business is DAB Incorporated. It's owned by David Bolduck and it operates at 13 Allen Range Road. As part of the annual renewal process, he submits an application and an application fee. Code Enforcement Officer does do an on-site inspection, which they passed, and then it comes to the council for approval and renewal. Hold [1:56:27] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): on, any questions for Chris? Okay, thank you Chris. Councillor Lawrence. [1:56:40] Speaker B (unidentified): Be it ordered that the 2026-2027 junkyard automobile graveyard permit for David Baldock, DBA, D.A.B, located at 13 Allen Range Road, Freeport, be approved. [1:56:57] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): Second. Seconded by Councillor Brown. Councillor Brown, yep. All those in favor? Aye. That is everybody. Okay. All right, moving on to our last voting item of the evening. This one's a little unusual. So October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and this has been a congressionally designated month since 1989. And we were approached as the town to read a proclamation to raise awareness about domestic violence and ways that we can support victims of violence in our community. One in four women and one in seven men has experienced abuse and violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime, and trans and gender non-binary people experience abuse from their partners at a disproportionate rate. So we don't typically do this as a council, but leadership and staff spoke and decided it was a worthy cause to support. [1:58:08] Speaker H (unidentified): And one that the council has supported in the past with a resolution, this is not kind of outside the lane. You don't do this often, but when you do, it has meaning. [1:58:22] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): Yep. And so I just want to make sure for folks who are listening, resources for folks who might need it. We have the main coalition to end domestic violence. We have Through These Doors, who serves Cumberland County. We have a national hotline at 1-800-799-7233, and I'm sure there's others that we can share, perhaps on social media. Any questions or comments? So Councillor Smith had a great idea, which is if we could read this all together, that would be great. So starting with Councillor Pillsbury doing one paragraph per councillor. We do the Pledge of Allegiance really well, we'll stop there. So at your leisure, how's it feels very absolutely? [1:59:19] Speaker E (unidentified): Whereas domestic abuse and violence is a serious injustice that affects people and families of all races, ages, genders, and income levels, and [1:59:27] Speaker M (unidentified): And whereas one in four women and one in seven men has experienced abuse and violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime, and trans and gender non-binary people experience abuse from partners at a disproportionate rates, and. [1:59:41] Speaker B (unidentified): Whereas each year nearly half of all homicides in Maine are related to domestic abuse and violence, and. [1:59:48] Speaker D (unidentified): Whereas support and help is available in our community 24 seven to anyone affected by domestic abuse through these doors, our local partner, who has been supporting victims of domestic abuse and violence in Cumberland County since 1977, and whereas all people in our community have [2:00:08] Speaker C (unidentified): opportunities to support people experiencing abuse and violence, challenge the behavior of abusive people, and transform the belief systems that allow abuse to thrive, and whereas together, our individual actions are what will end domestic violence abuse. [2:00:26] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Joanna Benoit, Freeport Town Council Chair, do hereby proclaim October 2026 as Domestic Violence Awareness Month in the Town of Freeport, and I urge all citizens to recognize this observance and to learn more about the local services available to support victims of domestic abuse and violence in our community. Community. Be it ordered that the Town Council proclaim October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month in Freeport. Thank you. All those in favor? Aye. That's everybody. Thank you for being here. You should. Absolutely, of course. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Okay, moving on to public comment period part two. This is for folks who are online. Do we have [2:01:21] Speaker H (unidentified): Have anybody who would like to speak so we have folks online but I do not see that they have their hand raised okay [2:01:33] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): Okay moving on to other business sneaky on there learning more about timber harvest regulations and Main Tree means tree growth program so we have Sophie on this one this [2:02:10] Speaker H (unidentified): Is in response to questions that came up a couple of meetings ago, that councilors had about trees, timber, and taxes. So we're going to try to have a very concise couple of minutes here. So the question that came up is about who actually oversees timber harvests in the state of Maine. And the way it works is that landowners are supposed to notify the state the state sets the rules for the for timber harvesting they set them and through the Main Forest Service and they enforce them and municipalities can have local ordinances that regulate timber harvest however the town of Freeport made the decision many years ago to opt out of that program we're going to talk a little bit about how you could hop back in so we opted out it required some amendments to our zoning ordinance and When we opted out we then rely on the Main Forest Service to provide the oversight, the technical expertise, and the enforcement. We went as far with not only changing our shoreland zoning and other ordinances to eliminate reference to timber harvesting, we exempt timber harvesting activities from the noise ordinance as well. You can revisit that choice, but there is a different kind of process than what you're used to when we enact ordinances. So there are a couple of different elements and Caroline asked great questions which is helping guide this. A timber harvest has elements. I think an easy way to think about it is if you're having somebody come in and cut trees for you. And if you're then selling those trees, you don't have to sell the trees for it to be considered a timber harvest. If you are having an outside contractor do the work, or you are clearing more than two, eight, two or more acres in a 12 month period, that is considered a harvest. If you're clearing for a small project like your house, that is not considered a timber harvest as long as you keep it under two acres and you're doing it yourself, not hiring a contractor to do it. If you want to take a couple trees down, hazard tree, some firewood for your own use, that is not considered a timber harvest unless you clear more than the equivalent one of two and a half acres or two or more acres. Okay, I want to make sure, is that in one cutting session or is it over 12 month period? So I want to be really clear that there are shoreland zone zoning requirements that trump the vegetation removal here. So I don't want people to think they can go out and cut two acres without ever coming to see Nick because there are some site permits you have to get. There's shoreland zoning that you have to comply with if you're in the shoreland. So we kind of talked about what triggers that notice. So people go right online to the forestry main forest service and they fill out a notification application, and so all of those notices have to be made before work starts. If you're doing a huge cut like that, 75 acres, you have to have a harvest plan and 60 days notice into the state and they have to approve it. So there's a process for that. So if you're plugging away and you happen to clear a half acre, and I don't mean necessarily a clear cut. It can be a selective cut, but if the total is under two acres, you can just do that on your own. And of course, we already talked about clearing for a house lot or something like that. Out. So when a landowner files that intention, that notice to the state, they are required to have a licensed forester and a contractor, harvester, somebody of that nature. They have to map it out where it is. The state actually has a map that they use to draw on. They have to be very clear of how many acres are being cut, whether it's a clear cut and how big the cut will be with the state. If they're near water, they have the state has a couple of regulatory things they have to worry about that they have to speak about and they have to sign off. The landowner or a designated agent has to sign off on that. So that's all done, can be all done electronically if you're in The shore land we still protect streams, ponds, and the coast. So you can't clear an opening within 75 feet of the water. You have to keep shade and trees in accordance with shoreland zoning up to 250 feet from Ponds, River, coast shoreland areas. So on the bottom, I started to veer into more technical items that I will put out there so you will hear it, but I probably can't speak at great detail about. So you have to either harvest less than 40 or 40% or more within that shoreland over a period of 10 years. So you can't cut an area, come back, cut another area, come back, cut another, whoops. You have to leave at least 60 square feet of basal area per acre. So let me just say I went down a rabbit hole and learned that basal area is calculated by cutting a tree at four and a half feet and what is the area of the tree that's left with a formula and when you put it all together in every acre, if you imagined you have to have at least 60 square feet of tree per acre. And it has to be signed off on a forester and approved by the state. So the question of if Freeport wanted to how would it adopt its own rules with regard to timber harvesting, well we'd have to go out and find a licensed forester to help us and they would draft an ordinance that complies with state law. State does give quite a bit of guidance, Main Municipal Association gives some guidance on what this might look like. We then when we think we knew what we wanted there is a formal process of the town meeting with the State Forestry Service to review. Then we have to send out Lando landowner notices so public hearing, there's a formal vote that has to go out 45 days before the vote. So it's it is a higher level of process than we usually would go to for account for an ordinance and then the council would vote on it and it would go to the state. It's important to understand that we have to use state definitions within our ordinance and it cannot be any weaker than state law. So we can make it more stringent but we couldn't do anything weaker. So this is a preempted area to our home rule authority, we're limited in what we can do. So then the question came up about what is tree growth. So I'm putting a bunch of questions all in one presentation. So tree growth program was created by the legislature in 1972 and it is a public policy decision and it was really aimed at trying to keep forests as working for us. The property owners are taxed on what type of trees they have in their forest. Management plan, which describes that, and not based on the development value or the value like everybody else's. Owners commit to a forest management plan, usually a 10-year plan, or a plan that has to be updated every 10 years, for their land. So why did we do that? We wanted large healthy forests to keep big tracts of woodland instead of having it be sold and split off into smaller lots. We wanted to make sure there was a steady supply of wood for main sawmills and paper mills, and we also wanted it for outdoor recreation, wildlife habitat, and clean water. The idea here was that if we tax these large tracts the same way that we tax other types of land, we would be forcing people to sell. That the taxes on that would force them to be splintered. So I think Councilor Pillsbury asked the question, what does that look like in Freeport? So we have 84 parcels enrolled in tree growth. You have to have at least 10 acres to be enrolled in the tree growth program. So it's 2,600 parcels. So one in seven of Freeport's taxable acres are in the tree growth program. I did the 2,609 acres. [2:14:02] Speaker E (unidentified): No, of Freeport's taxable acres, are there acres that are not taxable? Yes. [2:14:11] Speaker H (unidentified): Do I have that immediately off the top of my head? No, and unfortunately I think what it's saying, oh yeah, I of the whole town I don't have the breakout of non-taxable. The reason I put the mixed wood, softwood, and hardwood down at the bottom is if you really want to go down the rabbit hole, the state sets a value for mixed wood, soft wood, and hardwood acres per county every year. So just that there you have kind of the breakdown where primarily mixed wood acres, which are some of the, I think, more valuable lots. Yes, sir. There's a lot here. I got more. Go for it. So there we go, if you softwood, sorry, mixwood is the highest value than softwood, and then hardwood, they all grow every, it's based on the forest management plan. Those rates are set by the town, sorry, by the county, and not by the town, and I just want to caution you that these are 2025 rates for Cumberland County. So they set them by county. So what does that mean? So all of our undeveloped land is assessed at approximately $23 million. Our tree growth assessed value is about 1.1 million. So when we do our calculation for the state valuation return, we use that a value of eight thousand nine hundred dollars per acre. So there is a law that says we get 90 percent of our loss revenue reduced by an education funding offset based on every year as part of men's municipal valuation return, which has to go in by November 1st of each year. Min calculates how many parcels he taxed at a tree growth number and what that looks like. Last year, in 2026, we received about $98,000 worth of taxes back, so it's about a little less than $8 million worth of value. So you can see that there's quite an offset happening. And if somebody is enrolled in the tree growth penalty, in the tree growth program, but takes their property out of tree growth, they then have a penalty calculated that gets assessed against the property, which can be quite large. The longer you're in tree growth, the higher that penalty is, because you've been getting this break year after year after year, essentially back taxes. Yeah, not all of it, but a piece of it. So one of the things, because I was tasked with kind of thinking about how can we be more transparent about this, and what I learned is any but member of the public can go on the state's FOREST, F-O-R-E-S-T, website and put in a forestry notification, but you have to have a little bit of pull to be able to get into that notification process. Our code officer has the ability to go in and look at the notifications that have been submitted, and those notifications tell you all those things I said at the beginning. So you get a good sense of is this being cleared for development, is this a clear-cut, how many acres are they really going to take out, and a map of what the parcel looks like. We are planning to build out on the code enforcement page, right by the permits database, of parcels that are under that have pulled for us notification it's going to take me a little bit of time to do that, because we are down 33% of staffing in code, but working with Nick, I think Nick and I have a plan where we'll be able to work with our communications director and make sure that we can keep that page up to date moving forward, and that's what I have. I [2:19:43] Speaker E (unidentified): think this is great thank you for doing that you know my aim in all this was to shed some light on the issue and better understand it and I mean I think the program works and I understand the intense behind it my concern that I've received from residents is that there really was no notice provided for the project that happened between Webster and Desert Road, and the timing of it was there was no like, here's when it's going to start, this is when it's going to finish, and the activity was going from dawn to dusk, I mean, and in some cases pre-dawn, because obviously the landowner has as a need to get the work done as efficiently as possible, and the noise from it was significant. And I think that I'd love for us to explore a way to make sure that our residents have noticed when these activities are gonna happen and we have some sort of way to discuss or talk about how we're gonna deal with things like noise and other intrusions. I think that's just a fair way to be neighborly. I know our hands are a bit tied and I'm not looking to take this to a local ordinance and sort of run it ourselves, but I do think those are small things that we should be able to figure out a way to address, so I would agree [2:21:25] Speaker H (unidentified): that it becomes difficult to take on the technical piece of this in-house. I think we could do a little bit of research, Matt, to see what, like, I'm not sure if the noise ordinance piece was taken where it was exempted because it has to be or because that was a choice at the time. That seems like a reasonable place to start to maybe put some hours of operation in there. I think that the notice piece, I'm not sure what we can do with that, but we can do a little bit of research and try to find out. I [2:22:18] Speaker M (unidentified): think when you consider the number of times that a parcel is going to be forested, the intrusion on to neighbors is pretty small, and the other part of that is, you know? LL Bean has allowed people to use their property for years and years and years. That to me is being a good neighbor, so I really don't see a problem with trucks running early in the morning. I don't see a problem with lobster boats starting up before dawn, and I hate to put anything on any of that stuff. It's just, it's, it's what we do here in the [2:22:57] Speaker C (unidentified): State I so this is a great packet of a lot of information. I'm hoping that will go up on the website somewhere, media or something, because I think it's helpful. I know it was created at this particular moment, and so I'm not saying it needs to be updated constantly with, you know, how many, what the percentage of taxable acreage is and all of that. But even if it's just dated as an update, the information that I think many people might be curious about, it's, it's a slightly separate topic, but we've certainly addressed it when we talk about the comprehensive plan and the effort to prioritize not just the rural character but essentially the woodlands of Freeport, particularly as recreation is one use, habitat and connected habitat for wildlife has been another priority that was identified in the comprehensive plan. And we do have so much wooded acreage in Freeport that's owned by quite a number of different entities, ranging from corporations, even whose timber harvest is not their major industry, to individuals who do timber harvesting on their land, to non-profit conservation organizations. And I know that MN has gone through, in fact, years ago to try to sort out and say among conservation or non-profits, if their lot was in tree growth, it doesn't really need to be in tree growth if they're not otherwise already paying taxes on it. So I think all of that is to say that there is a lot of people to simply get surprised when suddenly what they have experienced is this is a forest and now it's being cut and they're not really sure what's going on. And we saw that even in Bliss Woods, which is a conservation property. But it is also a working for us, and part of the conservation effort is selective cutting to improve the health of those woods. So I do think a lot of it is community education. This presentation goes a long way in trying to do that. I also think that particularly for conservation organizations, and Bliss Woods is a good example of this, is it, if there's posted information, if they're like the forestry plan or even a link to where that forestry plan is, those would also go a long way to helping the public get that [2:26:07] Speaker H (unidentified): information. So I don't know that you're ever going to get a forest management plan. The town is not act, even allowed to keep a forest management plan. I think they consider it proprietary information or confidential information. I'm not suggesting the town [2:26:26] Speaker C (unidentified): require that I'm saying that in the public interest and private landowners obviously are not obligated to do that. I'm saying that there if even one or two conservation organizations gotcha had a timber management plan we're able to share that with their community constituents I think that would also help the public understand what that process is and why they might see that not only on conservation land but on private land as well. So I [2:27:08] Speaker H (unidentified): am I am thinking that what I just heard was, thank you for the information. There is no that you would like this information to go out publicly or to be posted somewhere of interest. I'm not exactly sure what my next steps are. I am committed to getting Councilor Pillsbury some information which I will share with the whole council. but it does not sound like there is a hue and cry to do anything with it at this moment in time. Am I, 'll get the information and then if Councilor Pillsbury or somebody else wants to bring it back, I'm just saying, I think my work is done at this point other than that information and getting the slide deck on the website and out. Is that fair? Fair? I just wanna make sure I'm passing the ball to you all the way down there. All [2:28:13] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): right, so we do have an executive session tonight. We'll not be voting in the executive session and we'll be ending the meeting directly after. So, Councilor Smith, do you wanna get us in? [2:28:28] Speaker C (unidentified): You'd ordered that the town council enter into an executive session pursuant to one MRS section 405A personnel matter for discussions related to the town managers contract negotiations second all those in favor [2:28:42] Town Council Chair (presiding officer): hi all right we are in executives