 I'm going to call the December 11th meeting of the Mobular Planning Commission to order. Before we get on any farther, our Director of Planning, Mike Miller is going to explain to us the protocol that the city uses for Zoom procedure. I just admitted Maria here. Actually, at this time, it looks like people have the ability to unmute themselves. The city has had a number of issues with at meetings where people have been zooming in, basically what they call Zoom bombing from other communities, other parts of the country basically. We have procedures set up to block people from being able to unmute themselves. As it turns out, this one happened to be set up. I could go and click the button to not allow people to unmute themselves. I only see two members of the public here right now, so I think we will be safely operating this. If something were to happen where we do get Zoom bombed, I will go through. I have the ability and Kirby has the ability to suspend participant activities and that would allow me the opportunity to go and remove that person. If they're going to be disruptive, hopefully we won't have any of those incidents, hopefully that won't happen here. But like I said, at this time, people can unmute themselves. If we have to go to another format, what happens is you'll have to use the raise hand function. Not letting you turn on your video should be able to. Now try it. People should be able to start their own videos, unmute themselves, and hopefully everything will work correctly, everyone will behave appropriately, and we can have a nice public hearing. If things go bad, I will engage a whole bunch of stuff and we'll have some more discussions about it. These are relatively new, we're still figuring them all out. But those are the rules. So everybody play nice. Thank you, Mike. Okay. So planning commissioners, first thing we have to do before getting started is to approve the agenda. So if I can get a motion to approve the agenda. I'll move to approve the agenda. Thank you, Ariane. Do I have a second? I second. Second from Carlton. Those in favor of approving the agenda say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. We can have this hearing then. There we go. The next thing on the agenda would be comments from the chair. I want to save time for public input from the hearing, so I'm going to skip that all together. And move straight to general business. So if we happen to have anyone on the meeting who is not here for the scheduled hearing and to discuss the proposed zoning changes, if they would like to discuss something else with the planning commission, now is the time to bring that up. So let us know if you're here for a topic other than the proposed changes to the regulations and the river hazard area regulations. It doesn't look like anybody in that case. We're going to move on. And get to the public hearing. So what we're going to do tonight is. The planning director Mike Miller will summarize these proposed changes. These are things that are being considered by the popular planning commission. Nothing's final as far as what we've considered. That's what this hearing is about to get further input from the public. Our plan is to vote on these probably after this meeting is when we will vote out a final version of things after hearing from people. But it's not too late for us to change anything. And then also, I just went out for anyone who's not aware. That of course, just because we vote something out, doesn't mean that it actually becomes the law for the city. That's the city council's job. So what, what we'll be doing is simply recommending some changes to the, to the regulations to the city council. So that's what we're doing here. So first, Mike will discuss the discuss and summarize the proposed changes. If anyone has a need to find copies of these changes, they can be found on the website. I will post a link in the chat just in case anyone needs that. And after Mike has done his thing, we will call on anyone from the public who would like to give us their feedback. And we'll listen to that. And that's, that's what the hearing is going to be about. So with that, I'm going to hand it off to you, Mike, and I'm going to copy a link to the actual written changes for if people want to access that. Okay, so let me presentation. All right. So, as Kirby mentioned, really quick, we're going to go over a couple of things in this presentation. So what this hearing is about, we're going to describe the changes to the unified development regulations. I guess, technically, Kirby, you'll have to declare the public hearing open. We'll have to remember this is a public hearing, then we'll close the public hearing. So we'll discuss the unified development regulations, which are the zoning regulations. We will have to describe the what's going on for the river hazard area amendments, which are relatively small. I think Kirby already took care of the next steps, which is basically an explanation of what's going on in the process. Then take comments and questions. So what is this hearing about? There are two hearings in one. We're making changes. We have proposed for both the zoning and the river hazard. The zoning bylaws will include changes to the zoning map and changes to the text of the document and the changes for the river hazard regulations. There's really only one change, and then there's some minor changes to the rules to clear up some things and clarify. There's a lot of minor technical amendments we do from time to time. So zoning changes. Number one, zoning map changes. So we have four zoning map changes that we're going through. The first one you see on the right is, I'll give you a minute to orient yourself. It's kind of zoomed in on the zoning map, so it's not really clear. You'll see Route 12, that's Northfield Street coming out towards the edge of town. So that little pink line, that's I-89. So this is 155 Northfield Street. It used to be part of this number 6-1 neighborhood. That is national life. This is a daycare facility that used to be part of national life. They were subdivided and sold and moved out. So rather than having them in the same zoning district as national life, we're going to move them to the same as the 11-7 here. They'll be in the same zoning district as all of these others. So that's one zoning change. It's just this little piece down here that is circled in red. They'll also be changes to Country Club Road. 29 Sibley. And each of these will also either create a new neighborhood or be merged with the respective ones. So this one. We have in our zoning, both zoning districts and neighborhoods. So there may be many neighborhoods within a zoning district just to differentiate one area from another. So for example, if you were over on Berry Street, Berry Street and Stonecutters Way are both the same zoning district, but they are different neighborhoods and you can visually see their different neighborhoods. So that's why we have these differences. So on the left, again, it's going to be a little bit hard to figure out where you are being a zoomed in on a paper map. But where that Route 2 number is, that is the roundabout. And so where the number 5-2 is, is near Gallison Hill and the John Deere dealership. And you'll see that one road going up, that's Country Club Road going up to the Country Club property. So this is only a part of the Country Club Road property. The 1-4 is a new zoning district. And it is being set up to basically be Urban Center 1, because this is the area that after the master planning process, it was identified that that should allow up to 5-story residential construction in that lower part of the current or the former Country Club. So that's the proposal there. The upper part, so everything you see, the yellow and the light purple, are both areas that are only open. So if you were to walk on the Country Club, these areas are the open areas of the Country Club. There are also a lot of areas of the Country Club that are all wooded. And those areas are what you see the areas in green to the west to the left and a little bit to the right. So those areas are still remaining in rural, but these two areas have been proposed for redevelopment, so we are going to rezone them. And that will also give us the ability to then apply to the state for new growth center designations or other designations to help us facilitate development of those two properties. The map on the right, there was a real minor, minor change. But it is a zoning map change, so we will identify it. There was a property that was on Berry Street, so you'll see the gray line that's kind of going through 4-3, that's Berry Street, that used to go all the way up to Sibley Street. Well, it got subdivided and attached to the property on Sibley Street. So, all we have a rule that parcels should have only one zoning designation, and a little tiny parcel actually had two, because it used to be part of the Berry Street parcel. So we've simply done a quick, the parcel has been merged and we simply are now connecting the properties in the neighborhoods. That's a pretty straightforward one. I missed one. Okay, so the other zoning map changes are the result of, if anyone was paying attention to the state law, they had the home act that went through. And that said that any zoning district, they passed a new law that required municipalities that said any zoning district that has sewer and water must allow five units per acre as the density. We already met that requirement for every single neighborhood except for residential 24,000, which is Res 24. So Res 24 will have to be turned into Res 9 in order to be compliant with state law. So this area up here that you see 11-12, that is the Town Hill neighborhood. So you're basically at the top past 250 Main and you make the right and everything that is east of Main Street is pretty much all in this one same zoning district. There also is a small piece of Res 24 that was in this little, almost, it basically looks landlocked. It's again, right next to the one we just talked about. This is Sibley Street, and 11-13 is just a piece of land that used to be owned by the college. The college used to have a piece of land that went out and went down to Berry Street. They sold that piece of land. That piece of land was then broken into three different zoning districts and the middle piece used to be Res 24. This is going to be Res 9 because it is within 300 feet, so it does have access to sewer and water. So the zoning map, if anyone has quick questions on the zoning map, we can go back to this, but I'll quickly go through the rest of these and then we can kind of go back if we need to. So number three and four, we had grouped these into different groups. Three and four are home act changes. We just talked about the need to change the zoning map. Well, that means within the text, we're now talking in the text, we had to make those same changes. Eliminate the residential 24,000 district, move the neighborhoods that were residential 24,000 into residential 9, and then we had to change the residential density within residential 9,000. So originally we made these zoning districts to match what was on the ground. What do we see on the ground? And then we tried to match it to it. And so the 9,000 you see is the square footage. So residential 9,000 means one unit per 9,000 square feet of property. By state law, what I mentioned is that you have to allow five units per acre. Technically five units per acre is 8,712 square feet. So one unit for every 8,712 square feet. So we're going to change res nine, we're going to keep it the same name res nine. We're not going to change it to 8,712. We'll call it res nine, but the density will be 8,712. So I hope that was clear enough. So those are the only changes. Home Act, huge state law that was changed to increase the amount of housing. And those are the only changes we need to make because we basically were already meeting it. And actually the whole Mac was really based on Montpelier zoning. They took our zoning and then made everybody else do it, which I don't necessarily think was the right thing, but it is the law. So five, six and seven, these are probably the biggest policy questions we have. These are the proposals regarding housing and density. Figure 214, that's your use table. That's our use table. So changes to the table. We made some changes to add to break multifamily multifamily used to be a single line. If you had five or more units on a part on a property. It was multifamily. We broke that now in this proposal into two, a large and a small. And that was because we have a lot of smaller multifamily that really don't need the extra level of review. So we made two lines. And made the small multifamily permitted, as opposed to conditional use. In figure 214, we also added more types of congregate housing options. So we have two types of housing. Most of us live in dwelling units. Dwelling units may be a part of an apartment, maybe part of a condo, a single family home, but you own all five pieces and you independently can use all five pieces. So you have a living room, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and something else. There are five requirements to have in order to have a dwelling unit. In congregate living, you share one or more of them. If you lived in a dormitory, when you were in college, you lived in a dormitory. You shared your bathrooms, you shared your kitchen facilities, but you had exclusive use to your bedroom. So that's what congregate living is. You're going to share one or more of these. There's a number of ways, number of uses that can do that. We have added a few more types to try to match them to dwelling unit types a little better. So we weren't discriminating against congregate living as much as we do, because there are a number of very good, we call them co-housing or shared housing options that a lot of senior housing options are congregate living, but they are treated currently at a much higher level of review than a similar sized residential unit. So we're just trying to eliminate that discrimination between those two. Section 302, again, this is a policy recommendation. We currently have, if you have a conforming lot, you're in Res 9000, you have a 9000 square foot lot, you can have a duplex regardless of density. That was put in, in 2018, basically because everyone's allowed to have an accessory apartment. We just expanded that to say everyone can have a duplex. The proposal here in this amendment is to expand that duplex right to be a four-plex right. And then the other piece comes from that any parcel within design review overlay will not have a maximum residential density. This goes to Congress of New Urbanism and AARP did a review of our zoning and they felt that we should not be regulating density or we should try not to be regulating units by density because it's really not a good way of managing things. Regulating how things look, the bulk, the massing is a better way of doing things. And we agreed, we've tried this a number of times, and the one thing that was agreed upon was that our design review regulations are good enough to protect against bad design. So we are proposing to eliminate density, which we don't have density in Urban 1, Urban 2, Urban 3 already. We don't have any density requirements. This would simply expand it to anyone who is within that area that is in the design review district. And we can go over that more later if people have questions. Numbers 8 to 13, we had one of the other complaints we had in the past was why can't we go to no residential density was that people felt we might, developers might come in and demolish all the buildings and then put up big ugly buildings. And so obviously putting up the big ugly buildings is taken care of by design review. We made some changes to the demolition provisions to try to make sure that people can't just demolish buildings willy-nilly. These we feel are much better rules. We had an appeal of a demolition project. So it was good that we had some court reviews. We had some court input and some input from our attorneys on what amendments we could make to make things better. We're also recommending removing solar access and shading requirements. This had been posed in the past. It's not really constitutional that we do it or hasn't been accepted practice that we do it. It was adopted into our regulations. And for about since 2018, we've been trying to either remove it or pair it back. And we can talk about that more if people have questions on the solar access and shading. This is a technical change for 3510. We're moving boundary line adjustments from chapter 350 to section 3125. And the reason for that is boundary line adjustments were in subdivision regulations, which meant you'd have to go through a subdivision process to a boundary line adjustment. That's a lot of work for a boundary line adjustment. So we moved it out of subdivision and we made it its own use. And therefore it can be approved administratively. And most of these are usually minor subdivision adjustments. 3126 make permanent interim emergency housing provisions make permanent the interim changes. So we made some interim changes about five or six weeks ago in order to accommodate the FEMA housing on Country Club Road. We are simply going to make those permanent. Doesn't change anything. The other permit has already been issued for the emergence interim emergency housing or actually actually hasn't been issued, but it will be soon. The other final things is there's a lot if you go through what is online, you will go through and see a number of strikeouts and small technical changes. There's a lot of those in there. We go through them every time, try to catch punctuation errors, spelling errors, reference errors might send you to, you know, see section such and such and it's not correct. We fix those, but we can only do those in these amendments. So we have a whole list of those, but the policy changes were mostly those housing in density changes. The remover of the solar access, the demolition provisions, and I would probably mention the sign provisions. We did make some changes to the sign provisions as well, mostly because then some of the numbers didn't make a lot of sense. So we've been trying to right size them. I did a survey of existing signs and how big they are and how tall they are to make sure our rules kind of match what is on the ground. So the river hazard changes really quick. There is really only one major change and that is a change to add additional requirements to critical facilities. So this comes out, this is a proposal we've had for a long time, but we never got around to really putting it together and putting it into an amendment. So critical facilities usually are public facilities, your fire station, your police station, city hall, hospitals. So then you also have ones that are not city run like your hospitals. And so there's a very specific class of critical facilities. And what we're recommending, what staff is recommending is that rather than have those be two feet above base flood elevation, the 100 year base flood elevation, that they should be two feet above the 500 year. So that would make them much higher generally, generally just a general. Foot and a half higher than our 100 year floodplain varies if you're close to the Winooski if you're closer to a bridge may differ, but in general, it's about a foot and a half more. So then it would be two feet above that foot and a half and the idea is we really need to make sure that our critical facilities are much farther above the floodplain than they are currently. You know, we have a lot of damage to the police station. Now this doesn't go retroactive. This just goes and says if you're going to build a new one, then you're going to have to meet this requirement. Or if you're going to have to substantially improve one, you're going to have to move to this new standard. And then there were a couple of minor technical changes again, same as before. And that's it. So I will stop sharing for now. And let anyone either on the planning commission or Kirby can open it up to the floor. Okay. Raise function. Yeah, thanks, Mike. Yeah, we'll be using the hand raise function for this and I will call on people facilitate. Before I open it up to the public, do planning commissioners have any clarifying questions for Mike? I saw what we heard. I have a question just because I'm trying to again get up to speed all of these, these zoning statues that are changing. Is this effective for all of Montpelier or just the country club and the golf course. Can you do this everywhere. These will change everywhere. Yes. So when we talk about, let's say, a removing density within the design review district that is actually not affecting the country club at all because country club is not in design review, but it will affect all the other down mostly downtown neighborhoods. The true question I'm trying to get at is with that. And knowing that we're having this, and I may be mixing things. But like I said, this is, I'm working and trying to get as fast as possible up to speed but as far as the new policy implementing the like the historical determining the historical buildings. How does that like affect the new policy of the density? I mean, what's, what's the historical what's not and then also allowing the density to allow Montpelier to grow. How do, how do, how do, how do those things. Do you understand what I'm trying to say? Like, it seems like one impedes the other as far as they cancel each other out if we're going to determine whether or not historical buildings are are important and then also determine whether or not multi family density is important. Which one takes precedence if there's a stalemate. So yeah, I do get where you're going with question. It's a good question. And that's been an issue. Or a question, a policy question that's been going for a while. We have a really good historic district, not every building is historic in our historic district. Most of them are we have a very intact historic district and our design review rules are meant to protect those districts. Now, the demolition rules that are being proposed do differentiate between historic if you're trying to demolish a historic building then you have a lot of rules. If you're trying to demolish a non historic building or part of a non historic building that's much easier. Because it's, we don't really have a good reason for demolition for for not allowing someone to demolish. You know, in 1988 raised ranch, if somebody wants to tear that down to build something new and different they can do that. Oh, you're on mute still. Sorry about that. Let me just ask you this as far as you touched on like the historical building, if it is proven that a circle building is damaged for because of flood. Is it harder for that for that damaged historical building to be taken down because it's rendered historical. Do we have to save it at all costs because it's historical and we can just take it down. No, there is a process and the technical term that they they look at is historic integrity. How much historic integrity does it have just being old is not a reason to keep it. In some cases, if it's significantly damaged by fire by flood, it may lose so much of its historic integrity and that's one avenue or the financial reconstruction doesn't it doesn't make financial sense and so in that case. But again this is is set up to be a process where if you are going to demolish part of or all of a historic structure, you're going to have to go to the development review board and make your case and usually it hasn't been an issue as we said we went to court, not because we had not allowed the demolition but because we had allowed a demolition. In the case that went to court it was an old carriage barn with a shed off the back. The shed off the back was just a little lean to shed off the back that was built in 1910 it had no real historic value, they wanted to remove that addition, and then move the move the carriage barn so it was in a better location so they could reconstruct it and we gave them the permit to do it the neighbor appealed it and they appealed it in part on the removal of the historic piece in the back. Again, it with the support of historic preservation Commission. There was just a determination that said that's just not it's just old it's not historic and so the development review board reviews all of those pieces of is it historic does it if it is historic maybe it is historic, but it's so rotten or it's so damaged. They'll make that determination. And that's for anything inside or outside of the design design review district. But that would cause that will cause a bumper stop for any individual who would maybe have heart strings to a section of a historical building causing, you know, time to be used to settle that that's correct right. We usually issue permits within 45 days. Now if it gets appealed to court that takes two years and there's nothing that we can do about appeals that's not not something we can handle. But if we're going to have rules to make a determination like that then we have to have a process and everybody has to have due process rights and so one of their due process rights is to appeal it. But we try to keep our process where something can be administrative we try to make it administrative like we said with the boundary line adjustments. Why do we have a hearing for this let's just make it administrative you can go and talk to Meredith Meredith can look at it and say, yeah, you meet all the requirements. Here's your permit, get us a new flat, and you can have your boundary line adjustment with your neighbor because you always thought that's where the line was anyways. So that's kind of what we try to do but in some cases where it's subjective like in historic integrity, is it damaged enough. Well, now we got to go to a board, go to the board of reasonable persons and have them review it to decide what what is reasonable. And that's why it's kind of set up in that way that the DRB is supposed to review things that are somewhat subjective landscaping requirements these types of things. So that's what that's what they're looking at. I appreciate you allowing me to do this. Thank you. I just know. And I guess the other the other half of your question was a little bit about the you know some of the densities in the downtown. What we have now though is existing buildings. So you might have an existing historic building that you might go through and say, you know what, I think I could put four really nice apartments in this building. I could put these two on the first floor and I put these two on the second floor that'd be great, but the density says you can only have three. You're not changing the building you're not changing how the building looks at all. And that's where the density comes in as a problem is sometimes our buildings that were built 100 years ago were built for single family homes that we don't have families with six kids anymore. Except for you know, I was. I was in a, I was one of six kids so we're one of the few big families. But you just don't see that anymore and so houses were built back in the day for big families. And so now we're trying to break up these really nice historic houses we don't want to tear them down but a lot of ways we might add a door to the side a door in the front. We might have something going up back to be able to allow that same structure to be used for more than one family and that's what we tried to do is to adjust the rules that say you couldn't limit what you can do at the building because sometimes it makes sense to have four units in that building. And now it's only allowed to have three. Let's just look at the building, let the design make that decision. And if it's got good design and design review says it's okay. Then, and you have to still meet the other requirements you still have to meet your parking requirements but that was the other half of removing the density within the design review district is we've already let the building be the building and let's let people figure out how best to subdivide that unit that building into smaller units and maybe or smaller units is better than two big units. Okay guys. So I want to pivot over to make sure we get comments from the public. This current conversation though I think Mike if you would like to record a note that I think in a future planning commission meeting. It may be a benefit for us to do a primer on the administrative process and then the appeals process and what goes to your office for a permit and what goes to the DRB. And yeah, I think that'll help everyone kind of be on the same page about about the speed as well. Am I on mute? Oops. No, I heard you Carlton. I heard me. So, yeah, it's all right. So, so yeah, let's plan to do that. But, but for now let's pivot back to the main point, which is to hear from the public because we did lose a member of the public and hopefully, hopefully, they'll either be back or they didn't have any questions. So with that, I am going to open the floor to public comment and people can use the reactions button on the bottom of the zoom interface here to use the raise hand function. So with that, the floor is open to anyone who wants to use raise hand function and ask a question. It looks like we just have Mr. Slope. He looks like the only member of the public. Yeah. So do we have any, do we have any questions from the public? Anyone? I want to make sure that people have those options. Are we sure that everyone has the option to unmute and Yep, or raise hands. Okay. So it is all this is put on orca and it does get broadcast. So if anyone is watching online, maybe even at a later date, you have questions or comments on this public hearing and what we've been talking about. Again, I probably should have introduced myself. I'm Mike Miller. Email me at my office. Then email is M Miller at Montpelier hyphen vt.org. And if you've got any questions, you can send them my way. And again, this will also go to city council in January. There'll be day you will have two hearings one in January, one in February. So we can hopefully have this adopted before town meeting day. That's usually time when counselors sometimes change seats. So we'd like to have the hearing and the adoption before. New people come on board because then we'd have to re have more hearings. So that's the strategy. So Mike, tell us that I didn't realize that a date was actually set for the city council meetings. What is what is the January date that we're set for? I don't have the dates yet. I've got to go and work that out with the manager there. There's a lot of these adoption processes have statutory requirements to them and I have to make sure, you know, we get it city council sometimes. So I made them slightly different adoption of a city plan is just slightly different than the adoption of a zoning bylaw. So I sometimes confused them and one of them says city council has to have it for 30 days. So that would mean we've got to wait 30 days and that means the end of January and the first meeting in February. Sometimes it's not the other one in which case could be earlier in the month in January. So I will, I always research it before I put it on the council agenda to make sure we're following the correct rules, but there will be two hearings. They will both be warned in the newspapers. We will keep putting this information out in in the various forum, different posts that our communications director takes care of for us. Hopefully we can get some input or questions. So this is non controversial except for those like three or four policy things. So this is not the, the big crazy ones that we've had in the past where we really had proposals that were pushing the envelope. These are really kind of much more straightforward, much more clean up like the zoning map or mostly clean ups. I'm not, other than those, those few items I mentioned that were policy. I don't, I wasn't expecting we would get a lot of pushback, but So, Mike, when you, when you do find out those dates where you let us know right away. So, yeah, so that we can all plan accordingly because we want to, we want to make sure that the other planning commission is represented. Well, at the meeting, when that comes up, we might Yeah, I was just going to say the next planning commission meeting is January 8, because it's the second for Mondays. So that would be January 8, it will not happen before January 8. So at the 8th, I will be able to tell you, because I would already have warned it in the newspaper. I will be able to tell you exactly what days those will be the hearings will happen. Okay. And maybe it would be a good idea. And people give me feedback about this. Since we have those important city council meetings coming up. Maybe we could, if we don't have anything urgent. We need to do for the first meeting in January, but maybe cancel the second meeting in January to free people up. To prepare or, you know, attend the city council meeting without being without, you know, this whole stuff taking a tremendous time. Do people have thoughts about that idea? I think it's a great idea. Anybody else. It makes sense to have people because we want presence at the council to encourage other people to attend as well. Right. Yeah. And I want to respect everyone's time too, because, you know, you didn't sign up to give your whole life away to this planning commission. So I think maybe a meeting day off in order to do the other stuff that's coming up. Okay, we can think about that and we'll talk about it possibly at the next meeting then. All right. Well, again, this is the hearing is open for the public. And if there is anyone from the public here who would like to ask a question. Or give a comment about the proposals that were explained tonight. Now's the chance because I'll close the hearing if we don't get anyone. Okay. So I'm going to add, I'm going to add one quick thing that was brought to my attention in the river hazard regulations, which is not in the draft. So we would have to vote to move it forward as amended. But part of the rules for there's been a lot of conversation about those substantially damaged or not substantially damaged buildings and having to elevate utilities. We're not taking away that, but the way it was worded was that so the rule was where a proposal is determined to be a non substantial improvement. Only the improvement will be reviewed for conformance with these regulations. So if you happen to be, usually we're looking at an entire building. The building is not substantially damaged. You don't have to do anything. That's a bad way to have things go. So what we said is if you're replacing the electrical in the basement, you've got to do GFC I so that way you're protected. You've got to move your electric panels up. One of the requirements we put in there was replacement of damaged sheetrock below design flood must be replaced with flood resistant material. And we have found that to be completely unworkable and unusable. And in fact, it's counterproductive because sheetrock is actually cheap. And for our existing buildings in the flood plain, it's actually if you use flood resistant material, it's more expensive. Water gets trapped in between and you've got to remove it anyways. So if you're going to remove something, you might as well just zip off the sheetrock and put new sheetrock on. Obviously the best thing to do is get out so it never floods, but for things that do flood. We wanted to remove that one sentence that says replacement of damaged sheetrock below DFE must be replaced with flood resistant materials and we just don't believe that's a good policy to use. So we would recommend striking that adding that to this list. Okay, thanks, Mike. That's, yeah, that's an important consideration. Okay, well, I'm going to do one last call. And before I close the hearing and then we're going to move on to having the planning commission discuss and vote. On what we want to propose to the city council. So last call for anyone from the public to ask any questions or give us comments. You can feel free to speak up or just use the reactions. Whatever you need. I'm not seeing anything. So I'm going to close the public hearing now and end. The public comments and questions and move on on our agenda to the next item, which is to consider comments, which. You didn't receive any from the public. And then to do a possible vote to forward the drafts. First things first, does everyone understand the current state as. Of the proposal when it came in. So, aside from the sheet rock thing we just heard. Does everyone understand look where we're starting at here. Any, any questions from the planning commission about. What's in what's in the proposal right now. I understand. Does anybody have any. Okay. And just to make sure I'm clear, Mike. Some of the parts that we've discussed quite a bit have to do with. It's, it's you made clear in your presentation that. I think that we will be allowing throughout the entire city for units as a permitted use. On a parcel. So there's, so there, no, doesn't matter what density. Level there is for a parcel for its neighborhood. For units would be allowed. And that's the, that's the proposal we're considering right now. And also what's in that proposal is. That in the design review district. We are proposing to remove density caps from those neighborhoods. Correct. Correct. Okay. And then, and then, so those are the things that, you know, we discussed quite a bit and that's what's currently being proposed. Do we have any discussion of the proposal before I. Ask anyone if they're interested in, in a motion or anything. Any discussion. Last chance before we lose control. I'm not quite sure I'm understanding your question. For the question. I'm asking if anyone would like to like discuss this, like, you know, so. So we're going to, we're going to vote soon on, on what we're proposing. And so I was just asking if anybody had any last minute. Topics related to the zoning changes. You know, both of the zoning regulations were, or the, the zoning regulations and the, and the storm hazard or river hazard rather. I just, I have a question on, you know, we mentioned the road going up from John dear, like that, that road is horrible. What's the mitig, like, is this not the place to discuss the, the incline of where the, where we even get into the, the country club. Is this not that discussion because there's, there's some things that need to occur for everything to ramp up in a way where we can even develop there. What do you think my yes. So the zoning really sets the rules for everybody and there are, there are rules that regulate the development of new roads. So there's, there certainly are rules in place for that the existing roads kind of continue to exist as they are. It is steep. It does cross railroad tracks. So as a project on a project level. So my office, public works. And those folks will be, we'll be trying to work with the state agencies. The railroad is owned by the state to try to go through and find ways to allow that road to better align. And the intersection doesn't align with Agway. If you've ever tried to get out of Agway at the same time as somebody's trying to turn it's, it's a, not a square, we'd like to square up those intersections. We've had a proposal from somebody from, from an engineer who we had hired to kind of go through and look at these are these barriers that we cannot overcome kind of a feasibility when when we did the feasibility assessment of country club road. Part of it was, is there anything out there that would say you can't do this? Their assessment was you can do this. That road is not a problem, but you're going to need to do some mitigation. And that just costs money. It's engineering and money. But it can be done. And there are certainly, if we can work with the state, there are ways to make this easier. If the rail division allows us to move that intersection, it allows us to lower the elevation of the railroad tracks. That would make access much easier at that site. But those are all kind of project level and not necessarily zoning level, except to the extent that if we're looking at how much density is possible. This is the time to go through and say, because obviously we've rezoned it up there to have a lot of density. If, if we didn't think it was fulfilling our city plan, or if we didn't think it was good policy, then we shouldn't be recommending changing the zoning to increase the density up there. Okay. Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you for that. Any other discussion on the proposal. I guess I got, I have one more question regarding that because isn't it. FEMA is doing what I think 25 feet of the infrastructure because if they do any more, it'll like ignite some other aspect of development from what I'm trying to understand. I think it's like at 35 feet. No one else has to get involved, but at 25 feet of infrastructure FEMA can do it. And they assume the cost. Am I on the ballpark with that because like I said I'm trying to get the information information is everywhere so I'm trying to just grasp it and it's in you guys are the players, as far as me bouncing it off on myself in the sandbox and then coming to you. But is there something to do with FEMA and 25 feet of infrastructure. Not that I'm aware of so most of our negotiations we had with FEMA to put the trailers up there. It did come down to infrastructure because there is some sewer and some water up there, but there's only I believe a six inch waterline. And in order to have a hydrant up there, a fire hydrant, it has to be eight inch, and that would mean we would have to upgrade this sewer and water lines back down the road back down to root to in order to make that happen. And the decision. Initially, FEMA was going to go and do that they were going to use their own money on people and they were going to go and make that connection. And then they said well, we'll pay the city to do it, and that was going to be $850,000 for us to upgrade all the utilities. And then eventually they said they wanted us to have the infrastructure, but they didn't want us to disrupt the tenants getting moved in and the tenants standard of living there, because it was going to really disrupt their lives there's really going to disrupt everybody's lives who are living up there and they're already these are people who are flood victims. So they said, could we put everything in here and put in these units that have self contained fire. Things and so we negotiated a lot of stuff and at the end of the day, we still got our 850,000 to upgrade those sewer and water lines, but we don't have to upgrade our sewer and water lines. And they're going to go and build 20 20 something I can't remember what the number is now for a number of FEMA trailers that have self contained fire suppression systems. And so that's going to help them be able to not need the fire hydrant. So that that was a little bit of the back and forth that was months of negotiation round and round of they're going to build it we're going to build it. And then in the end, this is what we settled on and everybody's happy with the results. Now we just got to get it permitted and built, which I understand is going to happen pretty quickly. That's what I'm understanding. I believe it's 25 of the FEMA trailers doesn't ignite. You know, something more a larger a larger response. So thank now I get it. Okay, thank you very much. And do you have any other questions about the proposal or any, any more comments? Anything. Okay. So, if there isn't any further discussion, we can take a motion to one suggestion might be to have someone move to approve the proposal proposal as it is with the addition. The change to the sheet rock materials and the river hazard regulations. I move to to generally approve the changes that were discussed by my plus the. Water resistant issue that he mentioned on the back end and forward them to the city council. Okay. Everyone understand the motion. Do we have a second. I'll second that motion. Okay, so we have a motion from Aaron and a second from Brian. Any discussion of the motion before we move to vote. Just trying to clarify on that one. So there was the motion was to forward to council for consideration was part of that. That was the best time, but I didn't say it's Mike. That's part of it. We're approving it, but the key piece is we're forwarding it to the city council for consideration to prove it and for the consideration. That was my understanding. And I'm sorry, I should have asked this question before I actually made the motion that just on the when you break the presentation when the presentation is made to the city council. Is it is it pitched as a complete package to the commit to the city council, where in they look at all of the proposals together and generally packed them together or they generally presented individually for individual consideration. City council. The reason why I asked is it might have some impact on how to frame the motion out of our shop. They get, they will get the entire package, each one of them, and they can consider them as a whole. They can consider things that you did not recommend. So once once a draft set of zoning is put in their laps, they actually can go in and pick out things that you didn't talk about to go through and say, Well, actually, this provision over here in section 3002, I've never liked that. And I think we should talk about removing that. If they go outside the box, they have to come back to you or they by they they mean me, I will come back to you to go through and say city council has also said they're going to make this change. If it's a substantial change or substantive change, then it would come back to you to go and let you know that they're making a recommendation that you did not make. And so those are the ones that would potentially come back. But yeah, once it's theirs, they could vote on it as one large package. Ultimately, they've got to vote on it. As one package because it is one ordinance, they can't adopt it in pieces. They might vote on it in pieces, but ultimately at the end, they'll have to have a vote to adopt whatever's left of the of the document the amendment. Thanks, Mike. I think I think we get it. They can dismantle it if they want. They can chop it up. They can add to it. Okay, so we have a we have a motion from Aaron and we have a second and everyone understands what it's about. Last chance to discuss the motion before we vote. Anyone. Okay, those in favor of the motion say aye. Hi. Hi. Are you opposed. Any opposed. Any abstain. Okay. So the motion passes to forward the proposal to. City council. And it's a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 0 vote. 7. Oh, we have everybody. We have everybody. Go us. Thanks for that Mike. Really well done. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Mike. Okay. With that done, we can move on. And. We can consider the minutes there last item before German. We have the minutes from November 13th meeting. If people could take a minute to. Look at the minutes. Anyone have any changes to the minutes. We have a motion to approve the minutes from November 13th. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes. Motion from Maria. Seconded. Second from Aaron. Does in favor of approving the minutes or approving the motion to approve it. Say aye. Aye. Okay. Any opposed. Okay, minutes approved. Before we sign off. Well, this isn't exactly what we expected was it. Absolutely zero public comments. Hopefully. Knock on what it's a sign of. Further hearings on this. I think I accidentally brought somebody out with my long-winded question. I didn't realize it. You know, so hopefully they do not hold it against me. I'm fluorescent. As I say in every meeting that I tend. It's all right. It's all right. I mean, I had asked the planning commission if they had anything first. So. Yeah. I wanted to jump to the public. I could have. What's that? I just wanted to say that the woman who is on is a friend of mine and. She was on to support. The planning commission. So. I'm sure she was just here to listen and offer support if needed. Thank you. Very good to know. Okay, well, we'll see everyone. We're skipping the next planning commission meeting obviously because of holidays. So the next Christmas. Is it literally Christmas? It is literally Christmas. Yeah, literally Christmas. So weeks from today, get your shopping done. Get going. Yeah, I'm in panic mode now. You're, yeah, you're one planning commission away from Christmas. So we'll meet the second Monday of January. Okay. So we're going to do that as normal. And we'll have some stuff to talk about then. Do we have a motion to adjourn? Before we do that very quickly, I just wanted to send out an email. Around three o'clock today. With some suggested edits to the economic development chapter introduction. I think I put in my email that I'm in no way wedded to any of the suggested edits that just out there for consideration. So I don't know if we want to put that on the next meeting agenda or have somebody just make executive decisions about how that should be framed up. I'm just putting that out there. Thanks, Aaron. Yeah, the plan is to throw it on the agenda next time and we'll do a quick review. So yeah, anybody that wants to look at ahead of time. Aaron sent it. Well, plan to spend a ton of time on it. Just do a quick review if anybody has any feedback for Aaron's version, but anticipate just passing the edited version. So thank you so much, Aaron. Okay. Back to German. Who wants to do it? And you say what, who wants to do it? Sorry. I'll move to adjourn. I'll move to adjourn. All right, we have the motion from Carlton to adjourn. We have a second. I'll second. Second from Brian. All right. And we're all in favor and we're going to adjourn. So everybody had a great night. Congratulations on the extra time you got in your life. And. Good job, everybody. Thanks, everyone. Have a great holiday, guys.