 All good to go good. Oh, and we are recording. Okay. We are. Yep. Actually, yeah. So interesting thing. We now have, uh, if this was included in the budget, but a town meeting TV is now, uh, helping record, uh, planning commission meetings as well. So, sweet. Thank you. Welcome. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Calling calling to order the extension planning commission meeting for Thursday, September 14th at 6 34 PM. First on the agenda. Are there any additions or changes that need to be made? All right. Next on the agenda, uh, comments from the public on items that are not on the agenda. Any, is there anyone in the zoom meeting? Global. I, yes, uh, somebody Gina de Rossi from global foundries and that's it. Okay. And you gentlemen are from global foundries as well. Right. All right. Cool. Next on the agenda are the minutes from August 10th. Do we have a motion to approve the minutes? Yeah, I'll make a motion to approve. Any discussion on the minutes that we need to. Change anything right now. All right. All in favor of approving the minutes as written. All right. All opposed. Motion passes. Next on the agenda are the business items. First up is introducing Jennifer marble, the new city planner. So I was planning to have Jennifer marble come today, but she actually is sick right now and bummer, but you will see her probably the next planning commission meeting. And that's certainly a development view board. Because I think her. She will have a bigger role there than here, but she has been helping with some of the analysis that you'll see today. Great. Steve, Steve used to says. Something about the audio just one moment. Sure. I couldn't get my audio going in time to raise my hand to make a comment and public comment. Oh, no problem. We can go back. I didn't know if that was okay. So I had to ask. Sure. Yeah. No, that's fine. Yeah. Yeah. So the comment I had was I wanted to check in as, you know, as I see different developments being built, what the, if there's any, you know, with the planting requirements to ensure that they're not going to in the future encroach on public infrastructure. For example, if I look at the apartment building on Pearl Street, the new one, they have some small bushes plants that are on the fire hydrant. And, you know, in five years that's they're going to grow in there and why would we have any planting around a fire hydrant. And I've seen other developments like mine where they put like horizontally spreading bushes, which then like all grow into the sidewalk, which then need to later get, you know, cut by the public works or, you know, I think, because they get out of control. And so I didn't know when we, if there was something for the, you know, future for code updates and things like that that that could be, there could be some foresight and that kind of stuff because I know we usually require some amount of planting for developments and apartment buildings and things like that. But to just everything always looks great when it's tiny and you kind of plop it in and adds a little greenery, but to make sure that the plantings are appropriate. So that's what I wanted to mention because I saw the apartment building and thought and thinking ahead to the future and obviously there's not necessarily anything we can do for that at the moment. Thank you, Steven. I know that in the most recent LDC that was approved. We changed some pretty robust planting requirements and the requirements that the property owners have to maintain those and and the involvement with the, I forget the name that the plant tree and committee advisory committee has more input in those plans. So I definitely would direct you to the updated LDC. Chris, do you have any? Yeah, I think it's there's also it's also a matter of of staff and the and the the tree advisory committee staying staying on top of some of these things there there is every every development is required to submit a landscaping plan and developments over a certain size have to have the landscaping plan be made by a licensed landscape architect. So there's sometimes there's a disconnect with how it's implemented. You know, we we generally we we take we take a generally a general look at if it looks right and according to plans but some there are certainly things that that's that that could have been missed. And in this case, I think there might have been a last minute change to to the location of the fire hydrants, you know, in consultation with the the fire chief and I'm not sure if the if the landscaping plans totally reflect that but we can we can certainly look into that and going forward and certainly something we can look out for. This weekend and a little bit of noise outside. Yes, and I was just thinking of like preventative maintenance so that you all don't have to go keep checking on these things because you have limited time for enforcement and that's kind of stuff. So, thank you for that. Yeah, thank you for your concern to that's a very valid concern. Appreciate you bringing it up. Yeah, thank you, Stephen. Yeah, so can you can you let Chris know exactly which building that that you found the plan. Yeah, I'm pretty sure you're talking about 197. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's the address right near the West Street extension. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. Just to be sure there's no other no other raised hands right there are no other raised hands. Okay, so we can move on now to global foundries and the solar installation presentation. Okay, thank you, Chris. Good evening. My name is Jacob Clark. I'm a leader of the development team with on core renewable energy. We're this solar developer that is partnering with global foundries to build the solar projects on the global foundries campus with me this evening is Jeff cram who's with global foundries. He's a facilities manager manager over there and just sort of a quick roadmap look ahead. I can run through these slides pretty quickly, introduce the projects, and then we can talk through the project overview that Chris has prepared, I think, if that's all right. Okay. Yeah. So the second slide just says who is on core. We're a solar development company based here in Burlington. We've been around about 15 years. And the key element on this slide is that on core is a certified be corp, which means that we focus on like a triple bottom line people plan and profit. Next slide. This is the first solar project. The 45 day notices I believe are in the meeting packet. But this is a much summarized version of that. So this project is called Essex a north lot solar. It's almost five megawatts. That's about 12,000 panels over around 30 acres. This is fixed tilt racking. It's not the bigger dual access trackers that you see in some places in Vermont. It's about 10 to 15 feet off the ground at the highest point, three or four feet off the ground lowest point. They're angled about somewhere between 25 and 30 degrees and they face south. So the rose run east west. We need to have a fence around the project for insurance and for electrical code purposes. We use what's called an agricultural style fence. We can talk about the interconnection points, but the interconnecting is all through existing green mountain power and global foundry is infrastructure. And there's obviously also a transformer on each site. You all can hear me. Okay. Okay. All right. And the next slide, Chris is just a sort of a concept map where we're we're we're working on a more finalized formal site plan, which will be shared with you when we do file the certificate of public good. The western most portion of the array here shows some panels in the forested area. Actually, there's two forested areas. I believe that both of those areas have been removed removed from the plan. So there will be any concerns about tree clearing should be eliminated. And then the next slide is the Essex B one parking lot solar. This is around 2.8 megawatts. They're sort of this this array is located in an existing parking lot. And there's sort of two portions of the array. One part is a fixed tilt portion like the previous project I just described around 3000 panels across three acres. And then the second portion of the array is parking solar parking canopies. That's around 4000 panels across around seven acres of the parking lot. Again, for the fixed tilt portion, there will be a fence for the parking canopy portion. There will not be a fence and the interconnection is to existing distribution service on campus. And then go on to the next slide please Chris. This is just a map showing the fixed tilt portion and the parking canopy portion the parking canopies are the ones closer to the to the east to the buildings there. And then on to the next slide. This slide is just explaining why global foundries is pursuing and advancing a proposal for solar projects on campus. As you may be aware, global foundries petition the state public utility commission for permission to operate as their own utility. They have a commitment in their certificate of public good to have solar on site within a few years. As when they operate as their own utility, global founders will have to comply with the with Vermont's renewable energy standard, the res as we call it sometimes. And global foundries is committed to compliance with those are excited about compliance with the res. And then the last three bullets are intended to say that we think this is a really strong narratives to generate solar where to generate like energy where it's going to be consumed on campus. We're minimizing impact to the transmission system to the distribution system. Minimizing impact to natural resources and aesthetics by building on already built up campus. Oh, the next slide says site selection. And this is just to sort of convey the amount of diligence that has already gone into selecting the sites that we're promoting here. We've looked at aesthetics, natural resources, habitat, wetlands, streams, buffers, stormwater implications, agricultural soils, endangered species, historical resources, we've done a feasibility assessment on the interconnections. I was looked at site access at terrain and topography, etc. So there's been a really rigorous site assessment already to identify these sites as the best sites to move forward. And then the Yeah, please go ahead. Is that some of those assessments you've done is reasons why some of the forested areas were eliminated. Yeah, having to do with endangered species potentially just I think in those forested areas, there are some wetlands that we would need to cross. Oh, okay. Yeah, and we don't want to bother with that. Yeah, makes sense. And then in terms of the historical archaeological resources you guys had that's it's done or that's in progress. Okay, we'll work with the University of Vermont consulting archaeological program as our consultant. Okay. And the, the studies that they propose will be pre approved by the Vermont Division of Historic Preservation. Okay. Great. Thank you. Of course, so we can go on. There's a lot of water monitoring going on on the property. What, how is this going to be addressed or add to it. The, the campus is already subject to stormwater permitting. We'll consult with the state stormwater office to see if there's an amendment to that permit, whether that's needed or not. And to the extent that there is a legacy of some polluted soils on site. We'll work within global foundry's existing soil management plan. And if any amendments are needed to the soil management plan that would have to be approved by the state as well. Excuse me. So I have a question here. So this is to supply electricity and power to global funds. Correct. That is correct. What happens if there's an excess generation of electricity, where does it go back into the grid? Yes, it would go back into the grid. Is there any guarantee that that electricity would stay in Vermont or is that up to three months? Well, realistically, with the load, the global foundry's has no powers ever going to be exported. It'll all be consumed on site. I mean, there's not really, there's not any real realistic possibility for excess electricity in this case. Okay, another question just out of curiosity. What percentage of their power will be supplied by this? I forget the answer, Jeff. This is the three to four percent of our annual consumption. Three to four percent annual consumption, and that 10 to 15 percent on a base load. Base load. If you want some of the GS specific ones. Sure. Yeah, by all means. Yeah. I like to try to keep it informal again, right? That's fine. Yeah, of course. It's a conversation we're having. Perfect. We need some water. It's right back. Thank you. So these two particular rays will be in the three to five percent of our annual usage. But at the time that it's generating it will be in the 10 to 15 percent of what we're using at that moment. So it's a size. And in the interest of sort of full transparency, the plan is to build out at this time, these two projects on the Essex campus. And two projects on the Williston side of the campus. But this is sort of just phase one. We're planning for a second phase, phase two, which would be another four or five projects spread out across both campuses. And in the end, we would get somewhere around 20 megawatts of power in total, which would be much more significant. That's correct. Our base load is 40 megawatts. And so if we get to 20, it'll be half of what we needed at that moment in time. So are any of the phases including rooftop arrays? Not a lot of flattery. Yeah, not what we've looked at with Encore yet. I did have an intern this summer who's summer project. She did a terrific job was to evaluate all the roofs on our so we could see that as a later term project. Roofs are very complex on this scale. The roofs, these flat roofs have typically a membrane style roofing. And you have to make sure that the solar installation doesn't interfere with the roofing warranty. And oftentimes you'll find that it will. And in global foundry's case, there's millions and millions of dollars of equipment underneath those roofs. I'm well aware of my husband retired. Okay. So I had the same problem with membrane roofing on my house and solar. Okay. Couldn't get it on the house. All right. So we can talk about sort of process, which is the next slide. So the permit that we need from the state is the certificate of public good, which is issued by the public utility commission. And we have to satisfy all these statutory criteria for that permit to be issued. And the field studies are ongoing for natural resources for archeological for geotechnical for aesthetics. Those field studies will be converted into reports. And those reports will be the basis for the attachments to the certificate of public good petition. And at the end of the day, we'll have hundreds of pages of data to be submitted. And that CPG petition is submitted to the PUC, but it's also presented to the town and regional planning commission and a lot of other state agencies. So right now we're preparing the certificate of public good petition. And we should have it ready to submit into the two month timeframe. Once we file this certificate of public good petition, it could take 8 to 15 months to be issued by the PUC. There's no telling how long it could take really. And then the next slide is just to illustrate sort of how comprehensive the state's review is. The agency and natural resources is a statutory party to the proceeding. But the division of historic preservation is a statutory party. The agriculture department is a statutory party. And they look at, they scrutinize all of these section 248 criteria is what they're called habitat, rare threatened endangered species, flood corridors, storm water, wildlife wetlands, air quality, water quality, soil erosion, prime ag soils. They look very closely at the interconnection studies. And they look at the economics. They look at the compliance with the town plan. But really the last bullet is the important one here. The most important criterion for the town to focus on is 248B1 orderly development of the region. And the key consideration there is, does the project comply with the town plan, in this case, the city plan. And the city of Essex Junction has an enhanced energy plan. So they're subject to a different level of difference by the state. So at the core, the question for the planning commission really is, does the project comply with the enhanced energy plan? So I'll stop there. I know that was a lot. Thank you for bearing with me. Are there, are there questions regarding the memo that Chris drew up? My question for you is how much, when you're talking about the roadways allowing for the bringing in the materials to set things up. How much noise is this going to be creating, because more than likely it's going to be coming in on 117 and route 15 and that sort of thing. With the school being across the street and people of course living across the street and it's near there. How much additional noises is going to be, or is this going to be just standards for moving of truck traffic? Yeah, during construction we'll have less than 20 deliveries really. There's racking delivery, which would be a few truckloads. There's a module delivery, which is another few truckloads. And then what we call balance of system, the transformer, the inverters and with some wiring, but it's not a large volume of deliveries. We've done construction near schools in the past without any problem. In the case where there are schools nearby, our protocol is to coordinate closely with the school so that there are no surprises. Because your timeframe would be either doesn't sound like it's summer. We really can't say at this time, we would just have to coordinate closely with the with the city and with the school. Of course, in terms of another one more step for process. I came here a few weeks ago and introduced the projects to the city council, just as a matter of introduction. And then what typically happens is, because the planning commission is the owner of the town plan, we come to the planning commission and say does the project comply with the town plan. And then typically the planning commission will make a recommendation to the executive authority of the city or the town, which is in most cases a select board. But in this case would be the city council, I believe Steve uses this as handle. Go ahead, Steve. Okay, thank you. I had a couple questions. One, you know, I saw you weren't going to build in the forest area. But does that mean also that you're not going to do any cutting in the forest area? Because I remember the array. I think it was global founders, but perhaps it was IBM down on the other side of the river, where they cut down a significant amount of forest to the east of the panels. And so I kind of, you know, would be great to know that that wasn't going to happen. Although I guess looking at this map, there's not that much that are too close to the, to the trees. Yeah, that project you're referencing is owned and operated by green mountain power. The land is owned by global founders, but it's a GMP project. Okay. And for tree clearing, the answer is that we do try to minimize tree clearing on core has a commitment to plant to trees for every tree that's cut. Sure. Trees that would be a shade problem or a fall hazard will need to be cut. But any trees that are cut will be analyzed very closely by the agency and actual resources for habitat or for rare threatened during dangerous species. And any sort of undue impact to trees or to wildlife or to habitat would need to be very closely permitted by the A&R. Sure. And I'm not just worried about, you know, endangered species. Those are great to worry about. I'm thinking just, you know, it's important to have trees in the community just for, you know, especially shade on payment, you know, lowering temperatures, things like that. Especially like on the right-hand side of this drawing here, there's, you know, trees up against the road and, you know, that are providing shade at least in the first half of the day because they're on the east side of the road. And, you know, certainly you don't need trees like right next to the array, but sometimes people get very zealous and cut trees for a while ago. And, you know, in that little bit of trees to the east there, right on the right edge of the property, you know, there's not going to be any endangered species right there. I mean, it's in the developed region. But those trees are really nice up along that axis, road heading up to Maple Street. And so that's the type of stuff, you know, that I'm thinking of. And it sounds like you're thinking the right things, but I just thought it would be just good to mention as a community member that, you know, shade trees are important, especially along roadways and visibility, you know, from the neighboring areas. Yeah, thank you for the question. We're certainly not cutting trees for no reason in any context. What are sort of the green? Oh, those green, this is a, those green blobs are meant to represent trees. Our engineers were looking at potential where there could be shade. So in this memo, I made some assumptions about the North Quadrant Master Plan and how this, you know, matches or doesn't match with it. Do you have any more major comments on that? I do. And this question came up in the City Council. And so we went and familiarized ourselves with that work that came about a little while ago. So that was a, that was put forward, I think in 2012 by IBM. And, you know, a number of things have changed since in that 10 plus years. The ownership of the site has changed hands. Global Foundries is really consolidated around its manufacturing operations from an efficiency productivity standpoint. So we've created space within our existing footprint where we have room for additional manufacturing for the boundaries or for a third party. And, you know, coming out of COVID, the office vacancy rate in Chittin County has gone up increased significantly. And the opportunity that that looked like it might have been there 10, 11 years ago is not, not nearly as great now. The other thing that has really changed is Global Foundries being able to operate its own utility. So because we, we have this, the res obligation and the renewable energy obligation, we now have an immediate beneficial use of this property. So we will go through and update that master plan to include the use of solar on this property as well. Yeah, I think, I think it's a great investment in the property. I love seeing solar go up wherever it can. So I think, I think it looks great. I think it's great. You guys are covering parking lots. That seems like a really good use of that space. I know Chris in your memo, you said that there was a recommendation to draft a letter. I'm just trying to find that. Yeah, so. Yeah, planning commission is, you're not obliged to, to take any action. But you may write a letter to the public utilities commission to just kind of confirm the plans alignment with the existing municipal plans. Including our enhanced energy plan. Yeah, and that's something that if you're interested, I can, I can draft it up. It seems to fit. I would support a letter writing a letter. So I think we would appreciate that as well. You know, we're, we're trying to approach this as a win-win and a very collaborative process. And so we'd appreciate it that it could draft that. In terms of timing for that. You're saying that it's, you're about two months out. Is that, is that right? Okay. So yeah, so the October, I'll have it for the October meeting. That timeline works for you guys. Absolutely. The, the city or the town's position won't really arise in the proceeding for a few months, even after it's filed. But that timeframe does sound really good. Okay. One, I know I forgot to mention is that, that we will be proposing some level of vegetative screening between the project and 117. Yeah, I was going to be my only question is in terms of the aesthetics. If you're at ADL school, middle school, if you're on the road, are you going to be looking at, you're going to be able to see it, or is there going to be some type of. We'll put some screening in and the, and the vegetative screening is typically a mix of. Deciduous and coniferous trees and shrubs. But the point of the screening is, is not to make the project invisible. It's to break up and mitigate views of the project views of the project. Sure. So that screening plan will be a part of our final filing and you'll get it in the CPG petition. Also, I think it's cool to have that going on across from the middle school to good learning opportunity. Certainly. Yeah. Absolutely. In the past, we have tried to sort of incorporate some level of, you know, educational opportunity into some projects. So it is something that we're open to. And finally, where, where, where it's feasible on core is committed to installing a pollinator cover crop with it within the array. That won't be possible on the parking lot areas, but on non parking lot areas. It will be possible. That'd be great. Yeah. Chris, do we need a motion to have you write the letter or. I can use a motion. I'll need a motion. I make motion to. Request that Chris draft letter to the public utilities commission confirming the plans alignment with the existing municipal plans. I'll second that. All in favor. Hi. Hi. Motion passes. Thank you all for your time. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thank you for your time. Thank you as well. He's really, really excited to come and share the share the project with we've been working on this for a little while and we're glad we're falling into stage. We're getting to take it out and share this with everyone. So I appreciate your, your time. Great. Thank you for doing the project. That's great. Nice to see somebody for the first time here, putting up carports with so. We're excited about that. We've been talking about that since your master plan from 2012. And this is the first project I'm seeing that actually has our port. Thank you very much. They are expensive, but they're great. Yeah, they really are great. Well, hey, with summer is getting a little bit more of the people who parking there will be thrilled in the shade. Well, thank you again. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Moving on to the rental registry and inspection program. Yeah, so. Um, We are. At a point where this is almost, in my opinion, almost ready to be shown to counsel. And the city council. Is thinking about taking a look at this and hearing presentation of what we know so far and what's possible. And they kind of want us to move relatively fast because they were really interested in the enforcement position that's wrapped into this. Half FTE with got dedicated to rental registry. This is also tied together. So, yeah, they're thinking of having a meeting with the planning commission, the housing commission and the DRV all together. In October to go over this and also to. I talked more about, you know, how responsibilities for the difference. Different commissions moving forward, which really means responsibilities being the planning commission and the housing commission is not totally defined. Who does what doesn't. It doesn't have to like, this doesn't have to ball completely in the book. But I think at this point, we, yeah, I have tried to clean up the draft ordinance should have a copy of it. And yeah, maybe if you have any. Any, anything to discuss about that some. Now's the time. Well, I do have a question. For section 20. 08 B, B, D and E. There's a phrase in there about out of state ownership. How is out of state state ownership. A factor in this. So, I should be a factor in this. Right. So this was in reference to what the city of Rochester, New York has done. In terms of how they weigh the risk factors out of state ownership. This means that the response times, you know, the response of the landlord may be lower. Just just because they're not around. But of course, that can be offset if they have a good property management set. Good property manager that's assigned to, to that property. But I was just trying to cover our basis in case we wanted to use that. It's really, it's a little bit difficult at this point, you know, to, to without having written all the operational procedures to say what's what the factors will end up having to be, which would make sense. I think that there could, it's probably necessary to have some public engagement on that. You know, we want to make sure that the factors are are going to be equitable. And effective. It's a focusing efforts where, where the risks are highest. I'm in favor of out of state ownership being a risk factor. Yeah, often there's probably data out there and don't know what it would be, but absentee landlord landlords are very much a challenge and very much be intended. Some of those tend to offer me properties that fall in the most disarray because of their lack of availability and lack of responses. Yeah, I understand that part. I just want. Yeah, I know that I wanted to feel like we're picking on a specific piece now and perhaps writing something out to say there's why we're, why we're doing that. Yeah, it could, it could be rewritten as accessibility of property on. Yes, I don't know, but I do know in Burlington. They require a property manager or contact in Chinden count that you must list on the registration. So, like, I think that's their way of addressing if you are out of state, you have to have someone that is in local that can be responsible for. Yeah. So that's a way to also build that. Yeah, I did that did stand out to me. I was like that seems like we're picking on a certain group. It's, I think Rochester have that partially because it's really easy to tell just from ownership records like that that's that's an easy number to pull out easy factor to pull out. I understand that tenant. It's just, since we're trying to be fair, and in this case, it's more of an understanding as to why that's a risk factor. Perhaps we need to explain why that's a risk factor and why we're asking for a local contact. So that. Whomever. Okay, we have a lot of people who might own properties here and then suddenly they decide to get up and move somewhere else. Well, they have a property. Let's say that somebody has a property, they turn their old grandma's house into into something else. You know, they've decided to move to Florida. Okay. How many snowbirds do we know. So it's, you know, are they still local. Yes, they're still somewhat local. And that they, they were here, but they're no. I appreciate this. Okay, so it's, it's just an understanding part as opposed to we were just looking at all the rest. Yeah, I think the real risk is the accessibility of the property. Like, all you're trying to do is get in there to inspect it. And if you have an absentee landlord. That's not connecting. That's not scheduling the property inspection. The issue is that you can't get into the property. And so that's the real risk factor. It's not necessarily that it's owned by someone. Okay. Well, I do think they're having their responsiveness to complaints directly by made by the, you know, by the tenants. I think that could be affected by whether or not they're local. Yeah. Yeah, and this is just, it is a proxy for. I'm just thinking that if it took, if it took a year to get into the property, that's a good reason to say you're getting another inspection. And here versus like, if we were able to get in there within 60 days, there's a good reason to say, okay, you're good for another three. Well, the way this is written, I don't think it'd be able to get away with not, not scheduling, not responding to scheduling requests for a year. They would definitely be in violation. I mean, I mean, I see it a little bit further than that than just access to the property, but absentee landlords tend to be those properties that. They're not responsive to the tenant. So the tenant would make a complaint about something not working. That's what and the absentee landlord. Okay. And it might take them a month to two months to get around to addressing it because they're not local. They're not nearby. They might have to find a contractor, whatever to stop. Yeah, I think to me, when I read those risk factors, that's more of what comes to my mind regarding violation of the. History age of the building, which would also, you know. The safety of the building as buildings get older, they tend to be more and more unsafe. And so. Out of state ownership tends to lend itself to properties that fall into disarray. I'm just saying, right that as opposed to out of ownership, because as we know, there's plenty of absentee landlords with local land. I mean, I like your suggestion of you have. They could live in stages. They're just out of. Yeah. You know, the county out of. What would the word be? Well, I mean, I like. Your suggestion of the way Burlington kind of addressed that. Issue of a requirement of. A local contact, you know, if they are out of state, but. In terms of rephrasing that. Yeah, well, 1, 1 way to do that is. Section 2003 registry information required. Number 6 is the name address and phone number gunning managing agent. You could just have comma. Something in the order, especially if the landlord owner is out of state, something of that nature. Just make a requirement of the information that needs to be provided to the department. According to what you were proposing. So, related to what Burlington does, would this be the place. If we were to say. And must be located within Chippin County. Well, it does that we do have it written here. A designated person within the state responsible for services on the property. So. I guess. And or. Make them. So, I think, as a matter of course, we would want, we would, we would be in the registry collecting. Information on local contact. I don't think there's. Like, I think everybody who owns property here and is renting it out has got to have somebody and they don't need. This will force them. I do think there's still a question of whether or not. We want to. Consider. Like, you know, where, where the owner is located to be a part of the risk factors. If we want to add more risk factors to that, that we want to kind of. Have the option of covering is one. Things that are in the ordinance. It can be way different, you know, it could be, it could barely carry any weight if we don't think it really matters. But if it's going to, like, yeah, I think, I think we would want to cover anything that that's. That we feel is important. And I, Steve used to send up. Go ahead, Steve. I think I kind of like Diane sentiment and. I think you just have to be careful on a straight location based like, for example, I own a rental property. Just over the line in Addison County. That's not that far away. Right. So like, wherever you're kind of trying to draw things, it's just. You just have to be careful because there's going to be gray areas and I'm very active with that rental property. You know, so I know the concept you're trying to, because I think there is people that, you know. Live in Florida 100% or, you know, whatever that's certainly not around or maybe they have a manager management company. It's just, I think it's difficult to try and. You know, there might be someone who's not from. You know, a 20 mile radius or, you know, some defined thing that you want to do that might be perfectly fine and very involved. They have a management company. They're doing everything right. And then there could be someone local. That just, you know, hasn't been on the property in two years. So it's it's hard to. I understand what you're doing. I'm just trying to say that you have to be careful. Thank you, Steve. Yeah, I think it just needs to be, I think, to that point, like you're saying. I think. I think the real risk factor is this absenteeism. It's not whether the owner has stated and I think, I think this in there could be picked up by. And that's why I bring in the other part is that my travels. Okay. Um, I've worked with a lot of property managers. So some of them are some sometimes are better than others. Okay. And we can tell when we've gone to places where the property manager is cared. The owner has cared and we're some where the owner cares when we interact with the owner, but the property manager hasn't exactly stepped up. So, um, so, because the owner is absentee, but the property manager also seems to be somewhat absentee too. Um, it's, uh, it's how do you, how do you deal with that, that risk. So, so just to be the devil's advocate or to be Chris's advocate for this inclusion. Okay. I mean, I appreciate and I agree that there's the potential for. Particularly members of our community who. Are no longer members of the community full time or still own property here. But everything we're listening here is a proxy. So, if I only own old buildings, I could be offended that you're going to potentially weight the fact that all of my buildings are old. Because it's more likely that an older, an older building is going to need repairs or if they don't get repairs, be out of code. So I, I, your initial point, I absolutely agree that whatever we land on, it's going to be important to communicate to the public to our community. Why these. Indicators are being included in our assessment. But I do think, but they're, I mean, just, they're all proxies. And to Chris's point, we can, however many more we include. They can be weighted. And I would assume that we can adjust all of those metrics, you know, as we get more information. I think that I wanted to come back to. We're at the very beginning of this phase or this experiment process. And I think that there is some weight that we should give to the fact that other communities in the United States have found ownership landlord residency being outside the community to be. Not a guarantee, but to be an indicator of the potential for. Potential for needing a more rigorous inspection or whatever. And so. Yeah, I guess I just think just to remind us that everything that we're going to be listing and weighing are all proxies. None of them are going to be a perfect indicator of. You know, this, this is the one we have to expect right into that point, Elijah, as well, just to piggyback on it a little bit. It's just basically making a statement and also go back to what you were saying to fill around accessibility. It doesn't mean because you're an out of state, you have out of state ownership that we're going to be inspecting every year. It just means that you get 5 years, your initial certificate, whatever it might be. And then maybe there is inaccessibility. You're not able to contact them. You're not able to get what you need. And so you say, you know what, we're going to start inspecting more often because we don't have the ability and it just gives the officer. The officer. Municipal employee. A little bit more of these need to say I need to go into that property a little bit more as of X, Y and Z. I totally agree with you. And I think we all agree on what this the intention of this is. My feeling is that by stating out by, by writing out of state ownership, it allows for opponents of a rental registry to pick on that and say. The city is being anti like we don't want an out of state property owner to come in, even if they're great at running the properties. To that point, do what Elijah was saying, should we then remove age of the building as well and just say. No, because I don't think it would, I don't think it would spark that much of a fire. I think Elijah's right. I think he's, I think he brought a really good point and I agree with him actually, but I don't think it would necessarily spark that fire that would necessarily come up as a, for some, it might be. Yeah, but I mean, to also just limit it to inspection violation history and remove the other two. I'm also in favor of keeping the out of state ownership, but also including some sort of aspect of absenteeism or or property neglect because we want that to include in state owners as well. Yes, especially if they're absentee in state neglect. Yes. And I think if I'm forward leaving this in there for now and if we pack like we're going to pass it on to city council passing around to the housing commission, they can have their input on it. And have a discussion with them next year. We don't need to. But you know some of those items that you just mentioned in terms of in state that have neglect and whatnot that falls under inspection violation history, potentially as well. Like that's a pretty all encompassing phrase. To some extent. Well, okay, so to my response to therefore you Chris. So I guess there's a lot to consider here. The way this is written. If you have to get inspected more often you're not being charged. More, unless unless those inspections find problems that you have to pay to fix. But the fee comes in the registration. Or in or in violations if you don't fix things and get penalized. So, and it's in some ways it's it's an income if the starting point is that everybody is supposed to have the properties up to code anyway, then it's then it's an inconvenience. It's not a cost. It's not an additional cost. But of course there's always, you know, when when you're talking about enforcement and kind of selective enforcement, there's always this is there's always a question of equity. And yeah, yeah. I'm open to, to, we're about changing this or seeing what's what council says. Yeah, the idea of. Or by request of tenant. I think that's in there. Actually, by request, you know, like, in terms of that phrase there, right that issuance would be one to five years from date to determined by the building inspector based on these risk factors. I guess it's not necessarily a risk factor included but not limited to inspection violation history age of building or per request by tenant. I mean, that could also kind of speak to the absentee accessibility, whether it's in state or out of state. If the tenant is saying, I'd like this inspected a lot more, you know, more often could we go with the two year instead of five, you know, I don't just kind of complain history. Yeah, complaints. Yeah, you know, issued issuance of complaints receipt of complaints. Yeah, I agree with that. I agree with that. I was thinking the same thing as that. And I don't know where those complaints go to the state. I mean, Patrick, maybe you know, know that in Burlington, there were a number of landlords that were facing issues of complaints. Does that go to the state or is it, is it just something that's publicized. I think we would be creating some sort of mechanism for complaints. Right, we would need because it would need to be a come. Yeah, because you can also file a complaint about something that's like if you think that the place you're renting does not meet the Vermont rental code health code requirements. And you should be able to talk to the municipality and we can send someone to inspect it, even if it's out of cycle. Yeah, yeah. So, I would also point out that Rochester, New York had kind of scores both the owner and the property management company to separate scores. So, a property management company with a reputation would have that reputation applied to all the properties that they work on. I'm not opposed to that. If there was a way to do it, that's an interesting. Yeah. That would be a risk factor, a poor property manager. I can tell you that it happens. Yeah, I'm sure. Sometimes it's a rule waiting for the, for the. Well, these big companies, the owners are not managing. No, they have property managers. Right. Yeah, especially in a large, this is not necessarily a large vacation environment. Some of us have some vacations, I understand. But, you know, so, but let's say there was still, I'm sure there are more property managers up in still because it's a more vacation oriented environment than downtown. That's instruction. So, you're limiting our capabilities. For the moment, I guess, like you say, I limited. Okay. But if people want to come vacation here and have fun, let's have. So, but it's, yes, I mean, it's, I, I try to be sensitive to having not having that we're isolating somebody out. Just because there's been a lot of picking on out of status and for monitors like to pick on out of status a lot. Okay. In fact, we have a vernacular for them, which I'm not going to repeat. So, yeah, well, yes. Okay. If you want to grow with it. So, I mean, it's, you know, even for people who've come from a much higher mountainous area. So, but I don't want, I don't want to see us being isolating people out and picking on them unnecessarily just because of some of our biases. Sure. I mean, could adding more phrases to that potentially soften the out of state ownership, you know, by listing things like inspection, violation history, age of building property management, complaint history and out of state ownership. Does that then soften raise out of state ownership when you add a little bit more that adds a little bit more context, potentially to what we're it might. It's not like one to three. It's one through seven. And it just happens to end when you list out other things in front of it that an out of state ownership might lend itself to poor property management for, you know, those other things that might soften the idea of listing it as a risk factor. I'm saying it's not just, it's just, I'm a little sensitive to, to our biases about out of state or something. I think this is certainly something that's valid to, you know, given that there doesn't seem to be like full consensus on how to work to specifically like I can work on this a little bit, but we could also point like flag this. Yeah. Thank you. I had some questions on some other sections if we're all right moving on. Section 20.3.C. So this talks about prior to occupancy of any new constructed rental unit conversion of the use to rental unit or addition or removal of the new bedrooms and major renovations. I'm not sure if I'll file a newer updated application for registration. That makes sense to me my question was, do we need to stay in this in this section at all that maybe like that a fee might not be reassessed I could see like if you've done some major renovations and you have to add a new application but you've already paid that year to you like I don't know if the expectation is you would pay again maybe if you added a unit you would pay again, right because it's a new unit. Yeah, but if you just added a bedroom or something you. Sorry, where is this section 20.03.C. Yeah, so if we removed new and just file an updated application. So they've added they put an addition or they converted something they already have a rent they've already have a registry they wouldn't need a new registry. This is new construction. For conversion to a rental unit. I'm just I'm just my intent my thought was saying that like a fee may or may not be needed. I'm not sure if that's required in this section or we build it into the fee schedule. I think that's okay. That's valid. Yeah, any net new unit would require. You paid in April and then in October you added added a bedroom so you update your application but you wouldn't be expected to pay necessarily. Yeah, it's not a new unit but if you split that into two units. Now you suddenly bumped yourself into a different category within the fee schedule and you all yeah slightly higher registration for that new unit. Right. Yeah. Right because you pay by the unit. So that would make sense to have something. So that when never lose one pushes back and says no. Yeah, I already paid I already paid this year and it's like well now you have to. Yes, you just have another bedroom on your program. Yeah, thanks. Thank you for updating it. Yeah. 20 more bucks for that. I've got a couple of years for section 20. Six dot E. And this is what we were just looking at actually where we're talking about is more based on the five or less. Violations. I wasn't sure are we at the point where we can determine that it's five or less when we don't necessarily have a inspection checklist or are we just want to mirror. Sorry, I want to make sure I'm looking at the right. Am I am I in the wrong one 28 20.8. Oh, sorry. Yeah. I want this was straight copied from. Yeah. From Winooski watching not told me I just but the five was was from there. It seems seems to be working for them. But yeah, we also because we don't have a building code. I feel like the number of violations are likely to be even fewer than what what they see. Yeah. I just we're picking a number and I'm just not sure if like, yeah, I mean, in my mind, the checklist. I mean, I think back to what uses for checklists and what the state housing authority would do. They're voucher units and it's it's extensive. There's probably like 35 or some odd and so my mom like, oh yeah, you have five or less. Yeah. A little bit of leeway to say. Yeah. Yeah. The question runs from my mind is that you're talking about that number. Maybe Winooski discovered that at five threshold. Where is it? You've got five or less than the incidental. Okay. Where, where once you get over that, it becomes they've found that it's no longer it's down. Right. So perhaps, I mean, at the very least, maybe we could ask Winooski about, you know, why did they pick five? You know, and they might say it's just the threshold number. Okay. So, in some ways, this can be wrapped into the risk factors because like the Winooski didn't have this they don't go like they don't say will issue it any for anything between one and five basic risk factors. They say it's either one year or four years based on the number of violations and that's it. We could wrap that into one, but I have it kind of called out separately because this is the more acute immediate if most recently you've had many violations, you kind of patched it up and corrected it. You know, this is just kind of a guarantee that this is weighted highly and that you'll definitely have another inspection within a year or right at a year. I think that makes sense. I just wanted to make sure we're all the same bit. Yeah, and to your point, should we be thinking about what a checklist might look like? Is that something we should? I'm not sure we're the ones that need to be creating that. Well, I do think at some point closer to implementation, I think there will this. This will, I think this will be an operational decision, but there will be some things that I think could use input for. Yeah. So if I recall, one of the communities we looked at did have a checklist. I can't remember if it was Winooski, Burlington, or Berry, but I do recall that there was a checklist of violations. So it might be, you pull to go back and find whether or not there was one. I think, I think all the... You don't have to necessarily start from scratch. I think they all have checklists because the inspector needs something to work for. They have to have something. Yeah. Happy to work on a checklist of assistance. Great. My last comment I had was on 20.8.0, which is on page 9. In multi-unit residential residential buildings? Yep. So what we're saying here is that if we see a representative of sample units that we can wave going into other units, my concern with that is if safety is the number one purpose that we should be seeing every single unit in a building. I know it seems like it's inefficient, but just from a landlord perspective, the only reason I thought of this was you have tenants taking smoke detectors out all the time. I had it recently in a changeover and it's a huge safety risk and you would want the inspector to go into every unit to make sure smoke detectors were installed. They can take them out the next day, but I feel like... In reading it, Chris, thought process was probably in large-scale rental properties, multi-unit, like we have here on Pearl Street. But those ones would also potentially be subject to other federal state agencies doing these as well. Not necessarily. So they don't have an affordable housing piece. They're also newer. A lot of them will be newer builds and from my experience, when I renovated my property, the inspector came in and was like, oh, you just redid this, this is going to be easy. Because everything is so controlled on new buildings. Not to suggest that we have checklists for checklists, but what about in a scenario like this? And this would take more thinking and probably more experience if we were to do this. But what if we had basically in a bridge checklist, so that you go into multi-unit inspection, say 10 units or more, you get some proportion, say, 4 that look good, or exemplary, then the inspector is able to still go into every unit, but they have maybe a condensed checklist that they are not applying. I mean, this gets really complicated, but maybe there would be a way that we could not have them, unless an inspector would probably be able to comment, like, yeah, you don't need to checklists, like, it's just a breeze. I agree, that's fine. I just wouldn't want to incentivize an inspector that's already needs to do a ton to say, he didn't think I wanted to do it on a safe, strictly on a safe, I would want to make sure we're going to get a review. I would agree with that. All right. Again, if everyone sees me on the same page, I can take that one out. I added that one kind of my experience with certificate of occupancy inspections. But that's a little bit different because we are just looking at zoning. And I look at a few units that are representative and I get pretty bored pretty quick. There is a point that maybe smoke detectors. I mean, I rented the place where we said we can't believe that the person put the refrigerator in front of the smoke in front of the fire extinguisher. There was no way you could access the fire extinguisher. It was on the wall behind the refrigerator alone. How am I going to get back there? So, I mean, it's an inspection case would say, um, no, there's a problem here. So, I mean, it's. Yeah. That's kind of what this is. Yeah. Do the same thing. Any other. Any other. Let me throw a couple of things in here. First of all, Chris, I want to congratulate you. I thought you did an excellent job of summarizing this. I'm really impressed with the ordinance right now proposed ordinance. My major concerns again come back operations. You're already probably overworked and understaffed and I'm just wondering whether or not it's realistic to consider the number of inspections that have to be done in a year. And that's not part of the ordinance, but it's just for operations. We talked about possibility of 2000 units plus or minus and there's six junctions, which may be more than we really have, but still if you do one, one, if you do it every five years, you're talking 100 units a year. That's more than one a day. So I'm just wondering about the workload and whether that makes sense for you to go forward. Not something we need to discuss tonight just something to consider. One specific question. We have a minimum house mode. In the city. That was section 20.08 L. So no, we do not that must be left over from. When you see. Oh, wait, this is. No. No, it's in 2080. Oh, yeah. Yeah, this has got to be. The months. housing. Right. The state rental housing. Yeah. Okay. Something like that. So about your point about with workload and how and whether or not it's feasible to to get through everything. I have two things to say about that there's the way this is written right now when you when your inspection expires, you return to provisional status, which means you're subject to inspection. It doesn't mean you will get inspected immediately. You know, when we're starting off, everyone's in provisional status, it could take a couple of years to get through. So there could be a backlog. But some, but it doesn't. I think I think we have. We have it covered where people won't lose their, their, their registration. But I was, I was certainly thinking about the ability to modulate how. How many units you have to look at by talking about by putting in that's the point about sampling instead of seeing everything. You know, if we were in this situation where it really was hard to impossible to get through everything. And you had to prioritize what's what what the biggest biggest concerns of you've got. If we've got files that are with properties with violations that you have to check back on and you can't even manage to get back to those in time. Then you probably wouldn't want to be spending your time looking at every unit of a perfectly good apartment building that has many of the same units. That's that was sort of what I was thinking when I, when I put that up. But it's also possible that if the workload is really, if there are many, if we have a lot of units, a lot of volume, and we get a lot of revenue, we just solve that by, you know, hiring another person. Yeah, or job we say, or we then have more evidence to go to the city council and say, we need you to hire whether the revenues are not initially, like, right, right. Like there's this need demonstrated need now. Right. Yeah. Chris, what you just mentioned in terms of operational procedures might be something to consider when you put those together is outlining specifically how you would address priority priority inspections. So you cover your cover yourself to a certain point, so you don't get pretty excited later for lack of response. Right. Yeah, I think there are ways to have operational procedures that that kind of modulate how where you focus your efforts. I guess we could, if it was, if it was really necessary, some some properties on provisional status could be left on provisional status for extra long if you really needed to focus your effort on tackling the acute issues until until things are kind of settled. So, yeah, that's something that can be written in center operating procedures and defended when when necessary. I don't know if anything else felt just one additional go ahead. There are a couple proposed fee schedules I just didn't know if ahead of meeting with the other commissions and the council if we should come up with the collective one that we are in favor of that we could say this would be our recommendation for a fee schedule if we haven't fully committed to one yet. Well, I think it might be helpful to lean towards one but like it's. Well, I guess that's basically what I'm saying is like a general consensus as we discussed and we thought that this might be the better but you know open a discussion with council and everybody else. Well, and I think some of this will have to depend on what what we end up finding as the, the number of rental units out there and the spread of rental units. Well, I guess as opposed to the difference between doing it by square foot or by number of units, like based on these two schedules here I mean I would lean towards doing it by number of units and probably specifying per property I would think so even if that one table that's a single family to family three family. You know I might, I might be a landlord to three families on three separate properties. Does that mean I pay 100 or I pay 180. That's from the Rochester table right. The smaller of the two. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I like the one new ski. The square footage. No, that was 115 per unit. The square footage is for commercial property. I didn't like the one this he would just the basic 115 and go for it. Yeah, because it's it with our current influx of small utility units coming in. You know, so that's your 1000 foot foot or less. I mean, it's, it's still going to take you time to go into each one of those units, even if there's 34 in a building off there's 19. Well, I do think though there there's an efficiency there. There, there are economies of scale with multi unit buildings you're working with one property manager with the keys to all all of them. When you get things registered, you definitely have all the units in there and in one like in one day you can inspect all the units where his, you know, driving around to hit up many different houses. I think does carry a higher cost. But I don't know it's also that is that would be a policy choice whether or not we cross subsidize. I mean, I always think that that's a good point in terms of that as well. But remember their individual owners. So just because you've got 34 units doesn't mean you get them all do them all. That's if it's a client, right. Okay, so. Yes, you got individual owner on individual renters. Okay, or. Well, I would think yeah, I mean the clarification I think would be number of units per property. So if property per, per, maybe per property per owner. Yeah, so I mean but the other thing I like about the scaling of it like that is so that if you have two units, you're not going to be paying 200 you're going to be paying that smaller feed it incentivizes density and additional units to be created within within the community. Right. What is it and be here. It's 50 per unit and then everything over 10 is 25. Are we looking at the same. Oh, I guess this is. Oh, I was looking at the next page down. You're looking at Rochester. Yeah, I guess that's Rochester's yeah, where it's the 6080 100. I think it's interesting to think about too well, Rochester isn't huge city Rochester significantly bigger. And I would just assume that there is more higher density, multi unit developments in Rochester than we have here. How does that affect how do you think that affects costs. They can afford to go cheaper on. Yeah, right. I guess a whole system has more. Yeah, I mean I guess just to clarify I wasn't necessarily saying we stick with the 6080 but I like that I like the tiered aspect based on the number of units per property to create that incentive for me to have more density within a singular property. Personally, I'm in favor of a single price per unit. Okay, it's a simpler and I would definitely go higher than the Rochester. I don't think I would stick. I would, I would at least get building blocks and $60 being close to a new ski and Burlington is around the same. Just just to be, I think we should just be charging the same amount as our neighbors. I support. Sorry, Scott. No, I support a single fee. I think keep it simple. Honestly, if you're, if you're renting an apartment. Yeah, not saying you can. I'm just, yeah, that's just the structure that happens. I think a flat fee. By unit though would definitely be a kind of cross subsidy for. For the. Multi units residential buildings, which. Which would probably just be so much easier to to inspect. Like the time you spend per unit has got to be pretty low. If you're dealing with like, you know, 60 unit building versus 60 different owners that you have to coordinate and a time within everything. At the rate we're currently building to go into 60 studio apartments would probably be a little bit easier than two bedroom apartments. Right. Right. So, I guess then in with the initial to your initial point, Patrick, if we're going to. Lean towards one of these two models. A commission. I mean, we don't necessarily like you could, it's sounding like we're leaning towards a single fee. But I mean, we can note in that that like, the commission is. There's a difference of opinions on the, yeah, it's leaning this way, but as we're not, we're not. That's why there's multiple people. Well, but I mean, I think that's very fair assessment that as a. As a commission, we're leaning towards this, but there is a difference of opinions within the commission. Good, could somebody explain to me what a commercial inspection would be. Are we talking about a building that's owned by a landlord, but rented to a hair salon or a dental right and dental business. A dentist. What is the commercial. Are you. So, which, which section are you looking at? Right there. Well, first of all, we define what a commercial enterprise is or a commercial building is in the, in the ordinance. But then we also. When new ski has an inspection fee in here for commercial properties. So, are we talking about also inspecting hair salons that are rented by some. I don't see. If I, if I remember correctly, that would, there was a consensus that we don't start with that, but I kind of have it in the definitions to have it covered in case we want to expand to that in the future. But when new ski does any, they do any public buildings. And there, there was certainly talk about how. How small businesses sometimes have issues with with their landlords and they are, they, they are really stuck. They could use the help by a third party, like the city to, to help deal with some of those issues. But yeah, like that. I just have that in the definitions to cover it in case we want to expand to that in the future. Yeah, no, my only concern is we talked about this last time that whether or not, like a restaurant, for example, for, for now, I noticed that the old railroad in Maine has a new potential occupants, another restaurant. So would we inspect that restaurant or is that part of the health, the health department responsibility for looking at restaurants and commercial properties. Well, we're not including commercial properties in the word. Not at this point. Yeah, not unless somebody's living in the restaurant. He's in the fee schedules just to carry over from the fact that when new ski does. Yes. So we're not, we're not going to deal with it right. So, so I guess I would interpret your question Scott is being at the mall and we're looking at it. Okay, as we're seeing it today. Should we remove this and put it aside until we get there so that it's available when we want to finally move to commercial properties. So that it's available or do we leave it in there. As the potential that we might move there. So I guess that's. I'm trying to decide should it be in here. Okay, in anticipation that we may get there, or do we want to take it out and move it there when we get there. Are you talking about the fee schedule schedule for the commercial properties. No, I'm what I'm what I'm talking about is not necessarily a fee schedule because I think we agree we're not going to have a fee schedule for commercial. But in the definitions, there's a definition of commercial property. And I think Diane, you're, you're common as a good audience for public public comment at some point. Does this complicate our lives or make it easier or does it matter? Maybe it doesn't matter at all. It's just a course when I read commercial rent. I mean, real estate units and owner to one or more businesses to be used as for commercial purposes, or as a place of employment. By having that statement in there, do we open up comments you don't want to hear public hearings, or do we leave it in for the opportunity to include it later. That's just a question. I don't, I don't necessarily go one way or the other. I just released it as something potentially to fly. I'm not sure. I don't find it a problem to define it. It clarifies the difference between rental housing and a commercial rental unit. So that it was that differential. So if somebody wants to say, hey, I've got my swan. Which is a rental unit, which is a rental unit. We're just defining it just saying, yeah, you've got one. Talk to your landlord versus or talk to the state, whichever is appropriate. And we're not doing that at the moment. Although if we start getting more comments, you know, from commercial rentals, maybe we'd step up. Although you make me, you bring up, or you made me think of a good question because we define short term rental unit or short term rental. Are we saying this applies to short term rentals. Well, we're, I don't know if I've made it clear enough in the text. Didn't we say that short term to start short term rentals should just be considered rentals. And go through same fee, same, same cycle, same. Yeah, I believe same same safety issues. Yes, short term rental. It just be, it'll just be harder to identify those right. That's kind of what we want. Part of registration. I think they would have to identify whether it's. Short term, short term rental. Right. No, we're just going to treat a unit as a unit housing unit. Short or long. It's still a unit. Right. But when we had the presentation from the software company, they, they said that it's hard to find, like to gather the data on short term rental. And so I'm assuming we're going to at some point try and find out, try and figure out which are the rental units in the city. Yes, and there's some, it's some landlords are doing a very good job at disguising them. Because they want them to sky so we don't know that they exist. Or at least they used to 20 years, 20 years ago. But when it comes. Like this is one more thing that works just in here, kind of, because we were talking about it and because, because council wanted the planning commissioner to think about it. It could be taken out, or it could be left in just kind of as the case we need. I think it should be left in. I mean, I think we're, I understand we're talking about all rental short term long term. But what I'm saying is that this goes into effect, we're not just going to expect every rental unit property owner to be like, okay, I got to do this right. So we're going to be some need to go out and figure out which are the rental units to make sure that we're getting their registrations. And what I've heard it's harder to find the short term rent. But we're expecting to have them register as well. Well, I think the guy though, from Ptolemy was saying it was it's hard to tell between a rental and a short term rental, but you can tell if it's a rental based on ownership and like where if the owner's address is the street address. I was going to show you something about it. The next thing I was going to do today was going to show you some of the findings we have so far with that analysis. Right. My understanding was that he was saying there's like data that they can use to figure out long term rental units, but finding short term rental units is more about like going to Airbnb and certainly having someone actually search for properties and sharing that data versus data point that he said you probably don't have that we could use would be watching. Yeah, we do have. Which we do have. But we don't know it. Anyway, okay. But your point is more nuanced. So any, anything else about the draft ordinance? The only other thing that comes to mind is, and I thought we had, and I went through the look and see if we had an ordinance on weeds, but we had at some point in time that there was an ordinance dealing with overground lawns. But our maybe there's just discussion on it, but I couldn't find it. So, but in I seven, see if I can get back to that page is like eight or nine. Yeah, it's page eight public building that is unsanitary or number seven deals with uncontrolled growth of weed. And then what came to mind is, we have a lot of people doing wildflower gardens. So, in fact, there was a discussion of Facebook about wildflower gardens, except it was also fun. It's, you know, it's, um, yes, that might be a telling piece, but then maybe not. Yeah, actually, this was straight from when you see I, I first I wouldn't recommend having that in there actually I think we need to do more work as a city to figure out policy around pollinator gardens and and lawns and why we require. Yes, lawn is a matter of course. So I, I think it would make sense to take that out. You know, we, I mean, because I mean, I wrote my bicycle around my neighborhood when I could tell who was on vacation, who wasn't, but how long the lawn was. So, would that tell me that there are going to be insects and everything else because no, not really, it's just that it's a lawn that's had mobile two weeks. Okay, so in that vein, I think it would also make sense to take out a part of our nests because what if you are a nest. Oh, yeah, yeah, what if you have a me hat or what if you are, yeah. The reason the corner that would be bad. Oh, so what if we cut basic everything after rubbish. Oh, wait, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's what I would suggest too. Yeah, just everything after you've got too many pollinators on this. Yeah. I actually, yeah, I did a pollinator garden on my property in Burlington, and I was just there last week weeding and it looked like a disaster. But it's a process. You got to trust the process. Well, the rain hasn't exactly helped the process. Things have gotten more excited about growing than they have in the past. But yeah, it's, yes, I think it looks fine now. Now that we have that, but now that we just mentioned the week. Tell a story from from about that that's I've experienced so my one of the program directors at my university for the school planning in Toronto. She was heavily involved with fighting the city of Toronto on the on I think they're bylaws about lawns and weeds and enabling pollinator gardens and they sued and one and forced the city to change its rules around that. So it's, yeah, it's a it's certainly something I think we should look at at some point. Yes, I mean, it's, yeah, I mean, I can understand the uncontrolled uncontrolled growth of of anything. It fits into the, you know, visibility triangle, or if it's over the sidewalk or over the street or whatever. But yeah, it's, you know, I was speaking with a neighbor today and I said, hey, you know, this place doesn't usually look like this. And he said, no, he thinks the couple was getting a divorce or whatever. And so it was not, you know, the marriage was in disarray. So it was the outside of the house because as they were fighting over who's who's mowing. So I had noticed, you know, because it was it was different that I had less in there. But was the product property out of control? No, just the weeds. So is that is that really a determining factor? Yeah, they could make sense at least for the rental registry. Just to leave that out so that we cover because we already do cover that with with another ordinance might as well focus. Oh, Scott's hand is raised. I'm starting to lose the connection. I must be the other campers are streaming Thursday night football. So I'm going to have to sign off guys. All right. Thanks, Scott. Have a good one, Scott. Travels. By the way, Chris, again, you did a great on those ordinance revisions. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you guys. I'll talk to you next month. See you Scott. So we're talking about next steps. Yeah, for this. So, um, when the, when city council puts together will have a special meeting that's kind of got to be outside of the regular. Council meeting schedule because their gender is already packed. But I can present what we've done so far and since you'll be there, you can chime in as well. But we also, we've done a little bit of analysis with the CCRPC. It's not quite ready to have on life, but I can talk through some of the some of what we found. So we use the grand list data to kind of map to figure out if the owner to try to predict if certain units, certain properties are rentals based on the. The owner's address matches the physical address that's there. And then we're trying to map, especially match that with some other data set that tells you how many dwelling units are in there. We are hitting some of the difficulties involve condominiums. It's really easy to tell how many when something is a condominium and how many units are in there. It's hard to tell if those are rentals or not. But with the data that we have some things that we found out so far. And with the caveat that I think the method that CCRPC use so far is a little bit flawed and that's why we're going back and doing another round. But in matching, so so they basically considered something to definitely be a likely rental. If the owner, if the owner's address is outside of as a junction. I'm telling them to update that to say if the owner's address isn't right there, then it's probably. So this is probably an undercount we have so far. But I think so far with. We have a lower estimates of about 1330 rental units. That compares to the 2000 that the census had estimated. So that's a number of units in terms of rental properties with about 300. Also, about 303. So we got some of them with many units. I'm not sure how trustworthy this is right now because of the fact that the data and condos is potentially a little off. But we think about 85% of the units are in apartments and the remainder in condominiums. I think from a small test that kind of makes sense people who like there aren't that many condominiums here and people who buy them. They mostly do live there unless there's a change in life situation. We don't seem to see people buying condos as an investment over here. As I see some other cities. Yeah, and still, for example, depending on the HOA regulations, I know my wife and I used to own over. Sure would square and they had the HOA has limited to the number of rentals within the condominium. Right. So depends on that could also be a factor in that scene. Right. Another preliminary thing that we think we maybe have found out is that about 50% of the units are. Kind of single or single units. So they're. It's not necessary. They're not necessarily just a single unit in the house. It could be within the condominium of 50% of them are not. Within not an apartment building with many other units. But yeah, that's we're going to come back with probably something that's more accurate next time around or by the time we talk to council. If there's anything. That you think the data might be able to tell that you would like us to look into. That was a time to. Are you looking at address data. So like multi units would have the same street could potentially have the same street address in different units. Yeah. So is that one of the factors you're looking at to figure out if there's a multi unit. Oh, because while we know if there's multi, we know how many units are within it all the time. That's saying that's that's in the grandness and that's also in our housing database. It's more figuring out if they're all rentals or if that's a condominium and within that condominium, how many of those are. Right, like if it's a duplex, but owner occupied on one side and the other side. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Are you working with VHFA for some of the housing data collection. And it's also potentially part of the state's housing needs assessment. We have not been working with VHFA actually just been working with the CCRPC. Yeah, well, I just know if there was another partnership there in CCRPC and VHFA to help collect some of the data. I know VHFA collects a lot of data probably potentially be interested in some of the stuff that you guys. I think they, I think they kind of use the same data for some of some of the data they housing. The main housing data set that they have is I think made together with the with the partner agencies. But I can see if there's a or even if they might have used for it for their database after you guys have collected CCRPCs won't share it. Right. In that sense, because of the way that VHFA I know they like to collect data and make it publicly available. Right. And make their data stronger VHFAs that is part of what I was reading with this, you know, is about rooming houses. So people are not necessarily rent a apartment. They're renting a room. I know the lady across the street for she died 10 years ago or better. But she used to rent out, she had three or four rooms that she was renting out. And first, I guess I'm lucky to be downstairs in the basement. Yeah, are we counting those. So I don't think we have an easy way of doing that. That's there's a call there's there's a policy question in that too. Do you need to be registered mental property if you're, if you live there, but you know that we have ADU counts from the applications for forgetting them for making it use the point ends up being is it is an ADU that it's rent. I remember reading our reading about if this ADU is rented or loan to a relative or something and there's not rent being exchanged that we were not counting that or we are counting that. Because I thought if it's owner owner occupy that it does was ADU is owned by somebody and they're not renting it. They've got a mother or a kid or whatever. So, how are we treating those because it's Well, the ADU situation I think one distinction to be of money is being exchanged and there is. And there's like a rental agreement. I think sometimes like a rooming, like if you rent a room in somebody's house that could be a rental agreement. So, I guess, yeah, like, I think that is a policy question where we could all I could also ask some, you know, as asked with new skins and other places if they, if they include those but I don't know if any thoughts. I mean, in our definition of rental housing, which I would assume we're defining that all that this is based on this. It says all dwellings dwelling units, rooming houses, rooming units, portable home blocks that by owner to one or more persons can be used as a regular residence or as defined in the current version. To me that would say that a rooming house counts as a as rental housing and would need to. Even if the owner. Even if the owner. So, I mean, I think I think it would, it would be one unit I would assume because you're talking about a single dwelling unit, right, right, but it would still need to register. Yeah, so I mean, that's the way I think that sense, because I what I'm thinking of is when, you know, some somebody, somebody that's older, too much space. Rats out. Yeah, they live there. They're taking care of it. Yeah, I mean, this to me this captures, we can add ADU but it says dwelling unit ADU is accessory. ADU for sure. Yeah, different address. Oh yeah, what is that program name? Yeah, I mean, it's where this is where senior rents of place. Yeah. Yeah, and they share. And yes, so how does how would a home share work because the person is is working off the rent is close to paying rent. Well, what do you think will be good policy. I don't know. So it's a great question. I'm glad that we got this from. I guess it depends on are we are we using as like a baseline is economic exchange of someone is paying to be in a space. We're concerned about their health and safety. And if that's the bottom line, then it would seem that a rooming house where the owner is living in the house, but is letting rooms would be something we want to consider. Or are we more concerned about spaces where the land, the owner is not present. Living in the space, because there's an assumption that they're going to take better care of a place where they're living. And therefore is outside the purview what we're trying to. Mm hmm. What about the. Going back and looking at whether or not the. The. Vermont rental housing. Standards. Right. Like, if those rule, if they don't apply by default, then maybe it doesn't make sense. And as we want to expand the applicability of it. And if it does apply that I think definitely should. Right. So just so we might have this connecting thing. So. I'm looking at the, because we say it's in the rental housing. Definition, we say, or as defined in the current version of the Vermont rental housing health code. And I'm looking at the Vermont. Rental housing health code. Which says the code does not apply to a licensed lodging establishment when the occupancy is subject to meals and rooms tax. Which clearly means hotels. But. Airbnb short term rentals are subject to the, to the meals and rooms tax. And so there could be. Right. Started down as being rooms for lead. As opposed to. As opposed to where they migrated to now. I think clearly, like obviously clearly what we mean is anywhere someone is paying to live. Or. Living in exchange, like is getting housing in exchange for something else. Right. I think that's kind of where there's where we want to. That we're trying to look at for safety purposes. So figuring out how we can. Define. So, right. I can tweak it a little bit to so that. The. Short term rental is. Not like it is included. But should. But like. Yeah. Well, it's not. I think this is definitely something to dig further. For sure. I don't, I don't want to reference some other code that then negates. What we're trying to accomplish. There's division of fire and safety at a separate checklist for short term rentals. Like it's different. Like it's there. It's all in separate track. Inspection. Do they define that as. Maybe that. Like is that. Well, I mean, I just went on to a CCD's website. It's just interesting to see that. Check out the Vermont rental code page or short term rental health and safety checklist. From the division of fire safety. So with that sense, and the room and boards tax. Do potentially then think about. If it's, if it's defined as identified as a short term rental, whether self identification or we. Figure out a way to do it. It's just maybe a lesser fee and it's a lesser. Um, type of inspection. You know, most of my something based on vision fire and safety and the way that they have it presented. Pretty short checklist. Well, it could, it could be. If it is listed as a checklist, it doesn't necessarily mean it's. There's any bite to it. Well. Not necessarily, but it's just. I guess interesting in that sense that the idea brought up of house and rooms, you know, meal stacks, which. Short term rentals are subject to that. And there is pushback. This could be a potential alternative to ensure that we get okay. We hear you will pivot to. Another idea as to how we capture short term rentals and ensure that they're. Meeting a certain standard. What, so this is. Derail is more than we want to be derailed. Right. I realized that just derail. No, no, no, no. This is bleeding me down. So, in looking at when you use his example, we've already said, you know, potentially public building inspection is the direction we're moving in, but we're not going to buy it off that piece of the apple yet. What if we would have further reduce the scope of what we're proposing now to simply to exclude. Not include short term rentals in terms of this registry effort with the idea that we are going to add that in. Once we get the quote unquote, like long term or traditional rental piece up and running. Or do we want, or is that kind of. I don't know, I think given council's initial interest in like, look at short, we want you to explicitly look at short term rentals. There's interest in having to be part of the registry program. Well, we can definitely force them to. If there was interest force them to register, even if the Vermont. Rental housing defines them as code. Right. Even if that doesn't apply, we can make them register. You just go through either with no, there may be the inspection. Yeah, the inspection might not be the same and I don't know what rules are being enforced. But you certainly at least force it to register. If they're in the ordinance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My, my only question is home share out of the house. Are they included or not, you know, and because we haven't, I don't know, we really talked about that before. Well, I can, I can ask around to see the other municipalities to. Where they draw the line. Yeah. Because it's definitely under occupied. That's the reason the person's there. I mean, it may just, but the question should be, I guess, asked and answered, you know, making that assumption that since it. Any home shares happening is because there isn't over there. Yeah, I guess in our case, currently with rental housing definition. It's that. Let. Does that specifically mean like I'm paying or it would fill said like exchange of service that also encapsulated by left. Because the home share is supposed to be keeping senior in their home. That's supposed to all those questions could be the senior could be renting. Okay. And they just need to go render. Yeah. But then in that case, we would, they would be captured because it's a run. Yeah, I'm just trying to make sure that we define who this applies. What type of what property this applies to effectively because we define rental housing. But then. In the, in section 21. A, we say that it's responsible for ensuring that all rental properties, but we didn't define rental property. It says as defined in. Vermont 20 section. I'm not sure how to read that 2730. But that, if you look that up, that talks about all public buildings. I just want to make sure that we're. That we get clearly defined on what type of property this applies to. I can clean that part up a little bit. And I think I just like, I know we're rabbit. I think that will get cleaned up in this process. Right. Right. Take a look at that. I'm sure council will look at that too. Sure. Yeah. Our intention is to include short that that short term rentals register. Right. Then we should make sure that our definitions align. Yeah. Yeah. So short term rentals, I think that's clear. I should try to close the loop. Okay. Home share. Are there opinions before I dive in and kind of ask around, like, in terms of, is it good policy to, to, does it make sense? Like that would, it would certainly, I think. The. Like probably there's got to be pros and cons. Cons being that. In the city. Home share. The idea is to try to keep things simple and make it. Easy for an older person to be able to stay in the home. You add complications to it. What if we were to, what if we were to include it in the registry so that they're getting expected health and safety bill in the case of I'm sure we'd waive that. It's an interest. Yeah. Something along those lines. The Vermont rental code does have definitions and things as it pertains to sanitation facilities, kitchen facilities and bathroom facilities for. Rooming homes and then instances. You could probably even extrapolate that out to things like home share where they're like minimum sleeping areas and making sure that there are. So, I mean, I think it's, it'd be great to be able to include it in some fashion to ensure that the person who is home sharing isn't being shoved into a closet with. No, no access to adequate bathroom facility or something. To that extent, but. Like the idea of its owner. Home share identified as such that a fee could be waived or something. Be interested to see that. What. Home share. Home share. Actually says about how they operate their program and what kind of. Rules regulations they have around that sort of thing. And if they do inspections and. Do any kind of enforcement. If it's registered to that program. I can actually get in touch with Vermont. See what, see if they have anything to say. Across the street, right? I think, aren't they? Isn't that home share across the street? Yeah, I think so. Is home share. Just like, like an exchange, like you say at my house, I'll stay at your house. There's no. Exchange. Sometimes it's a small monitoring. In other words, instead of paying $500. You might be paying. I would say that that would fall under short term rental. No, I don't think it's like a housing swap. Yeah, no. I'm going to live in your house. I need assistance. So the person works off part of their rent. They share their home with somebody. Oh, I see. So, so in other words, instead of you. Having an apartment for like, say $500 a month, you're paying $100 to help their fees. And you're working. Yeah, you do some cooking groceries. You do some stuff. So just to be clear for the next step, are we. Are you taking our input and then are we going to, are you going to give this to council for, and then we'll have a group meeting. Yes. Combined meeting on this. Yes. And, but if that happens after the next. PC meeting, I'll, I'll show you. Okay. I'll show you. I'll show you. There's just might as well. But yeah, along with. The. I'll show you our findings with. With. Our initial list of. Likely mental properties or these tally of. Likely mental properties. Okay. Moving on to the next agenda item. Housing commission cross appointment. So as was mentioned before, and of course it's a. It's a, it's a big commitment and nobody wants to be spreading, spreading out your effort means spreading it thin sometimes. So no pressure, but the city council is still looking for. Somebody from the housing commission to. I mean, some somebody from the planning commission to also be on the housing commission. Yeah. Yeah, it's. Probably going to end up being a 1 meeting a month situation, although they previously met twice. But yeah, that is not totally said at this point. If anybody is. If any of you are interested, let me know in the past to me too. And they currently don't have a forum, right? So they can't meet? Is that, uh, is that a difference? Yeah. Yes. But they're on, there are people, they would be able to meet if, if council confirms like two more people who were applying for the cab, but didn't get in and said that they would be interested in other things. Um, but council was thinking about this, not so much in terms of meeting forum, but they added the number, they added to the number of seats, they made it go from five to seven. Yeah. What the expectation that they could fill more seats with cross appointments and also perhaps with somebody from the development world. Um, yeah, I mean, you can think about it and let me know if you're interested. Yeah, I mean, when it initially came up, I did. I was selected while I was a sitting number here. I am interested. It's just the commitment. Yeah. New child on the way coming November in my time is going to be in the next. I mean, who knows. Yeah. But I have a lot of interest. I guess that's my mental figure out. If anybody else wants to step up. I'd be more than happy to not do it. Well, I can see how it might fit in if it becomes troubles and I'm going to have to stop. No, I'm serious. I I know that they were meeting during the day. Which has its own fun and games. I think we can all think about it. Yeah, reach out to. We reach out to you, Chris. Yes, please. Moving on to the next item village center renewal. I was just going to update you on the fact that I have now submitted that renewal application to state and they say they. They'll let me know if they have any questions, but it should be fine. I think over the next. I'm going to say 2 months will probably also try to. Start talking about the expansion of the neighborhood developments area. Some other priorities that said that I want sorted out first, but. Throw some ideas and wall see what sticks. And also bring bring those ideas back to. The planning commission. A few different options. What we could propose. All right, nothing in the reading file. Any member updates? I sent a notice from. The department of observation and are. It's heavy yearly conference. Which is October 20th. I sent the registration information. To us as the PC. To that address. I'm not sure how that will come through. But. It's. Monstrous 35 dollars. Which in the past I have gone and I've had the. Village pay for course now it's the same. So. It has a lot of environmental stuff. I have a lot of. Things in the states doing. So. I'm hoping that comes to everybody. Because the my sending it out. And to the PC. So. See if it comes or not. I sent it. So I'm not sure how that transitions. I got it. Okay. So. I got it first from one person from the state. And then I got a reminder. So this is the. The reminder. I'm on the list. Did you want to go? Do I want to go? Yes, I'd like to go. Okay. So. I think that I should, there should be no problem with the. The city paper. Yeah. Yeah. That's. Monsters. So. I won't be around 30. But otherwise. That's the 20. Well. It's definitely during the week. I'll take a look again. It's usually in the national life building. On the hill. Yeah. To their offices. So it's. Parking hasn't been a problem or anything. They. They have parking in different tiers along the hill. There's also a fantastic bus that goes to the city. You can add the link. Mm hmm. I mean, I guess I'm not, you know, that made me think of the town fair and they have nothing dealing with planning. Yeah. I don't know. I haven't seen the agenda. I'll be there tabling for a CCB. But. I was kind of disappointed. Yeah. He's going to be with you or is he going to be. He's with our department until the end of this month, but you, I don't think he's, I don't think he's, I don't think he's going to be there until the end of the month. Usually there's been like a, at least the workshop or something for. Yeah. I was just trying to see if I could find. Nothing. Yeah. I wasn't buying. I wasn't buying. I mean, it's nice that it's local. Yeah. I was being down in Hillington or something, but it was. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's nice that it's local. Yeah. I was being down in Hillington or something, but it was. Yeah. I just wanted to bring up a schedule. The next meeting I. Most likely will not be available. Well, I definitely won't be available in person for the, what we'd be meeting on the. Fourth. Fifth. Fifth. Um, might not be able to make it. Be a zoom either. I'll be traveling. Um, Yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to bring up a schedule for the next meeting. I. Most likely will not be available. Well, I definitely won't be available in person for the, I'll be traveling. Um, But my October is not look good for Thursdays anyway. So I'm fine. If you want to have the meeting, I will be able to attend, but I just wanted to bring that up. You want to look at scheduling the next meeting. I think I'm available for all of it. They'll be on the fifth. So they'll most. Most. That's something else that's coming out. You are available. Yeah. And unfortunately, Scott's not here. I would say let's keep it on the fifth. Okay. All right. Any other, any moving on the staff updates? I don't have anything that would. We haven't already talked about. Great. Well, if there's a motion to adjourn. Make a motion to adjourn. I'll second. All in favor of adjourning the meeting. Say hi. Hi. Hi. Motion passes meeting adjourned at 848 PM. Thank you.