 get started so can call this meeting to order so the first thing in our agenda second thing in our agenda is the approval of the agenda does anyone have any changes okay so I was going to get into that after calling order in that case we are not called order so we're lacking a quorum so this will be a working group of the Mobular Planning Commission tonight and our next meeting will be on July 29th in which hopefully we'll have a quorum and get business going so we had a number of things this evening that we'd plan to vote on there are going to have to be pushed off but first things first I will go ahead and go through the comments I'd plan to make with the quorum and that's that we don't have a new member so we have a vacancy on the Planning Commission right now and so we're hoping to have that seat filled by our next meeting that's all I have to say does anyone else have anything to okay there's no general business right because we correct just doing a working group no election of new officers tonight which then leads us to the Stork Preservation meeting from last week we plan to do a follow-up tonight and then we were going to do a walk-through in depth to the proposed regulations that came from the Stork Preservation Board next meeting and and offer our suggestions and Meredith is going to come and work with us I don't know if everyone's aware of that Mike were you thinking you were gonna come also or to the next meeting next yes okay you and Meredith both will be here yeah okay I just I mean I would have been there too okay I personally if you wanted to have a night off wasn't gonna have any issue with it but totally your call obviously okay well in that case what does everyone think about this current state of design review and the historic Preservation Commission's proposed regs I have some concerns just bigger picture about design review and I'm not sure that they're not sure where to sort of put them in the process but you know I think generally I'm concerned that design review you know maybe the boundaries could be adjusted because I'm especially concerned about you know homeowners who house that's technically historical like maybe there's a small feature over here because I used to own out like so I do have some I am bringing some of my personal experience and just the difficulty and the extra expense that it is to you know fix something or maintain something or change something so I have that sort of general concern and is there a way I mean I I do value the historic character of Montpelier I'm not a total anti historic preservationist but I think there are many instances where there's homes in the design review district that most people would walk by would not you know really have a deep appreciation of the aesthetics do you know what I'm saying versus you know obviously you walk through our downtown and you have a real sense of the aesthetics anyway so I have that concern about homeowners and also just want to raise the question of how this impacts you know if we want to develop more housing units and I'm not sure I've tried to read the regulations and I'm not really sure how that all and hopefully the next session will help me sort of visualize how that all is affected and fits in but so I just just have those two general concerns I guess about the design review but I'm not sure if that's appropriate for the review of this and another question I had which I didn't think to ask last time but was I'm just curious if they have any records of the public input they got or how much public input they got I'm a little bit curious about that too and I know they did they made efforts but I'm just curious about that. That's a good question I think Meredith next week will be able to or next meeting we'll be able to go into that because she's she staffs seven banks and so she would have first hand because yeah it seemed like there wasn't a lot and it was kind of vague. What do you think Stephanie? I think it was it was good to have them kind of I think there are some issues that I had in my original questions I had in my original review like the library example that someone from the community gave the addition of the library because some of the language was if you're adding a piece sort of like the new development question if you're adding a piece to a new building it should be they shouldn't try to match the historical nature but it should be compatible with it but it should be different and that some of that balance seems challenging to me but I think the library is a good example so that was but I still there's still a lot of arbitrary it's still a little arbitrary to me how exactly that happens and I think the development falls within that too as far as matching the nature but not copying the spark district I'm not sure that seems like a fine line to me so I wonder a little bit about that I think it was really helpful to have them come though and explain from their perspective what it is that they're trying to do I also think the found I think we're gonna need to talk about the boundary for sure sooner than later I think going through it next week first makes sense we have an understanding of what we're looking at but I think some of it some of where your question leads me to think about is specifically what the boundary is and if it's a house that's not actually historic should it be in the boundary between historic you can't like section out one house so yeah I know it's it's a complicated question but to me there are houses that are historic but are not and I guess it gets hard because it depends on the whole neighborhood and the whole look of the neighborhood but a lot of houses to me that are historic but I don't think most people walk to be you know just like appreciate it I mean I used to live in the old north end of Burlington and that's what I'm right there are a lot of just you know we're all under this like preservation thing but I don't think you would walk through a lot of sections of the old north end and really feel like you're in a historic neighborhood but maybe that you know I haven't I'm not sure exactly what's in this district and I don't maybe I should walk around I think one thing that will help next week is if we can have Meredith or Mike go into before we start diving in so we're gonna have a busy meeting but before that talk about how the document we're looking at will be applied in the real world because the the feeling of being heavily regulated either comes from or doesn't come from like the process that the doc that the regulations put into place with like for instance I mean some of it if it's just DRB review and jump in and crack me Mike a few you know but when when something's just up for DRB review a lot of it's really is just suggestions and they're working at the DRC sorry yeah yeah sorry yeah yeah I don't know why yeah so yeah DRC so and then the DRC were some of the folks that were here last week so we just I mean I can I can tell a personal anecdote where so my wife's expanding her child care business from our home and one of the regulations is you need a four foot tall fence so she applied to get a four foot tall fence put in around her house she had to go to design review committee for that and was kind of worried about it and I told her not to and then it was really painless and there and it was like things like suggestions like and like lots of questions about how it will fit into things and she kind of had answers and they accepted her answers and there was nothing like you shall do this nothing like walking out of it she was she wasn't really bound to anything or at least didn't feel that way but she's and then afterwards she tried to stick to what she told them as far as when we put the fence in and she told that for instance I mean we just painted it white she said it would match the house but she didn't really say which of the house's colors but they didn't really the trimmed whites we painted it white so that was her experience and so I think yeah and and I feel like they missed that opportunity last week to some degree to go into that and talk about how it's not always that intrusive although the new rules are gonna would change the dynamics of what they're regulating and how what standards they have to meet so there's gonna be a little bit of a shift how the DRC has been enforcing the existing rules is the existing rules are generally more vague today which we're concerned about from a legal standpoint I think they have to be more specific because of some of the recent court cases so we think it has to get more specific and then if it gets more specific how does that in the experience we had before from the Planning Commission was that we wanted to just start to narrow the scope of reviews if things aren't gonna matter so we tried in the original version to go through and say you can replace your windows so even on a historic house you can replace the windows but the windows have to be of the correct historic character so that's got divided light and it's a six over six then you're gonna have to put in a window can be new window but it's gonna have to be six over six whatever the thing is the DRC would review it but you could replace the windows and historic preservation division historic preservation wasn't happy with that so yeah so they wanted they pushed back and eventually we haven't just shelf the whole proposal but we were looking at those types of questions so when we get back into it we're gonna be kind of back into the same thing because we didn't want to have some people get required to keep the windows and fix them and some people get permission to replace them really should be consistent if it's either we're gonna make everybody keep the old windows unless they meet us clear set of standards unless you can demonstrate one two three you have to keep the old one doesn't fix them or is it we're gonna let everybody do it and the same came up with things like roofing and he was just replacing asphalt shingles take off asphalt shingles put on asphalt shingles and code officers came up and stopped him had seasoned assessed because he didn't have a permit for placing asphalt shingles on this roof did he have an old house yep he had a historic house but it never occurred to him that replacing the asphalt shingles on this roof well if you're gonna get a permit anyways so we wanted that's what we had talked about when we were doing this during the big zoning rewrite was roof treatments window treatments porches doors these things that we get a lot of we should have a nice clear rule this says you can replace your door with a modern door so it's a historic character place the roof as long as it's not the same character of the roof you're removing so we've got standing scene you have to keep the standing scene if you want to go from asphalt standing scene then you got to go to the DRC so we can have a bunch of these or vice versa if you had standing scene but you wanted to go to asphalt you'd have to go to the DRC to get approval and you may get denied because the character of a certain building may be federalist you tend to find federalists have more standing scene or slate you know they didn't want people going in and removing a slate and putting in an asphalt roof so what is the definition of historic preservation do they approve design regulations they only do they don't in our case but we are a certified local so that's a CLG we have signed up to as a community to hold ourselves to a higher standard and division of historic preservation gets to comment on whether we get to maintain our CLG status so they made some threats about whether whether we would be able to maintain our CLG status if we allowed to replace whatever we do we'll probably have to go back to division and get approved so those those are some of the balancing acts that we'll also have to get into is the requirement from the state in order to maintain our CLG status which gives the historic preservation opportunities to get grant funding to do various projects so I think they'll be a I think there will be a balancing act that goes in there between what we want to regulate and we just kept them as we transferred them over from the old regs the truth is it ends up being very strange because there isn't we don't get a lot of applications we don't run any applications because it's not the design there isn't anything in the gateway that's in the design review district and we haven't generally considered the entire district to be in design review and I don't know if that was the original intention I haven't seen it work out that way but when I've read it I'm wondering about that too it's whether whether all of these other districts are also added onto which is that all the other districts are treated the same and those two have like their own special needs for some reason yeah they end up in design review and some of this some of this has to kind of come down through the buckets you know you might have a rule here but if there's no way to get to the rule no we actually have to meet it it's we use that bucket analogy a lot because it's getting it starts the top and the applicability and you've kind of got to get your way down there and if the thing is it's regulated to the design review district and then it says everybody who's in the gateway has to meet these rules it's like well they're not in here so it actually applied to them even though there are rules that should be applied to them the only rules that would apply are people who are in the design for like Riverfront there are portions of you district and therefore they have to meet the extra I don't think there's anything west gateway west would be so those are in potentially a new district yeah the newest I made a set of comments as they were doing their initial review this is like their version 3.0 so I commented 1.0 and 2.0 and I didn't get an opportunity so for the boundary discussion because of the things this is where I want to start asking questions considering City Council removed a neighborhood and from stored preservation sign review are we currently do we feel like we're in compliance with state law with what this is what the boundary is now yes there's no there's no issues right now because the only requirement we have and it's not really under state law the only requirement we have is because we are a designated downtown everything that is in the designated downtown must be in design review that's what I mean by state law yeah like the even the things were voluntarily yeah that's the only requirement that we have is that that's that's where we'd have to start at the minimum okay has to be the minimum is the designated downtown which cliff streets not in whatsoever there are one or two hillside the one that comes up from court and are they it's not cliff till you turn right and they're and they're currently in that correct cliff street was in before yeah City Council removed close to us yes the first boundary was somewhat arbitrary this boundaries someone what a great place to start it was someone arbitrary national register district was also a little bit arbitrary through there as well someone they somewhat overlapped through cliff street so cliff street was is in the design national register district was in the national register district and then our design review district in that area tended to over so they were in so for a boundary discussion one thought is that we could just try to tackle this after we do the deep dive on the regulations as fresh in our minds but of course there's the public input component and there's a chance that we do something other than the bare minimum if we do the bare minimum I don't think there's any risk of like the public if we do as small as we are like legally can then I mean you know but our discussion is going to go beyond that right even if we end up doing the bare minimum like our discussion go past that which means that maybe there should be public input or definitely should be public input so with that in mind what do we think we should try to plan and like should we might do you think it would make sense to in a month or two from now maybe hopefully sooner than two months away have one of these meetings dedicated to the boundary question in which we make an extra effort to attract or invite the public yeah I think I think it should probably be in the fall a lot of people are busy during the summer and not here I don't think we'll be ready before the fall anyway so I think we waited till September to have a we could probably make three or four different map options that go through and say this is what we've got and this is kind of either the minimum or the minimum plus all of the commercial neighborhoods that are right design review district I think the designated downtown only covers half of Berry Street like both sides of the street as it goes down so I think there are times we could just add in the rest of certain neighborhoods that might make sense and then just go through it so we kind of have the smallest got the existing here it is out into the residential neighborhoods that includes anybody who's in the historic district which wasn't popular when we proposed it before but I think we could put in a range of options that says you know these are the options actually go all out to the entire city if you wanted it balanced and then you just kind of see what the public thinks is supportive of more of those protections because usually it's just a matter of talking to people to make sure they understand you don't want to regulate yourself be the first one to come in and we've talked about but I don't remember where we have ever landed on this but but we've talked about possibly having design review that's maybe a larger area and then within that having historic preservation limited to a smaller area if these rules can be easily broken into two pieces kind of the historic design review and then design review I'm not sure that can be that it's very historic focus and so this is going to be it for our design review yeah I mean I think it would be difficult for us to different without going back and doing more work I think this might my impression when I'm one shot the next meeting we go through it that makes sense I think we might come up but we can try to go through it first and see what we think and just it's just the historic piece but then I think it would be really helpful to see all the different maps so the historic register map the existing design yeah and then there's just zoning neighborhoods there's a lot of neighborhoods that kind of are historic and you can kind of add on or subtract off for hoods if it made sense because it might mixed use residential kind of goes out Elm Street past the bakery those right right along Elm Street started at some spring street out so should that be designed mixed use has some commercial in there I think it's more policy questions at that point but you probably put the whole neighborhood I think one thing Stephanie was kind of hinting at us I mean these things go hand-in-hand I mean I've said all along I'd be more inclined to have a larger area covered if these were flexible but the less flexible they are the more you want to focus them on the most oh yeah exactly and they seem to be oriented toward and I mean because I know what she was saying too like toward really trying to protect the resources are there in which case they may be more perfect for smaller area but since they go hand-in-hand it's like it'd be in a perfect world we do them simultaneously it's not looking like it's gonna come out that way I think we can still talk about it before having a better understanding of what the options are and why we might be leading this specific direction it'll help when talking to the public to know what are have a better idea of what exactly the regulations will be so I think going through them next meeting still makes sense yeah yeah I think that's a good idea for next time but then but then have the actual boundary discussion maybe the meeting after that where hopefully we'll we'll have we'll be close to what we want to suggest for the boundary and then have the public meeting a month or so after that so it's in the like September like you were saying the fall yeah it'd be easier once we're into the fall again okay so we can have the maps maybe projected or something at the next meeting because yeah I feel like that would help me I'm visual so I want to see yeah is that possible yeah let's see if we can get them digitally or some hard copies as I put this out from the internet but I'm like which boundary is that I think it's the design control district but it doesn't really make a lot of sense to me so I don't know did I put off okay yeah looks like I think I'm guessing yes that is the current design control and then they put in the ccb and they put in the vcfa parcels which is vacant land or am I no that's that's um we're not ccb but that other parcel this this one is vacant that they took all of the college owned part property this one's currently for sale oh okay that was all the college property yeah property but they are under state law exempt yeah based on the last decision these have been here for many years yeah the irony is that these are both exempt from design review under state law oh that's a little and they and we've had a lot of stuff from people but we can still I'm like no okay he can't it's a little bit frustrating but yes state house state property which is why under the new zoning they're some of the feedback we received in the new zoning was like why are you leaving the state out and it's like it doesn't matter if they're in or out like it doesn't apply to under state law so bcfa is selling this parcel which is vacant land which once they sell it it it won't be exempt right once they sell it it would still be oh it would still be yes oh i guess i was assuming it was exempt because of an educational institution it it would still be in design review it would no longer be exempt right that's what i meant to say if i said it should it be in design review it's an empty parcel right because it's only that piece is only in because it's owned by it was only in because it was formerly known by the college so then it shouldn't be in yeah so yeah whatever random boundaries we have would be helpful to me that's yeah and then with zoning if we want to make it match it's supposed to be districts so did we want those for the 20 so this would be good for next yeah so helping for the 29th just in case we get any questions based on right right i will i will do the best i can just just a couple of printouts maybe for that one yeah from the 22nd just in case it comes up something to look at that yeah current current current zoning map and current and current design review maps so i'll just try to get some 11 by 17 if you could see the national registered district too though it would be helpful for me but to see how different that is from our existing good call national registered district there would be helpful if you could make it actually a bad room that's for a reason yeah yeah the arbitrary one we just had but and that's the only thing that to me seems like a more solid line i'll buy none of that didn't understand you're saying that even the national map isn't wasn't the process that went into it wasn't exactly it's it's meant to be strictly just a study of the structures that were built within a certain period or theme so they just end up with a really big district and i'm not sure if that just was generated from the fact that there was a number of fires that burned most of the downtown 70s, 1880s, 1890s so everything ended up being built all at the same time and so therefore when they did the national registered district it all came out as this was all built in the same period oh it's really getting burned that's just a gas but we we have the largest district in the state by far yeah 50 years is the cut off got other places that could be the meadow is not in the is not in the district the college is not in the national registered district so their number neighborhood's college street isn't but their number place that could be their own district but probably would be a different time period that our current district so we probably have two or three we should have probably two or three historic districts so how different rules well they would these would be from the from the national register from the planning standpoint we would have different districts how what gets regulated how we regulate that it's just curious how many towns in Vermont have designed control districts I don't know off the top of my head a lot of them would there's quite a few of them that do I know there's at least 11 CLG certified local governments so I think you have to have design review just curious I'll try to get some okay so it's nothing else our working group is definitely narrowing down like what we're going to look at specifically the next couple meetings to push off the election the officers beginning a next meeting that's awesome okay yeah we have some we have some time to sort that out until September I'll email you someone might know it's about maybe the order of the discussion based on what we've been talking about now which is basically like what I'm thinking is we can start with an introduction based on process and then go into substance of the other proposed rags okay all right so the 32nd on the city plan so I've been continuing to do some implementation strategies with committees and I've been working with the historic committee so I'm actually meeting with them again so housing we did last year with the housing committee I'll probably go back and revisit with them historic for energy I'm going to try to set up a meeting with them so the plan is not much here but what this just did is the chapters there were about 12 chapters we were going to put for the plan certain things I was going to be working on you know prepping notes meet with the committee implementation plan meet with the committee again provides the implementation plan have the committee approved so I'll be meeting with each one of these committees three times then when it's done it could go to you guys so I've just started to fill this in and start to pull across but like historic resources I'll be meeting with them tomorrow it was was seven nine I mean I canceled so and then I'll get a revised one the same with housing energy I just I have one that's drafted and ready to go I met with Barb but natural resources and transportation were two of the next ones I had started last year I'd started utilities and facilities but there's no committee to review those you know no committee to look at sewer and water for natural resources is that conservation and parks yeah that's conservation and flood resilience well it's the report this is our requirement we have to have flood resilience and it has to go somewhere so that's where it would naturally fall talks about that no probably it's going to fall to the conservation commission and their discussion of rivers so I'm going to get those things so like I said I generally prep some notes for them I put a bunch of stuff out there of thoughts and ideas and I bring with me the the discussion of a city full of butterflies rainbows and unicorns thing and I go through that with them and explain to them where we're trying to get to and then you need to start just throw stuff out and then I galvanize it go back to them and say this is what I've heard and that's how kind of break into three pieces historic twice ready we'll hopefully get this finished up and as I said housing was the guinea pig that we started with implementation pretty much is done already that was the example that we did I'll just keep working these things through so my plan was just keep working on this on my end and then as we get these things up with the center planning commission then I can start handing them off to you guys and hopefully by then we've got historic preservation design review done it's not like nothing is happening but at some point you will be responsible for land use so we'll have to work on that as a group hopefully we'll start to be able to pull some pieces together and have some public input decide from that point once we have implementation plans the discussion we had last year was to work a little bit backwards most of the time we write the chapter and we write the patient plan afterwards but this one we decided to do a little bit backwards we'll work with the committees we'll do the implementation strategies and then because we want it to be more succinct with what we're saying let's write the plan of what we're going to do 2,000 1,500 to 2,000 words on transportation and really focus on telling the public what why we're doing this why it's important as opposed to starting out with a big blurb of all the statistics and data and everything and then you end up with a 500 page plan that nobody reads we wanted to kind of make it much more succinct that really focuses in on 1500 words on why our aspiration and our vision is what it is the appendices for all the other stuff that the data it's like on this link you get the data but turn those into short videos that would be because some of the plans that are nationally going on right now is their web-based plans and like 80% of the traffic are people viewing the videos so if you want to know the housing plan you would just you know got the housing plan in professional produced and it doesn't bore you with all the statistics it just kind of goes through the process of housing why it's important and what we're doing and why what we're doing is important and why it's going to help us achieve our goals same thing with transportation and natural resources and I think it would be good if we could get there but we first would need to improve the plan because you came in the video the city council has said that is our goal now we can go home approach that we agreed on before so even though it's we've been kind of sidetracked with a lot of stuff I've been trying to as this winter has wrapped up and gone through spring I've started to jump in and get more of these as I said energy took a bunch of time historic resources so hopefully we'll have four of them moving pretty well this summer natural resources and transportation next appreciate the implementation focus and the clarity of gravity focus also I think that's going to make for a much better useful product which sounds great to me feeling a little disconnected from the process so I would love to be able to just make sure the source is correct yeah just kind of see how the process feels a little more yeah because it's kind of not really clear on what to say yeah I think it makes a little bit more sense and and I can bring maybe for the rest of the group when we maybe after the next meeting because we'll be busy but I can bring in and kind of show you when when you guys get historic resources maybe I will show you this is the these are the notes that I gave when I did prep notes and they came back with me with this which I then turned into this and I then turned into this you don't really have to review it it's more just a matter of seeing what that process was and what you have at the end is the culmination of you know three months of this iterative process of developing something that we think is going to be effective here's our vision here's what we're going to do and if we did what we're going to do are we going to accomplish our vision hopefully the entrance yes set the vision we all agree on so are you working with these groups on something I'm just wondering how this is connected to like the three goals that some of these groups brought to us this is something different that you're working this is related to it we go back and look at what their three goals were and try and I try to integrate that into their notes that are being prepped of you know this is what's in the existing plan here's some notes here's some things I know from other communities I've worked with here are the things you mentioned when you when you gave your three things now let's start to build some things start putting some pieces together what are some tools that are out there that perhaps you're not even and we can start to get into you know what are some things in in some cases what are some things that we are doing and doesn't make any sense we have some energy things in our zoning that kind of just don't say is is regulating the shading of structures really a good idea it's only in there because they wanted to protect solar resources but it also forces buildings to be farther apart and make some shorter so they don't cast a shadow is that really is is that a magical thing not shading your neighbor's house really that important that we should be doing that as opposed to you know your energy plane is really talking about weatherizing and energy efficiency and we spend time regulating this other thing so sometimes it's the things we're doing and whether it makes sense for us to do them in other cases are there better tools that we could be utilizing stabilization be helping if we had points towards weatherizing buildings would that help people tax stabilization on those improvements points right now it's something to consider when you say people do you mean the members of the committee who have tax stabilization for any property only only because of the way our law is written it only applies to commercial properties yeah okay so well I appreciate that this background work is happening and is moving because we're going to need it and none of us are able to do it I mean so it's great so thank you Mike for me and moving all that along and it's looking like yeah we'll we'll get back to this in a couple of months and then hit it hard and try to work exclusively on that because I think once we have some implementation plans and especially I think once we have a number of the implementation plans I think this process will move a lot faster because once people have agreed on that then it's just a matter of writing a chat writing that 2000 to 3000 words that explains what we're talking about in the implementation plan and then just reviewing it against the state rags to make sure we've met have we checked all the boxes of things we need or do we need to add well I'm imagining these implementation plans so that the planning commission will give its input we'll get public input we'll try to take the public input and um make it work with you know with what with you know the other stakeholders and things so there will be that entire process though yeah we have to have the products because there's going to be a balance like I said I'm doing historic and we're doing energy and if historic comes out with you know very strong recommendations about maintaining historic historic windows and the energy committee is really big on saying we've got to get these things replaced I'm not trying to steer I want historic to write their their chapter to their thing understanding that this may change as it gets balanced with somebody else and the first people to balance it will be the planning commission and the second group or is there a section that's missing transportation rights its plan energy rights its plan then we get done we're like hey nobody talked about public transportation and it may come back up to here where we send it back to another go and say you know we think public transportation would be part of the transportation plan transportation committee we're going to ask you guys to work on a discussion of public transportation or the energy but in certain cases certain things are going to have to be addressed so is that the understanding of these communities is they go through this process that it will be sent to us we work conflict resolution we need to make decisions and send it back to update in some way or change at our level yeah if we make changes then it'll probably go back to them I don't even have that in there committee approval set to pc pc approval no it didn't really there might be a send back update process they might be a send back only if we feel like we need it if it yeah yeah if it needs to be necessary it may just be oh FYI we we remove we remove this because we don't believe it's you have this one strategy you had five strategies listed we don't think we're going to support strategy for we're going to take that one out so that was that was the only reason why I kind of printed this out yeah it was not really to talk about so much that what the dates are that are in there but really to kind of go across the top and say this is kind of the process I'm working on it although there aren't too many dates on there there's a lot more that has happened that isn't really reflected it sounds good can't consider so yes this is a working group there's no reason for determine anything but everyone feels good for the night we can come back in two weeks