 All right, let's call the meeting to order then. Everyone had a chance to take a look at the agenda. Any adjustments to the agenda? We're going to deal with the plan at some point. And the Esri Hub grant from Stone, I was curious. What's going on with that? I don't know if we want to add that maybe as agenda item at the end. Well, why don't we just get some updates from that under, or I'll ask about that in my comments in the chair to the stone. Anything else? I think we can get updates about it without needing to warn that. OK, hearing none, the agenda is approved. So comments for the chair. We haven't met in a little while because we had poor weather. And I was away at the last meeting, so I want to officially welcome Aaron, our newest commissioner. And you had a meeting without me, I believe, right? Yeah, he survived. You met everyone. And I just want to take a moment to recognize Kim Cheney for all of the work that he's done. He was a commissioner for a long time, and he really played a critical role in helping us get the zoning amendments, the package moved on to city council, and ultimately approved. So I just want to take a moment to recognize Kim. And those are really my comments. We wanted to ask for some updates on a couple of items. So first, let's ask about the stone grant. I think that's a little bit more discreet. And then we can ask about the thoughts about the D-City plan. So I met, we did get awarded the stone environmental Esri grant, so that's an ArcGIS hub, which is going to be kind of a one-way, two-way communication tool that the city can use for a number of projects. We already have a GIS person in public works. And Zach does a lot of work with it, but he just didn't have the background to teach himself all this stuff. So the advantage we have is that he's going to be learning a lot of how this ArcGIS hub works. So he could be able to, it won't be a one-off thing where we do one thing, and then it gets put on a shelf somewhere. He actually wants to learn how it works so he can keep doing these going forward. The first one they're going to be doing is actually going to be a transportation project. So they're actually doing something with the snow plowing and tracking the snow plows. And people can get input on the parking bans and just a number of pieces along that. They also wanted to go and try to do some stuff on the pavement index, but they kind of put that off to the side. So the first idea was to kind of look at the parking. And then that will let Zach work with the folks at Stone to learn how to replicate this and roll this out. And then we will be able to use Zach's skills to help us as we start rolling out with the master plan update or the city plan update so we can do some of our outreach. And the idea is with these GIS hubs is it's an interactive way that you can push stuff out to the public and get feedback back from them. You can do storyboards where you can try to tell a story. So GIS has been so much about data, data, data, data and maps that this was a way for them to try to contextualize data so it can actually help the public and help policymakers make decisions. And that's kind of the... They're trying to take data to the next level and help be able to push it out and then let the public comment or ask questions back. And that's kind of the goal of the overall process. What's the timeline? They told us they wanted to have the first one done by the end of the year. Stone Environmental works directly with Esri. They're actually like a beta tester for Esri products so they work and do a lot of stuff. So they've been wanting to do this for a while and it kind of got delayed and now they finally are in a position to get it and they want to try to get the first one done by the end of the year. But they're going to continue to be available going forward with Zac to continue to do more of these and to continue to develop and ask questions, answer questions. But the first one should be coming out hopefully in the next month or so. Dare I ask, is there any thought that this training will help Zac help us with calculations of slopes? No, it won't be able to do that. No, and we actually had a conversation about that and they made the comment that it's just extremely large data sets that just can't be absorbed. We can get more into that later. I was just wondering if that was in the scope of that grant. No, not in that grant. So as we start coming up with our plan elements, housing or transportation or something, we can start to build a story board about housing that then lays out maybe some of the statistics and the stories and the background of what the goals and aspirations are and let the data support that story and get that out and start to get public feedback on issues. Yeah, that's, I mean, we have sort of lost our momentum with the city plan, but I don't think it would be too hard to pick it up again with all of that input we received at a kickoff meeting. I don't know, Erin, how much you've been told about this, but we had this meeting a few months ago where we invited a representative from various committees in Montpelier to present the top three goals their committee has over the next five to 10 years with a view towards using that information in developing our next city plan. And the first thing that could help us is to identify if there are overlapping goals or their goals that potentially conflict so we can figure out ways to deal with that from the start rather than finding them after everything's been written up and we feel a little locked in. So what we, we had a great meeting at the Pavilion Building Auditorium and we received a lot of helpful PowerPoints and just had a good discussion, but we haven't really done too much with that information yet. We, you know, Mike typed it up. Well, Bob took notes there and then Mike typed it all up so we have it in a digital form, which is good. And we had talked a little bit about creating a website or some sort of repository for all this information that people could work within and the public would have access to view. And John started putting that together. But we just haven't moved forward with this too much so we should revisit it and make a plan for where we're going. I think everything's just gotten kind of side tracked with all of the zoning updates that we're trying to get through because they're feeling like they're a little bit time sensitive. And we had some discussion at the last meeting that we were going to try to get through the zoning in the next meeting or two so that way we could resume that, but then we kind of missed another meeting. I mean, it's since June, we usually meet twice a month and June was the last month that we met twice. So we met once in July, once in August, once in September, once in October, once in November. And so that really starts to, holidays, weather vacations, it's set us back a little bit. How do people feel about that plan to get through the zoning changes and then resume the city plan? You feel okay about that? Yeah, I guess I'm curious about hub and whether or not what we've done with, if that will be the sort of vehicle or tool for where we put the plan as opposed to the, its own website. And yeah, I've started putting stuff in there. Barbara and I met. I've taken what the energy committee sent and put it into a format that I think is more workable that we can start looking at in terms of giving guidance to the committees and some, to try to promote consistent input that's useful for the plan. So whenever we're ready, I guess there's some stuff. Did you pick any tags? I don't think I included tags at this point. I don't think we're there yet. But more kind of creating the baskets by which people can characterize their input as a goal or a measurable objective or an action or a policy. What does that mean and what do those look like? And essentially took something that the energy committee had written up and tried to do my best at putting it in those baskets. So anyhow, we can, I guess, follow up with that. I can also maybe chat with folks at Stone or with UNZAC. Yeah, because I'm still waiting a little bit. I'm way behind the learning curve. I met once with Stone and looked at a lot of the stuff that was online for the hubs to kind of get an idea of what it is. But I'm still waiting to kind of see this first one start to come together to kind of see the process of how it's going to work. What information, what do they need from me, from us to start that process for the city plan? And so I'm kind of hoping to see where that goes. But the second meeting, so the first meeting was end of October. And then I think the last meeting was when I was at the housing meeting, statewide housing meeting. So I missed the second meeting. So I have to get caught up on where they're at. Okay. Do you want to share, John, what you've done? Sure. You all have access to it. Oh, okay. Erin, I may not have added you yet to the drive. But I'll do that. Okay. I'll do that right now, actually. And then we can all just kind of take a look at it and provide feedback at the next meeting. Questions are probably more likely. So the last piece I will add on the plan is I have a meeting Wednesday, this Wednesday, two days from now. I'm meeting with city council and they, on their agenda a while ago they had set that by the end of the year in December they wanted to have a meeting to kind of talk about the status of where the city plan is and where the zoning fixes are. So depending on where we get tonight, particularly with the zoning fixes, I will be meeting with them on Wednesday to kind of either hand a piece off to them or to let them know here's the status that we're at and we expect to get things to you pretty quick. Yeah, and we have a few zoning changes that are more urgent than others. So if we can wrap those up tonight, that would be ideal so that we can hand off a small package to city council. Anything else with general? Did everybody introduce themselves and give information on how long we've been on the commission? No, but you don't have to. If you don't want to. Okay. We did some. It was a completely lacking implementation. No, I'm not interested in it at all. I am. We can do the full like share one thing about yourself. Well, I don't think... Yeah, so I mean, we should just quickly do that. I think that we should just say, obviously your name is in front of you and Aaron already has a name plate, which is great. And how long you've been on the commission and what your background knowledge is in more specifically. So I don't want to call it expertise or whatever you want to call it. But I think, yeah, and then for fun, what district do you live in? Whether you want to say one, two, three, or a zoning district, you know, it's your choice. But I'll start since I made this. So I'm Leslie. I think I've been on the commission since August 2014. I think it was right after you started. So it'll be 2014. 2014. And I've been chair for a year and a half, almost two years now. And I know a little bit about environmental law, but more like water quality law than land use. And I don't use any of those skills in these meetings or more of a policy person. And let's see. I lived in district three, which is, I think I'm the only member of the commission that lives in district three. And I, what is my zoning district? It is. Oh, you're quizzing? Are you quizzing people now? I know, I know. I would bet your residential 3,000. No, I think it might be riverfront. No, it's the Prospect Street. Yeah, I know Prospect Street. Where is it? I don't think people are going to be able to figure it out. It's high density. I can tell you that. And there are steep slumps. Yeah. But it's kind of, I should know this. You have a map. It might just be Prospect Street neighborhood. Prospect Street is yellow, which is residential 3,000. Oh, residential 3,000. You are the planning. I did make a map. I get extra credit for it. So the character of the neighborhood there is hillside buildings, I would say. Yeah. So anyway, John? So I joined the same time as you did. So 2014. I'm a recovering planner and current map nerd. You were a map nerd before too. Yeah, I guess. Now he just gets paid for being a map nerd. And where, what zone? I have Ward 1 mixed use. You're probably right. Yeah. And Mike, you've been on since earlier in 2014. Earlier in 2014, I'm the staff for the commission. So I'm the only one not a commission member. And my background is in actually natural resource planning. And originally I worked in science and ecology and then transferred into planning. Certified floodplain manager. Certified floodplain manager, certified planner. I've been doing this for 18 years now. When you came from, you were working in Barrie. I was working in Barrie for five years before here and then a bunch of regional planning commissions before that. February? That sounds right. So I'm a newer before you. I'm a planner. So for the state doing hazard mitigation planning, but mostly flood prevention, future flood prevention, planning work. And I'm in district two, but I don't know which. So I'm on Charles Street on a very steep slope. Oh, Charles Street. But built in 1910. Charles Street is off of Barrie Street. Yeah. Yeah, that's another one. Same district. Residential 3000. If you like, it's a good sign when you're planning commissioners don't know what's on there. Because they're not here like for their own interest. Yeah, that's how I was characterizing my ignorance. Well, I came post-map. It changed so many times. This changed so many times. Who knows where we are now. All right, Barb, your turn. Oh, I'm Barbara. I was a licensed architect for 30 years and taught at Vermont Technical College and System Design. And I'm also on the energy committee. So that's why John and I were working together on that piece of the city plan. And I am in district two. And I am in Liberty Street slash College Hill neighborhood, which is 6,000. And I do know that because I've been looking at it for a little bit. Yeah, unfortunately, you guys might have had to look at it, too. Because that was one of our examples. And, oh, I've been on the bank. You were in 15? That sounds right. I was in 16. Oh, I was in 2014. You were in 2015. Yeah. There's North Street. I'm Kirby. I think I've been on the planning commission since 2016. I live on Elm Street. I'm pretty sure I'm zone downtown. Like one of the downtown categories. I'm very urban. And my background is in, well, as you know. So Kirby, Aaron, and I all went to law school together. We talked about that. Same class, which is funny. I had an interest in law school and land use and stuff, but ended up falling into tax policy. That's my background. And like Leslie, I don't really use tax. Is commission good? That's it. Oh, yeah. And you said urban downtown. Yeah. Urban center three. Good thinking. That's why he's here. Hi, so I'm Aaron and like Kirby and Leslie, I'm an attorney. I work for the state. Drown here because a couple of jobs ago, I worked for the Department of Public Service. And part of what I did there was a scour of a handful of town plans. I found it to be pretty interesting. So I kind of keep my interest in this kind of work. I am in district one. Don't know what my is only district. He's up in the Terrace Street neighborhood. We'll look it up right now. I'm not going to move it. I'm there. We'll represent you. Res nine. Yeah. What did you say you do? You scoured what lands? Town plans. Oh, town plans. In various lands, just took our fields. Yeah. No, I did some deep diving. Where do you work at the state now? The Department of Public Service. That's a good question. I just get my notice of my current employer on Wednesday. I'm starting a new job in two weeks. I'll be working for the second time today. I didn't know if you didn't want to divulge that. No, it's fine. I was thinking about that. I was like, who knows in my word? Yeah, right. I've been holding things so close to the chest for so long. It's hard to go pump it. And I'm currently in TFR. I have a master's in planning, but I've never worked as a planner. So I've actually feel very beginner planner. I've worked at the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board reviewing funding applications for affordable housing. And I live in District 2, and I have no idea what my zoning district is, but Kim Cheney is my neighbor. So whatever his district is. Up on Town Street. Residential 9000, I'm guessing. Yeah, that would have been. Yeah, it's right here at the border. Is everything good? They're all good. Yeah, Res 9. To do with the minimum lot size. Yeah, well, residential 3,000 types won't hold it against you. You're definitely not a beginner planner, by the way. I mean, there's a lot of word jargon that you learn when you're here, but you already know all of that. Yeah, you know a lot about affordable housing, which is really nice. Okay, well, thanks, everyone. I appreciate that. I think it's good to kind of remind each other of our backgrounds too. So the next item on the agenda, item four is general business. Comments from the public about something, not on the agenda. We have some members of the public here. I don't know if you want to, if there's anything you want to. So if you'll just introduce yourself. I'm Laura Rose Abbott. I'm in district one. Yeah, near you and Hubbard Park, so probably the same zoning. I was at the October 22nd meeting and John Snell was in to discuss the ISAA300 standards. And in a number of you with your law background, we're kind of concerned about requiring something that we don't have on file, that we don't know what it contains. I myself was concerned about that, so I called them and I talked to a wrap and they sent me a catalog. But they said that for cities, because that's like saying that we accept all engineering manuals as what we require in our zoning, like you really can't just say like we require it all because they could be pruning to a standard but doing the wrong pruning. It doesn't lead the public in a meaningful way and it doesn't protect the city in that you're requiring something that you don't know what it is or have. So what they were suggesting is really the best management practices. There's a combo of two volumes that for members are under $30, but maybe even without it would be less than $100. But they're saying that like I'm encouraging you to maybe talk to a rep because I think it would be maybe erroneous to put the ISA as the standard that you're asking. So I do have this catalog and you are interested in it. I could provide it to you. And I think at least the phone number. Sure. I mean I just, I called the ISA at area code 217-355-9411. I mean the whole thing took me 20 minutes and I got lots of information. So I'm encouraging you to do that. You know and then they'll set you up with a contact person or whatever or maybe the tree board would like to join. It's not very expensive to be a member and then you get your manuals at a greatly reduced rate. My other concern arose during the October 22nd meeting just about the landscaping and screening proposed changes. You know it's just been mentioned a lot that it's really coming up in current projects. There's a few very large projects that are of interest to the public and I've heard various things about the changes in these standards. How they would affect for example a parking garage that was maybe proposed prior to the change and when they were adopted and you know Mike said that the changes would affect the garage but not the hotel since that plan had been accepted. But then when I spoke to the council the city manager said no no we never look back so the garage would be the old regs. So and just changing them at this time is of concern to the public just because the screening on a structure is large as the garage to go from being a perimeter requirement to being less than that also with the street trees and the parking lot trees no longer being distinct trees double counting of trees is a great concern for me and many members of the public. I wanted to bring that to you. Can you elaborate on that? What do you mean by double to double counting? Sure. Maybe Mike spoke on that at the October 22nd meeting that for example if you have street frontage and you have to have so many trees out there but behind it is a parking lot. The parking lot had its own distinct regulations for how many trees had to be in there in the asphalt or whatever but now he's proposing that it be changed or you are or I'm not sure about how the administrative and the executive interact in this commission but that the trees would no longer need to be both you could just sit them on the street and count them as parking lot trees even though they're not in the parking lot and also it was concerning that in a time of climate change that the parking lot trees who could help cool the cars and keep things cooler are not required to be where they're going to cash shade and various other things but I know that these are still in your draft stage and it will be going to the council and wouldn't be adopted without public comment. Yeah but we always appreciate having the public comment early on the process it just makes it easier for us to incorporate changes. And I'm also concerned about which projects are driving these changes and I would like more information about that. Well we are coming to that on our agenda we're going to talk about the manual lane. I'll sit down and keep taking notes. Yeah and I'll invite you to come back up and give more comments on them I appreciate that. Thank you. Thanks. Okay so the next item on the agenda item 5 is to review the draft landscaping and screening standards. Mike would you mind just giving us a quick summary of the October 22nd meeting and well maybe not of the whole meeting but of where we are now in the discussion about landscaping because we talked about it at a meeting before that too and how the way that the regs are written right now is fairly draconian as far as there's not a way there's no point system or anything like that they would give some flexibility and so that was the concern that we're trying to address. Yes so there were a number of big picture concerns and so one clarification from Ms. Abbott is these do not work going backwards so while we use these to we may use the garage or these other projects as demonstrations or examples the garage is under the rules that are in effect either under the rules that are in effect today or under the rules that were in effect before January 3rd depending on the timing I believe all of the parking garage is under the new rules but any specific questions on the garage need to go through Meredith who's the zoning administrator but any changes we make here will not affect any ongoing applications they only go into effect once they've been adopted and any applications received after that date going forward will have to meet whatever changes we make but a lot of them a lot of these current projects have informed where our zoning have issues so some of the issues like the counting the tree one question we had was simply whether or not you can count a tree to meet two requirements and we just had a discussion at the last meeting that said well if a tree meets the definition of a street tree and also meets the definition of a parking lot tree that's okay you can count that tree both ways but it has to meet the definition it has to meet the definition of both requirements and we had a number of things under the current zoning that just were either left unsaid, unspoken were confusing or we just had no way of making them workable so what we tried to do which was with Meredith and myself was to start to go through and try to come up with some changes to the rules we restructured them to try to touch on as many of the important questions that needed to be answered the purpose remained the same there were two versions one's a red strikeout and one was a clean copy I didn't make a lot of the clean copies because we had some I do have a couple more and this hasn't changed since the last meeting so if somebody was short one clean copy of the red this is the clean copy I put the red strikeouts over there I like having the strikeout some people like strikeouts and I saved a couple extra can I use just a quick question about the red lines at least on the copy that I have there's green line changes in addition to the red lines I said red lines but green meant it was moved red means it was added and on the right hand side it was what things were deleted did you say that the strike through version here reflects the changes we discussed last night? yeah this should be the same as that just one is a it's up to date though yes so the previous one that was sent out would not be up to date they had track changes on it I guess the question is so the track changes version that was discussed at October 22nd sounds like there were some other changes requested in that meeting were those incorporated into this latest draft? does this one does talk about the A300 standards I'd have to go and look and see if there was a specific change that I can look at it's dated November 7th so that tells me it did incorporate yeah so that would have to have incorporated the changes let's see what I've got in this one just to make sure that these two are that look like they're the same it's just can be tricky we'll consider the November 7th version the most up to date but I want to say these two are the same alright well as we walk through these if anyone notices changes that need to be made a slight difference then we'll know that the clean copy is the outdated one but the idea was to go through and have purpose, applicability some application rules and administrative rules I put all the planting specifications into one area before they really weren't in one consistent area we put them all in one area and then starting in point F we started to have the actual requirements where we talk about the general standards which say all planting shall meet specific standards shall not reduce planting areas and shall protect plants as well during the construction process and then we start to get into a couple of different standards so the street trees being one the parking lot landscaping was two screening was three and total site landscaping was four and then there were some last things at the end for nonconformities waivers conditions and then on the last page when it gets to planting specifications that's where some of the context things have changed quite a bit we moved where the mature maintained height is so that way it becomes a definition a large tree is defined as the mature height so they're right next to each other what's a large shrub what's a medium shrub how you measure the height the minimum planting area required to plant a large tree it has to have 100 square feet of rooting surface and that also works in the other direction as we start to calculate how much planting material you need so as opposed to using the border of the building as the size will come up with another factor that would tell us because before it would tell you for every linear foot or every five feet of building perimeter you have to have a tree and so depending on how big your building is depending on the number of trees you would need but it's not necessarily how big the parcel is or anything else so we tried to come up with some new ways of calculating the amount of vegetation that would be needed and that was I think what Stephanie wanted was for me to bring a couple of site plans which I did bring just to kind of go work through what this would look like so I grabbed a couple of projects three of them just so we can kind of see how it works and then Sure that is a whole new column and is that defining literally say the space that we're going to allow for the tree well Yes somewhat so you need to have a hundred square feet but you can't make it any narrower than five square feet than five feet than five feet yes and the reason for that is we didn't want somebody to be able to go and play a game by making a planting a large tree in a in a two foot by twenty foot area to go through and say well it's got at least be five feet and that standard which surprised me a little bit that standard five foot four foot three foot actually appears in a number of larger cities I looked at portlands and a couple other places which had some things and they actually were okay with these five foot by twenty foot tree wells for a large tree because the roots actually would expand out to where they could fill to take take in that moisture so the tree boards okay with those Yeah I did review these with John John Snell it seems small tree with only a five foot well it wouldn't be five foot diameter it would be five by twenty yeah minimum of five we can certainly go to make things bigger and the tree requirements I did find were bigger in other communities a large tree in some places would be required could be required to have two hundred and fifty the issue that starts actually coming up is it could start working against you because if you don't have enough area to plant a large tree then you don't have to plant a large tree so you actually could end up coming in and getting less trees because in a built environment like we have we may have only a ten by ten area in the front of the house that we can officially designate for the tree well I guess the other area I'm concerned about maybe that this doesn't pertain is that this may force people to plant trees too close to a foundation because they can and eventually that's going to either damage the building or it's going to kill the tree so I was just surprised to see those numbers. Yeah I think there's going to have to be a certain amount of flexibility in working with the rules we need to have some objective rules but I think we have to have some subjective judgment that goes in because I did ask John directly should we have a setback requirement for certain trees and he didn't feel like that was important he didn't feel that was as important as these other factors that we were looking at well he's not he's not the architect so he's thinking about the tree health and you're thinking about the he's looking at the trees health you're looking possibly at the foundation yeah has other areas but eventually it will it will break through the foundation as it's growing so yeah because also isn't it true that for a large tree essentially the diameter of its crown is the area that its root system takes is that reasonably accurate as a certified bloodplain manager I'm hoping you can answer I did I've done some work I mean having my degree in ecology you know reaching back into that yes but it's going to it will fill the box that it has and as I said I was surprised to see that other communities you know the New York cities and these other places were okay with these five by 20s or four by 20s and you're just yeah but to think that they were talking about trying to get larger trees in there I think it kind of goes back a little bit to the subjective side of it you have to look as John was pointing out to me so much of it depends on what's there what's the context of that tree is being planted and is it a single-story cottage or is it a three-story brick face on the south side you know your tree is going to interfere differently and is going to react differently a single family bungalow the tree is just going to grow up and expand over its roots will look for its where it can have its material to bed I think one of the big things to to keep in mind about this is we currently have had certainly before January no requirements at all for this you just would be required to have a tree or not even have a requirement to have a tree you just had to meet certain landscaping and screening standards so we've moved to a point where we've started to require a certain number of trees and now to go through and say if you're going to have a tree you're going to have to have a certain planting area and we're going to require that it meet a certain standard now whether we've got the right numbers in those boxes I think I'll rely on the tree board the tree board and other experts in the field who go through and say if they think these need to be better or different by all means I will recommend changing them but this was these were what I pulled together from some of the research I did and I think it's an improvement I think we should require a minimum planting area whether that's 100 square feet or 250 square feet whether 5 feet wide in fact there were no requirements for widths I added that in because I felt we need to at least have some widths there has to at least be something and whether it should be 5 feet or whether it should be if it's 10 feet then it's requiring a 10 by 10 square I have a request for a change back on in part 3203.e which is page 3-58 this is the planning specifications section or provision this planning shall meet the following standards 3 is the one that we're receiving comments on from Laura Rose I don't come back to that I want to ask your thoughts on this but 4 and 5 seem to be saying the same thing so 4 says use of invasive plant materials is prohibited and 5 says use of native plant materials is strongly encouraged so I would just request that we just strike out number 5 okay okay never mind and on number 3 I think there's an issue with it says planting should be in accordance with the standards and policies of the Montpellier Tree Board but they don't have any standards and policies I thought we changed that language this was our compromise language I think this was the compromise it's really weak just to update you it's saying that it will meet the requirements of the tree board which roughly follow ANSI which does not give guidance to the public very well at all if this was coupled by something maybe on the city website that actually had tree boards adopted standards that would be one thing without that then yeah I'm not comfortable with this provision either a lot of us weren't last time I thought we'd stop in a little more than that even and included there's a note in here that prompted me my memory but we were going to have a reference that they could consult with the tree board if they were interested and I don't know where that ended up but I thought that was part of this particular update that we made too or was it something like they had to meet and then they could consult with them to determine whether or not they met that or I can't remember but I don't think they have standards or policies adopted so we can't require them to follow something that's not a thing I think we could keep three and we could say if formally adopted or something like that had a qualifier that the tree's meaningless or without teeth unless the tree board actually adopts itself and doesn't just rely on the other ones yeah that's true we could just strike everything from which to the end and put if adopted in there, plantings and then you actually could change the should to be a shall because it obviously would be then plantings shall be in accordance with the standards and policies of the Montpelier tree board if adopted why don't you just say plantings and policies adopted yeah although if we don't know what that is seems kind of if nothing's adopted then once the tree board does adopt it becomes operative in this document but do they have plans on adopting anything like if they're not going to seems like a bit misleading to allude to something that no one has an intention of creating sure but I think it serves we wouldn't be able to serves as a placeholder I think it's helpful in the event of well it sounds like Laura Rosemont has something to add to that so let's hear what she has to say when I come to the ISA rep that he had just spoken in his experience that he's worked with a lot of municipal you know people who are doing their planting, zoning work and that the best practices does it's not it's for lay people the manuals that he was recommending I think would be a low cost investment but it would actually give people the ability to come and see a resource that could actually make more successful plantings John Snell talked a lot that people put in their trees to meet the requirements and then they just die and then there's no trees like you don't go back in five years and see if that tree is alive and say hey you know we let you put on your porch and keep the tree alive so we want the trees to live so it's like a low cost guide that could even help the tree board because I was kind of like he didn't know the standards or have access to them but he was sort of following them but I couldn't tell that he was because he didn't have them I mean that's definitely outside our area of expertise I don't think we can come up with the standards for the tree I mean we could but we probably it does sound like the the ISA already has developed the best management guide that's for municipal use it's for the public to interface with the municipality for guidance and it's just for people who have home gardens who want to do it you know and work with the planning department on their application and it's something easy that they can actually use so I got my materials pretty quickly but I mean you could also leave it vague and there's no guidance but it doesn't solve what John was suggesting that you know we want better results than the plantings so this language that the tree board generally follows this manual or the standards the standards yeah that implies that there can be some deviation is there deviation we want to build in there? that's what he said I think he wanted to retain that flexibility but he wanted as she said to make sure that people take care to plan it the right way we're getting into the J.A.M. Gulf Void for vagueness issue I think this is void for vagueness as it's written but we can set it up where the tree board could then come in later and fill in what the standards are I think that's a pretty good approach I agree I think the approach of saying the plantings shall be in accordance with the standards of the tree board and then making a recommendation to the tree board that they adopt the best management guides rather than the ISA standards or the ANSI standards or that they adopt a both or a combination of both because if the best management guides are a much easier and a much simplified way of doing it then it makes sense that we wouldn't there's no sense adopting a big fat manual of guides of requirements when we could get away with a much more straightforward process but I would leave that up to the tree board to make a determination of what their standards are we could make a recommendation that they explore the best management guides but if they think they really think it's in the best interest to have a very technical guide that they want to do the ANSI 300s then are you thinking that we would just make a separate recommendation to them that's not in the zoning right well it depends what we do for number three we can remove if we remove number three then we have no review of the planting standards we would need to have some standard if we choose we could insert the best management guides for planting but we would probably want to get a copy and take a quick look make sure it is what meets our needs I'll order up a copy and have them get it shipped here and we can take a look at it and see is this doing what we think that we want it to do um or the other possibility would be to reference it and then simply reference anything that's adopted by the Montpelier tree board and then make a recommendation to the tree board that says you guys have been kind of doing things your way of doing things and if we're going to be official and we're going to require people to do things then we have to be much more formal and I think sometimes these ad hoc groups aren't used to having to meet a legal requirement that we can go through and say you must do this you must do it this way and if they want us to be able to do that they're going to have to go and step up and say these are our rules and you're going to have to meet these rules and hopefully there's hopefully that best management guide kind of fits that purpose because we're not New York City parks department we're Montpelier tree board I think even if we have a provision here it says plantings need to be in accordance with the standards and policies of Montpelier tree board if the standards are adopted or however we want to word it it's still a little bit unclear because we're not referencing a specific set we're just sort of referencing a document that may or may not have that title so that that's a little bit concerning to me that's a little bit vague we don't know what what they would put together that's the part that's confusing for if we don't know what the set is we're saying they have to follow something we don't know what it is yet I think that's fine so if it sounds like the thread that you're talking about to provide the tree board in terms of crafting the standards by which this would adhere to that's fine I think the language as a placeholder that Wesley's talking about does just that so I think there's a benefit to applicants first off I think it gives the tree board difference to craft standards so long as they're formally adopted under their rules then I think if we're okay with giving them a difference and trust them then that's good more importantly it puts applicants on notice that this is the standard which we're going to use you should consult with the tree board but if there's nothing in place at the time the tree board just says we don't have any standards right now they say find the new one but once there's standards that are operative then this document has already anticipated that and you don't have to revisit that issue later on and there's a standard in place and the applicants are already unnoticed of that right now it's just a timing issue really after that so that's kind of well we could I was just going to say for adopting a policy or standard be the same as what we would have to go through and isn't it our job to adopt those um those regulations so you know deferring to the tree board which I'm not even sure if they can if they have the authority to adopt a standard um or policy that would be used in quasi-judicial hearings you know and if they can just adopt them without a public process well that has other issues because then they could just change it at will or you know on some random Tuesday night and then change it back for another property owner so I'm just wondering I like the intent of it but are we just getting wouldn't it be simpler to say hey come up with some standards give them to us we'll put them in this own hang yep but I think they need more guidance than just come up with some standards that's the issue we're running into because I think that they may be under the impression they've given us some standards to include already I can certainly get back to John and give him some of the additional information on the best management guides and certainly we can order up a copy of those so he can take a review with them on his on his end um can we look at like a few places that like what have other places done what can't be the first yeah I mean we could adopt our own we could create draft our own standards um the advantage of some of the that and this was what John had pointed out the advantage of some of the ANSI A300 standards is that it's it's the standard it's anyone who comes in from Burlington or Platsburg or anywhere else New Hampshire if they're in landscaping they would understand what those standards are and what their requirements are and it's not a unique um set of standards well you do for any major site plan we require landscape architect but it gives a it gives a certain if we had this shortened guide then that should be able to help with you know if they adopted the best management as opposed to the A300 then that's that would be that would be the change um it would be just a stricter set of standards and we would have to buy a copy to have it down in our office and we would have to learn how to enforce the A300s and I think that's it sounds like it's a much more complicated um set of rules and requirements but John's concern was um right now we're just planting trees and because we're not doing it right they're not thriving and if we're going to start to require trees we should make sure that they're in a condition that they can thrive and so we should have the proper soil we should have the proper depth they should be planted at the proper time they should be staked properly I agree that I think the best approach would be to have this report give us a set of standards not referring to an outside document even if it means that cutting and pasting from the outside documents would then give us their standards and interest I think it would be okay to reference an outside source if if they if they adopt it we could go through and say let's say for example it is the best management guide for planting um we could put that in as our standing planting shall be in accordance with um best management guides for planting produced by this group I don't think there's because we we reference a lot of those in other regulations the flood hazard rules reference you know if you're going to be elevating you need to meet or if you're going to be flood proofing you have to meet the flood proof standards of technical bulletin 1.01 and that's just you know we don't have to go through and re-print the technical bulletins back into our zoning bylaws um I guess part of my thought process was that if you wanted to generally follow those standards and only adopt part of them then I think that would be the way to do it was to meet a creator own I think that the requiring I mean if we require a licensed landscape architecture certified horticulturalist that's something to keep in mind for and these are the CIS site plan review so if we're dealing with a certified professional in this industry then just like we do for engineers and require them to meet a certain standard that I'm sure you know your office is not doesn't understand whether the structural integrity of you know whatever is being proposed in a spec they had they rely on that seal right uh yeah in certain cases we'll and we'll spot check those with the engineering department if it's there for an independent technical review if it's the stakes are higher yeah we had geotech studies for various projects for soil stability and so I don't know if the ASLA has the ASLA has standard that we could apply is that what you're saying right or you know if we tell them hey meet this A300 standard what does that mean to you like is that something people are asking you to do or is there something else or it's helpful for any applicant to know what the standard is to be able to actually physically look at it regardless of whether or not they're licensed professional or not so I mean at this point if we were to go back and ask the tree board to come forward with standard some kind of a standard that they would use what happens to sub sections 3 we just eliminate until the time that they actually come forward with something yeah I mean we can just strike it out and then 4, 5, 6, 7 just jump up in number and then once they have adopted we plug it in or we just put it in as a placeholder we could put in a placeholder that requires consultation with the tree board I'm not sure that's gonna like requiring a certified landscape architect to consult with the tree board I'm just trying to think creatively here I don't even know what's under the purview of these A300 things like what are we talking about I have no idea at this point if you pay $100 you can find out as well I mean this is not all of it but it's just like every little tiny kind of so this is the ISA though that's different from what we understand is are there so there's like there's a gazillion manuals it's like everything under the sun in the plant world but they also have things that are more urban minded but this is not an extensive catalog the best thing to do really is to talk to a rep because once I said it was for municipal zoning he said well what you really need is simple but it's you know utility pruning I mean it's everything under the sun the tree board doesn't know this stuff I think John I think you bring up a good question like a good threshold question whether or not the tree board has jurisdiction for authorities it could recommend a city council they would adopt them through the city through the city council as soon as John said that the tree board's responsibilities their jurisdiction is within the city's right away so they've been appointed to manage the city's trees that are within the city's right away so even on your private property if you own a tree that is actually on the city's land you can't cut down your tree without first contacting the tree board because it's technically a public tree so the tree board's responsible for managing those and there also will take down damaged in what are the trees that can fall on power lines or other things they'll take down trees so the property owners don't have to sometimes okay so what do we want to do with number three in the meantime it seems like going back to the tree board and asking them to either accept some national standard that's easily understandable to landscape architects makes the most sense to me so can we leave the with awarding the number three with the standards and policies that won players the tree board when adopted I mean I think we could just say planting should be in accordance with the standards and policies of whatever standards it is we don't have to mention the tree board in here at all we can just reference the but we don't know what that standard is right now right well we wait for the tree board to make a recommendation but then we just plug in so I mean the language I think we could just strike the can we leave that open Montpelier tree board which generally follows the I'm just have the standards and policies of the ANC 300 standards if that's the one going off they recommend we fault we have in here or ASI whatever the municipal one is so right now we would just say in accordance with adopted standards on policies because we can't reference a standard now we don't have the I know but I mean I think we would just have to leave it blank that it would just go and say the planting shall be in accordance with the following standards and policies and then it's just blank and I mean we're just going to have to come back to it I think we're going to come back to it but don't we just remove it for now yeah and then come back with something that's the whole one piece okay because keeping in mind that we don't currently have planting standards in our zoning so it's not like we're we are we are taking a step backwards we try to take a step forwards and we're now going to kind of revisit that and go back to where we are which which is that we didn't have any trees we didn't have any planting standards and it was a recommendation from the tree board that we should have these standards but until we get it right we really can't make it we can't make it a law until it's ready all right is everyone agree about that okay motion to by consent we are going to remove 203.e three are there any other small changes to the language here that we want to discuss before we walk through the site plan apply these to the site plan no all right Mike all right see how these work so you can see from from the red lines that we're in the red line document that most of what you have now is new we we had to kind of make stuff that would work because so much wasn't working and really the big things that Stephanie had pointed out that we really kind of wanted to look at was how when we get to the total landscaping and we get to these J2 and J3 I really kind of had to come up with this weird 3-6-1 and 3-6-2 so how the mental games we played downstairs we went through a bunch of different options for how to go and say how much landscaping do you need to have and we kind of looked at things like well if it's a small lot versus a big lot if it's a district that has a lot of required open space or doesn't have a lot of required open space I mean it just changed so much so what we tried to do is to come up with and if you don't follow it it's okay if you're allowed to have 80% coverage then you're allowed to have 20% then you have to have 20% open how much of that 20% should be landscaped and so we kind of came up with we'll make it a third just threw a number in there and said we'll make it 30% of that has to be and then if it's 70% it's a third 30% remaining and so you can see how we just went with these factors and then we took a bunch of applications and we ran them through and kind of tested them and it kind of worked to a point until it got to be big parcels and then all of a sudden everything started falling apart you started ending up needing thousands and thousands of square feet so we came up with two which says if a lot is one acre or less then you have to follow these factors and three says if the parcel is greater than one acre then these are the factors that you need to have these are the minimum landscaping and we've started to as I said work through some of these and it certainly is a lot better these rules now have more flexibility they have non conforming rules they have waiver rules so we have ways of short circuiting it if this doesn't work the DRB will have a chance to short circuit it under the current rules today there is no short circuit so we end up with rules that just have some odd outcomes and there is nothing we can do about it so the first application and again none of these applications actually have to meet these standards these are all can I ask a quick question? so if you were looking at virtue of the J2 minimum landscaping areas for parcels then what you are saying is that how does this translate into what percentage has to be open? the district if it's 70% maximum coverage then by the inverse 30% of it has to oh okay uncovered not necessarily open space not necessarily open space I was getting confused with that requirement okay so we're not setting up a specific requirement yeah and then it turns out that these actually ended up cancelling each other out when you did the math so it made the formula rather unique you just take your amount of impervious cover and you multiply it times this factor and it will tell you how much landscaping you need and if somebody really wants to see the math I can go through and show it to them but so the first one I'll show you is caledonian spirits see where our microphones are we try not to cover our microphones because it makes awful at home so this is caledonian spirits we have berry street we have the railroad tracks we have the access going in you see the new skeleton of a structure getting built right now so this was their proposal and they came in with a landscape plan that looked something like this so this is something we would get whether it's us or the DRB members so the question comes up okay is this in compliance with our landscaping standards so this is 116 gin lane it's in the riverfront district it has an 80% coverage requirement so you can cover it with 80% impervious cover it's exempt from the street tree requirement because it's not on a street so the first one that would come up that we would be looking at standard is the parking we roughly measured out the size of the parking which has a little more than 20,000 square feet of parking and by the way this is like a 4 acre parcel roughly so 20,000 square feet is a half an acre of parking and we have to cover the requirement in here which is the same as under the rules passed in January 40% shade and we kept the shade requirements the same a large tree would be worth 1200 square feet and a small tree would be worth 600 square feet these guys here are birch trees river birch so I don't know if those are technically a medium tree or a large tree but if it's a large tree they would be worth 14,000 square feet of shade or 7,200 square feet of shade depending on whether it's considered a larger medium tree we'd have to figure that out one of our staff would have to figure that out the requirement is you need to shade 40% 40% of 20,000 is 8,000 so it would meet this if river birches are in fact large trees then we have 14,000 square feet of shade for the 8,000 square foot requirement but those were shrubs so those were not big enough to count as shade but they did count for screening so depending on whether these were larger medium so if these turned out to be medium trees they don't have enough to meet our requirement and they would have to plant some more trees which if it were staff we would probably have suggested you know somewhere in this area that they could go and add some more trees that would add some not only benefit to the shade but would also provide some benefit to water quality to the river so that just gives an idea that well the numbers weren't impossible to meet are they too easy too generous these rules were the same rules that Brandy had proposed and were adopted in January so I didn't change these in this new draft doesn't if this is four acres don't they the way I'm reading this is they would just have to put in 2100 square feet of landscaping you're up at the total landscaping I was working my way through so the first one I did was the parking lot landscaping they didn't say the planting size but they didn't have what would be the full height I would probably have asked them to include the mature height of the tree in their report that they submitted to us we would probably not do the work ourselves we'd probably ask them and then confirm that information to see that illustrated on potentially on the plan if we assume that what they're actually indicating is the planted diameter of the crown wouldn't it help you too to have an idea of how big that crown might grow in terms of shading as our rules are written all we care about is that it is a large tree that has the trunk of the tree within 10 feet because under the current rules that Brandy had proposed we didn't have a distance so as we were enforcing her the rules that we had adopted we had a question of we'd have a tree over here does it count as a shade tree because we've got to follow the logical rules I think the detail you're getting at is what would be under the standards that the tree board doesn't have yet that's what it sounds like because having the space for the roots system is probably something that keeps the tree alive were you asking about the roots you were asking about the crown because a maple tree would have a bigger than an elm an elm tends to grow up in a little tough at the top the square footage requirement to hear this hasn't been measured out yet but under the new rules under the rules adopted in January we wouldn't be looking at whether each of these trees has 100 square feet or 49 square feet if these are medium trees each one of these trees would have to demonstrate that it has 49 square feet of rooting area we would want to go through you're going to have to space these things out they're going to have to demonstrate to us show us the breakdown of that and that may mean this has to get bigger to accommodate more roots but as this was adopted there were no requirements for that under the new rules we would be requiring mediums I think they would have to have that much rooting area so you'd want each tree to be indicated with the rooting area if dashed in or something to that so they can share as long as there's enough as long as these two are 98 square feet because the two trees can share root space but the physical planting of these trees is what we were just talking about when I go to plant this tree is the soil mix B how deep does this tree have to be planted how big is a root ball do we expect on it do we leave the burlap on take the burlap off whatever the I don't know this stuff that's for that branch but my guess is that's how we would be evaluating this from our standpoint then when we get to point J the requirement that we were just talking about for total landscaping the screening requirements as I said I would have said this is a screen parking lot what about screening of the delivery that would be a question so we have to we now have very specific things that we have to screen for we must screen we can use landscape buffers we can use fences and walls and we can use berms we have three things we can screen with and we must screen the parking lots we have building mounted equipment so we have four things we must screen for that's an existing document these were reorganized and kind of put in there but yes they were mostly in there just moved into different places to make it work a little better so in fact under a new proposal that came in they actually revised this plan in 2018 and they put a generator over here and we've required them to put screening so there's actually now cedars over here because this is 2017 so any of these things here is what Meredith would be looking at in order to either approve it if it's a minor site plan or to put into a staff report for the DRB to consider she would go through and make the evaluations of these different things to go through screening has been presented and it would be up to the DRB to determine if it's sufficient and it would be up to the public to make a comment that's not sufficient to protect the views in fact I think it probably would be okay this is an elevated site compared to Berry Street so probably that would be good as we get the total site landscaping we now are to that calculating area where we would need to find out how much because this is more than one acre and that means we would be talking about number three because this is riverfront it's 80% so that means they must provide a minimum landscaping of 2178 square feet so those little that table that we had every tree needs 100 now we're counting every tree is 100 square feet of planting area and we need to reach that square feet they had the table over here very helpful I could go through and calculate that that's 192 square feet for Aronia which I don't even know what that is 588 for the birch that's assuming it's a medium 25 for the crabapples one crabapple 162 for the cranberries 294 for elderberries 348 for winterberry winterberry for a total of 1,609 square feet so using these new formulas it comes out I believe what did I say it's going to come out low so yeah 2178 so it is going to come out almost 500 500 short under the new system so actually this new rule would have required five more trees if you look at this site it's five acres and there's very little planting out here so the fact that we would have required them to plant five more trees five more potentially large trees they could have very easily dropped five trees we also pointed out that they were probably deficient on their parking for shading so we probably would have recommended that they go 1,2,3,4,5 get some large trees south side and it probably would have very easily it's not something that would have been a burden for them to have met that requirement for this and that's square footages that you were assuming were the minimum planting areas so 100 square feet for a large tree 100 square feet for a large tree so when we say they're 500 square feet short I quickly just can five large trees they're welcome to put whatever they would like if they want to put 10 medium trees that's the flexibilities in their control that decide how they want to landscape it but we would be requiring them to have a little bit more in this plan and you could make recommendations as to where to place them and we could make recommendations as to where to place them although I think we could require them to do the parking because I do think their shading is not sufficient I'm going to question the shading why do we get rid of the relationship to impervious surface seems a bit arbitrary to say once a lot is greater than this you need this much trees we're planning here once it gets over an acre you mean right and we're talking about lots of it has to do with as the and again I came up with a way that I thought might work there are many ways we could attack this issue what happens is once things start getting bigger is because we've been working on the inverse so what percentage of the rest needs to be landscaped then when if you end up with needing a percentage of a very large parcel you can end up with a very large landscaping requirement so I tried to move away from that and come up with a factoring but for these since they're flat numbers if this is only a 2 acre parcel they have to have if it's only this piece they'd have to have way more trees because this is 4 acres multiply that number times 4 basically would be your answer why wouldn't because you'd have to have 8400 square feet of plantings are you saying that if we continue that same factor forward that's where it caps out at 1 acre so at 1 acre it's not multiplying by the amount of impervious surface it is but if you only used the factor that's in J2 and you said I've got a factor I'm going to make this work when you apply that factor to a large parcel like in this case that factor works good for all the small parcels on Berry Street that factor number in 2 but as you get bigger than an acre that factor number starts not working because as in this case we would have to have 8000 square feet which would be another 85 more trees planted on this site but you're multiplying it by the site size not by the amount of impervious surface yes I see what you're saying if they met the if this were 80% coverage then they would need 80 more trees so they probably don't have but they're not maxing out their coverage they actually have a coverage of 79000 square feet so shouldn't we just use that actually brought me right because if it's a much smaller it's only a 2 acre parcel that's a lot more trees on that site well it's the same amount of trees but in a much smaller amount of space for 2 acres compared to 5 right we're going from something that's like closely tied to what's being built to something that's kind of like well your 2000 square feet whether you have 50 acres in this specific case using the coverage of the buildings that are there the result would be 4937 square feet of landscaping including the parking lot so all impervious that's all impervious it has 79800 so it would be actually a little bit more so we could round that off to almost 5000 as opposed to what did we say 2100 so you'd be doubling the landscaping if you wanted to kind of remove number 3 or we can come up with another mechanism but I did know when we tried these figures earlier they worked for small lots and then as we got to bigger lots so what do you mean when you say they worked for small lots we would take projects we would take a project which we could get to if we get some time for Elm Street which is some of you guys might recognize like 187 Elm Streets across from the cemetery and they had a proposal in the building covers a big chunk of the lot they have a carriage barn in back they've got very little green space so when you look with a 3000 square foot building on it you know can you still meet the landscaping requirements well you can because these factors don't require an inordinate number of trees and shrubs but once you get to larger parcels or not I mean we just gave the figure we were assuming so the first question is I converted from a system the old system said we're going to measure the perimeter of the building and for every 5 feet of perimeter you have to have a shrub and for every 30 feet you have to have a tree and they can be anywhere on the site so buildings that jog in and out a lot and have a lot of context have more perimeter than just a big square box landscaping make a big square box probably not what we would like to be encouraging but it ends up with weird things because this building lot could be just this big in which case they have a building and they have no place to plant their 87 trees that they're required to build or plant the standards that Brandy had proposed with this work well in suburban model proposals which is why it would work for this and her proposals would work for timber homes which is the next example that I have which is out on Elm Street as well same standard supply you've got a 9 acre lot alright how many trees do you need and how are we going to handle small building on a really big parcel but what I did was we're not going to take building perimeter we threw that out and we replaced it with these planting areas because we felt that was going to be what we really wanted to do was to say impervious cover for whatever impervious cover you have you're going to have to have a percentage of landscaping basically kind of mitigating mitigating it and you can and we're going to let you double count so you can count your trees you can count your street trees and you can count your parking lot trees aha I'm exempt from parking lot you're still going to have some landscaping and you're going to have to put it somewhere and these are the requirements that we would like to see I just don't understand why we changed them at 1 acre right that's me too and it could change at a different number as I said this particular proposal at 4 acres would require an additional what did we say that's right so for a 4 acre proposal that makes sense but I'm worried about like the 1.5 acre parcel what that means whether the break should have been at 1.5 or 2 rather than 1 so if this parcel was half the size but it still required more trees that are currently on here I'm not sure what that looks like I'm worried that might be asking too much of a parcel that's just over the 1 acre or I just don't see why we need to break their relationship with the amount of impervious surface it seems I guess the question is why did you guys find that lots over an acre the formula that you used for acre and below lots didn't work in the 1 acre one right it was mostly just doing some trial and error on some of these but what what did you want I guess this would require double but this is a huge plot with a bunch of impervious surface without a whole lot of landscaping like it wouldn't have been hard to add more trees here they've got a ton of space to work with so if perimeter doesn't make sense can we look at square footage of impervious right so there's some justification some standards yeah and I think the issue comes up is the ability to meet those requirements based on the amount of available space that's left if the impervious cover data is too high then maybe we should be lowering that that would help to create more green space but in this case they've made 79,000 the multipliers you have work with all the max coverages right so presumably you're going to have enough space by definition to put all of this and they don't seem overly I mean they seem fairly attainable right yeah we can review a couple more of these and if that's the answer is just to go through and say continue to do a straight formula we can do the straight formula so as we said this one here would have required we already knew it was a little bit deficient because it came out at 1,600 and they're going to need roughly 5,000 so according to that they would need 34 new large trees to meet the standard for this and then in with the draft version here how many did you say I think they were going to need five more that was close what if the factor was just modified somewhat for larger parcels maybe one acre is not the tipping point but we still had some factor in a specific defined square footage the way it's written in the proposal that does seem it just seems somewhat arbitrary we can make it it's a little bit complex but I can see how it would work in my head that you could have a factor that's like if it's more than an acre then it's this number and then we're just using a slightly different factor that goes and says we've got a kind of a steep factor think of it as your tax code you've got the low you've got the 18% and it just keeps stepping up as you're going along this would be kind of working the other direction you've got a very high requirement but because once you get to these large parcels as we said adding 34 trees starts to become seems like a lot seems like a lot in addition to the trees that they're already planting I mean they're already planting 160 shrubs and 20 trees we're talking about two acres of impervious surface as well yeah 78,000 so it's almost 50% coverage in a district that's allowed to have 80% coverage so you think you could work up some modifying factor for larger parcels if you think that's a direction to go I mean I can certainly see your point somebody if we were to then double the double the size of the parcel and double the size of the building but still only have to have 2,000 square feet and that as things continue to get bigger there's still parking lots on big lots right and we're losing the effect of mitigating the impervious surface although you still have to meet the it's less of an impervious because you still have to have the same amount of undeveloped land but there's grassland as opposed to plantings you know maybe we'd rather see some higher level of planting instead of based on the district with the maximum coverage can be based on actual coverage so if it's you could have 90% coverage but you only did 50% coverage then you don't need as many trees the factoring the reason why the factoring is in there is because it everything else or the 90% is in there is because it's how things cancel out so I don't have to go and ask how big is the parcel otherwise you end up with a formula that says how big is the parcel and how much is this and how much is this and you're multiplying 3 things and by doing it this way you're just going to go and say I've already canceled everything out and I can explain the math if somebody really wants to get into the math if you put it by the 90% it actually cancels itself out and you don't have to worry about what's your parcel size multiplying anything else I think we do want to get into the math that's what I'm hearing I think there's a concern that I mean so first I just want to say this is great work we should just stop back and recognize that because you've basically written a whole section so what we're doing is we're getting nitpicky now about one aspect of it which is an important aspect sure but the reason why I'm hearing a lot of concern is because we don't want to be recommending a policy that could be viewed as arbitrary or one that's encouraging a lot of oh yeah absolutely I think John's comments were on point that certainly because if we cap it and just flat out cap it then that becomes an issue so but I do think it's kind of a discrete question hopefully it's a discrete question I don't understand a lot of these stuff so I apologize I don't understand why the district coverage is a necessary variable determining why it can be I think that's the same question that everyone's trying to ask in different ways so the issue that I'm hearing is why does the default coverage the maximum coverage allowed cancel out the variables of what the lot size is and what the coverage being proposed actually is why don't we use that as the calculation and that's why getting into the math I think is needed the reason why the district maximum coverage is why that's necessary is because all of these factors are couched against that so it'll allow for the maximum coverage of the district basically will determine what the likely available open spaces so if you were to have a factor of 0.1 in a 90% district you'd end up in a situation where you'd have to cover everything with planting or potentially not be able to build because you need to take out building in order to plant your required landscaping so this is saying I think if you do the math it works out to basically 30% of your required open space is going to have to be planted in every district so what we're looking at is if you had a parcel and we pushed all the impervious cover all the buildings and all the parking lots up front we put it all in back we'd have so 20% of the parcel has to be left open okay so that makes sense now the question is how much of this 20% did we have to yep it's okay it's helpful for me the percent for the lower ones is about 30% so what we said was of the remaining 10% 20% 30% 40% a third of it will be set aside as landscaped and managed now the other issue that comes up not to get everyone to your setbacks automatically start to take out so this is just taking your required setbacks so you end up with these 5 foot that become difficult to plant trees in so sometimes you're going to have landscaping that you're required to keep 5 feet green on the outside you could count the street trees in the front you can count some of the stuff in the back so some of the stuff is automatically covered for in your setbacks but you might not be able to plant a tree in your setback if there's just not enough room or if there's a shared driveway or if there's something and if you can't meet those you can talk to the DRB but that's why some of this I said we can't say 100% of your impervious we couldn't do 100% because in a lot of cases you can't actually plant you have to have some lawn somewhere that's just lawn so that was why we picked 30% just as a number to start with because we wanted to go and say let's pick 30% let's run a couple of models see if it works kind of worked at 30% so that's why we kind of kept it and then when we ran it on different size parcels that was where we started to see some discrepancies that started coming in whether it's the four acre parcel here or and I've got some some copies we all need to have a copy but I made enough copies for people to grab we can share over here you can use that one and we'll just share here and they can share there and walk us through it so timber homes is a 9 acre in the rural district so it's on the second page this was their landscaping plan that they put together which included 10 to 13 more trees 75 shrubs it's in the rural district anyone who's driven up route 12 can see the new building that was going in so my notes that I put together in this one this only has a requirement for 20% maximum impervious coverage is 20% and it wasn't even close although it doesn't look like I wrote down I wonder if the 43-56 was the but the requirements for the trees that were 43-56 is based on all other districts so that was the requirement they would have to have 4,356 and that number is artificially low because it's a 9 acre site but how much impervious is that it had and that was what I was looking for was what are we looking at here I don't think I grabbed the number for the impervious cover on this one because it was over an acre in size because the parcel was more than an acre in size so maybe that actually would be an interesting number to look up try to remember off the top of my head what was was there a legend that came this is two pieces of a much larger document so the impervious that we're looking at is the building, the driveway and then what is the orange the orange is another, that's the three houses so that's another set of impervious including the three houses proposed, it's actually already approved it just hasn't been constructed yet but that's part of the same it's part of the same parcel so it would have to be counted so so yeah I'd have to get all of the impervious if we wanted to go and kind of look at what the total impervious on this one would be to multiply it out I didn't write it down on my list because it was more than an acre so I wouldn't need the number so in this case if you added up all the trees they were doing it's 1,176 square feet of materials they have a requirement for 4,356 so in this case they would be well short but what is now can be taken into account is the natural square footage of natural coverage which along the shore there was about 5,000 square feet of natural coverage that's not indicated here but if we had this as a rule we would have required them to go map that out which you get 2 to 1 so they would have gotten credit for 2,500 still short but again I don't think in this case if we were looking at this this is a huge open site if we were to require them to have put in some additional large trees I don't think it would have hurt the proposal I assume those were medium trees because they were apples yeah we would have to determine and we would also then also require on their site plan what are the planting areas in this case they're pretty well spaced out so chances are good they could just go through and get a uniform circle that would go through and say as long as there's no tree within this circle I've got a rooting area that's sufficient right but then they also need to at least give you a calculation of the impervious yes and I do have that it's just I didn't write it down on my cheat sheet they gave it to you or you had they gave it to me they had to for impervious cover requirements so it is written in the can you give us some comparison of what the proposed version would look like just using j2 for the entire thing did you just use the factor under j2 if I could have, yeah if I knew the impervious cover so let me z60 if that other one was how big is that for the thing oh it's two but it's going there I want to say that it's a it's just that it's not blue 5000 square foot it's really a bit should we let's let's call this another 80,000 square feet if it were right around 80,000 square feet of impervious cover between all of these buildings times what's our requirement for that district they're multiplied times 0.1 times 0.1 equals 8,000 which is divided by 100 would be 80 large trees that would need to be added they already have some what is this so that doubles the requirement under that's if we use 2 we use the multipliers under 2 well what is this the orange these are these are homes but including all the roads and everything in the building so all of this it's a production facility that's timber homes yeah yeah it's timber homes for constructing I didn't know if they were homes or if they were no no no this is timber frames where they're going to build timber frame homes and now here's where they're building where people live and are these other rectangles that are dark those are the stacks so that's not impervious okay more or less yeah they're elevated yeah they're elevated off the ground yeah they have to be because they're bundled yeah underneath it so are we making any headway but it was these were some of the things that we ran into when we started to run some numbers as we start thinking you know is it appropriate that these guys would be required to have 80 more trees or 75 more trees they would have to build 70 they would have to plant 75 trees in order to get a permit to build that facility there so and right now they are proposing they had 10 to 13 new trees and 75 new shrubs but isn't there a reality for these large rural sites is that they'll likely just meet the percentage based on the existing vegetation and it'll all be driven by meeting whatever subdivision or site plan standards that are asking them to screen or design oriented stuff as opposed to doing the math this is probably more of a unique site this is probably more of a unique site in that it's nine acres and it is almost devoid of any trees which is in character with being along the river though I guess so so this is a prime example where a waiver might make sense as opposed to probably the other side of the road where 90% of the similar sized lot is trees and they're going to meet their requirement by simply stating that we meet our requirement because we don't have a lot of trees so what did you I didn't understand what you said you said they'll be meeting a different standard because of if you have a large lot in a rural area odds are you're going to meet whatever percent we come up with with the trees that are already existing you get half the value but you're still half the value in square footage of the system that happens to be large rural a reason behind that is it just existing specifically for us though not just not existing existing coverage as for what's the requirement how was it decided that half of the existing coverage would be allowed would not count it I just I just made up the number there was no standard and it was actually a question that has come up in actual applications people have come in to go through and say hey I'm building right up here on river street but my lot actually is backs up and I actually have another two acres of trees behind me so I don't need to meet any of your landscaping requirements technically as the zoning is written right now yes at least now we're factoring it in at two to one we don't want to penalize it too much we don't want to penalize it too much because we don't want to incentivize people to actually start to cut down the natural trees we actually want to give them a certain benefit but it seems like it should be more of like a qualitative issue than a quantitative one yes here which is why you have four requirements we you still have this still have to meet the street tree requirements you still have to meet the parking lot requirements so even if you only had to plant three trees but you have a parking lot that requires you to plant seven you have to plant seven and you automatically are way past your total landscaping requirements that you have to meet because you had to plant street trees and you had to plant parking lot trees or you had to plant screening and you may already be above and beyond your total landscaping before you get there the total landscaping is your is your catch at the end that goes and says you didn't have to meet this you didn't have to meet this you didn't have to meet this but every project should have some landscaping and we're going to require you to meet this minimum amount of landscaping and you know this project is a perfect example of that you don't have any other requirements in here you don't have to meet street trees you do have to meet the parking lot but it's some screening but it's some screening but you're kind of tucked away not a lot that you have to not on the streets so um I know we're running out of time I don't think we're going to get there tonight but I don't think we're going to so what I think makes sense for this section for next time Mike would you mind reaching out to John Snell again and talking to him about our concerns about referencing standards that haven't been adopted um I'm happy to do it if you prefer nope I can I can do that it's not that we don't want to include Sanis preference ones that aren't in place already yeah we're I should at least give them a heads up that we're probably not going to have a requirement in there for them until they adopt them and if they're interested in moving forward on adopting some standards or recommending some standards for us to adopt into the yep either way works we can do it and I think actually that was the preference was that to adopt the written standards into if we're if we're referring to the best management practices of this company then state that in here because then there's a public process that goes along with the adoption right right exactly zero requirement to use as much rendering as possible just thought that was the proposal kind of a green field yes that's what it was and then would you like me to try to come up with an uh an adjusted factor for number three maybe yeah okay other than that is it seem like we're generally the adjusted factor for number three and then see if we can come up with any sort of way to change the metric for counting what's already there I mean so the the existing trees sort of giving them a discounted rate I think it's only for forest land though right that was my understanding the big oak tree right next to your house that's different than an individual tree that's next to your house we would count as in the same way that you don't want to have someone cut it down put up two trees in the same way that this is the Elm Street project Elm Street is right here and if you happen to know this property it has two prominent trees in the front yard very large trees and you know this was where the joke came in before that we were talking about the fact that technically the owner of this parcel would have to cut down one of these giant trees to plant more shrubs because he met his tree requirement he wasn't meeting his shrub requirement and so we were like well that's just silly to have rules that would tell us to cut down these two street trees see the picture that's the this is the front of the house so it's got a porch on the front got a bunch of trees yep the proposal in this case was actually in back to convert the abandoned shed into two new housing units shillings you still live so that was as I said that was a little bit of you would get full credit what these guys would be able to do would be to come through and count the number of trees when we go through and say you need to have seven or you need to have so many square feet they can say I got one four five trees we can determine whether these are viable trees based on obviously if you count them you can't cut them down alright yes so we'll take that up at our next meeting which is December 10 um we're going to skip over item six sorry Barb we'll get to that at December 10 um let's quickly go over the minutes October 22nd just as a final thing so we can get these posted um do I have a motion to oh we have to fix the May due date for Symphony I'm doing early March oh since it made the minutes it's not just a soul congratulations future generations okay since it happens to be in there early March early March Aaron's name is miss Feld too that's okay well it's correct on the um flag oh yes it is so just for her benefit is K-I-S-I-C-K-I easy right so K-I-S-I-C-K-I because she writes the minutes based on the video okay all those in for any well any discussion all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed none motion carries do I have a final motion for adjournment do I have a second yes non-debatable okay all those in favor say aye aye okay we are adjourned thank you thank you