 to do is approve the agenda. So we're going to take a look. The, you know, most of this meeting is dedicated to the public hearing on the proposed zoning changes. We also have an update from Marcella and John and company, Stephanie, I think is the company. I'll move to approve the agenda. Great, great. Give me a second. Oh, second. Second by John. All in favor of approving the agenda. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, agenda approved. So moving on, we have comments from the chair. I do have a couple of things I'd like to comment on tonight. The first is, you know, I was really impressed with the way that everyone responded when John brought up the parking issue. And I think that I'm going to, you know, take that cue and have us do more of that. I think that, you know, I've taken it really slowly and trying to like push any kind of agenda since I've been the chair, but that doesn't mean I haven't had, I don't have a whole list of things that I think would be great for us to consider. And I realized that I've been doing this for, I think a year and a half now. So I think the time might be where we start adding some more discussions like this to the agenda. It seemed like everyone was really responsive and we can get a lot done. So you should all expect for me, you know, items added to the agenda that are similar to this parking issue, like issues where we can, you know, do some changes to the zoning potentially if the group wants to and have a discussion about that. So in other words, I plan to be a little bit more active. I also invite anyone to reach out to me about adding items to the agenda. So if any of you have a similar thing that you'd like for us to talk about and possibly act on, let's do it. I think the only criteria I would ask is that you have a concrete idea of what you would like us to do. If it's too amorphous, it may not be very productive. But if you say, you know, in this case with the parking, if you have an idea, like, I think that we should, you know, remove the remaining parking requirements in the zoning and that's a concrete thing for us to talk about. So hopefully everybody is on board with that idea. And if not, let me know if you have any concerns about what I'm talking about and you can do that offline or during this meeting. Do we have any reactions to that? If not, I can move on to my other thing. Okay, so the other thing that I wanted to bring up was for us to make sure that we're getting together and organizing and doing our subcommittee work. And I've been guilty here too. I need to schedule, for the two subcommittees I'm on, I need to schedule some meetings because it's been a while and we haven't done anything. So just as a reminder for everyone to try to meet and discuss and try to get some more productive possible out of those things, it's just, I'm just bringing it up now because, you know, as a group, we had decided that this is like how we want to proceed. And so I don't want us to lose our momentum that we had in deciding to do it this way. So, yeah, let's just make sure that we meet and then get back to the bigger commission soon. And I think that's all I've got to say. Does anyone else have anything to bring to the group? Planning commissioners? Okay. If I may just do it very quickly. I have to be personal friends with Barbara Connery. So I just texted her and she said she's trying to join but is having trouble with the link. So I have forwarded Mike's email to me that provided the link and hopefully she'll be able to join shortly. But she's assured me she's trying. Just FYI. Let's see. In fact, she just, she says she's not receiving email. Well, maybe I can figure out how to text her the link. Anyway, I will try to do this. We'll see. But she may be having just internet problems. I don't know. But anyway, she just texted and say she's not receiving email either. So for whatever it's worth. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, no, she's definitely missing here. I mean, I think. I wonder if she doesn't have internet connection. I wonder if that's why she's not able to get emails or make the link work. If her internet is down, just guessing. Yeah. So yeah, hopefully she can get that sorted out and join us as we move along. Well, the next item on our agenda is general business from the public. The only person who's not a commissioner or staff here is David. So David, you didn't have, I take it you're here for the hearing. You're not here for something else. So that's good. So moving along, we have to consider the minutes from December 14th. So everyone can take a look at what Mike sent. Can I just say that December 14th feels like a lifetime ago? Second. I'll second that too. Just a question. Are we gonna talk about the parking thing again today? Is it part of the hearing? As this suggests. Yeah, it's part of the hearing, which means that if we decide to do something, then it will go with all of the other recommendations to the city council. Well, if our could call in just via one of those phone numbers. You, one of these phone numbers works, right, Mike? Yeah. If she is having full internet, maybe she can call. Yeah, that's a good point. If someone could try to let her know through text. Maybe David, you could do that. Let her know to use the call in number. The meeting ID and the passcode. Okay, do we have a motion to approve the minutes? I'll move to approve the minutes. Motion by Marcella. Do we have a second? I'll second it. Second by Stephanie. Okay. All in favor of approving the minutes from December 14th, say aye. Aye. Okay. Any opposed? Okay, man, it's approved. Which brings us to the public hearing for rezoning changes. This goes back a little way. So there's a number of things that probably feel even more ancient to December 14th that we will go over. With that, I'll hand it off to Mike so he can breathe us on everything. The hearing was going to be broken into just a couple of things. I'm going to go over a summary and then we'll go through some questions. We won't necessarily have to have the public questions. It doesn't look like we'll have any public but I did want to go through the summary because this is going to be on ORCA and it is going to get broadcast and taped. So we should go through and summarize everything in case someone else is taking a look at this at a later time. And then we can, after we've gotten through our questions, we can have that conversation about the minimum parking standards. So, and then finally at the end, if we are ready, we can vote tonight to send this to city council or we can have another hearing scheduled and we can make that decision afterwards. But let me quickly go through this. Let's see if I can, so that should work. Let me know if there's anything not working. So the areas of primary change. So this proposed zoning update is really broken into three groups of changes. We've got the Sabans related pieces. We've got housing related pieces. And one of these, one part is due to statutory requirements. There were some statutory changes the legislature last year and we have to make changes to our by-law to reflect that. And some other parts are housing related but are not statutory requirements but made sense to do them now because we are talking about making some changes to housing. We might as well make these other ones. And then there are a number of miscellaneous changes and that will go through them mostly or minor and technical in nature. So the Sabans related pieces, there are three. We have section 3303, which is traffic. The conditional use traffic and below you'll see there's also subdivision traffic. So the, and I'm not going over them in word-for-word strikeout detail. I'm just gonna give a high level summary of what the changes are. Primary, what was that? So, okay. So primarily the traffic was about the removal of the level of service as a requirement. And it was organized to clean up kind of what is our environment, what's a guideline. We kind of made sure we understood what's the overriding requirement that has to be met and how do you meet those are some of the guidelines. So it was, we kind of cleaned that up a bit. In section 3404B, that is the new neighborhood PUDs. We'll accept that one. Okay, I'm sorry. Ah, we got Barb, or at least I can hear you. Yeah, sorry. You've only got me by phone. I don't know what happened. I think I made the fatal mistake of accepting the invitation. And anyway, I'll let's man, thank you. Okay, so we just started the public hearing. We don't have any members of the public here except for David White. So I was just going through a quick summary of what were the changes. And so I mentioned that there are three sections, one of which is the savings related changes, which are the 3303, the traffic changes that we made. Section 3404, that are the neighborhood PUD changes, which only changed the applicability to exempt a riverfront district. And also made a technical change of kind of replacing urban center one, which didn't apply anyways. So really the new neighborhood PUD is not changed at all. We just exempted riverfront district properties from that neighborhood, from that PUD as a requirement. And third, the third change was 3504 traffic, which is in the subdivision. And all we did was matched it to the conditional use standard rather than restating the requirements because previously our two standards were slightly different. Under the required housing related pieces, they are in section 1203, which is about non-conforming parcels. Non-conforming parcels are your grandfathered parcels. So if you were in a district that has, say a requirement that has the property has to be 6,000 square feet. If your property was only 3,000 square feet, this rule explains what you can do on your property. And in this case, what state law says is that any parcel with access to water and wastewater must be allowed to be developed under state law, regardless of size. So even if you were in a district that required two acre minimum lot size and you had a 1,000 square foot lot, which is substantially smaller. If it has sewer and water, it would be eligible to be developed. And that's what the state law said. And so the changes basically reflect that. The second set of house required housing changes were figure two dash 15, which is our use table. It's a big table that's at the end of part two. And what was required under state law is that any development of one unit to four unit buildings, so that's a single family house to a quad apartment can no longer be denied for character of the area, which is a requirement that's under conditional use. So you can't use character of the area as a reason to deny a one unit to four unit project. And because of that, we propose to change any of those from conditional use to permitted uses. And that's really just because if you can't deny it for character of the area, there's really not gonna be a reason to deny it for conditional use. So it makes sense to make those permitted uses. The third set of changes from the state law changes last year were to accessory dwelling units. We were mostly already more generous with our ADUs than state law, but there were a couple of small pieces that we had to catch up to, one of which is that under our zoning, under our zoning, we only allowed studio or one bedroom apartments as ADUs and under the new state law, any size can now be required. So we had to remove those studio and one bedroom limitation. So you can now have a two bedroom ADU or a three bedroom ADU as long as you meet the other requirements. So what was not required that are housing related, we've had this discussion in the office since 2018 when the zoning went through, we started to notice there were a couple of inconsistencies with the way residential uses were classed and created gaps and inconsistencies. For example, room and board is a specific use in section three, but it's not on the use table in section two. So we had a couple of these ones that kind of showed up in these different places and there were gaps. So you would have uses that or overlaps of things. You'd have congregate living in senior housing, but some senior housing is congregate living. And if you had a four unit building that was senior housing, is that a four unit building or is that senior housing? And it started, there's just places where it didn't make sense. So we went through and reclassified into three groups. So all residential uses will now fall into either regulation by dwelling units. So that's a one unit building, two unit building, three unit building, four unit building or multifamily. So those are all by dwelling units. And another group is congregate living. And then the third group are specific uses of groups in residential care homes, which are specific state licensed residential uses. So we really couldn't drop them into either one. They really have to be treated on their own. So the dwelling units, that first group are those residential units that independently contain all requirements for a dwelling unit. So there are a number of them in the definition that talk about having a kitchen in a bathroom and living space. Whereas a congregate living arrangement is a residential use where you share one or more of those requirements. So if you've got a living arrangement where people share kitchen facilities, so you might rent, live in a dorm room, but eat in a group kitchen. Well, that would be a congregate living. Dormitory living would be congregate living. So that's the difference between the two. So there are a number of rooming and boarding is a congregate living type of arrangement because usually you're renting rooms, which you can live in independently, and then you share the kitchen facilities. Sometimes you'll share the bathroom facilities. It really depends on how the arrangement is set up. So that's the difference between the major groups of dwelling units and congregate living. And many of your different, some of your senior living may end up as a congregate living, some of them may end up as a dwelling unit, but we no longer look at senior living as a separate use. So because we rearranged these and made these changes, which the housing task force supports, they supported this new arrangement. These changes led to a number of other places where residential uses appear in the document that needed to be changed. So figure 215, we had to rename the housing uses and 3002D, that talks about density. That's how you calculate density. It's adjusted to reference the section 3111 and changes how densities calculated for congregate living. So that became a challenge, how to calculate density for congregate living. And we adjusted it to be using FAR instead of density, which works much better. Figure 313 renamed housing. So that's the parking. Figure 313 is about parking. So if parking stays, we would then have to adjust our parking table to make sure it talks about the dwelling units in congregate living. 3107 added residential care homes and group homes as they are both protected in order to law. So 3107 used to only talk about group homes and we added residential care homes into that same section. And 3111 used to be rooming and boarding. We struck that and replaced it with a discussion of residential uses generally. So that was another change. And the last set of changes for housing really just came down to definitions. Obviously, when you make all these changes, we had to remove a bunch of definitions. There was one policy change that we kind of went through. And I think, I know John, we had talked about this in the past. There was a requirement for dwelling units that said you had to be a minimum of 250 square feet in light of a lot of the conversations about tiny homes and everything else. And it doesn't seem like it. There's a overwhelming use to keep that in there. So I was just going to recommend striking, remove the minimum 250 square foot requirement. Rooming and boarding, skilling add, we had to add a definition for congregate living and we had to amend the definition of household. Because now that term only applies to dwelling units. So I'm going to try to be quick about what are the miscellaneous ones. Minor fixes to transition areas for buffers on the natural resource map. So we have an amended natural resource map that's a part of this application. It's just they're very minor transition areas. If somebody really is interested, I can show them to them. It's just a funky thing of the GIS as to how it had mapped it originally. And we had to fix it. We had to fix the design review boundary and district and neighborhood boundaries on the zoning map that were incorrectly mapped in September, 2020. So that's up on Terrace Street. We were supposed to remove two properties and we, for whatever reason, when we did the GIS map, it removed five. So we got to put those three back to where they belonged. We had discussed all the maps and looked at all the maps but the map that was actually warned was wrong. So we had all looked at other maps that were correct, but the map that was in the hearing document was wrong and therefore we have to re-adopt to fix that. Some other changes, again, these are just random miscellaneous things that have come up as a result of projects. One is applicability. So 1004 is really what needs to have a zoning permit. And we have, and point B, added a requirement that removal of vegetation in certain areas such as wetlands and riparian buffers triggers a zoning permit. So what we found is there's just a random, that if all somebody is doing is removing vegetation, it technically doesn't trip a zoning permit unless they've already had a project there and it's a condition. So unless somebody has a project or has not had a project and has riparian buffer on their property or has a wetland on their property and all they're gonna do is go in and cut down the vegetation in the wetland, it actually isn't a violation of our zoning because it doesn't actually trigger the need for a permit. So we just needed to add language that says if you're gonna remove it, then you need a zoning permit and therefore we can either give a notice of violation or deny the application. Section 1301 adds rules regarding reasonable accommodations for ADA. So we didn't really have a process for these reasonable accommodation requests, but there was a discussion on the VPA listserv about these and the zoning administrator and I discussed it. We really thought that was appropriate and good. We didn't take the ones that were online, but we took the spirit of it and kind of really drafted some rules that we think were good and appropriate and helped to guide somebody if they have a reasonable accommodation request, we now have a process that says in these cases, it's administrative and the zoning administrator can simply approve it. In other cases, it has to go to the DRB for them to work on making the approval. Figure 310 is just a technical fix. There's just threshold requirements in the left column of this table that says everything is greater than or equal to, but when you look in the right-hand columns, it's only talking about greater than. So we just had to make sure it matched that if it's talking about greater than or equal to in the left column, it's talking about greater than or equal to in the right column. So 3201L changes sign requirements to strike a provision that reviews content, which is now unconstitutional. So there was a Supreme Court case that said you can't review content and we had this section in 3012L that talked about, very expressly talked about, you should review this content. And so we know that's not legal anymore, so we struck it. 3101E is striking a provision that allows eight foot fences on class one highways. It's allowed in other places, but I don't think the intent was to allow them on class one highways, which could be Main Street. The class one highways are a lot of the main routes through town, and I don't think we would be wanting eight foot fences. And fences generally fall under permitted uses, so it would be very difficult. So the only place eight foot fences are allowed is if you have a property that a butt's I-89, you can have an eight foot fence. 3105 changes the title to match the content. So it was the title of 3105 is home occupations, but inside that talked about home offices, not home occupations. So we just changed the title. Outdoor seating applicability changes to apply to patrons. So we had an issue in 3205, which is about outdoor seating where somebody was just coming out to put a bench. It wasn't for patrons, but they had to go meet all these requirements for patrons. All the rules are really talking about customers, but if somebody just put a seat or something for public enjoyment, then it still had to meet those requirements. So we just made an adjustment to have those outdoor seating requirements really apply to projects that are addressing patrons. 3301A clarifies applicability of conditional use. Oh, because the 3301 just said these, it's really applicability for conditional use. And it says anything in part two or on the use table needs to meet these requirements, but there are a number of places with reference to that. So this is really just a cleanup to refer to the fact that there are other places where you may end up needing to do conditional use review as well. And we added river hazard areas to the natural resource requirements for new subdivisions. So part of our NFIP requirements is we are supposed to have minimized projects and impacts on river hazard areas. And they aren't addressed in our river hazard regulations because they were supposed to be addressed in our zoning and subdivision regulations, but we didn't. So we just added them in here, probably won't make a big difference in most projects. And then lastly, we had to change a number of definitions or we had to change a couple of definitions, one of which was for accessory structures. And the definition of accessory structures refers to items that are detached. But if you look throughout the zoning, we have a number of attached accessory structures. So it was kind of an oxymoron to have an excess and an attached accessory structure when by definition accessory structures are only detached. So we struck detached from the accessory structure definition. So that is a quick, as quick as I can make it summary of the changes and certainly we'll go back to taking some questions here, but if there's a member of the public who is viewing this at another time and is interested in asking questions, you can email me at mmilleratmontpillier-vt.org and I can answer whatever questions you have. These are also all located online. If you go to the main page for the city website, you will find that there is a link on the left-hand column near the bottom and it'll have the proposed zoning regulations and you can click on that and it will give you copies of all the documents, the new natural hazard map, the new zoning map, an abbreviated version, which is usually the easiest one to kind of get through because it is just a printout of the pages where there are changes in the zoning strikeout copies and you can review them there. So I guess I will turn it back over to Kirby for the next step of just taking questions and comments from anyone. Yeah, thanks a lot, Mike. Yeah, that was quite a lot of technical stuff there. I guess for background to remind us, you talked about a number of things. I had actually over the last few months, I've missed a meeting or two, so it's possible because some of it was new to me. Is some of that material supposed to be new to us? Like, it seemed like some of it was technical changes that you've made administratively. A couple of the miscellaneous ones may be new to you guys or we didn't get into them very much because a couple of them were technical. As I said, the only policy changes that were really in miscellaneous, one was the removal of the 250 square feet for the dwelling unit definition, the change of the fencing, the eight foot fencing, and that was just one that was noticed by the zoning administrator. She was like, I don't think that's really what the planning commission had intended when they wrote this, but officially people can have eight foot stockade fences on Main Street if they wanted it. Well, not in downtime, you have to go through design review, but in other places, route 12, you could put in a eight foot stockade fence on the property line. And so I don't think that was our intention when we wrote that. So I don't think there were too many others that were real policy, that really affected the policy of things. Yeah, I wasn't thinking that they were very policy heavy. I was just clarifying that in case there were other planning commissioners who thought, I don't remember that. Yeah, so yeah, some of this is a little bit new to us. Yeah, just so do we have questions for any of the items, Mike went over? Do we have any discussion over any of these items? Is there anything that anyone saw that gave them concern? So we have a very timid hearing right now. David, did you have anything about being a member of the public? No, I'm mostly here listening and if there are any issues that come up, I'm happy to offer my two cents worth, but not hearing any currently, I'm fine. Thank you for asking. I mean, I think part of the reason that like, for many of these things, we have gone over them before. And as Mike was just saying, a few that we haven't, we're mostly technical, and I didn't personally have any issue with it. I think what Mike did was wise, because you're related to the traffic changes, right? Like you worked on something similar to that. So again, just to remind people, I represent the city as my client on this and my particular role is related to the Sabans pasture project. So it's both the traffic related and the PUD related provisions that I'm here to support. Right, yeah. And I think that that's pretty well settled from what we decided to do with that. So, okay, so again, before we move on, I'll ask, does anyone have anything about any of the items Mike went over? If not, we'll move on to the parking. That was what I was gonna ask about. Just gonna say, did I miss the parking or what? Yeah, okay. So, yeah, so anyone, Barb, did you have something? I was asking if you had something because your phone logo just popped up on my screen. No, sorry, no, no, I don't. None of those, because we've already discussed them, that's for the most part. There were a few surprises for me too, but I understand that a lot of that was administrative. Okay, well, with that, we'll let it go. Thanks a lot, Mike. And we'll talk about the parking requirements. I'll try to give my attempt at the background and then let Mike or John take over because this was suggested by John at our last meeting, which was about a month ago. So, we are considering removing what remains of the parking requirements in Arizona Inc. For many residential uses, they've already been removed, but there are some that remain. And we've questioned, or at least some of us have questioned whether it's useful to have that and whether it's actually meeting the policy goals intended and whether it's good planning. So, with that, if Mike or John, either one of you guys want to come in and start the discussion. I mean, I'd just inquire quickly, because are you intending to take, to have any kind of motion on the zoning changes that Mike talked about tonight? Yeah. In the hearing, I'm just trying to decide whether it's worth my staying in this meeting or not. I mean, fastening as it is. Yes. Yeah, so it's looking like now that we're going to, I mean, it looks like we're going to approve those. I mean, there's been no one's voice any concern with any of them. So, unless something totally unforeseeable happens to, you know, by my estimate, we're going to approve those. We may also add to them a removal of the parking requirements as well. Okay. I kind of object to that in terms of, if we were to add that now without further discussion, I think that's premature. Right. You know, everything else has been discussed. Right, so the intent is that that discussion is going to take place right now at this meeting. And because that's why, I mean, this is my understanding today, and anyone correct if there's anything procedurally incorrect, but it's why Mike put it on the agenda in a way that he did, so that we would have the option of making some change to the parking, because it was warranted as part of this discussion. My only question is, Mikey, you offered to let folks who are watching this later provide feedback after the fact with that, if we voted now, would that kind of make that feedback move? Or can we, in court, do we need to bring the feedback to the city council? Oh, I see, okay. Because it would not be too late to, for someone to provide feedback after seeing what we've said. Because there's an extra, okay, of course, thank you. But if the public does have questions or does have comments, they can still contact me, whether it's in the Planning Commission's court, or whether it's the city councils, they can contact me about questions and comments. And if it happens to be going to city council, then they can also contact their councilor to go through and say, I support this or I don't support this. So that would be their choice. Okay, great, thanks. So I guess I can, I'll just throw in really quick. What we're talking about in parking is in section 3011. That is where almost all of the parking requirements exist are in that one section, page three dash 22 in my version of the regulations. So anyone either at home or any of the Planning Commissioners wanted to look that up. That's where it is. And so the one question I have, I guess I'll ask John is, is your request to remove the parking requirements and minimum parking requirements entirely for all uses or just for the residential uses? I would advocate for being for all uses. Okay. So yeah, so that everyone knows, along with the Zoom invite tonight, Mike sent us a link to additional documents. And one of those documents would be draft zoning changes abbreviated. And so- He probably wouldn't be in the abbreviated version. These would not be in the abbreviated version because I don't think we have proposed changes in this section. Well, I found it in that document. Unless I'm looking at the incorrect thing, it's on page 10 of that document is where 3011, well, as part of 3011, it actually starts earlier than that in the document, but there's the figure 313 minimum parking ratios table. Yes. Okay. So that does show just the minimum ratios table. So earlier in that chapter, there's 3011.C, which talks about the minimum amount of parking requirement. So what we would probably do because we had talked previously about, if we did this, then we lose some of our strength on being able to regulate because currently we have a minimum and a maximum parking. And so people have to fall in between those two guardrails for the amount of parking that they have. If they want to have more than the maximum amount of parking, then they have to go to the DRB and justify it. So if we removed our minimums, we would no longer have the maximums because the maximums are double the minimum. So if you were required to have two parking spaces and you wanted to have five, then that's more than double. So you'd have to go to the DRB. So what we would have to do to figure 313 would be probably to double all those numbers and change the title of it to say maximum parking ratios. So that way, if we wanted to maintain that maximum parking requirement, we would just keep the same table, just adjust it to say maximum and finagle with the numbers on the inside. That would be my suggestion if we wanted to remove minimums, but keep maximums, we would make an adjustment to that table. So there are ways of working around that to do it. The policy side, I guess, is whether we should is a separate policy question. I think there are ways of making it work in the zoning to do that. Mike, can I have the question about that before we move on? If we make that maximum, but then for financing reasons of what else are for developers required to put in more units and start more parking, then they would have to apply for a waiver or variance in order to do that. In section D, section D of that talks about maximum amount of parking, creation of more than twice the minimum parking. So we would have to just adjust that to say creation of parking greater than what's on figure 313 shall be approved by the DRB in accordance with the following that the applicant shall submit a parking study demonstrating that additional parking is necessary and that the development or review board may condition approval of any parking in excess of the minimum on the additional area being surfaced with pervious materials and being faced with that the construction only as warranted to meet future demands. So they have options for conditions. Those aren't requirements, but the DRB can look at what is talked about in that parking study. And it's clearly left vague. There aren't really good standards in there. You know, I don't think we spent a lot of time talking about these when these were presented to us and whether it was probably 2015, 2016. So there's probably room for making some improvements to that section to give it some guidelines. What is the DRB using to make that determination? Right now, I don't see a lot in there that would give the DRB the ability to say no. Usually you want to have something to be able to put your thumb on to say, nope, you didn't meet that requirement. Seems to be as long as you have a parking study demonstrating that you need it, that the DRB really doesn't have grounds to deny it. I guess our attorneys on the board can no point on that, but that'd be my thought. It would be nice to have a requirement in there somewhere. The only thing I can think about is. I can see a denial because the DRB decides in its own discretion that the study does not show that it was necessary. I think it'd be arguing about what the study says. Yeah, pretty bad developer. If you just submitted a parking study that said, you do not need this much parking. Probably happened. Well, we know what happened with the drains at center and that they ended up putting in more parking because the various tenants thought that it was necessary and I'm not exactly sure how. That was qualified in their application. So it has happened in the past where there have been modifications to this. I'm just concerned if we turn figure three dash one three into maximum parking spaces, although that would be a really nice thing to do. I just am worried about what's gonna happen as a fallout of that. It's already the case though, right now. Pardon me? That's already in existence right now. Three dash one three. That is currently a maximum right now. It's currently, figure three dash one three is currently minimum parking spaces. But if you, there's a provision to double that is a maximum. Oh, right. Yeah, I'm not talking about that. I'm sorry. I thought that what Mike was suggesting is that we turn this figure three dash one three instead of being minimum parking ratios to turn it into maximum parking ratios. In which case I just don't know what's going on. How that could impact other parts of the ordinance. I think what Mike's suggesting is we don't, it currently is a maximum parking requirement. If you, it's just that those numbers are doubled. If we remove the minimum parking requirements, they'll be referencing no table unless we keep a table in. So I think what Mike's saying is we double those numbers and then just explicitly call them maximums instead of the way it is now. So it would change nothing in terms of the process and what we currently have for a maximum parking requirement. It would just remove the minimum. I see. Yeah, okay. But still at this point, we have not yet discussed taking them out, taking the requirement out completely, right? Correct. We still have to get to the policy. I was just mentioning it from the functional standpoint. I think we could having taken a look at how our rules are written. I think John's proposal to remove minimum could be, it's not a huge undertaking to rewrite the parking standards to do that. I think we just, you know, we remove point C, which talks about minimum, and then we make some adjustments to point D and we make some changes to that table. And I think, you know, so what sounds like a major change to the parking would actually have a minor effect on what's written. The question is now going to be a policy standpoint. Do we think that's a good idea? What are the implications of not having a minimum parking requirement? You know, sometimes the argument is that this will push additional, you know, where somebody doesn't have off-street parking, they may put in additional units, which those units would use on-street parking, which may be severely constrained in certain areas. And there are certain neighborhoods. Berry Street obviously has some parking issues. The lower sections of Elm Street can have some parking issues. But I think by and large, most, I don't see as many problems, but I don't live in town, so I don't necessarily see all the problems that exist. So... Mike, isn't there a way for people who can't meet that parking requirement, particularly downtown businesses, to pay a fee to the city in lieu of providing the parking? That was under the old zoning. So that's gone completely. I didn't realize that. Yeah, that was gone completely. And we rewrote when this was passed in 2018, Urban Center One, Urban Center Two, Urban Center Three, and Residential 1,500. Those four neighborhoods, or those four zoning districts were exempted from the minimum parking requirements. Right, right, I understand that. But now the Transit Center did not need to get any approved parking. For their project, were they under the new zoning or the old zoning? They may be under the old zoning. So if the Transit Center came through today, there would be no discussion of parking at all. They would tell us what they're doing and have to meet any environmental and impervious cover requirements, but they wouldn't have to justify meeting a minimum parking standard. Yeah, but isn't that parking waiver available for occupancies outside of those zoning districts? For example, a multi-family that is located in red 3000 or red 6000, and they don't have sufficient off-street parking. Weren't they able to also apply for a waiver? They can apply. They can apply, there is no C, but they can apply for shared parking. So they can make arrangements with another one to locate somewhere else. So point E talks about shared parking. If you can't meet the minimum parking, so we'd have to probably review whether that's even needed. If we didn't have minimum parking, there probably isn't a need for shared parking requirement, but there is a discussion of how to do shared parking. And let me see if there are waivers. I do not see waiver requirements in the parking. So it looks like you would have to either meet it on, the way the rules are written today, you'd have to either meet the minimum or get a shared parking arrangement. In your experience, has this been a barrier for anyone developing multi-family housing? In the past, it was. It used to come up quite a bit because the way the old zoning worked, and I don't want to dwell too much on the old zoning because it's not here anymore, but the old zoning for certain cases and certain ways, and so every once in a while, we would get a project that would come through. I can remember one on Main Street in, you know, past the library, but before the roundabout in that area there, somebody had an extra unfinished space. And so they wanted to finish that space and put an apartment in it. And it turned out they could do the apartment, they could meet every single requirement, but they didn't have, didn't meet the parking requirement, and it didn't qualify for whatever reason, they were one of the technical ones that couldn't qualify for the parking waiver. And so they ended up getting kind of caught up because they really couldn't meet the parking requirement, and it was a location where they could do a new apartment in the downtown walkable. And that was kind of what everybody said was, hey, this is downtown, it's walkable. I've got a tenant who isn't even looking to bring a car and it kind of got stuck. So it does, you know, certainly in the downtown, it becomes a really big, you know, certainly in the downtown, Urban Center One, Urban Center Two, Urban Center Three, you don't want to have the parking requirements. That absolutely has been the correct decision. Sure, you really should be looking for shared parking opportunities, parking, public parking opportunities to deal with any parking issues. You don't want everybody to have individual parking lots. That's for suburban development. Right, so we handled that by taking out those minimum requirements for those districts previously. Yeah, and I can remember another project up by the college that had some parking issues. They had the vacant space, they took a carriage house that they renovated and it turned out that, you know, having to meet the parking requirements ended up being one of the barriers to putting in that additional unit even though they didn't think there was a big push for it and they could park on street without causing a big problem. And so it does, I would say it does come up periodically, but for the most part, most places, you know, as I said, they're kind of these two, two extreme, they're three areas. You got the two extremes. You've got the downtown where we don't want to have the park, everybody having their own parking. We want to have shared parking. We want to use public parking. We want to use on-street parking because we want to have that density and we're never going to meet that density if we have a parking space for every unit. On the other hand, you have the lower density areas. The rural areas, the residential 24s, the, you know, those areas there were, there's no reason to have on-street parking. You know, everybody's got a single family home, maybe a duplex at most. The requirement is two parking spaces. They can easily fit all of their cars onto their properties. It's just when we start to get to this little bit in the middle that we're, where we start to have some question of whether minimum parkings have value. If somebody wanted to put another eight-unit building on Berry Street and was not going to put any park, any off-street parking, they're like, I'm just going to, you know, right now I've got a, you know, maybe somebody right now has a eight-unit building and they have a parking lot with eight parking spaces. And we changed the zoning and they say, awesome, I'm going to take my parking lot and I'm going to put a new eight-unit building on there. So now we've displaced those eight parking, those eight cars onto the on-street and we've added another eight cars. You know, that's the potential policy implication. Will it happen from an economic reason? I don't know, but that would be the situation where we know Berry Street has a lot of parking problems. Is this something that could cause more problems? And I guess that would be, that's the question that kind of has to get kicked around and decided by you guys, and then I can implement it into the zoning. Yeah, it seems like this will, well, it's unlikely that it'll have a huge impact in terms of what people currently do and how things are developed. But even if it's like, even if it's like two units, like Mike was saying, that's like two families in Montpelier that we've told they're not welcome here because we think that they need a space to store their car on a property when we have like 15% of households in our city that do not own a car. I think why on earth would we require a space for them to store a huge metal object that they don't own? It seems crazy, not in the public interest. The data says that there are quite a few people in Montpelier who live in Montpelier and still drive to work in Montpelier. So I mean, I'm not saying that we should promote, but I just think that this is, I mean, in my opinion, it's extremely elitist of us to say that we don't think that renters should have cars. It would be great if they didn't have cars and we all want to work towards that, towards that possibility of getting rid of cars as much as possible, but we also don't want to tell people renters that, oh God, you can't move here, I realize, because we don't have any parking for you. And if you imagine that there's a family that just come to the grocery store, they're coming home and they can't park near their unit, so they're gonna be schlepping all of this stuff back and forth, or if they have young children, at least now we can make sure that they have one reasonable parking space that's available for them near their unit. I mean, it may not be next to their unit, but it will be somehow designated a car that else won't have it. I mean, I think it's great. I really like the idea of limiting parking and reducing parking, but I think the idea of then pushing it onto the street is not the right move, because it also actually makes the streets much more unsafe, frankly, particularly in residential areas. So, Barbara, I'm just gonna stop you. That is not true about streets being unsafe with untreated parking. The likelihood of fatal collisions on streets with untreated parking are far lower than they are on streets without untreated parking because travel speeds are much higher. I'm not talking about vehicles. I'm talking about pedestrians. It's more dangerous for pedestrians. That's not true. What I'm saying is if you're a pedestrian on a street with on street parking, you are far less likely to be mowed over by a vehicle because, and die from it, because vehicle speeds are far lower. Well, if you're an adult, but that doesn't mean that, I mean, my concern is kids crossing the street at any place which actually does happen. And then on top of that, the other piece that bothers me a lot is just what it does to our neighborhoods, in terms of moving all of that parking on street. So now, what might have appeared to be, maybe it was a three-unit building, but it really didn't have a lot of impact on the other single-family homes in the area. But then once you move that parking on street, it's pretty clear what's going on. And it really does change quite significantly the characteristics of the neighborhood. So, I wrote a note to the transportation subcommittee, but I have to say that in 30 years of renting units out in Montilier, we had six, now seven units, and no one, no one was carless. Now it doesn't mean that we wouldn't like to encourage that. Oh, these were all walking distance to downtown. So it doesn't mean that it wouldn't like to- Can I jump in? Perch that? For a second? Yeah, so on your first point about equity and cost, I think one of the, I was actually thinking about that in the opposite way, which specifically to say that if you have a unit that doesn't have a parking space, you're not gonna be able to charge as much for that unit. So there might be a cost savings there. I also think if we're able to promote infill development, I mean, housing in Montilier is extremely expensive. And if we're able to promote infill development, that might not have been there otherwise, we might be able to get in some additional units. We're working, everything we do in that direction and adding additional infill and more units is working to reduce that cost. And I have no problems with on-street parking. I recognize that I'm someone who used to live in Chicago and understand that that's a lot different than Montilier. But it's also, I think part of the reason that we have such a nice downtown and for a town the size that we have, it's amazing that we have the level of density that we have in any case. But I think if we really wanna keep encouraging that, this is a way to do that, to help that infill. And I don't have any problem with cars on streets. And I think if we can do that and get more housing, we're actually helping people. So what do you say to the family who basically has to park their car a block away and take their groceries to their unit? What do you tell those people? You know, oh, Farah, you just don't have this extra face. And I can't have you anyway. I find that a block- I don't think having to walk a block is an issue. I just, maybe that's just me. And for some people, if they have an accessibility issue, I understand that that might be different. But I just, I don't think that for most people I don't find that certain. That's the current situation now. I feel like that's a red herring. Like if Montilier becomes as successful, if we do grow and we do become more vibrant and have more people, you know, there's an infinite demand for free parking directly next to where you wanna go and where you live. And if we're working towards building a community where you don't need to own an operated vehicle, then like, let's do that. To suggest that because we eliminate on street or we eliminate parking requirements that, you know, the straw man family will not be able to park, find a place or rent a place that has a vehicle that they can park, you know, right next to their housing unit, I don't know, just doesn't. I mean, I think it's a straw man, but I'd say that it's probably quite a few families and who are renting in Montilier. You know, you've got two young small children and you've gotta be able to get back and forth to your car. That, you know, that sort of becomes a big issue if you're gonna require them to park on the street somewhere. If you're taking anywhere parking units away or requiring anyone to park on the street, we're just saying you do not need to provide, you do not need to build a parking space if you don't need one for your housing unit or whatever other use you have. Cause I think we've shown like, we have, I don't know what now, 60 years or 70 years of data of parking usage and we've shown that government is terrible at predicting the amount of needed parking spaces for every single kind of use. You know, we just try to try to predict it and it, you know, it just doesn't make any sense. Yeah, well, it just, to me, it doesn't make any sense to, you know, be so restrictive in terms of what we're providing for renters, you know, because 50% of our people are our renters and that means that there is a huge demand right now for parking spaces. And we already have a city where visitors come in and say, oh, I can't find a parking space there. So I'm not gonna go to that shop. I've heard that from retail people in various locations. It's like what people said, that they just wouldn't come. So meanwhile, we're gonna add to that burden of on-street parking by adding in residential units. I mean, the other thing that we did do when we changed the zoning was we allowed for those parking spaces to be behind each other. So if you have a long driveway, you could have more parking spaces in it. You know, which was not, I don't believe that was the case before. I believe you had to be able to get access and brandy doesn't really want it to do that, but we said no, but we can have stacked parking that just allows for everyone to have a unit off the street. And I mean, you know, not even getting into the whole snow removal thing because that means that at night in the winter, we only have half the on-street parking available because the other half is forbidden. So, I mean, that becomes an additional unit, excuse me, additional issue. So it just seems that, you know, we're not solving a problem here right now. We could certainly add some language in, which would allow for, you know, if somebody said, I'm building this eight-unit building and I'm marketing it to people, you know, there's a lot of units, I'm marketing it to people without cars. So therefore, I don't need parking. You know, we could allow for a waiver situation where they would be able to build that building without cars, but without spaces for parking, but to just automatically say what won't be required, you don't even have to pay attention to a prospective tenant. You don't have to care that they might need a certain kind of parking. So it just seems, I don't know, as I said, I'll leave it. What public purpose are we serving by requiring individuals to create parking spaces whether they need them or not? Well, you don't know who needs a parking space when you're building a building. That's right. I think there's an equity issue in terms of, you know, John, you said earlier, we're telling two families we don't want them in Montpelier because we're requiring parking instead. I think if you're putting up a bunch of new housing that might be rental housing and you can give people no place for their car and they do have to walk in it, we're not talking about a block, we're talking about a crosstown to the one lot that's available over on Berry Street. And it could be in the winter and it could be people that don't have the, you know, a lot of capability to do that. I think that we're telling people of certain income levels or ability levels that they're not welcome here, in my opinion, if we do it that way. So what I wanted to chime in on is about that because yeah, there's been a lot of discussion but I don't think it hasn't been said enough in this discussion that the market will work these things out, that landlords can't, just because government allows it, doesn't mean that a business or a developer can do whatever they want. They still have to follow, you know, the economics of it and the finances of it and they, you know, most people do have cars now and if a developer does not consider that their potential tenants will have cars, then they're going to be at a major disadvantage because there are plenty of, the rental and the housing that exists right now does provide parking mostly and those that don't are, you know, we're going to have a problem of not being able to charge as much rent. That was said earlier and I think that that's very true. If you look at the rental market right now, a couple of major observations, there's hardly any. Second, they provide parking. That's not the main issue if you're in the rental market right now. So I think the market will resolve some of these. So I think that it is, I don't think that it's a big problem that we're all of a sudden going to have rentals that don't have parking. I think that's, there was a leap there in this discussion I think of like allowing this. And another reason why that I'm not worried about that problem is that bear in mind that most residential uses right now don't have a parking requirement. There's only a few residential uses on that table, that parking table that we will be excluding. If we include commercial, it's actually going to be, I think a lot more and someone correct me if I'm misunderstanding, but this will impact the commercial uses much more. And I think the concern that was voiced earlier about people coming into shop and not finding parking, I think that's a much more real problem than renters having a problem with parking. We are going to solve parking demand and supply with parking minimums. Right. On the downtown, on the downtown piece, Kirby and Barbie, you brought those, you started this conversation. I just, I want to point out that it's actually significantly better for our downtown that people park and walk past other businesses. They will spend more money if they do that. And I think for the purposes of people who can't walk, it's important to have some spaces, but it's in the benefit of our downtown to have people park in a parking garage and walk all the way down East State, or sorry, all the way down State. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I certainly agree with that. To congregate our parking wherever we can. It's just, I would rather not see streets used as for that congregate parking. Yeah, I just feel so strongly about this. Oh, the issue of the market will adjust. Well, we all know that now, currently we have like a one percentage vacancy rate. It's very low. So if some of the existing landmarks decided that they wanted to take out their parking, they could point to the zoning ordinance and say, well, yeah, I'm no longer required to do this. So yeah, I'm not gonna keep this up. I'm not gonna plow or do any of that. So it just seems as if now what we're saying is, we're trying to be someplace like Chicago where everyone has the park on the street almost. I think what you're describing is a healthy market though, where some landlords will decide to build more housing and therefore the city would have more housing. Other landlords would decide not to do that. And then those that provide parking will be able to charge more and then the tenants would have choices. And that's how markets work and how things kind of work themselves out. So it seems like it's not like a horror story. It's just, it's fine. It's true if we had a market where there was a higher vacancy rate where people had choice, but they have very little. I mean, once units come open, they're snapped up. And if we then say, oh, well, this one happens to be fall into the category of no parking, then the potential renter may not have any choice because they need someplace to move. So I mean, I agree with you that it could be a market force issue if we had a 4% vacancy rate maybe, but not with the vacancy rate that we have currently. To me, it wasn't it's fun. And it has a former landlord. I'll say, you know, I never liked to have to provide parking, but I certainly understood why we were doing it. And it felt like the right thing to do. And I guess I'll comment on, you know, in light of Kirby's comments, I mean, the high cost of free parking, Donald Shoup's, you know, treatise on it. That's, it is quite a book. He's an economist. And he was looking at it from that perspective of trying to decouple the cost of parking from when he talked about residential, from residential units. So if you're a renter and you're paying 1,200 bucks, you're paying for a parking space, whether you have a car or not. And then that's what his conversation was. And his, one of his pushes was to decouple parking from these requirements. And the idea is that the economics would take over that people who don't need parking and don't want parking can rent units that don't have a parking requirement or landlords could, let's say that hypothetical landlord I was talking about, which doesn't have a minimum parking requirement has an eight unit building and has a parking lot with eight parking spaces. He could decouple under this new zoning proposal, he could decouple parking from the units and go through and say, I have eight units there for rent instead of for 1,200 bucks, they're gonna be for rent for 1,000 bucks. And each parking space is 200 bucks a month. And you can decide whether you want to buy an apartment and a parking space or just the apartment or just the parking space because you might live two doors down, not have a parking space, but decide to go two doors down and buy the parking space from that other neighbor because it's available. And we have on Sibley Street, I think there's an old lease that kind of works that way where you have a property which doesn't have parking, but there's another lot down the road that has parking spaces that are leased back to that other unit. So it basically where he is going is with this economic model that says let's decouple it. So people who want parking spaces can buy parking spaces as opposed to requiring everybody who is a renter in Montpelier is currently paying for a parking space whether they have a car or not. And that ends up being this vicious cycle of feeding itself that because you have a parking space, it ends up feeding the more cars, people end up being at a lower density and it ends up requiring that you need a car because we've got lower densities and therefore I need a car to overcome the fact that we have low densities. The second comment I wanted to make is as I was thinking about this proposal and we started talking about commercial, at first I thought commercial would be the important one and then the more I think about it, the commercial ends up being less important because for the most part, most of our commercial is in the downtown. Our second major area of commercial is Route 2 River Street and Route 302, which is still River Street. Most of those don't have on-street parking and therefore they're gonna, they can develop how if we said no parking, no minimum parking requirements, they're only hurting themselves. They can make an economic decision as to how much parking they want in a ratio of parking to building. That would be an economic decision for them and they really wouldn't be impacting any neighbors because there's no on-street parking in any of those areas. The only place where commercial, again comes back to are some of these mixed use residential neighborhoods or riverfront and those would be the only ones where it could have an impact and I just say could. So as I started thinking about the commercial, I don't think the commercial and industrial minimums make any sense because tractor supply is gonna make whatever number of parking spaces that they want or think they need. The issue for them is usually having the city putting a limit on making sure they don't have too much because usually they regulate to the 95th, that's what you learn in this guy here is that they're regulating to the 95th percentile or 98th percentile. So basically they're building enough parking for the day after Christmas. And for 98% of the year, those parking spaces are empty because they're just built for two days a year. So those were the two thoughts that came to mind as you guys were talking about it. I wanted to put out. Thanks, Mike. Do we have any other people who want to comment? Maybe with some priority to Aaron if he has anything. She isn't or Marcella, no, she isn't. So I'm gonna admit you guys have been having some connectivity issues. So I missed about 10 minutes of this. It sounds like it was, so I don't want to wait into it just because I think I missed a bunch of it. So I apologize. Okay, but hey, you missed like the hottest 10 minutes we've had in years. Well, that's what it's like. Yeah, I want to watch Parker. I apologize. Get your popcorn. Okay. I was just at this point, like I feel very not tied to commercial, like I don't care if downtown has parking next to the business or not. That doesn't bother me. We can do away with those minimums if we want. But I feel pretty strongly that I'm not gonna change my mind tonight about residential needing some minimum. I, as a renter and as somebody who has not had parking, my entire time living in Vermont, I will tell you that, I mean, in my opinion, it's not great. It sucks. I mean, we're not talking about like, oh, I gotta park around the corner. No, it's like a mile walk in a snowstorm to park your car somewhere you're allowed to park it, especially during snow bands. And I don't think, you know, if it's hard for me, it's gonna be hard for a lot of other people. So I don't think that it doesn't make any sense to, I mean, I hear what you're saying. I don't want planning to be centered around parking. I don't think we should be using tons of space. That could be something else for parking. I understand it's expensive. I just think that it's a, I think, I don't know if I'd say elitist, but I do think that it's an opinion to say that, you know, people don't need parking and they'll just figure it out. I don't think that that's ideal, especially in Montpelier where it's a pretty damn small town, really, you know, this is not Chicago. This is not Montreal. This is not New York. People need cars and people have cars. I just don't feel like my opinion here is like way out of left field. I totally understand the problem with parking. Like I've been doing some reading, I totally get it, but not giving people parking near their place or making it impossible to find another unit. In Montpelier with rent with parking is tough. And I think it limits it. I think one thing we should clarify though, because based on part of what you're saying, you should know that most residential parking is already doesn't have a minimum. So if we change something- Well, what do you mean? Cause I'm seeing single unit, other residential, there's a minimum there. It's the, and maybe I should probably just let Mike, being the expert, tell us what are the residential categories where there's a parking minimum? So the easier way of kind of describing it is, so those four zoning districts that we talked about, which are really in the core, core, core downtown, those zoning districts do not have any parking requirement. Yeah, I looked at those. Outside of that, which is 90% of Montpelier, you do have requirements for all of the uses. So any of your residential uses, and remember we just had the conversation about, you've got the ones that are dwelling units, and you've got the ones that are congregate living. So the ones that are dwelling units, which are the ones we're most familiar of, single family, two family, three family, four family, multi family. All of those, we have a minimum requirement of one parking space per dwelling unit, which is a very minimum, minimum. So for people who have, for communities that have minimum requirements, that's a pretty low one. Some of them have a requirement, one parking space for every bedroom, some of them have two parking spaces for every unit. So there are ones that have minimum parking that are much higher than what we have. We really have about as low of a minimum as you would see, which is just one dwelling unit, one parking space per dwelling. But that would be the requirement. If the amendment passes, the congregate living would be classified by FAR floor area ratio, because a number of those, think of something like heat and woods, how do you calculate the number of cars needed for heat and woods? It's not really multifamily, it's a senior living facility. So really the best way to do that is with floor area ratio, which is what we use for commercial uses. So, but for most of our uses, we're talking about dwelling units and that's what would have it. So if you're on Loomis Street, Liberty Street, you'd have a minimum parking requirement. If you've got a quadplex on Liberty Street, then you need four parking spaces. And I just want us to try to separate, no one is saying that, you know, no one, that people aren't going to use vehicles or no one needs cars, or I think that's very different. I think what we're saying is that we will make it legal and possible for something to happen without their needing the, having the provision to build a space for a car. We're just letting that decision be put on the landowner. And we do provide on street parking. And if this is a big problem in a way, it's good I think if our parking problem is exacerbated because it means people are coming to Montpelier and we can take steps to address that. And that could be by way of a parking garage or a lot of different demand management strategies or parking management strategies. But I think by having things like parking minimums, we're not actually doing anything to create any more parking or solve any problems. We're just telling people that they can't come here or they can't build a family, build a housing unit unless they have that space. And I think the reality is that it's probably not gonna change a whole lot. We are probably only talking about a handful of situations, but I still think it's worth getting rid of it if you can get a few more households in Montpelier. Would it pertain to existing buildings? Mike, I mean, if that change was made, would it pertain to existing multi-family? This is what I'm hearing in the examples. Mike, you're muted. Yeah, I just figured it out. Yeah. Yes, I mean, it would, you know, I won't 100% jump in because there's some things that may, there may be a condition of a permit. So I don't wanna give anyone in the public a sense that they would automatically not be able to because if there was a project that had previously been approved that had a condition in the permit that said they had to have a certain number of parking spaces then those limits would remain. But if you were, you know, a historic six-unit building that had six parking spaces and then the zoning change to say you don't have a minimum parking, then yeah, technically they don't have to keep those six parking spaces. They could turn their parking lot into a lawn. If they had enough impervious cover or whatever else, they meet all the other requirements, they could put another structure on it. They could reuse that parking lot for something else that that would be true. Okay, so I think we need to wrap up the discussion because we actually do have an item after this and we want to make sure that we get a vote on for the sake of the public hearing because it's, you know, obviously it's not just parking. So yeah, if anyone has any final or original things, let's go ahead and do that. And then if not, we can start thinking about a motion. And I think that just procedurally it might be a good idea for us to try a motion on, well, we can talk about it. But I know in the past when we've had different options, people haven't liked that we've explored every option. So I just want to put out there that there's the option of doing it with all commercial only or getting rid of all parking minimums or just the residential ones. Everyone should keep in mind those, all those options when we go to vote and talk about which version you would prefer. And with that, do we have any final comments? Well, I know I've had way more than my share of discussion on this, but I will use just one example. I live on Liberty Street and we have parking on both sides, which means that it's great traffic calming because, you know, only one car can go through it any time. But I live within a block of the elementary school. So during the time from school to session, West Street is, you know, covered with parking that's being produced as a result of teachers that need to come to school and all of those various issues. So we already get that overflow parking, overflow from the on-site parking. So what happens then is what would happen if all of the, if the increase, there was an increase in number of units along here and then all of a sudden the people who were living here and if they were going to rely on on-street parking, they're getting pushed out. So it's not like we have a lot of choices. We just don't have, you know, we don't have a parking structure. We don't have a lot of, we don't have off-street parking lots where people can park up legally. Well, anyway, I will stop. Thank you, Colby. I agree that, you know, the actions is a good way to look at it. We might want to vote on the options. Okay. Yeah, by the way, I used to live on Loomis Street closer to the school than Liberty, but everyone had off-street parking, so it didn't affect my life. The streets were all busy during school hours, by the way. Just, you know, totally adding to it. So, okay. Uh, let me first ask, you know, what people are the most interested in? Are you the most interested in getting rid of the minimum parking requirements, changing the table to maximum, keeping the maximums, but getting rid of those parking requirements for everything? I take it, I mean, I sense that John and Stephanie, and I'll put myself in that group, are in support of getting rid of all of the parking requirements, but what are other thoughts about it? I know Barb, you would be opposed to it. Martella mentioned that she doesn't like anything that touches the residential part. Erin, where are you at, Erin, so that we know what kind of, and in Stephanie also, I made an assumption about where you stand, so feel free to let me know that too. No, that's fair. I mean, I, sorry, Erin, you can go first. No, I was just gonna say, I think I echo a lot of Marcella's concerns about this. I mean, I think fundamentally, you know, without getting rid of the weeds too much, I guess I would just agree with the general tenant that the commission should be wary of tinkering with parking regulations as a way to, that has impacts, whether intended or not, that it sort of, I guess for lack of a better term, sort of creates social engineering within the town. And if the town wants to institute policies and programs that try to get people less dependent on cars and encourage less car use, that's great, but I don't think parking is a mechanism we should use to do that today. I guess I would say that's what we're doing today. That's what we've done. Yeah, I agree with that, that trying to regulate parking is actually the social engineering, I think. I think leaving it alone is the, whatever the opposite of the lead is to this thing. The thing you just said, the thing you just said, everyone on my street had off-street parking, so it didn't matter to me. It didn't affect my life. The parking got busy on the street during the day. I was subtly making the point that some of the problems that Barb's bringing up in her hypotheticals aren't actually problems. That's what I'm talking about. You illustrated my point in that you owned a house, or maybe you rented a house. No, I was a renter, but all of the properties around that part of Loomis Street and Liberty Street. I'm parking. There's a lot of rentals, there's a lot of rentals, but they all have off-street parking already, so. But if we're gonna try to create a community that doesn't have that, then when you do have other things that put pressure on on-street parking, including snow, the people who don't have the off-street parking are the ones that are gonna be, it does affect their life. I mean, to say that, well, I have off-street parking, so I'm good is not. I see what you're saying. I just, I don't see us making this parking change as actually resulting in a whole lot of new development. I just don't see that as likely at all. So I don't see this. Because it might allow some more units. And it also gets us out of the business of trying to have the city decide what parking needs exist when we're not actually capable of doing it. I mean, there's a whole bunch of non-developed stuff downtown that doesn't have requirements for parking. And what would Sabin's pasture look like if there's no street parking over there? What if they decided not to do parking? It's an awkward lot. Be easier if they didn't. We know that they are, though. We've heard about what they're planning. It's not that the cities require, I think if you asked it, Dave or Celery, you asked him why are you providing parking and what's being proposed or whoever the developers are. I don't think it's on him. But you know what I mean? If we ask, I think what they'll say is, well, in order to be competitive, we need to provide parking because we're not going to do as well financially on this if we don't, we're gonna lose customers if we don't provide parking. That's why we're doing it. But if that's the case, then why are we saying like, if I have a choice that the consumer is choosing parking, why are we saying we're gonna get rid of the parking now? Because if we know, that feels like an argument that can't support what you're thinking. You guys go ahead. I think we really need to separate. We're not saying that you don't need parking. We're not saying don't develop parking. We're just not telling you what the minimum is. We're letting people decide that. And the reality is most of the time, people will build and people have built more parking than they need. So that removing this requirement, probably isn't going to have a big impact, but it might allow for the creation of a few more units. And that's why I think it's worth it. We're not starting from the premise of I think we started from the premise that people can develop their properties and then we identify reasons or things that are in our collective interests for having these different regulations that we pass. But I don't think parking is one or parking on their properties is one where we are in a good position to figure out what that minimum is. Okay, so for the purposes of time, go ahead Stephanie and then I'll try to lay out some options for us as far as moving forward. Oh, I think that was Barb. Oh, she was rebutting, she was rebutting John. Well, in that case, let me try to move us forward before we, because we can all rebut all night. So a few options here, and tell me what you think is a great, we could discuss this more as I was just saying, what it would mean is any action would be put off to the next time we send some recommendations to the city council. So those, especially those in favor of making a change in this area, would you like to just table this discussion and bring it up later? Ariane will be part of the discussion, she'll have a chance to participate, which is a factor. And we can talk about the residential aspect or we could try to vote tonight, but it sounds like there's only three votes for getting rid of all minimum parking. If we did it tonight, it sounds like we could maybe get rid of minimum parking for commercial uses, but not the residential that exists unless Erin or Marcella decide to change. That's kind of the landscape we have. So what do people wanna do? Well, I would be in support of tabling it so that we can get more real data and information before we act on it. Well, I think at this point, I mean, functionally, I think we're gonna have to table it anyway. I don't think we're gonna get anything passed, but I do one other thought that's spinning around in my head, I just wanna say that Marcella, I hear what you're saying and don't disagree with some of the arguments that you're making at all. I just, I think in this case, I'm not sure that this is the right policy to fix the issue that you're talking about. I'm not sure that it's actually having that impact. I mean, if you don't have a parking space now, then it didn't help. So I'm not sure if that's really, I'm not sure this is really the right solution. I certainly lean towards something like a parking garage downtown that people could park in overnight when it's snowing, but I just don't think that this is gonna fix the problem that you're having. Yeah, I'm trying to think right now of other, kind of like, I, you know. Yeah, but I also think part of my part of what, if I have a hesitation, it's around the new winter parking policy. So now if you have a car and you have to park on the street, you have to move your car every single day, which is like, if you don't normally drive your car, that's a lot different than just having to move it when there's a snowstorm, which is only an occasional thing as opposed to now having to switch the side of the street that you're on every single day. I mean, I don't think that that policy specifically considered people who actually had to park on the street. Okay. Yeah, because it was assuming that there was an off-street parking requirement for residential. Right, I think that policy assumed that people were parking not on the street at night, which is not specifically the case. Okay, what do you say is everyone okay with, you know, we'll remove this from our consideration for this round and we'll put this on the agenda for next week or next meeting, I should say. So, sorry, my other thing to add to that, I will not be at the next meeting. So I apologize for that. My husband won't be home, so I'll have a two-year-old running around and he doesn't like being ignored very much anymore. He doesn't like to be parked. No, he doesn't, no. Yeah, he would love to do that. But I'm not sure you guys would appreciate that. Oh, sure we would, yeah. In that case, I think, I don't know, if we're gonna do something with this week, it should probably be one where everyone's here. So maybe not on next time's agenda then, but in the next few, if that's, and since John, I wanna ask what John saw as ours since he brought us up in the first place and if he feels like he's, that we're being dismissive by putting it off a few meetings. What do you think, John? Hey, I got pulled away for a minute, but sorry, what were we doing to your question? Yeah, the question is like, are you okay with putting this off and having us renew the discussion in a few weeks where hopefully everyone's there so we won't be next meeting, Stephanie's missing, but in a future meeting where we can have everyone discuss it and maybe vote then. Oh, yeah, of course. I've been at beginning for this for like four or five years now. So I'm in no rush. You have time to wait, okay. We're doing a little bit better about having updates on a regular basis. So if the parking won't make it into this round of updates, but if we have a conversation about it, we can then have something developed. If we're gonna make changes, we can have something developed and well thought out that'll go on the next round of zoning fixes, probably be late in 2021 just because we tend to have these things cycle through with the zoning administrator. So, okay, let's pencil it in for the first meeting of February, it's gonna be, I can actually look. Sorry, calendar's on computer, so it exists. February 8th, so let's tentatively plan for that. Hopefully everyone will be here. Hopefully everyone who has a position can bolster there. They can dig in, because that's helps. And we'll talk. Get the octagon ready. Yeah, so we can talk more there and people can do more independent research. Okay, so with that, let's get a vote for the other changes. And Mike, why don't you, well, no, that's not appropriate to have you tell us what to motion here. Let's see, I'll do it. Do we have a motion to propose for the city council to make the changes as briefed by Mike earlier in this conversation, but excluding any changes to zoning that were not briefed by Mike? I'll have it. Okay, okay. Can you make the motion? Or do you have a motion? Or would you rather have us do it? Where are you going? Better to have somebody else do it. Yeah. All right, all right. I'll make that motion. We'll second it. Yeah. Okay, so we have a motion from Barb, second by Erin. Again, this is, you know, to move to make the changes that Mike briefed us on, but to not change parking other than, that's, I know it's complicated, but Mike did make some minor changes to parking. And what he briefed, and we do want to make those changes, just not anything more. So maybe it might be just clear to say that the motion is to forward the proposed draft to the city council for consideration. It doesn't propose draft, can something regarding parking? And it doesn't affect the minimum parking. Okay. It was the proposed draft that you guys were presented. Okay. So we have a motion from Barb and a second from Erin. I think we all understand what we're doing. Those in favor of the motion. Oh, is there any discussion? Just stop it there. Anyone interested in discussion for that motion? Okay. Those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. So we're moving that batch of proposed changes to the city council. And that ends the public hearing aspect of our discussion. And what's left on the agenda is a brief. And if you guys need, if we want to kick this to the next meeting, that's totally fine. But the continuity structures subcommittee, we're going to give us an update. We had received about a month ago an Excel spreadsheet from Marcella. Do you guys feel like you have enough time to go over that or do you want to put it off? I feel like we could probably do it quickly, but I don't know what is 730. Let's just, I think we're all worn out. Let's put it off and we'll do it first thing next meeting. Yeah. Is that okay? Can I ask one question? Yeah. So I've been, I've worked on, cause I know you guys were working on kind of how to restructure the implementation in your table there. But I've been working just to put together the actual draft chapter for historic resources just as a way so we can start to get that framed with, what would you guys like me to do with that draft chapter that I pulled together? I've tried to just kind of come up with a framework, something that we would use as a template that we would kind of repeat. Do you want me to have historic reservation committee take a look at it first? Do you want the continuity and structure subcommittee take a look at that first? Do the planning commission want to take a look at that first? What would be your thought? This would be a chapter like that would go into the final. Yeah, it would be the compendium. I mean, we eventually want to have a web for this to be a web document. So this would be basically the text of the web page. And then at the end of that is the link to the implementation strategy that you guys have already been working on. And then we've been working on all those implementation strategies. We now just have to write 10 or 12 chapters as well. Yeah. I feel like Stephanie and Don may be correct me, but I feel like we kind of had the thoughts about how we wanted the chapter to look. So maybe we should look at it before. I don't want to be a bottleneck though. Yeah, I also think it would be helpful for either the continuity group or the planning commission to take a look so that we can make any edits before you start doing other chapters so that we can use this one as an example. Yeah, I think because we just had, I feel like we had opinions earlier about what we wanted them to look like. So maybe that'll be good first step. Okay, so yeah, if you guys could, I mean, I'll send it out. Is it Marcella, Stephanie and John? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I can send it out to you guys. And if you guys have a subcommittee meeting, just tag me into it if you don't mind. And I can kind of get in on that so I can see what you guys are thinking at for structure because eventually over the next six, eight months we've got to work out the 10 or 12 chapters as well as wrap up the last of the implementation strategy. So we'll have our work cut out. But if I've got a template, then I can start to throw that out a few people to work on. Okay. So I will send that to you. Thanks. Thanks, Mike. Okay, so yeah, that works out well. Well, we'll hear from that group at the next meeting. Hopefully you guys will have time to also go after this, go over this draft chapter and so that'll give you a good example so that it kind of becomes more concrete for us like what your ideas are. So that sounds good. So with that, do we have a motion to adjourn? No moved. Okay, move by Stephanie, do your second. Second. Second by Marcella. All in favor of adjournment? Say aye. Okay, aye. Aye. Okay, so we are adjourned. Thank you, everyone. Very interesting, great to meet you. Have a good birthday, thanks Kirby. Thanks, everybody. Yeah, happy birthday, Mike. Thank you. Oh yeah. 32? Yeah, I went 20th anniversary of my 32nd birthday. Awesome. Enjoy it. Yes, yeah. Bye, everyone. Bye.