 We're going to call the order of the Colchester Planning Commission meeting at 7-0-4. So the first thing we got are agenda considerations reserved for changes to the agenda items in order. We don't have that tonight. Comments and questions from the public, not related to the agenda. All good there. All right. So to get right on to public requests for amendments to development regulations. This is a leftover one we wanted to look at again. So the first one we have is SR 22-1 of Dave Burke on behalf of Jim Mattel and Skip Barrow. Well selected residential uses in the commercial district. Do you have another comment? Come right up. Hi, David Burke, Boliri Burke. As you said here on behalf of Jim Mattel. Jim Mattel and Skip Barrow own the vacant footprint lot at High Point Center. So at High Point Center you've got what was historically Libby's Blue Line diner at the big office building to the right of it. And another big office building, kind of the glass one that sits closer to the road to the left of the entrance. But behind the one that's called the glass one to the Winooski side is another approved about one acre footprint lots. That was originally earmarked for another office building in 2001. We secured town approval for a 76 units extent stake hotel at that location. That was done at that time, gave handy on that footprint. Skip Barrow and Jim Mattel ended up buying that from him and had no, they're not hotel guys, but they bought it from them. Since that time, since the 2001 era, office space has been going downhill for them. The second floor of 19 Roosevelt has been empty for eight years now. They own, they own that they own part of the office building to the right, I think three of those floors and they own the footprint lots. So back in March of 2017, we submitted for submitted to planning and zoning five years, five and a half years ago. For consideration that apartment buildings greater than 10 units be added to the commercial district. We feel that I'm sure you've got my letter in the package, but there's several uses, including extended stay hotel that got approved. The all the school of pharmacy was at the High Point Center. There's lots of lots of uses that are residential that are commercial in nature or they're commercial and they're residential in nature, however you want to see it. My feeling is that the apartment building 10 units falls in the same bucket as those four or five uses that are already listed in this district. So there was two, there was multifamily and there was apartment buildings greater than 10. My personal feeling is multifamily should be limited to three and four storage, three and four unit buildings, six unit buildings, not the not the big box buildings. And that's what that's what you have out there now for office space. When we submitted in 2017, there was, it was already empty for three years that one floor, and they have an architect do a they spent money on architect to do a revamp of the building to try to use that for marketing purposes and just nothing's come. Once COVID hit, I don't think anybody with a straight face can believe that office space is coming back. Not at those locations, a lot of locations around Chittany County. So what you have is a empty, an empty floor, you'll end up with more empty floors. You'll end up with the lot in the back not being utilized. And the owner, depending on this proceeding, regardless of this proceeding probably is going to be pursuing low getting his taxes lowered just because of the lack of use in those buildings. So I think it would be short sighted not to consider adding this use, which is similar to the other uses. I disagree that it's contrary to your town plan. We're not asking for an expansion of residential use. As you see on the board now, halfway house, congregate housing, hotel, motel, extended stay, trade and vocational schools, colleges, community college, including dormitories are already allowed in this district. So we're simply asking for apartment buildings greater than 10 units to be added to the commercial district. And we think that's more than reasonable. And it's actually more reasonable than when we first made this submittal due to if we thought at that time that there was going to be a rush on office space. Certainly COVID has changed that. I do not expect that office space is ever going to come back the way it did just a lot of businesses have decided that the employees at home save save money and the employees in a lot of cases like being at home. At the last the last informal discussion we had on this on May 17 of 2022 Mrs. Austin had asked about the incurred, you know, felt that there should be an encouragement for residential and asked the question, how many units. And there is no proposal at this time. And there is no proposal imminent. They haven't had me or anybody else do any work. It's just, it's something that whether it's them or whether it's another developer interested in that footprint bought for this particular use. We're asking for the consideration for it to be added as a conditional use. So any previous any subsequent proposal will go to the development review board will undergo normal scrutiny of that process plus the extra scrutiny of the conditional use process. And I think the reason that that's important is that if you add this you asked somebody asked last time is this for this parcel. I can't ask for it for this parcel. I'm asking for it to be added to the commercial district. So I don't think it's going to be widespread with the uses that are already allowed that are like this. But I did look at what would happen here likely. And the 19 Roosevelt has 81, 8,170 feet square feet per floor. That would likely result after you take out hallways, et cetera, in about 10 to 12 units, one to two bedroom units. And then the 76 unit extended stay building footprint that permits expired long ago. But that would result in about 40 to 50 residential uses versus the 76 just because those extended stays are very small. The numbers that I'm using are closer to 750 square feet per unit or so. So there's a in the proposal. There was that follow up dated December 1st. Kathy and got a hold of me asked if I wanted to submit anything additional. That's kind of what I just went over a summary of it, but it's in the December 1st email. The nothing that I think I need to go over on the March 22nd 2017 letter. The main thing are those current uses of which most of them are conditional uses trade and vocational school and college universities are the only two that are permitted uses. The other three are conditional uses. So all the more reason that if this were to be added to the district, which again, I believe you have the authority to do without a town plan change. The minutes of the 22nd are in there and there's nothing to really go over there. And then the attachment three back when the back when the 76 unit building was approved for the extended stay. There's just a site plan and a rendering of what that building would look like. While it is a four story building, it's just the slope of the hill. When you're down on route seven, it wouldn't be much higher than the extension of the site line over Libby Libby's blue line diner. So that's what that is. And just to make sure I didn't skip anything. The last attachment I think was the the April 9th staff notes, which at the end said are the ones being utilized for tonight as well. On those I had, I didn't have a clean version. So on attachment four of my information, you will see a couple red marks. Those are back from May when I looked at this. And some of my comments were this has been five and a half years. I don't really want to hear that I need to wait for a town plan change when it's been five and a half years. And I feel strongly that it fits within your existing commercial zone. And then on the markups that I have on page two are the kind of the commercial in nature. I've had this discussion in the office on other proposals we've had. And we've got one in Castleton right now and it's like, is this a commercial building that has residential uses? Is it a residential building that has commercial uses? It's, you know, I think most of your big buildings kind of fall in that gray area. But I suggest it would be a missed opportunity for Colchester to not consider this and other things like this. Or you're in your areas that were predominantly office buildings. As I said at the beginning, High Point Center, two office buildings in the front. The one in the back was back in 2000, not 2001 when it was originally done by Mr. Wiley. That was also earmarked as an office building. It didn't make a whole lot of sense because it was all shared parking and you had three big office buildings. When they were all occupied, there was, and Libby's was going. And there was also, it never occurred and never will occur at this point. There was a very small footprint out there for a small bank between Libby's and the building on the Colchester side towards the interstate. But I don't need to take up more of your time, but I'm happy to try to answer questions. Sarita? I did come up with around 62 units looking at your numbers. Yeah, the high end I think would be about 62 in low end, 50 to 62 with the two numbers that I gave. I felt like, I mean for me, I felt like you're making a compelling argument because of COVID. When I reread the town plan, it looks at trends in the housing unit. Those trends, they don't exist anymore. Like you said, office workers are not returning to the office. At some point we might want to re-look at that because I think things have really shifted in terms of commercial and residential development. So that's somewhat of a compelling argument for me. I don't want vacant buildings in Colchester. I want to increase our tax base. I want workers to find a place to live, and this seems, no, it's probably much more complicated. Or maybe more complicated, but I think Kathy can help me understand that. I find your argument compelling for this disappearance post-COVID. I know in the town plan, we were very careful saying that in the commercial business district, we really didn't want housing. We made a big effort not to have residential in that area. That being said, I kind of agree we got the economics of it right now not working. It's not just this high point center. I think it affects Water Tower Hill. I don't know what the occupancy rate is at the Water Tower Hill. But again, we have some large buildings. I don't know if there's empty floors. I mean, we're going to go down this route. That's what we're going to start looking at. Are we going to accept this more as a mixed commercial use? Or we've made a big effort not to. I don't know what other commercial districts we have. So this is your only dedicated commercial district? That's what I thought. It's just this kind of core around the interstate. This is the only one. I agree. I think it's a very compelling argument. I'm one of those people who is displaced to home. As well as I work for the state of Vermont, like almost all of us are working from home now. So I get it. I don't think office space is on the upswing at all. So this is what I look at, too, is you're in a commercial spot now. And I hate to see businesses that are there now. We change the dynamics there. Because I know the quarry already just got beat up pretty good and they're permitting and had to settle out. Nothing's more important, I think, than that quarry in our town. And I hate to see us get into a residential fix in an area that never had residential and then create new problems for an existing business. That's really one of my fears. The reason the master plan came up with that was just that reason. We wanted a commercial spot that, because we like diversity in the town. And you're right. It's probably more diversified to put in some residential. I don't know if that's the future in five years from now or if that's all we got for today. We can't continually do residential and not have some type of, I don't know, imagination of what we've got to do to make that building in that area work. I don't know if you've worked with Kathy and she has any other ideas about her because we do have an economic branch here. It's been years and the owners also worked with Kathy. But that particular location, I think largely because it was originally envisioned as office space. Now the commercial obviously has other uses that are already there. But the ones that have taken hold and haven't gone away, at least for now, I mean they're on leases. But like the ground floor is a dentist. Whether he'll stay, they don't know. But those seem to be the uses that can occur. Again, I don't see that it's much different than uses that you already have in the district, the ones I've noted and the conditional use gives it that extra scrutiny which I think is helpful because I'm not suggesting, they don't have a proposal to do this. Correct. They're drawn straws right now saying, boy that's been vacant for eight years now and it was vacant for almost three years when we made the submission. And they had suggested other things and having been the ex zoning board chair of Colchester as no, no, that's not going to work. That's not going to work. That might work. That's similar to what you have now. So that's where I was coming from and I felt comfortable, straight face test five and a half years ago. I feel very comfortable, not that any of us wanted COVID, but you know, after that, that was residential property before. So there was three units on that property, that whole area was residential. Absolutely. And the duplex was there when I first got involved in this. Duplex was the last thing torn down on that piece. When the 76 unit extended stay hotel got approved, the quarry was involved in that process and it's just a matter of having the legal documents recognizing that it's a quarry there and that the people can't complain afterwards because it is going to be a choice that people make to live there because they're going to get the occasional noise you know, at that location. But as I said, you know, a half an hour ago or 20 minutes ago, I think it's short sighted not to consider it. Yeah. So for our board it looks like we want to just consider it. Yes. And I don't know what affects the town plan. So yeah, that's another thing we have to look at because we had the town plan, right? And what you're talking about, in fact, the town plan days was the transition because there was a house there that owner that owned it, owned that property, lived in the house. And so we went from all residential now to commercial and now we want to put some residential right in the middle of what at that time was the whole idea was commercial. Like I said, the diversity part. So do we go back to residential again or do we overlook our town plan and I get the idea that when we put the town plan together, sometimes it doesn't make it to the end with the changes we want. The idea with the town plan is put it together and then we let it run and see what happens. But we're talking conditionally used. We're not talking about changing the zoning here to residential. It does change the zoning. I would caution and I've made this case for many years. Conditional use does not mean and there are a lot of boards that misuse conditional use. Conditional use does not mean we'll pick the ones we want and say no to the ones we don't. There's a very strict standard. You say yes to conditional use. You're pretty much saying yes to anything as long as it doesn't have a, there's their state criteria that you follow but you can't pick and choose one lot over and next in conditional use. And I would encourage you that if at some point you do reach a determination to allow any residential use here, whether it is in the next six months and the next six years and the next town plan, wherever that happens, you avoid and I will make this argument again, you will avoid making it a conditional use. You either want it there or you don't and conditional uses are very slippery slope that should be limited to certain things that can be dramatically different based on what, you know, a retail use, for example, is very different when it's a Costco which is a 2,000 square foot local grocer that might have some applicability for conditional use but a ten unit building is a ten unit building. So I guess I would just caution whatever you do, don't rely on conditional use to be a determining factor for you. You know, I just meant that it's still going to be a commercial zone. It's not going to be a residential zone. It is a residential use. It will allow residential. As soon as you allow residential, you will see residential. I think everybody knows the market and I think that's kind of the point, right? Well, the district already allows residential. I disagree that it's a change of zoning. You're talking about... I've been working for 37 years in Colchester. Colchester has done conditional use right most of the time and so I disagree with that and I disagree that it's a change of zoning. I'm asking for a use to be added to the commercial district that is consistent with residential uses that are already allowed in the district. There was a 76 unit hotel extended... A hotel is not an apartment building. You ask our tax office, you ask our economic development office, you can ask our select board. They pay very different taxes. They have a very different draw on our services. I will disagree with Mr. Burke all day long that an apartment building is not a residential use and I think that 99% of people and 100% of planners will tell you that an apartment building is a residential use. It is a residential use. It's as residential as a single family house. It's as residential as extended stay. It is. Absolutely not. Yes. I haven't checked with... The town's got plenty of sewer. I checked with Brian Osborne five years ago. There's no use. There's a light at that location, so it has to meet all those criteria and it has to go through the process if it were to happen, but this is not a change in zoning. One thing I will agree on, two different animals. Extended stay and residential is still two different animals. Just in the flavor of the people once you're in your apartment, you now have a home, you now have ownership. You're committed. Extended stay, you're there, you're gone five days, five months, you're still gone. And you like that better? I don't know. It's different. Because the ownership is different and the management of your customer base is different. I think that's what we're afraid of. Water tower house is a good example. At one time I was all about putting this monster apartment above. Get a million dollar condo unit up above. But the problem was that million dollar condo had to have changes. And they have a big voice in it because they are a residential unit and you are in a different animal for the commercial world versus the residential. The commercial world is 24-7. It runs every day all day. And in the residential world, not so much. Sometime along you're going to sleep. Commercial may never sleep. People seem to get upset about when they want to sleep and that truck comes rolling in. The lights fire up in the office building. For me personally that's what I fear. Like I said, I don't want to see a business that's been there for decades to get attacked all of a sudden because we changed the use around them. You know what I mean? That's really what I fear myself. Even though it is a good argument that we need more residents but we have the Coast Center now that's tooling along at its pace. It's tooling along but it has a lot of residents happening. If this proceeded they would not be part of the they would be noticed and their voice would be heard. So it's not like something is being changed without their knowledge and that may be enough for it not to go through. But as I said this was submitted in 2017 and I was told then I forget what the issue was but there wasn't the opposition from staff that there is now. You're the board that gets to decide. Just to be clear there's no opposition from staff in examining the issue. The question is does this rise to a conflict with the town plan? And I think that's very obvious to me that it does. Now you could choose to open that town plan back up and have this discussion and however you want to have the discussion I disagree that it's a small thing. This is the town's only business district and it may very well be appropriate to have a lot of residential to this district. The question is who gets to be the people that are invited to that discussion and I think it's a much bigger discussion. I think you want your business owners I think you want your economic development office there I think you want it to be part of your town plan that's the very purpose of a town plan. It's two years of outreach it's two years that people put into coming to these meetings you were in communities, neighborhoods this was talked about then and it was decided no and it may very well be different and now it should be or may be a yes but those same people should have their voice heard. They had their voice heard then and to overturn that without opening that conversation back up seems really disingenuous to anyone who showed up. That said the other thing that we've talked about is there's probably a real need to look at warehousing should be town-wide. I don't think we're looking at this in a bubble I think you're going to hear two other requests tonight for other areas of town to look at just a district and your only commercial district alone without considering where the full scope of increased residential should be also seems like you're doing it in the dark when there could be a bigger picture look which is done again as part of your town plan. The best place for your residential uses is always going to be where you have municipal water and sewer and it's very limited in Colchester. This is one of those locations. That is true. Yep. You know I did look at the town plan and it talks a lot about current trends it talks about the housing and population has stabilized small steady gains, trends will likely continue over the terminus plan and that's just not accurate anymore so you know I agree that I probably wouldn't be supportive about looking at the town plan but it's not current right now. The housing piece is not current as far as I'm concerned the demand for housing in Vermont is dire and you know this combination of not using office space they're having vacant buildings and being able to possibly put in like 22 units of housing I look at the interchange that's going to be walkable now. People could be able to walk and go to work and not have to drive a car again kind of moving the trends in terms of climate change making walkability and I just think it will fit nicely with the Newsy. I mean the Newsy's main road is going to come up to us and they're all that's all working towards a walkable commercial residential space so I just think if you're looking at just the 2019 plan there was also a piece of there was an economic study there was one in 2014 but there was also a supplement do you remember that in 2017 I don't know if you remember when we were looking at the town plan but it talked a lot about the protesters specifically the culture should be looking for info and not again taking up that's why we did the PUD down to 1.5 and that has been working with the same idea that the growth center still is a majority part of our growth for residential and also commercial I do think in other towns Hassex, Williston I mean they're doing it they're doing commercial and residential but they're having a required mix they have a required mix you can't just build residential in their growth centers in those newly built areas usually the ground usually the first floor has to be commercial similar to what separate corners were supposed to be kind of hasn't kept exactly there seems like there's three so one would be my preference would be that you would agree with me that it does not require that it is consistent with the other residential type uses in this district and it does not require town plan approval second would be I think more what I'm hearing from Kathy Ann is I'm not opposed to it but it obviously requires a town plan change and then the third one would be we're just not interested I think Kathy Ann makes a good point about the context of housing in Colchester I just feel like that will take three years and I think the need for housing now and the vacant buildings just sitting there now it's concerning to me and I think when you if or when you have this conversation you're going to hear probably a lot of what came up in your last town plan discussion and you know there is there is a concern whether or not you think it's a big concern or worthy concern or not is that right now housing is so in demand that anywhere it is allowed it is all you are seeing and that's something to consider and again I'm not saying that that should stop you from allowing this in any way but you have to look at all of the potential I don't want to use the word consequences but the effects housing is so much in demand you will never see another commercial building built up there if residential is allowed it's just those are the numbers and anybody who is who is seeing that so again that's when you have a discussion that's what comes up and I guess this just goes to the point of it's not checking a box to me it's a bigger conversation there's a lot of things to consider and I'm not here to give my opinion on that whatsoever you know very interested in housing you probably won't find a bigger advocate you know I signed down to the county's campaign it's just making sure that you don't just jump in head first and you consider a lot that has gone into what was written already and you consider what has changed and you talk to your economic development office you get a good idea of tax impacts that could arise from these changes nobody creates a new future land use map without looking at what it does to a tax the tax base and there's numbers I mean this is a can be actually a pretty scientific approach you start to look at your change in I'm just making up numbers here 80% residential becomes 90% residential in your town your tax base changes quite a bit not the least of which is that we keep saying commercial use is also there are industrial light industrial uses allowed here as well that's also a very different impact on your tax base than your commercial use and different impacts which may or may not you know go away due to the competing pressures and higher highest and best use right it'd be nice if there was a magic business coming in because it's nice to have housing we also need a place for people to work they need to live somewhere and right now we can't grow economically as a state because there's no housing and people, workers can't find a place to live that's really hurting them so it's concerning me one possibility for this piece and it's certainly not solved in this discussion tonight but maybe if it went the town plan route is the intent again there's no proposal the intent is not to do away with commercial this again fits I think with those uses that are already there but one thing that could occur is Kathy mentioned Kathy Anne mentioned in Williston and other towns is if it were approved maybe the most appropriate way to approve it is either on a per property or per building requirement of 50% or something whatever that percentage is that it stays that the building and the property still has the commercial component and depending on what that percentage is you may benefit greatly and that some of the people may choose to live where they work but I would agree that you don't want these three buildings to become residential I don't think you would see that that doesn't happen with the regulations that kind of in that direction limiting the residential component I can over here I just think it's going to take more involvement in analyzing what's going on in Colchester as Kathy Anne said talking to all the different stakeholders in this because I know history that we really pushed hard to get a commercial center in Colchester and that's why there's water and sewer there it's for the commercial buildings and I think it's a bigger element than just saying yeah let's have residential I think it's a big and I think part of the reason I brought this back to you this month is that you're also setting your your work plan so it's your town plan if that's the route you end up going is not due until 2026 2027 but that doesn't mean you can open it up early and you may do that anyway because we've talked about doing a new open space plan once you get that worked out it's a future land use plan so every plan is a future land use plan in the second you finish that work you're probably looking at some amendments in there that are based on that it's certainly ripe and if you're new can you just explain to me the difference between the conditional and changing things but they accomplish the same I feel they are it sounds like Kathy and may disagree but you got permitted uses and you have conditional uses so if you are in a permitted use you should expect that you're going to get approval if you're in a conditional use it's case by case that's my opinion conditional sounds like it's temporary though conditional brings in more of component of the neighbors and and Kathy is right that sometimes they deviate for the good or the bad from the standards based on public input you've probably been on the side of it and when I was zoning board chair I saw both sides of it so conditional use criteria there's five criteria that come from the state and the one that gets used and abused is that people think that it refers to the character of the area that's actually not the language but it's the one that comes up a lot in a hearing so you see a new residential development that happens all the time and you have a conditional use and the neighbors come out and say that doesn't fit the character of the area because my house doesn't look like that and all too often decisions are made based on that which does create a case by case basis when it really shouldn't really what it should be doing is treating everything the same and it's based on a planned character and again if your planned character is residential just say yes to residential and don't make it conditional on anything and there's some other things like the availability of services and stuff most of which are pretty easy to check off on a list but I don't think it's as much about whether or not it's conditional or permitted it's more about whether or not I think the difference that Dave and I are having is whether or not an apartment building is residential and whether or not residential would require a change to the plan where it says no residential I think without putting words in his mouth as he's saying it's not new residential that's where I started it's a residential use that's commercial in nature it's a commercial use that's residential in nature same as same as those uses that are already conditional uses so if you were to go down the road of getting rid of conditional use you should get rid of them on the four that are already in that district that are conditional uses I wouldn't encourage you to do that I'd encourage you to keep conditional uses those that are considering residential that are in there now I would put that in the transitional it's transient housing it's not people that are here versus living there for a year or more so that's the difference to me what's conditional and the commercial zone versus residential yeah fair enough is there enough interest for you to consider it and this is where I thought you were 2019 on your town plan which would wouldn't that be 2024 that you should be it's eight years now eight years now that another was a COVID no that was pre-COVID that was pre-COVID five years to eight years which if you're on the board you're pretty happy about that actually if you want changes not so much I know which most town plans and most towns come about a year and a half always were coming about at six and a half anyway most of them weren't meeting the five years we'll probably start right in there it doesn't mean you can't do it early it doesn't mean that you'd have to do a full rewrite either most town plans when they're done it's a full dive it's everything we're only going to do it we're going to do everything but that's not a requirement yeah so go ahead I just again I think it's not I think this trend of working from home is the future and I think people really like the idea possibly not driving far or being out of modes of transportation to get to work and I think for Vermont's economy especially if we want to keep Vermont affordable we have to increase our basic tax payers and they can't move here businesses can't move here and people can't move here without housing so that is why I am in favor you know I know it's more work for the planning office but I think I don't want to wait three years and then be here you know having to do it I think I just do it because I don't think things are going to change see now my thought is it is a commercial use place this commercial building may not be an office building but hopefully somebody can figure out what it's next life is going to be and provide jobs hopefully good paying jobs for these people even though if you want to live in the state I realize it's not cheap you still need a good paying job and that'll get you from point A to point B for a place to live and this place is great you're right off the interstate we do that water sewer they have internet connections there's a lot of bonuses here to be a commercial unit now what it will be in the future I can't answer that I was hoping maybe Dave had but he hasn't got an answer for that either they've hired other consultants and as I said the architect and they've got that one floor that's been vacant for eight years they would love to have that next use and even if you said tonight yes we're going to do this in six months from now it was in there if that next use came along they'd gladly accept it but it's been eight years curiosity why one floor eight years well that particular building they only own the middle floor and the upper floor is I think he said either 40% full or 60% full I forget which and he said they're hardly ever there and the ground floor is spent pretty good so I didn't get into any of that other than to know that they thought it was a big thing that they spent money on the architect to kind of revamp the building to say I'm kind of chuckling about it because everything's come full circle those glass buildings that were ugly for 20 years are now coming back around again so I think that building probably fits in the future where it might not have fit the last 20 years so I think it would be sobering if the board had not just Colchester if they had Chittin County numbers on vacancies it's sobering and I think people would like to live in these commercial areas where they can walk to work and walk to the store and do these things but sounds like that's a much bigger conversation with what kind of plan I personally think it is awesome discussion do we I guess our next thing is do we move it on as not a deal or do we move it on as a discussion I think it would be for me which was okay which one was B just for the audience so I just wanted to quickly respond to something you had said about more work for staff and I just want to as we talk about the work plan in 2023 it's not a matter of more work for me or not I think that there's only so many hours that staff and yourselves and the community can budget to a project or sets of projects and whatever you want those hours to be is entirely up to you and I will do whatever it is you want to do just know it's like anything else with a budget you do one thing, you can't do another and whatever ends up on your list I fully support working on working with you on just know that there's opportunity costs too you decide what they are it does not create more work for me I'm still only going to do my 50 hours a week but that's what it is and it's your hours we're not having four meetings a month to make up for it it just means something else doesn't get done that's all I agree we should table it table it table it and B B is Revis Revis it later and you can even talk about it later tonight if you want in terms of what's coming up in FY23 you might say open space open space we don't care I don't know Wendy are you happy with that majority rule is on this thank you alright so we move on SR22-04 Elias Erwin on behalf of Cody Rice to request zoning changes of a portion of the proper Blake Road ag district to residential one that's right, it all summarizes it not much different since April although a new face, hi Wendy good how are you I'm Elias Erwin of Landmark Engineering and Design here representing Cody Rice and the Rice family with the subject 86th acre parcel which is on Blakely Road and have you read the letter I did so really guys nothing much has changed in fact I'm here because I was invited back so I was thinking maybe you guys had some positive findings from our last session is that right it's because it was a discussion from the last time and we decided we wanted to hear more and think more about it that's really why you're back here good okay great you wanted to cut the front piece off go to R1 30% of the subject 86th acre parcel not that time you did not really know what you exactly wanted to put in for units well that's right we're just looking to have the ability to do so sir right it's in the infancy conceptual phase here yeah but I will tell you being currently zoned as ag it's very restrictive as you know it's a one living unit per 25 acres correct if we've got an R1 designation which is adjacent to the parcel both to the east and west I believe and you have R1 and R2 districts that are immediately adjacent to the parcel that would then allow one residential unit per 30,000 square feet just less than an acre really we don't have any plans yet but through your help and through the guidance of the town we can come up with something that's beneficial for everybody I know our clients interested in maybe some multi unit affordable housing maybe in the back portion maybe some larger lots for some single family residences really the property is ripe and it's a perfect area for it there's well-drained soils yeah there might be some wetlands but we'll deal with all that through the permitting process none of that can happen without getting that zoning designation change not a conditional use or anything but an actual zoning change right so again there was 23 acres yeah that's right R1 as displayed I think it was figure three in my application that's the right one right that's right there right but you can see you know reading through the plans and the regs we talk about spot zoning spot zoning and we approached you guys in according to a 2.0 3D that allows for people to come in and ask the board for a change and that's where we are so you're caught under the same I'm just looking at the current zoning just you have an idea of where the ag is and the current R1 the current ag and we would use that unnamed tributary as a boundary as a natural boundary and you know you guys know that parcel being residents of Sherlock or excuse me Colchester I don't believe that land is still being used for agricultural purposes it's just a vacant lot as far as I know it's just sitting there and it will continue to remain that way and in the meantime I hear about the shortage of housing and the need for residential housing we do definitely address that regardless of all the shortages of housing I'll say one the Colchester is definitely on the ground working on that that argument it's a good argument I realize you have shortage of housing but the Colchester is moving forward like a rocket on that you've got some serious developments out there ongoing now I've seen it, yeah so I agree that we do have residential but we also have again diversity in the town where that was a one-time agriculture it's also open space it has some other uses that have not been utilized nobody's decided to do anything with it so far maybe they bought it to look at it and enjoy it there's a beautiful piece of property right there fortunately it is right on top of the interstate it does have a noise factor it has a lot of wet lands on it so I understand it does that part I get we're looking to explore all those options further correct so the same thing happens you run into the master plan which we had discussed years ago nobody had any objections to leaving that open at the time when the owner that had bought it at that time so the question now is it's almost spot zoning I get it it's an extension but it's almost spot zoning because we're picking that one piece of property state doesn't still like that the state really isn't really big on board and it's taking anything out of bag to begin with the state is it the state themselves do not like that we do answer the state we do answer to obviously a chitin county regional planning commission what we do there our master plan had to be presented to them and approved at the time and that's an important piece of what we do and you must know that anyways you've done other pieces in chitin county so you must have run into the same criteria I'm trying to think of which state rules you're referring to specifically Act 250 and we have it and we've had which you run into there too would be and I'm sure it hasn't disappeared I've heard the word a lot of the prime ag so it comes up all the time right and that comes up through the Act 250 permitting process absolutely but again we're not there yet we just simply want to see if that's where I think we would have a discussion on for ourselves well I think this fits into this whole discussion of looking at housing in culture I don't particularly want to give up that so I just don't again I think the trend is to try to get people to live closer to where they can shop and go to work and stuff like that so that kind of and I think it separates corners hopefully that's going to be a fabulous environment to do that I only brought up the residential housing because I heard it before and I'm hearing it again and I didn't say you guys did so this is an opportunity I just want to make that clear so I'm hesitant at this point until we have a bigger picture like you're talking about Kathy in terms of kind of looking at how this is going to impact this and this is going to impact this I think that you know if we were sitting around this conversation working on the future land use map and a whole idea of future land use plan I think that there is this gap there and I think it would definitely be a discussion point it would be probably a hardy discussion there because there is this little baby gap that this sort of fills and across the road that there's several homes there aren't there but I think that that conversation again is part of that broader land discussion and I think we're you know we've had a lot of discussions tonight we'll probably have it again as we talk about open space because I think we'll have trade-offs right if we're looking at how we examine forest blocks and fragmentation and different sorts of wetland protections and whether or not we should be allowing one mile roads dividing up parcels in the rural parts of town those trade-offs might be that okay maybe that's not the right place for it but where along a busy corridor that's a question that'll come up for discussion I think that is a worthy question and it'll probably stimulate a very good conversation but I think you do it you know again my I'm protecting a plan that was written by that I had nothing to do with but I do it because I also want to make sure that when we do a plan and work together you guys work very very hard on a plan that you can have faith that the plan that you put together is the one that will be in place until it gets revised so it's I think to me about defending that plan right now it's not whether or not it makes sense because there's a good argument there's a nice piece of agriculture we just never had anybody that had ownership in it that wanted to do more than that already was there they were happy with it and that's a good example of land that if agriculture was to disappear in Colchester that'd be a good way to start one thing I think it becomes land locked for agriculture once you do that there's no frontage it's unfortunate but that's the case it's do we have the I can call it defunct ag land so I take it there is no road hang on a minute but yeah as you said on paper it looks more correct saying that the housing kind of continues towards the interstate and crosses over to the interstate but then we get into this issue of spot zoning I think we have to put it in the category we kind of have to look at this holistically again it's a more discussion if it's beneficial we can maybe address all the criteria as defined in article 2.03 specifically all the subsections pertaining to D impact to growth public investment use impact natural resources agricultural resources just using the development regs as a guideline are you talking about act 250 chapter 2 excuse me do you mean I'm in the Colchester Development Regulations specifically article 2, page 4 that's what we have to go for guidance is your own recommendations and regs so we're just trying to help you or help this along by giving you the information you need in accordance with your own regulations I hear that we're up against the town plan but in that specific section it's not clear to me maybe we can review that together at a later date or maybe we can all look at that but if you think it will help we can address each one of those specific subsections and get that to you in writing so you can take your time and review it and digest it and see if it makes sense that sounds like a good plan to me I prefer to read things would you pursue this further does that mean you will too then yes I will you're actually probably more familiar with this property I'm not real big on it it's an ag piece right now it's an ag piece at its time I'm not real big on changing it out I'm just not at this point in time it is what it is where it is either the owner that has it now wants to work it as an ag piece they want it to put some house on it I understand that housing is a big deal I'd like to recoup some money out of the corner out of it the problem is for me again it's no different than the commercial section residential the way property works it kind of like hides the ag if you don't want to see it the way it's laid out the ag is hidden in the back once you put the houses up front now you're going through there to do ag in the back if somebody at one day wants to work the land I don't think that's the intent I understand that residential is a big hot item right now but for myself personally I'm thinking this land it's in the master plan as it is for a reason I'm big on leaving it that way that's my own the other thing I look at is the watershed going through there because I know the houses across the street all their basements flood because of the water and if you're talking about the whole section having that branch come through and the top branch come through it may not be great well be sure we will avoid all the setbacks and isolation distances and floodways and flood hazards I know but that doesn't stop the water coming in their basements right it may not be the greatest parcel of the housing yeah well we can't evaluate it for that until we can get the zoning to support it that property could support three houses as is and it could be PUD out to a corner as is is that a question or statement to make sure I'm stating correctly what's the size so it's 86 correct I don't think it would meet road frontage requirements we haven't looked into that again we're just looking for a zoning change I get that part as is I believe it could do that if they really want to put some houses in there it's possible just saying that it's possible we wouldn't shut down residential 100% they would still have the opportunity for some residential they do as it's currently zoned and it's odd though for agricultural use they don't even allow for accessory structures even if you wanted it for agricultural purposes you couldn't have a farm hand house unless it's on its own separate lot without going too far down the rabbit hole we've created so it's something that I was planning on bringing to you as part of an open space look right now we do have this low density ag but you carve that up into three lots as intensive as if you're putting in a lot of homes depending on how you're forced to carve those up and how your roads are and what you're clearing you're not preserving ag in any way just by being low density but again I don't think that's something we can solve quickly it's part of a bigger conversation about what open space values do you have and how do you want to see that play out in development our discussion at this point time is where would we like to go with this I just want to dismiss it there we go what do you say I kind of put in the pool of looking at everything holistically if we're talking about housing so it kind of goes back to our earlier discussion to kind of table it so we can look at where we are and culture so that's option B dismiss it as what option A that's C that would be a not this round for this one yeah it means we take it up right now what do you think Wendy I'm going with B so I would definitely go with the dismiss part so we're kind of split on that one I I don't know there you go so we're going to have another discussion but in the comments again like you said we can discuss it again apparently we have a raptor head what I'm hearing from you though is a little bit different than the discussion you had six months ago it's sort of like table it but not necessarily six months from now when we have more time it's table it until we have done the work that goes into it which I think was different than I think six months ago it was like gosh we're just we're focused on these like sure we don't even want to think about this right now until we have time to really talk about it I'm hearing a different type of table it from you tonight right does that represent I think realistically what's going to happen is you guys are going to sit down and look at the whole land use map across Colchester either as part of your open space work or part of dedicated work related to your town plan and say okay where what has changed for us now that we're looking at these things what makes sense and all of this is probably going to come out as part of that alright so we're continuing on a discussion yeah very good thank you absolutely it's an ongoing discussion we have time very good alright SR-22-05 Rich Gardner to request zoning change a portion of a property come on up act a residential one we're back based on what I've heard I have a guess where this is going so I own a rather large portion of land on Millpond Road the parcels of land parcels of land to the north south and west are all zoned are one can they see the map is there a screen alright so what I was what I was looking to request was a zoning change for about 15 acres of this sorry Rich this is the only one you submitted right yes I'll bounce between that and the zoning map as well so I'll let her pull the zoning map up of it I was requesting a zoning change for that portion it is currently zoned agricultural we'd had discussions at the last meeting I do have the ability to do a PUD and create residential development there so it's the zoning change for me doesn't necessarily change what I can do it changes how I can sell it and it changes the ownership of that so should I move forward to do a PUD or a plan development I will end up taking the entire parcel and turning it to a residential parcel which is totally fine and legal what I would like to do though is create the type of development or the type of neighborhood that I grew up in where if my neighbor wants to have a garden in their backyard they can do that they do not need to ask me or their neighbors for permission if they want to put up a fence or a shed it would all be completely legal with inside of the regulations of the town so they could do that and I prefer to have neighbors that way where I don't have control over their land and they don't have control over mine am I in the right spot here Rich you are that is it it goes all the way back to Essex yeah well that is another interesting question by deed or by what I think it actually is it hasn't been surveyed in a while by deed I am just shy at 98 acres I think it is actually much larger than that I have walked the corners so an ag piece at 98 100 acres 100 acres can you change the image of that though and go to the aerial so the ag portion of this and the usable ag portion of this is really the rear of the property which is what I would like to maintain and preserve the front portion of the property if you read through the town plan it talks about Millpond road having rolling hills and marginal soils the front portion of the property that I am looking to rezone actually is you can't see it from the road except for the front portion and it is sand I have beautiful sandy soil I am actually building my house on it currently where I will be moving with my family we have an at grade septic system which is really hard to find soils to do that so though the town plan does describe Millpond road it is really Millpond road to the north of my parcel so the piece in the back you can't access from my front portion the access right now is through the person's property for the guy to get down and use the tractor the upper portion if you want to zoom in there it is really that section that I would love to rezone which is the front portion I wish I could point at it but that portion and if you move the cursor up towards my neighbor to the north so the small little lot to the north no not the big piece the smaller lot I feel like this is an eye test 21 so there it is so there is a pretty steep drop off from the upper portion down to that lower that lower meadow or the smaller meadow it is about a 70 to 80 foot drop from the top to the back so you cannot see any of the fields or any of the farmland that is on this parcel and you can't access that first meadow from the other side nor can you access the large meadow from that side unless you have an ATV and that is why I would like to rezone that front portion I would actually like to preserve the back piece so how do you have access to it there is access to the rear portion again is ATV only you can't even get a tractor through the lower section there which is 20-1 where 20-1 is written you can't get a tractor from that portion to the back it is too steep there is a tributary that runs between the two fields so access right now is if you go to the south there is a road that kind of winds down I want to say the road was improved when maybe it was Velco went in to improve their power lines there is actually a nice road there but I don't own that road and I I don't own that road I don't own the access so if anything happens with the portions that are in front which I believe there is currently a plan in place right now where it will sever the access that I have to the back portion of that land pretty soon so I am in discussions with trying to open up another path to get back there and I am sure you understand how that is trying to get access to parcels and pieces so when you remind me again how many houses you want you can do so if I go through and I get the number of acreage that I believe I have I would be able to do one dwelling unit per 25 acres I believe the parcels closer to 150 acres so I would be able to do six units and cut up the front pretty well and then the entire piece at that point is residential PUDs do that when you flip them over I am sure I could put something in it I have to talk to my attorney in more detail about how to make that not the case as I said before I have got two little boys that are going to be moving on the property and if one of them wants to start a little vegetable farm in the back I would love to be able to tell them to go ahead and go do it and I don't want to talk to the neighbors about whether or not that is right or wrong or if he wants to start a tree farm in that back field so I can go in way more detail on other things but there is my case so if we go R1 that whole piece is R1 then it has to be subdivided out put in so it is a little intense I think that without creating a lot more work for myself I think that I am hearing the bigger concern that Rich has is about how we structure subdivision in PUDs with this and less about increased density I mean increased density for me I would love to be able to have nine units there is both would be I apologize I didn't mean to put words in your mouth and again even with a PUD even if you do the footprint type lots you still end up with an HOA you still end up with declarations you still end up with rules and regs no matter which way you slice it I have never seen a PUD that doesn't have those normally they end up being a little defunct if they run a little bit long just like some of the old neighborhood rules and regs that were created years ago where you can't have livestock or things like that that have all gone past density would absolutely be great I'd love to maximize that but again I have no interest in doing much of anything other than keeping the back portion the way it is so this portion pulling back and reading it this portion that you want to make R1 what's the it's really that wooded line it's about 15 acres there you go what's your red line there that's my red line so we're talking about 15% of the property or less if the parcel is actually 150 acres which I believe it's closer to so this one's a little different than the last one because for one thing you can already do what you want to do as we discussed before you can get a few more houses in there I can so this one is definitely a different animal than what we just discussed earlier the thing here is I suppose to break that off that becomes its own entity in the back it doesn't have access it becomes again landlocked it's going to be anyway it is right now it's PUD it's not landlocked you have to have access you have to create you can't get down there but you're still going to have to have access into that area where what you want now that access will be done but you'll be your piece straight back correct? Yes I want that back portion separate from the development that I would do up front so you would have to design where your house is up on the road yes a driveway or a way to get through there and do the road correct yes and I've got to improve I mean I want that field to stay a field and as we all know if we leave a field unhayed or unkept it turns back into woods pretty quickly so you're talking about the back field the big field the big field in the section of the R1 that you are no that smaller fields like an R1 it doesn't matter if that one goes I mean I'd like to put some residential units there the back field is the one that I'd like to keep a field but I'm going to lose my access to that and by back you mean this middle section? Yes do you have a name for this back back section? in our family we call it the land the land actually that back hill that's some hills in it that's where we sled way back here the larger field there's some topography on that field that looks flat on a map but it is not flat we've got some good sledding hills also vast trails run through there which is the bridge you can see the vast has got three bridges on the property that they use I have full intentions of working with them and making sure that they always have use that one? That's the vast trail yep it's a really pretty piece of property and I'm happy that I can be part of its history and I'd like to preserve that back portion you can't build on the back portion anyway and I don't ever want anybody to anyway what was your point about the forest growing in that the front field? Yeah if left unkept that it will just get naturally taken back over and I'd like to keep it a field? Yeah the guy that I bought the property from has paid the fields they haven't been used for agricultural aside from hay for as long as I can tell and luckily he's been willing to continue to hay it so I ask him to and I would love him to continue to do that so you're saying you're going to lose that right away I don't have one anyway I don't have one but she blew up and said right away here or are we talking about somewhere else? she blew up and said right away yeah that's not mine though that's not mine I have an ATV trail that goes through the woods and you couldn't get a truck across it and there's a little bridge that supports that ATV down to the tributary and then a very steep back up so I've got to improve that to maintain my own access to that back field with anything more than ATV or UTV I'm trying to understand I'm confused as to the fact that you can develop your land and I'm confused as what you're asking it's the tools that I have available if I wanted to move forward with the development now I could do that under the PUD standards once the PUD standards start my understanding is that the entire parcel becomes part of that PUD whether I want it to or not so all 150 acres would become part of a residential PUD I would like not to do that I would like to sell people their own acre or whatever it ends up being chunked up to you have your acre your neighbor has their acre or two acres or whatever it ends up being and that's yours and you own it and then I have what's the remainder of that parcel as mine and you wouldn't want any covenants at all that you develop you wouldn't want covenants that you would put in that would go with the ownership of also in a real estate company so I've seen those go many different directions I don't want normally the first buyers understand the regs, understand them well they've been talked to by the person that created them and it's a well understood the second owner comes in and maybe it's a little bit muddied and not as clear and not as passed forward and then the third person that moves in and they decide they want to do something different and depending on who you hire and how well the things were written and I just don't want to put myself in that situation if I don't have to so the easiest way for me to make it a very clean development and create a development that I would want to live in would be to sell people their own land without any and you can get one acre lots up front? yeah I'm sure I'll have to put it in a road but I'd have to deal with that when I got there so you're talking 15 acres 6 homes is that correct? yeah so what is it R1 I might be able to get a couple more so now we're at 8 houses, 15 acres somewhere in that way that's where you hope I was a realistic number so we're looking at 8 houses we hope yeah there would end up being if I could survey the whole thing correct I've got to get a survey done I'll have to do a survey the next section I go which I'm not looking forward to paying for a survey on a bigger piece of land yeah what do you think? this one is different I have to admit I was pretty the other one I was like it's ag you bought it as ag but you can already do what you want to do the difference is really is who owns the land in the back in the end of this I definitely would do option B that's what I have to say I'd like to think about it I'll also point out I'm almost walking distance to the growth center in Colchester I'm very close for myself personally it's more about where you sit than what your neighbors are because you have you get the duplexes right across the street I get that and when the master plan was built the idea was as much rural as people wanted again that property complaints they wanted it it is what it is the difference is you can change it because the rural is we allowed the reason we allowed it was for houses you want the houses there I get it for myself personally and when I first thought about this I didn't think about it so much I think it goes back to our discussion that we're probably going to have later on about looking at our open space because this is definitely part of our open space in Colchester and I think no matter which way it goes if it can be re-zoned for R1 for a part of it still get open space I think I'm with you but let's take a look at it see how it fits I agree I see that we're still discussing these but it sounds like it sounds like it would be a good discussion and be very informed so physically I know your house is being built which is a nice spot where do you envision a road as you look at it to the right because it goes like this so there's access to the lower meadow the smaller lower meadow where the cursor is there's a farm road that runs down there so I've been working on lightly improving that farm road so you can get something more than a tractor down there because again my access to the rear parcel I know my neighbor is working on a development there and as soon as my access is severed from the other side the farmer has access on the other side currently right now I don't know what the land from it's one of the so right by that little patch of trees if you're cursing right keep going down just a little bit more down down down to the trees right there there's a little road that goes down and your neighbor to before this this is a guy that's looking to do some type of development he is he's our one he's subdividing his land which will sever my access to the backfield I didn't realize that was R1 that goes R1 to the road yes I don't know why it's not showing I've got them turned on zoom out just a little bit and I can tell you which one's R1 I actually have the map here where the old farmhouse was that is R1 that's why I said everybody around me let me pull out yours there's a map here hold on I have that here we go let me hand it to you it's hoping Kathy had I don't think where am I is it hard to walk out yeah we don't bite I didn't think so it does have a gap there we go yeah so on this parcel right here this is R1 R1 this is my piece yeah he's subdividing this quarter piece there there it is this is the Clark property so this is what you are looking at right here is a history of spot zoning yeah those are spots and they are zoned in very awkward ways yeah again part of the 15 acres was I pretty much drew a line from his property line this makes no sense to me straight along that tributary that's there and drew the line yeah I got it now unless he owned all that property he just wanted to have this on there yeah well there was time when you could pull pieces out I don't care where the state came along and said no and then we stopped and we tried to fix a lot of it almost impossible to fix it because again you had an agriculture property that did not want to change that's why we didn't change it back in the day it's definitely going to be ripe for a discussion at some point because these are just so weird yeah yes there's two in the village at the end there that are similar to that I mean look how dense this is here oh those are condo units yeah you should drive down there sometime you should drive down there not often but a few times it still has a rural feel they sort of pop up out of nowhere so I think that's more discussion I think so too on paper as I said it really looks like it's kind of an easy decision but we really need to look at it we do like to discuss zoning on that one too just out of curiosity if it was an easy decision and I'm not asking you to make one I'm just curious, is there even the ability for you all to make that decision tonight? tonight? well no, if I had done a better job presenting it and I had made the points perfectly is there even a possibility of I'm just curious if you asking them or me? I'll tell you what I look at the first time you came we did have the end of all the things with East Lakeshore and all that and then now we're looking at again what we want to do in the future there is one project at the end of the road I personally hope we take a closer look at which will take a lot of time and tonight you did present a lot better view of what you want and how you want to break down to make that decision I personally don't make a decision in one shot I have to work it through my mind again see what the town as a whole Rebecca stated where we're at I hate to pull the trigger on something and then two minutes later say oh I didn't think of that I will, myself personally will pull the trigger on something you're not going to sit here forever and I think there's boards like that we've been pretty good about it the only caution that I keep throwing out there as the ship's captain is not necessarily whether or not we should go one direction or another but when you do write a report on zoning changes what you saw with East Lakeshore the very first question you were asked is does this comply with the town's plan and the second you write no and I'm not sure I can write yes for you and maintain my certification the second you write no it does draw the attention of of the state economic development offices and the regional planning commission even if it's a fantastic idea and everyone's on board and there's lots of cheerleading going on that is a hurdle that's something we haven't discussed in previous meetings Chittany County Regional Planning Commission which we have to answer to we have to answer to two entities what are the end results we know what we want for our town there's still two other boards that will have this discussion and that's why you've been in the real estate business you've seen a lot of property to that decade 12 years plus from point A to point B you've only been on this property a year or two if you were to get it 10 years you'd be in pretty good shape in some of the properties we've done out there actually Millpond Road the condos, Haley's Way, Donna's Way my parents purchased that and I said this last time my parents purchased that I think when I was three I actually ended up selling some of the units there I will tell you I probably won't wait that long for this portion there's timing and there's life you have a unique opportunity for this property you can actually build if you want I can but I realize that you don't want to build it in that manner so I get that I would prefer to maintain the back portion of the property and have it be what it currently is I would prefer that to stay the case and I'd prefer to build the development that you're not seeing too much of anymore which is the traditional old style type developments where everybody's got their own land and there's no tie to something else alright I think we're on discussion sounds good I look forward to presenting again you might thank you all very much do you want to give him back his map do you want your map? there you go it's a lot of ink right there alright we're on a discussion on that one we'll move to next so that's under B again that's under B again we're in decisive sort of but I don't think you guys are giving yourself the same short timeline that you necessarily did last time no closer look easier and we have a continued discussion of the work plan items for calendar year 2023 alright it's actually a really nice transition I think yeah do I have anything quickly in my staff notes on this or do I just have the list sorry yeah, so we'll just hop down to the list and you know I write open space plan on here but I think that when I talk open space plan what I'm thinking of is really two parts and one is like okay let's identify like the big let's talk about what open space priorities you have and maybe it's not just you maybe it's a lot of work for the conservation commission or so part of it is let's talk about that's going to bring in this natural land use discussion the second part is going to be what do you do with it now you've just heard me say that when you're talking about open space that just because you can only put three units on 75 acres those units can be big they can have big old roads and driveways they can have big old clearings it's I think meant to conserve agricultural space but it doesn't effectively do that so that's probably part of the discussion I'm just sort of previewing something that might come out of it is okay what do we do with those standards going forward so like this parcel that you just talked about and you talk about like open space and what is the tradeoff between conserving all the back what does it mean for the front and when you start talking about what you're going to conserve in the back you naturally start to talk about what kind of benefits can be created to the front to create some balance and you'll hear me preach about this a little bit too I think a lot of people will agree you'd rather see those six or nine units up the road right there than you will if that back parcel of that right look at these here these are what 10 units you get 10 here that has so much less of an impact on open space than if you had a road with a house here a house here a house here and all of a sudden a higher wooded area this forest fragment you could call or this forest block gets fragmented by those 10 same units in a whole different layout so we don't necessarily talk right now on what that layout has to be so not getting into that now but just previewing here's what could come out of that discussion when you start talking about open space and you start saying okay maybe maybe this whole tributary area is really important maybe it's not I don't know okay what does it mean what does it mean to say it's important maybe it means you don't bisect it in some way I don't know we'll get there but those are the conversations that would come out of it as we talk about open space so I don't know exactly what that looks like I don't want to put Pam on the spot but I think that it becomes a collaborative effort with the conservation commission I don't know how much involvement they're going to even want to have but that's one of the first conversations that you might want to work through when we tackle this again in the new year get back down to my list so that's on there as you may know or you've heard me say a couple times the last open space plan was written in 2000 I have members of my staff who were toddling in 2000 I was at least in college so it's pretty ripe I think for an update and part of it is work that would lead into your town plan there is a requirement in statute now that your town plan includes is it act 268 I was getting bad with numbers 248 where you have to address forest blocks and a fragmentation plan that is not in your current plan it's a requirement in statute so it was written in 2018 2019 that I think requirement came out in 2019 so you don't currently have that in your plan it will be your requirement of your plan anyway so the work you might do on open space will feed pretty well into that even if you only look at forest blocks in a fragmentation plan or anti fragmentation plan so other things on here I'm going to I skipped to open space just because of that project but other things form based codes this is something that you identified last time as wanting to take up next I do think it's a big lift it could be small but I think that we've just identified so many different consequences or results that don't match up quite what you know at some point made sense but maybe it's just it's experience right it's seeing things and talking to the DRB and we have a standard that might have made a lot of sense on paper but in practice it's proving to be really difficult and there's a couple things specifically that come to mind there but I think taking a look at them holistically you know something that's come up is how are we dealing with building breaks it's very it's probably like the number one thing that comes up in a form based code our standards not quite creating the result that the DRB is enjoying or that they thought was intended you know so we talk about like minimum of 60 foot breaks we have 60 feet then 60 feet there's still two big blocks and then there's you know we talk about the relief and stuff so that's one of the ones you know entrance standards we we don't really say we might say you have to have an entrance but we don't say what that entrance is it could just be a door that looks like it's a back door to something that doesn't really create that street presence so I think there's some movement there you heard from the Ireland representatives that they want to talk to you about garages setbacks of garages I've looked at that I think it's a relatively easy thing to address there's some language that some other people that have adopted that makes sense that we could plug and play there the other thing we're coming up against is how do the form-based codes interact with our street standards this is something I hear a lot of from the current developer at the northeast quadrant that's the one across from the buildings that are under construction now so our public work standards just as an example they don't like T intersections they like big swoopy roads where the plows can make a nice big wide turn a form-based code wants blocks and I'm not saying we have to fix it I like blocks they're kind of running into each other in the sense that these big swoopy curves don't really create two street fronts it's hard to put a building at a 90 degree intersection that's not 90 degrees so that's something that's been identified as take a look at this is there anything we can do I don't know do some of the road standards that are used town-wide make sense should they be different in a form-based code area so we don't necessarily have a different set of road standards for a pedestrian scaled street so that's something that might be talked about you can take up any of these some of these all of them you can look at the whole thing you can look at pieces of it I still think it's a pretty big project once you get in there you just keep going it's a big deal and I will want to have a meeting I think with the DRB before you even get started to hear a little bit from them I've heard from a lot of people including some people at this table what's going on with those buildings under construction one looks like we envisioned it and one doesn't so where did we fail where and was it our failure or was it something where did we miss so at least we have some case studies to look at that was the idea to revisit so it's going to take some time and we may have to also solicit some experts I don't pretend to be one but I know how to look at other people's codes and say Rebecca what do you think waste water updates what's up waste water updates so this has new since the last time we talked about this so if you are following along with the select board's agendas at their very last meeting they took up a conversation about whether or not to return delegation for waste water to the state of Vermont Colchester is one of only two in the state that has waste water delegation we process and permit all of our waste water permits it's expensive costs us more money to manage there's a public hearing on that next week next week so that public hearing may likely lead to the draft that's written says that by April 1st that would be returned to the April 1st yeah would be returned to the state that has an impact on the development regulations that you manage mostly from a technical perspective there are a lot of references to a waste water official we won't have a waste water official there are certain things that are in there that talk about rules that were different for us than exist in the state so they would need to be removed because we would have no authority to require those things anymore so it's not necessarily a big thing that I think requires a lot of debate but there's a lot of pieces for you to look at and if we want to time it correctly so that when April 1st when we don't have any administration of the program anymore well you know how long the last one took it pretty much means that you'll have to have a public hearing yourself by February for right so I think your next supplement 45 is basically just waste water pieces so you'd have to prioritize that over the other ones I think just in the very short term yeah and I'll try to make it as painless as possible I'm sorry I've already got it half written half redlined but it'll take some time just to go here because it's a lot of text there's a lot of waste water references in there I mean I was granting me the permit and I just wonder you know just what's the downside for residents is there a downside for residents if the state picks it up is it the same you know I'm not familiar enough with the program I think that there's potentially some upsides because at least everything is centralized I don't know about the fees being any different I don't think we charge anymore here than would exist I think the biggest benefit as a resident is that it's less on the tax it's one less expense I think somewhere to the tune of about $70,000 same process you're just talking to a different person I don't know if the timing is different I don't know if we process faster than the state I have no idea so potentially it takes you a little bit longer because they're backed up and understaffed but Mr. Gardner knows the problems is there public comment below go ahead with the program I would save it for the 13th I was just going to speak specifically about SEPIC and I think it needs to go to the public and talk about speaking specifically from a consumer side from somebody who's done development in Colchester it was much much easier and much much faster to be able to go actually physically talk to somebody in the town office and that goes from new developments to people who need to have placements and things done once it gets pushed off into the state's hands timing becomes a much different your schedule is far different it may take somebody the entire summer to get a SEPIC system replaced if they're in need of one so timing and accessibility having it in-house made it much easier also a town that the vast majority of the residences have their own wastewater systems on site which does make us very different from other towns we don't have many residential actually I can't think of any single family homes that are connected to city water and sewer in Colchester the only thing I know of is multi-family and I think the Sunderland Woods might be that might be it Sunderland Woods Residence, single family homes they're in the sewer service area that's all I know maybe they're not actually connected they're all SEPIC so I'm just throwing that out there we're a bit of a different though I agree the savings would be good we are a bit of a different animal and we deal with SEPIC comes up a lot in Colchester residences and to be clear this is not a it's not even a planning and zoning department led initiative the only attachment that I have to in any way is that technically if this passes it makes our language out of date and inaccurate in quite a few places this is when will it pass so the public hearing is next week with the select board anybody wishing to give testimony can do that then I don't plan to be there just to be clear but I believe yeah and if you look at the last one the public hearing is already noticed you can see all the documents already they're on the end they're here so the done deal hopefully if we all go straight forward we'll know by January you will know by next week but the language that's in it says because of the warning time to the state it basically says effective April 1st everything in there says effective April 1st so if we want to be in line we also want to earn April select board approval of development what I was getting to is our next meeting we can jump right on it by your next meeting we will know that's what I want to know so if it's passed we go if not we jump into something else so it could pass the same night they have the public hearing yeah yeah I think it's technically it's chapter 8 so it's code of ordinances there's some appeal period or something that's much shorter than the April 1st 21 days maybe but they only require one hearing because of the it's a code of ordinance update so yes if that happens we'll probably spend January just at least the first January meeting just looking at the wastewater red line again I don't think there's anything in there that's going to be like controversial or debatable but there's going to be a lot of text to look at so we'll plan yeah okay so does it have a timeline in there for when it well I guess it can't become effective earlier than April 1st if that's what it says in there correct yeah so that would get us going so we should if this is pretty straightforward text we probably should have two meetings a month to keep on track yeah I think that this could take the better part of your first meeting just because there's just so much text any questions we get the meeting sure it lined up so we just knock it off yeah and I've told Rich that I I may try to sneak in a very tiny not just one little tiny thing we have an administrative procedure in how we send out our butters notices that I'd like to change it should be something we should just be able to handle in our office but for some reason the procedure itself lives in our development regulations and so any change to it has to get modified we've been wanting to change it for a while it's a very small thing but I think if I could get that done faster it would save my staff several hours a month and be worth good adding early but I'll come prepared with that as well in January so we're looking at these two items supplement 45 taking up at least January at least the first meeting so we look at January as the first meeting because you could have a January meeting you could say this all looks great go ahead warn a February public hearing depending on how because you need 30 days roughly you could have an early February late February public hearing which would get this to select board for early March for them to warn an April hearing then we should have we should get on board on discussing these three items we'll have some time to think about it a couple months here and then I I think as you have to wait anything else could be talked about at a later January meeting yeah absolutely there's no rush on the next supplement so we're talking about a supplement 45 45 is yeah it's got to be we're probably going to have simultaneous conversations about 45 and 46 exactly yeah I mean it's not like 46 passing time to wait we start discussing on whatever we put on we can do it immediately at the same time yeah yeah so and the open space plan is going to take I mean I don't know what comes out of that that actually lands in a supplement or which supplement it'll be yeah that's more that's why I have it down under special projects you're looking for more definition on that one yeah I mean first thing we got to do is pull out the plan and say do we like this format or not do we just want to update data and feedback or do we want to like look at something that wasn't looked at before yep so it'll be a big project potential other things so you have agreed to take up form based code you have agreed to spend some time on open space these other things are suggestions some of them smaller than others parking standards I have listed here I've heard from a lot of people and looking at them myself I do agree our parking standards are requirements our minimum parking requirements for commercial uses we over we over park we have a lot of spaces that are required the downside is that is more impervious surfaces it looks it's not good for the town either when you have an empty space it just doesn't look good for the success of the business right you have a lot of empty spaces so I think that there's some merit there my intern over the summer started to look at it and it's a potential project for a next intern who could start to look at some this isn't the right number what are the right numbers our waiver requirements are also a little odd we tell people with commercial properties that you have to at least set aside the land and be ready to pave it and we try to hit like a perfect number we all know that like 10,000 square foot of retail this type of retail is very different and it's needs even from a different 10,000 square foot of retail you know your your ace hardware is going to be drawing a different level of parking than your trader joes it's just a fact but they're the same thing on paper and we don't have a very good system in place that allows for waivers to be flexible a retail is retail is retail so I think there's some improvements that could be made there that would be very business friendly but also very town friendly and maybe potentially having less pavement and less empty parking lots that are not serving the tax base and not serving aesthetics very well signage signage is one of the things that came up from some conversations with some folks in the business community it's not really well developed at this point but there's been some concerns about very broad concerns about some of our signage requirements especially for permanent signs I don't know if it's ripe to go to you but I think it's worth sort of leaving on A list somewhere we'll see how signage as sign on your building big time how many yeah I think some of it's about location I don't know exactly it's like I said very poorly developed at this point but I think there was some concerns about where signage could be placed on a multi-tenant building does it have to be right next to it I wish I had more details for you I don't really I haven't spent a lot of time looking at it I saw some new construction commercial buildings that they had it up look nicely to take some doubts we decided somewhere in our regs that we had a sign there and a sign there yeah I think you can't have it above your roofline or something it's not fairly simple though if you can figure out what you want but I think ultimately you know it's not something where I'm like we need to get stricter about signage no and it may be something that is requested that still doesn't even make sense but it's really poorly developed at this point but I wouldn't bring it back to you until it had more details I don't think it's a big I don't think it's a big project I don't think it's a big time I'm not trying to redesign all of it anything else in here so change in tenancy is another thing that I've heard a lot from the business community you switch from a daycare to a daycare it can be a four month process to get a permit yeah that's the best example I have because it happened recently so anytime you change tenant even if it's the same business it's a lot of it can't be avoided because everything is based on wastewater it's a problem that doesn't have a good solution because we ask at a point in time because everything is so much is on its own wastewater or it pays for wastewater if it's on public wastewater that we need to know at a daycare for example how many kids how many employees well maybe you add three employees for a month you're not calling us to tell us maybe you downsize and you lose five employees because you just can't do it or whatever we only look at that number the day that you apply and so when the tenants change oh we look at it again so we don't look at a occupancy co-occupancy requirement that this building is designed for so many occupants no not necessarily what we would look at in a change in tenancy is wastewater parking and traffic and those are going to be based differently depending on the use like a hairdresser is going to be based on or like a hair salon is like number of employees plus number of stations it's some hybrid other things are based purely on square footage and that's sort of what complicates it you simplify it to get a state permit you have to state what the occupancy is the occupancy is based on the classification of the building its business the occupancy is going to be 100 square foot per person and that wouldn't change well I'm hoping if wastewater changes it makes it a little easier because that's the one that gets really complicated traffic in most cases is based on square footage regardless of whether it's riches daycare or seritas daycare doesn't really matter doesn't matter if you have ten employees and you have twelve it's the square footage it starts to matter with wastewater more than than anything else parking tends to be based also on square footage again I don't really have a defined problem or defined solution yet but it is the most common feedback we hear from the business community is like I can't change out a tenant without it being a three or four month process and so I think this is just an attempt to be responsive to that but I haven't worked out what the solution is but it is a problem we've seen it and I'm very sympathetic about it from the DRB these are all new ones again since we last talked recreational amenities and open space standards the language that you have in a lot of new developments speaks very specifically to a recreational amenity more and more people in the development community are looking for some flexibility there can I have community gardens instead can I have so we're seeing people try to meet that with things that don't take up a lot of pervious surface so we're seeing disc golf courses like you couldn't believe because it's just a pole in the ground and we're seeing people try to hit that recreational word and so what I would the discussion might be are there more amenities or different amenities is there more flexibility that we could bring to them that's not just a basketball hoop or something that fits a pretty strict definition maybe you say no but I think it's worthy of having a discussion of are there different things that you would be you would consider I didn't even know we restricted it I was on the rec board forever our term for rec was wider whatever you thought was rec we literally threw it into the pot that was interesting I didn't really restricted well I mean it has to be recreational in nature so no community gardens it could be an artist's stand where they paint yeah it's not entirely clear but no and there's some there's also some feedback I've heard that says we're not if you look on the whole are we asking enough you look at not to pick on Patrick will call me and yell at me but not to pick on the Severance Corners Village Green but that's now up to 400 residents they have a top lot they have a top lot they have a little tiny playground for children for small children it's a very small playground very small for like age five and under they do have a walking path they do and that's actually I'm very I think that's a great amenity and I think that if people put that in it's a good one so the question also comes in are we asking enough you know can it just a grassy space work maybe but is it clear that people can use it is it clear that kids can kick a ball on it is it a wetland if it's just a wetland and you're calling it open space it's not really open space go fishing go fishing yeah so I think that I think that that becomes right for a conversation I think it would improve you know is it something that's a maker break now no but I think it could really improve new developments to better specify what could work and what we're looking to create especially as the town doesn't want to take on new parks it's hard it's very expensive as you know so these are all going to be a lot of private amenities let's make sure that if we are putting 100 people in a building that they have some place they have this outdoor room to go to one of the buildings over at Severance Corners has actually if you would never notice it unless you're walking around there has a really beautiful patio in the back that has like lounge chairs and shared grills and like a pergola and a fire pit maybe I don't think it counts as one of their recreational amenities but it really serves the people really well it's just so privatized so that might be something that we can consider I put it in the category that sounds like it's a lot of work but there's a lot of good examples out there including ones that I might have written before that we can kind of steal and plug and play if you want or at least serve as a template that you could say no make it bigger make it smaller make it different but it could be a starting point so I don't think we're not starting from scratch here Lakeshore District Landscaping Standards this one I just got from the DRB it's more about like the shoreline overlay requires you to randomly place trees I think it's a small fix but it's one that's important to them because they keep coming up against it like what does it mean to randomly place new trees it looks like they didn't put up any trees at all you know they built their hubs and I thought there was a a standard that you had to replace trees you know they had to be sunscreen at least a little bit it's not a very good standard we follow some of the states shoreland so we also speaking of delegation we state has shoreland regulations in most towns the state administers those Colchester is one of several towns where we administer them to us to tweak it a little bit to what we wanted so we say you can't cut down more than 25% a couple big problems with that one is that nobody listens to it two is we don't know what 25% is once they've been pulled out 25% of what they're all gone we have no idea what you started with and then 25% for you you sell your house five years from now 25% then 25% all of a sudden there's no trees stabilizing the bank I'm not sure what the fix is there but it is something that has been coming up a lot in front of the DRB and so they've brought that to us the other thing for me is it's just huge and it was across the bay but I mean it came right into my window I'm just wondering if we could look at downcast lighting it's just so annoying to me when people's lights come in too I'm not familiar with our lighting rigs I'll take a look I can't even tell you if we already do and people just aren't doing it right I haven't spent a lot of time with it I'll take a look you're 25 acres yeah downcast and shielded is a standard downcast and shielded so you have some sort of cutoffs around it projecting straight out but I don't know, we may already have that I don't know well I'm actually glad you brought that up because I missed putting it on here you guys had sort of you were in and out in your discussion it came up a lot from people in the public and as we were looking at one standard it was like boy should we carry this over to west but we all agreed I think at the time of when Westlake shore was done there was a lot of time put into it let's not pigeonhole anything in right now so it's a possibility I put it on the list of possible projects if you want to return to Westlake shore it could also be something you throw on your proverbial parking lot of yeah we want to get there but not this year it's not a high priority it did come up a lot when we were looking at Eastlake shore should we carry this over while I'm still on the lake degree of non-conformity is a constant battle that I would love to fix sooner than later basically means is we have allowances for new rebuilds so if you are you have a home along the lake you're already too close or any sort of non-conformity but mostly it happens at the lake right so maybe you built a little 5x5 porch you're already in the setback right so here's most of your house you built a little 5x5 porch maybe before zoning maybe before the statute of limitations whatever you've got this porch it's a hard time that you have this porch now you'd care it down it happens a lot I mean even in my year plus here I think I've seen 10 teardowns on the lake and rebuilds you tear it down we're hearing a lot of arguments that say well I already had those 5 feet I can now build my entire home to that line and I think the past the past practice the past practice has been yes that's your degree of non-conformity you already at that line you were at the whatever line that is that's the line you get even towards the lake that has not been our practice I've sort of put my foot down and made an executive decision to say no your degree of non-conformity is is where the majority of that structure was but it is not as clear as it could be we talk about degree of non-conformity but we don't talk about what the degree is what is the non-conformity is it distance, is it massing so I want to bring you a fix there if no matter where it ends up I at least want it to be crystal clear even if you say yeah they had that 5 feet they get it all the way across or you say no but either way I want to make it clear for people because it's come up quite a bit recently and it's a headache it's a headache in-house, it's a headache for the DRB and people don't really care for our interpretation and then as I said procedures for notifying of butters more and more towns are getting really smart and saying cover your ears Rich if you want to have an application, you send the notices, you pay the you stuff the envelopes you pay the postage it takes us hours especially if we're doing something at the fort you would not believe how many butters you have to notify because they're condos Zach will spend 3 hours stuffing envelopes, we'll drop $400 on postage to send them the agenda to send them the agenda to send them and then once a decision is posted to send those out state law allows us to put that burden on the applicant so I'd like to follow up on that and save our staff some time and money and allow that to happen but because it's in our development regs that we do it, I'll change it How do you police it? How would you police it? So they have to file a certificate of service is what they would have to do so they would have to give us basically an affidavit that says I did it, this is who I sent it to, this is what I sent we basically become one of the people they have to send it to and we get to see and then they certify through a certificate of service that they did it Do you give them a list of who they have to send it to? Nope, but we'll spot check the one they show us that they did it's actually pretty easy with our software that we have here, you can actually create you know, so if I'm looking at this you know and I have the Gardner property I can generate a list of all the properties around it that touch it Yeah, whatever they're registered to wherever their tax bill goes I just thought I Yeah, when we would help somebody, if somebody came in and they're just doing something small, they've never done this we would obviously help them to find that list and everything but there's just certain projects that are just exhausting for us and it would really help us out so that's what that is, that's the one that I want to sneak on sooner than later That's the end of my list I have two things that you've asked to sort of put on a and these don't all have to be in this work plan I'm kind of hoping to hear from you about certain ones that you have no interest in certain ones that you might say Hey Kathy, maybe how about the second end of 2023 or 2024 or no, I don't want to touch that I definitely don't have a form based on anything No doubt about that I think we need to take a look at that, I'm all over that Somehow there's a disconnect Yeah And is that SEPHERN's corner? Yeah, there's a disconnect There's two buildings sitting there two different structures and one of the structures does not look like anything is board ever to suggest So somehow there's a disconnect I don't know how or why it's there and if we just, if nothing else we look through it and we can figure it out maybe, I don't know There's something missing Maybe the DRB can explain it to us Something isn't correct We want nice looking projects There's no real excuse not to have it in this town And I think we could count the form based code piece taking up about 50% of your time Which is typical We do one big piece and then pick out some smaller ones which is fine That's a big development We should think about that It's important I'd love to hear any feedback about things that really sounded interesting to you or not at all on the rest of the list She spoiled us 100 Yeah, this is easy I personally am okay with just about everything on there I mean, it all makes sense It's all things we'd like to look at How you want to structure it for yourself and your slam Okay, what works for you on that end? Serita? Again, I'd like to when we have time there's plenty of time but I'd like to give Lake Shore, West Lake Shore a little talk Yeah, if you're in no rush I'd like to push that one down We spent so much time on Lake Shore these last few years There's not much development going on in West Lake Shore Drive No, that may very well change once the first sewer line gets in And we can create a part of this list what we'll call it Parking Lot of Bike Rack where you have ideas of things you want to eventually get to but that may not be immediate So I can keep that a running list of that I'd appreciate that We should meet with the DRB We haven't done that Yeah And I've heard from they would like us to re-examine again what requires a permit So should we be asking people that they need a permit to put in a fence? Should we be asking people Maybe it's a non-stop Maybe it's easy for you guys Just the direction I've received that I want to bring to you I'd be all over that Should we not require permits I live in Williston If you have a shed under or an accessory structure under It's like 140 square feet You don't need a permit I'm making up the number They tell you So they're still a standard But you're not having to get a permit You're just having to follow the rules That's the kind of conversation that I will not come to you with any suggestions Just let you tell me what you want Nice But there has been direction to at least have the conversation of are we permitting too much But it went down to the water And it was a huge It was that because you were in the shore land? Yeah No, I think she does need a permit I felt bad but I just didn't know if I needed a permit To put a stone step down I think ultimately the answer was no though You didn't need a permit That becomes the question Are we spending more time You come in Rich, you want to come and get a fence permit You're going to spend time on it Then we're going to go out and inspect it We've just Then we charge you $50 or whatever for it And there's There's a whole school of thought that might say Yeah, at least then we know where the fence is The assessor knows I don't think we charge much on a fence I don't think it changes your taxes at all But it's at least worth talking about I think so So I didn't put that on there yet But I know we do a lot of little stuff We require a permit for Patios Stone patios You look at the research around towns Some people say yes If you're actually building a structure like a deck Yes, but a patio is just landscaping We do require a permit for it Should we? No You tell me So Basically I'll bring you all the list of things That you need a permit for and you say yes or no That would be good You can also say We don't have a permit for this You must get one That could really Make some people's lives happy Quick That might end up being its own whole meeting But It is very Resident friendly Try to plug in one of those A supplement And I think that's it Other time things There might be some training opportunities I've just finished up around Environmental leadership training Which was kind of fun I met some There's some really good people at the state Who are doing some really cool things That I would love to bring to you If you guys haven't met Jens Helke yet He's fantastic You will love him He's really dynamic with a group And he might be somebody we bring in To talk when we get into the open space Forest fragmentation He's just He's pretty cool And he's not going to come in And tell you to save every tree That's not his thing That's perfect too It's very practical going Only on the lake shore Is that it for that one? You know what we want basically I think so All good We're going to have a busy 2023 Looks like it Staff updates Staff updates I got to go back up to my memo I wrote them down so I wouldn't forget them We hired somebody new If you've been in I didn't get to introduce you So we do have a new hire that started On Monday of this week Her name is Emily She comes from the town of Georgia She was the zoning administrator Slash planner there So she comes with some experience She was a one man show there And Now she has one woman show Yes, thank you So she's with us now For any reason you find yourself in the building Say hi New town center renewal application Is in progress For anyone who doesn't know We have two designations for our downtown We have a new town center Which is what exists for people Who don't have a traditional downtown Or a village traditional village Legislature created something called A new town center We have one it is only That severance corner village center Area Oh it's not our village at all It is severance corners It is So we have we're designated We have a designated new town center It's what they made for those of us We got a gazebo right there We got a gazebo No No We call it our village It's not a designated village Is it a historic district though Ah I could look It might be But I don't know if those are Something you have to ask for I'm not aware of the town I've ever Asked for it But if it's a designation that's made without Being asked it's possible No it's something that goes through The division of historic preservation Are you do you know Kim No I could look into it But I don't know So our new town center is mostly built out Again it is that part of Severance corners village Center is what they call it Village green Where Most of the Ireland stuff That whole southwest quadrant You have to Renew that Eight year cycle with four year check-ins Our renewal is up I don't need any action from you It's just giving you an update It goes to the select board to get approved That serves as the focal point For the larger growth center Which is Severance corners You lose one though you lose the other You can't have the outer ring without the The inner core so It's in progress we're hoping for A meeting with the downtown board in the Early part of the year We're a little bit behind We technically expired December Unfortunate but It is where it is So that's just an update on that State wastewater delegation we talked about Pleading commission membership Just as a quick update The select Board Rich has met Rich and I met with two people Who have applied The select board Is holding interviews Starting interviews Doing some form of interviews Next week That may or may not result in a new member Depending on if they're In this round or not So They're in progress You may have a new face In January That's it for staff updates Informational items I threw on here Separate from a staff item You had a letter about the Mercer Drive Solar sighting I can pass along the offer So It seems like there's an application There is an application You haven't gotten it I'm not shepherding it so I don't know all the details Just sort of what's in the letter So as you know the town has two existing Solar fields We are trying to permit a third This is our second or third attempt The other ones have been declined It was one in sunny hollow I think So it's just A lot of things you have Natural resources competing with Energy competing with affordable housing And everybody has their own division And they all have their own interests I'm just saying I can't speak We have a representative I can pass it along So Mercer Drive if you're not familiar with it Is sort of off of McRae Road Sort of an interior infill Sort of space So that's the update Anything on that Before I move on Plan and commission meeting schedule So January 3rd I think I'm hearing tonight that let's Plan for those twice a month And if We run into anything We'll talk about them as they come up I don't think there's So for January 3rd That would make it the 17th I believe the 16th Is a holiday So there's no So I think the 17th Is not I don't think there's any other conflicts going forward I haven't looked at the whole year Potentially there's July I don't know where the 6th falls But Ahead of that I don't think we run into Any with holidays or anything But we'll take them as they come It might be that there's just a lot of work for me to do Between meetings and so it helps to Take one off so that We have plenty to do Yeah But for now let's at least plan for those two January to February meetings And if Something comes up Very good Is that Minutes We're getting there make sure you're all ready Minutes Alright now we need a motion for the minutes I'll make a motion that we approve The Meeting back in November 1st Second Alright all in favor I I'll make a motion that we adjourn Our meeting Second Discussion all in favor I I will not sign off on the next meeting This was too long Just kidding Just kidding