 Good evening. Welcome to the very first Junction City News. That's what, that's how we're testing out our new monthly show on Town Meeting TV for Essex Junction. I am Regina Mahoney. I am the City Manager for the City of Essex Junction, and we are really excited about this opportunity. Today I have Chris Ewen with me. Chris is the Community Development Director for Essex Junction. And we are here to talk about some land development code amendments, aka zoning by law changes that we have proposed in front of the Council for the City. Would you like to introduce yourself, Chris? I'm Chris Ewen. I'm the Community Development Director for the City of Essex Junction, and I am taking the lead on bringing these land development code amendments forward and explaining what this might do to the community. Awesome. So let's start off just by explaining what the land development code is and why we're making changes to it. So the land development code is the City's zoning bylaws, which are the rules which regulate what can be built, where and what can be built throughout the City. I think people might not think much about it every day, but the land development code is really what shapes the City to be what it is today. And also, you know, this is the rules. As we have it evolve, this is going to shape what Essex Junction will look like in the future. Great. So what are the changes to the land development code? Well, we've got a whole bunch of changes that have been planned. Just some background over here. The land development code amendments have been a project that the City has been working on for over a year. This started with work from the Planning Commission, who worked with the Chinden County Regional Planning Commission to figure out what were some things that could be modernized in the rules and seeing how it fits in with the broader community goals. Some of the changes that are involved here are changes to how we regulate housing, how much housing, how dense it can be, what that housing might look like, some changes to what we require of developers in terms of parking, what must be built with these new housing and commercial developments. We're also taking a look at some changes to what we call design review and historic preservation. These are looking at changes that control how developers can design new developments to look from our major corridors. We also have a bunch of other changes as well, which we'll go through as we move forward here. Okay, excellent. Thank you. Okay, so you mentioned creating more opportunities to build housing. Can you talk a little bit more about some of the specifics associated with those changes? So housing is a big topic and we know that housing is a critical issue for many communities throughout Chinden County. We've taken a look at this from a multitude of ways. One of the changes that are being discussed here is allowing duplexes and triplexes in areas currently zoned for single-family homes. There are many parts of the city along the main corridors where you're already allowed to build higher densities, but we also have areas where the current regulations require houses, they detach houses only. So this is a change that would allow some homeowners who might have some extra space in their home that they don't need at this moment. Or for people that are rebuilding their homes or thinking about additions to create a little more space, or if they've got an attic that can be renovated to become living space, these changing rules would allow for additional units, additional apartments to be added to homes. Great. Yeah, we've got a bunch of other things as well in terms of allowing slightly higher densities within the five main corridors where multi-family homes are already allowed. These are more kind of technical minor tweaks, but in reality this would result in some more housing that could be produced and that could be added to our city. Awesome. So it sounds like those are some fairly significant changes. Do you think that is going to, if the council adopts these changes, do you think this is going to look very different in Essex Junction in the near term? So I think something to keep in mind over here is just that Essex Junction is already changing. Our main corridors, which we're already seeing a significant change where we're seeing some commercial establishments get torn down and turned into multi-use, mixed-use apartments. But at the same time we have some areas, the areas that are zoned for residential use, which are fairly stable. These rules would allow for some more residential units to be put in there, but the reality is these rules allow extra density and allow change, but they don't require change. And we do know that many people who live in these residential areas right now aren't looking for change. And that's perfectly fine. If you like your home the way it is, you'd certainly be welcome to keep it the way it is. So I think these changes would open the door to incremental change over time. Great. So the state has recently adopted the Omnibus Housing Bill, known as S100, until maybe it has its ACT number, I don't know what that is yet. What impact does that have on these changes that we're looking at? So that's a very interesting point because S100 comes from the state level and everything the municipality does has to conform with what the state requires. Interestingly enough we've started this process of looking at how we could increase the opportunities for building housing over a year ago. And we're working through that now, but the state at the same time now is going to require that cities allow for additional density. We're still looking through how the specifics of those rules will affect us, but we will also have to make changes to our landowner code in response to that. And one of those changes does actually have to do with the duplexes and triplexes. Not only do we have to now allow duplexes and triplexes, we would actually have to allow fourplexes throughout much of the city areas which are served by water and sewer. Okay, so can you explain a little bit why some of this is why we have a housing shortage now and starting to look at why we need to be making these changes from a housing perspective and really is the population growing that significantly or are there other impacts going on that's really forcing some of this demand for extra housing? So I think there are two major things going on right now in terms of demographics and the background that's causing this housing shortage. One of them is population growth. I think Chittenden County grew by about 8% in the last 10 years and that's really put a strain on the housing supply out there. At the same time, the average household size has been decreasing which means that more people are looking for housing, more individuals, more couples, more people are looking for housing themselves. But this also means there's an interesting opportunity. It means there are some people, empty nesters perhaps or some people because of the decrease in average household size who now might have space in their homes that they don't need, they don't need all of it. And when that happens, that's an opportunity that they might want to consider in terms of renovations that would allow for an additional unit that could also bring them some extra income. Great. Okay, so let's move on to strengthening the standards for design and historic preservation. What are those about? So this really comes from the recognition that what gets built today is going to be here for decades to come. And along the major corridors, these are the parts of the city that people will look at, people will remember and these are the parts of the city that becomes a part of our identity really. What's the design review criteria, this proposal, what it does is it extends the rules that we currently have which only apply to the Village Center zoning district, which is really just around the five corners area to the areas throughout the major corridors that lead into the city. So what this would require is that developers just make some thoughtful choices about how they design the materials they use, the kind of design aesthetic that they choose just so that we can be sure that's the look that the community can be proud of. And at the same time, historic preservation extending the rules that currently exist in the Village Center zoning district to these main corridors, which require us to think critically about the existing buildings that are historic, that have been designated or eligible to be considered historic. Taking a critical look and making sure that we preserve the pieces that can be preserved and really cherish those parts of our history that we want to keep. Great. Okay, so one thing that's definitely tied to the housing picture is the concept of parking and how much parking we require in zoning bylaws. Can you describe a little bit about the flexibility that we are incorporating from a parking perspective? So, yeah, this is a really interesting point because a lot of cities throughout America are currently going through changes right now in how they think about parking and how they regulate parking. In the past, many cities have thought about parking as something that you just have to make sure we provide plenty of to make sure that there's never a situation where you would arrive and have trouble finding it. But the reality is parking takes up a lot of space and also is very expensive to build. If you compare the size of two parking spaces, for example, that can easily be about 600 square feet. And we all know 600 square feet when it comes to an apartment, that's enough for some people as living space. And what we don't want to end up with is a situation where we're valuing space for parking more than space for housing. But what the changes proposed here are to relax some of the requirements that the city has for developers in terms of how much parking they have to provide. All along, we've been requiring two spaces per residential unit. And that's regardless of whether or not the household that lives there has two cars. We are proposing to drop that down to one, a requirement for one parking space. And to be clear, this is a minimum requirement if a homeowner, if a home builder or developer wants to include more because they know that their renters or their buyers are going to want more. They're absolutely welcome to build more. Great. So that really just helps eliminate that requirement of two whole spaces for every single residential unit when some of those developers might find that there's more of a mix and maybe something more like 1.5 parking spaces per residential unit actually works a little bit better. Doesn't waste too much space on parking or money associated with that. But maybe is a little bit more than one space per unit and that will work fine because we're just really bringing in the flexibility by not requiring those two spaces anymore. That's right. The builders out there really know who they're selling to. And the reality is a condo that has two bedrooms or three bedrooms would not be the same as a condo that's a studio apartment or one bedroom. And also, depending on the demographic sets that you're targeting, the number of cars that on average will differ. But what this allows for is to make sure that we aren't requiring people to buy more parking than they actually need. And when it comes to the cost of building this parking, when you're building in the city structured parking, it can easily be north of $20,000 per space. And that's when it comes to a mortgage, taking $20,000 off of the cost of that makes a big difference. Great. Okay. So the LDC amendments, Land Development Code amendments also include changes to bike parking facilities. Can you talk a little bit about what those changes are? Right. So the Land Development Code currently already requires that developers include some bike parking when they have more than 15 car parking spaces. But even this rule is relatively new. You'll see that in many of our shopping centers. You might roll up and not be able to find a parking or a bike rack to safely lock your bike to. The zoning changes over here would strengthen those requirements and also specify what types of bike racks are allowed. There's been research and there's plenty of experience out there from people who ride their bikes and have to lock them up in urban spaces. Some of them have much better security than others. Some allow you to lock up your entire bike whereas some only allow you to lock up the wheels. This would really make a difference in terms of what type of just short term bike parking is required. But also there's another requirement that's added on for larger developments and this is long term bike parking. What we're talking about is bike parking facilities for people who work at a certain location or people that live there. So this would be indoor bike parking rooms somewhere that's for somewhere safe that you can keep your bike dry as well. And for very large developments there would also be requirements for lockers and showers. But this is unlikely to apply to most developments that we're going to see anytime soon. Okay so the next section is about green storm water infrastructure and enhanced landscaping practices. What are those and what changes does that mean for developers? So green infrastructure. Green infrastructure refers to the human built but natural landscaping tools and interventions that we have that's designed to slow hold and clean storm water before it washes off. We have a problem in cities where when you have too much impermeable surface pavement basically. When rain water falls it carries all the dirt and all the garbage that's already on that pavement and all the oils and it just carries it into our river systems and into Lake Champlain. And also and one problem with that is of course that it's not that there's pollution that comes with it. But also it has the effects of potentially overwhelming our storm water system and causing localized flooding. Recently in recent years there's been a shift towards using green infrastructure approaches which is using more planted surfaces, rain gardens, bioswales, green roofs. And just more of these natural interventions that can soak up the rain water and also help it go back into the earth and recharge our groundwater systems. But our land development code has not been too friendly in the past in terms of making it easy to build green infrastructure. We're just proposing some technical changes to the rules to make sure that all of those options are considered. Okay so also we've got some adjustments to the permitting fee schedule. Any major changes to point out to folks? So whenever people come in to apply to make a change to an existing building or when a developer wants to build something new there are fees associated. But Essex Junction's fees are some of the lowest in the region. And what that means is that we are still providing, we're still doing the technical review and the zoning compliance reviews that's associated with this. Making sure that all the applications are consistent with the rules that we have in place. But we haven't been covering the full cost of doing that out of the permit fees. So some of these adjustments would just increase those fees so that less of it comes from our general revenues. Great. Okay so that was a lot of information. If a resident is learning, interested in learning more about these changes where can they find the information? Well we are currently, I think council would be really appreciative if more people would go on and provide some feedback about this. Because in the end this affects, this affects our residents, this affects the businesses that are located in Essex Junction and people who just visit. We have a survey that's live right now and this is available on Essex Junction.org slash LDC 2023. I'd encourage everybody to take a look at that. Find more information on what we're proposing here and also to provide some feedback so that council can get a feel for what people feel about this and how this will affect people's lives. Great. So today is Monday, May 22nd. What are the next steps in the process going forward from here? So council has been working in the background to think about some additional tweaks that they might have to do and also staff. We've been thinking about what changes we might have to, what additional tweaks we might have to make to bring this into compliance with the new state legislation. So there are a lot of moving pieces but June, mid-June, the specific dates. June 14th I think is the date you're looking for. June 14th, we're anticipating that June 14th will be the date of the public hearing about this. Certainly that will be a time that the public is welcome and encouraged to come out and let council know what they feel about this. And if they think what we're doing here is enough or the right thing or if there needs to be some additional tweaks. And going forward beyond that council would have the opportunity to make some additional changes if they want or to pass it at that time. And by August we expect the changes to either be complete if they pass or to be rejected if they don't. Great. Thank you so much. So just to clarify some of those dates there. So Wednesday night, this Wednesday night, the 24th, the council will set a public hearing for June 14th if they feel they're ready to do that. And before we wrap up here, can I just ask you to repeat that survey location again for folks so they can access it on the website? It's sxjunction.org slash LDC 2023. Awesome. That seems like a good short URL to work with. Okay. So I think we are almost wrapped up here. And this is the first, again, of what we are titling the Junction City News. And our time slot I believe will be the fourth Monday of the month at 5.25. And sxjunction will be bringing other topics forth to try to get the word out about things for folks. Chris, any other items that you'd like to mention about the Land Development Code amendments? I think I'm good at this point. Thank you. Okay. Great. Well, thank you very much. And hopefully this helps let folks know what's in the amendments. Thank you. My pleasure.