My name is Ginny Mike. I'm an environmental planning and policy senior and my project is about Cutler Coase Ferry had Loop Trail expansion. So statement of need. Washington County down East Main has been in an economic downturn for years. In Washington County. Population decline has increased by just 0.3% between 20182019 with a growth rate of negative 4.5% on total, which is, and then the poverty rate was higher than average at 18.3%. And then there's a high economic dependency on trade, utilities and transportation. Mostly, I would say fisheries and the lobster industry. Scallops. One of the top percentages of Maine lobster licenses per capita, save for the island communities. So charting means future suggests that Danny's mains should promote city and town revitalization, land conservation and quality, outdoor recreation and tourism. The place is rarity of protected public coastal land. And it is predicted that by 2050, Most of the East Coast will be highly developed with sprawl, urban sprawl. So it's especially important that this kind of area that's already rare remains intact with further preservation efforts and then with a hiking trail. There's health benefits for the community as well. It's a new way to get the community out and active. And then main parks and lands actually does recognize this area for high potential. They are currently working with it. They always work with to try and expand outdoor recreation areas and build more trails and preserve land. This is a map of the area. It is around 12 thousand acres. Very had Loop Trail is 10.3 miles round trip to the coast and then goes inland. And it's increasingly popular with the river visitor parking lot, backcountry. So you hike all your water. And I just got a notification that my Internet connection is unstable. Most people probably do one overnight. And then there's campsites along the ocean, as you can see. And then high regard from visitors. If you look it up on Google has 5-stars. Everyone says it's amazing. And 5 thousand acres of it is an ecological reserve. And it's further than that's happened last time too. Okay. Why don't you just go ahead and continue speaking and if it unfreezes, then hopefully we can move ahead to those slides. Yeah, I think what I did last time was Exit presentation and just have it and like edit mode and I could still go through the slides. Yeah, no, I don't know how to do that here. Here we go. Can you still see my screen? Yep. Okay. So this is just for a little reference on where it is. It's about 16 miles from the eastern most point and the US. And the picture on the right is from the eastern most point and the US, And we're back. This is the town itself. Like when I say small town, this is literally it. So there's it's a huge fishing area. The whole Bay Cove is filled with lobster boats all the time. And this is about just a few miles down the road from the trail head. So the ecology is extremely unique. There are subarctic and Arctic and carnivorous plants grasslands, peat bogs, clips, sensitive species, Birds, 200 plus species, re-live whales, porpoises. You can often watch them, but from the cliffs. So it's just like it's one of the last places in Maine that you can experience something like this. So for outcomes the short-term would be increased knowledge of potential economic benefits from tourism in the community, increase knowledge of the area from those outside of Washington County, and community involvement and trails. I think a lot of community members would love to volunteer and help build trails. Midterm outcomes, better plans, policies, ordinances to enhance aesthetic qualities in the area, which would help with tourism. Like in Matthias, there's really no ordinances on like falling down buildings. So all the buildings are falling down and they're allowed to just exists there, which isn't attractive to torus. And then a general acceptance of tourism benefits and land preservation. More environmental interpretation guides and outdoor recreation companies, which there already are a few. There's actually one based right in that small Cutler area that's does Boat Tours out to see the puffins And then more of a desire and stronger efforts to preserve additional land, which I already mentioned is already happening. But and then stronger eco-friendly policies and practices as that becomes more of a norm. Right now, it's not really important to the community because of their fishing industry focus. So long-term impacts, lower unemployment rate, increase in job opportunities increase in year round, and younger residents from 0.3% change, say 0.1% change in five years. Anything would help the community to recover at this point. And then additional environmental preservation, more hiking trails. I do know they're working on something. And Lubeck right now. And then this is a little spot of where I would want to expand the trail to. So the circled areas mean Coase Heritage Trust land. It's called Eastern novel, so I can try and zoom. So basically, if you could get private land over permissions to cross this one area right here, you would be able to connect to Eastern novel. And the plan would be to acquire a little bit more land, like I think right here isn't owned by being coast Heritage Trust right now, but I think they might be looking into acquiring it. And then also there's land across from the reserve that's also owned by the reserve itself, that the hiking trail could expand across the road into there as well. So for strategies and activities pre-approval, It's really hard because it's really hard to estimate because every trail requires different, a different budget, a different amount of effort, you really don't know what you're going to need to put in a until you go and map it out. So I couldn't really I was guessing it would be a more expensive venture because it's such an ecologically sensitive area. And I didn't know they deal with some flooding and you're going to need boardwalks to go over that and whatnot. So after figuring all of that out, you figure out trail crew logistics with main Conservation Corps. And I didn't read what number that was. How many minutes left? That's about three. Yeah. That keep going. So yeah, basically acquire all the machinery, meat, and supplies, materials. Hopefully it would take two to three years to complete. I spoke with outdoor recreation supervisor for parks and lands and he kind of helped me with what he does. He oversees grants for the state and said about two years. And then the head of eastern regional lands said, About 10 thousand to $20 thousand budget for mile of hiking trail, which is a huge range. But again, it depends on what needs to be done. So by by August 2025, it's hopefully ten miles would have been completed by then. All bridges, boardwalk steps, complete finishing overview and approval from the grant manager, which would be back in this case, Who's listed right here. That's where he spoke with Doug Reed. I also spoke with Tim lit in that the main cause Heritage Trust President. I didn't get a chance to speak with him, but he would be highly involved as Eastern novel is owned by Minkowski Chess and then the town of color for permitting and other permissions and public outreach. And then evaluation would be to assess employment, unemployment, and poverty rates, perhaps yearly, every two years. Track visitation, guestbook trail counter and observation, and survey a lot of people just via observation, like rangers and whatnot. Say, oh, it looks like more people than going. So this trail and then actually at the Fed Way highway, Federal Highway Administration has access to track our cell phones and Steve, what cell towers we are using. So apparently now they're able to look at what trails are being height based on how much cell phone activity is in that area, which I thought was really interesting. Continue monitoring ecosystem health and number of small businesses. How are they doing? Are they able to stay open and tracked population change? Yeah, track population change over perhaps three years. Cutler the back much IS that whole area perhaps like a 50 mile radius because everything is very spread out around here and people are used to driving. So it's kind of like the cultural norm. And then this is the end. Thank you, Ginny, would your connection to this area, I was half raised here, half half here up in the Mencius area than the Chinese Cutler area? Yeah, I'm in wide area. Okay. So, you know, I really I want to applaud you for this. I mean, I've been up there many times and it is, as you say, an incredible treasure. And I've never back overnight it in the area, but I've done the loop trail many times. It's it's incredible and you're exactly right. It's one of a kind. One thing that I'll just say again, you know, like because I'm the evaluator is you had a slide in here about you're out And which was really well laid out. I think that your outcomes should also be something that you're looking at in terms of your evaluation. So you need to kind of consider kind of meshing those two, you know, like integrating those outcomes into your evaluation plan. I want to also acknowledge that I thought you did a really good job with your reference material. You know, it was really a well-cited in terms of data and I got the I got a good sense of what the needs are up in Washington County, Cutler area. And so I thought it was really well laid out. Very good, and I really enjoyed it. Thank you, Jenny and Richard, I loved the idea. One of the things that I think might strengthen the overall proposal is having a little bit more of an understanding of the economic impact at sort of what you think could actually be economic contribution to the area in the written proposal. I appreciated that you put a proxy model in the creepers trail in Virginia. But then when I actually went and looked at that model and looked at the surrounding area. It's like seven, eight times the size of the surrounding area. And so although a good proxy model, it already has so many more small businesses that it can generate huge volume of economic contribution. It has a big annual Trail hike that brings people from three states there where they come in the tens of thousands. So, you know, one of the things that was unclear to me is when I looked at your little the the picture you have Cutler. And then I went and I looked at some of where businesses are. Matthias, is there enough business there that a ramp and tourism really would create a significant from an economic perspective. So that was the part that seemed unclear to me. I think the way in which you've analyzed the potential is good, but I would like to understand the economic impact a little bit more. Yeah, there's already definitely a base for tourism. There is not enough for an immediate uptick. So it's more of like a hopeful, gradual tick. And there are definitely, in order to get to this place, you have to drive through much isu. A lot of people go to Lubeck as while they just combine the whole areas. So you're kind of getting exposure to those businesses. But it's, it's also like the businesses. The more that people show up, the more that it will be. Recognize that, hey, these businesses are doing well. We can open more stuff like this. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to me it's interesting. Years ago I helped people with a business proposal to open up a second in on should be Island, this should be work apple orchard in. And one of the things that was funny, they went out and they raised some grant money and some other Contributions to do it. And then five years from the point in which they opened, some economist came to them and said, okay, so how much money have we generated? And when they looked at all the revenues they made in five years, it was only half the amount of grant money that they made. And so they realized that they had invested in this thing that was so remote that the economic impact was not actually great. I don't think that's going to be the case and what you're talking about. But I do think when we invest in these smaller areas, it's important for people to really have some estimation or, or some good research around what potential economic, the impact could be. Also, main destination Academy has been doing a lot of work with small towns in Western Maine and doing something like that. And the area was really helpful along those lines. Again, there is literature that shows the relationship between parks, park development, and economic benefit. So that should be accessible to you through your review of the literature you, I can really see or environmental background in your presentation as which is very nice. I would have because if you want to be able to attribute long-term benefits and long-term impacts from this project. You've gotta be able to show that companies that have invested in parks, for example, there is a certain difference in economic benefit or return they have. Like in any other project, people are going to look at dollar invested per person affected. And so you would want to have traffic counts for the adjacent roads. You'd wanna know what's what, how many users are currently taking advantage of trail related amenities? And what percent of the population are those users? And is there untapped potential there in projects that are successful? Also, the benefits of this are not just economic, but actually there are environmental services in terms of land protected and accessed. And those would also be your stakeholders. And you can quantify or put an economic impact on those environmental services that are provided to people forward with this. And I hope you see that by adding that because if you generally discuss an economic downturn of an area, and the funders are going to say, okay, but how is this project kind of fit in? And there is plenty of literature through tourism and hospitality, ecotourism, things like that, that show that, that you could tap into. I think my flaw in this that just occurred to me is when I was looking up literature, I was looking just for hiking and backpacking trials, but I didn't actually look up parks. So that is going to help a lot. Yeah. And I absolutely agree with what Rob saying. I think that if you can bring all of that into your research and into the story that you're telling. It makes the grant proposal that much for compiling. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the other thing I just want to throw out is and Richard mentioned the creepers trail down in Virginia. I used to live down in that area and there's other trails down in that area. The Appalachian Trail is really close to the Virginia pre-print fail, but in the Mathias area, you have the Down east sunrise trail, I believe. And so I think, you know, there's ways that, you know, like the creepers trail folks are partnering. There's all these partnerships that can emerge. And I mean, you're creating a greater groundswell for trail development and by partnering with other trails. I mean, I know that down east down, down east or whatever rail sunrise is very popular. It's a slightly different Trail user. But again, you know, like forming partnerships with them could be beneficial as well anyways. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. With what Georgia saying make that make that a phase like the second phase is how to get is approaching those other landowners looking at at shifting from cap, what they call capture trips, folks that are already there, to destination traps, which has folks that decide to go there because this is there. Thank you.