 So I'll go ahead and call. This October 24th meeting of the popular planning commission to order. And we first have to approve the agenda. So planning commissioners. When you're ready, I'll take a motion to approve. Sam moves. By John. We have a second. I'll second. Second from Ariane those in favor of approving the agenda, say hi. Hi. Hi. You posed. Gender deemed approved. Okay. We have comments from the chair. You know, we've got some presentations tonight, so I don't want to take up any time. You know. I think we're going to get started. I think we're going to have things moving along pretty well. I think we're going to have things pick up soon. Just so people are aware. Hopefully we'll get new commissioners, but if folks can make sure that they make the meeting. So we have like forms starting next month. You know, we'll start moving the city plan out. So I anticipate quite a few voting. Opportunities then. And whenever we have space, we're going to revisit zoning really soon as we've talked about many times. So I think we're going to have to move the city plan out. We're going to have to move the city plan out at least for, you know, November. I'm sure we're, you know, We'll probably will miss the Christmas. Meeting. But yeah, that's all I have to say. We can move on to general business. Do we have any comments from any members of the public? And I see Peter's hand. So go for it, Peter. Thanks. Thank you. I occasionally come here to say some things. And there've been an awful lot of recent developments. That I think are pertinent to what you guys are doing. But I'm wondering whether the future. Is. Gaining on us. By the time you publish the. The city plan, whether. Some things will have already overtaken it. I'm particularly worried about the house and chapter in that regard. So let me just mention three areas of concern. One is, as you know, There are some huge potential project. Development projects facing us. The country club road. Property. VCFA. Buildings for sale. Habitat for humanity that you guys have been talking to. Stonewall meadows that you all know about. And I think we're going to talk a little bit more about that. The both project. There's talk again about savings pasture. These are all the large projects. That if even two of them happen in the next few years, you're going to have a major impact on. The shape of the city. And there are two points that just want to make one is. Traffic. We really need to take a look at what these projects, these projects are like. The city of Northfield street. You know, there's only a few ways to get from the other side of the river to, to the city of all sides of the river. And you've certainly read in the front porch forum complaints about the granite bridge. And about the, about the intersection of a river street with Northfield street. I really hope you guys are taking a very, very careful look at traffic issues. As you know, everybody obviously admits and we're facing a we're in a housing emergency crisis in every sense at every level of housing. And one of the intractable pieces of that is the cost of building. Okay, the cost of building is always good is a problem. But what can the city do to help developers come in here and do the right thing in terms of infrastructure. Are there some things where the city is going to need to consider really footing the bill for infrastructure so that sewer and water and electricity and so forth, you know, are not on top of everything else. And this is something which is going to relate to my second point, which is, you know, we've been talking for years now, and Josh Jerome is beginning to do it again, about ad us, or about dividing up large homes infill. They're not happening. Why aren't they happening because they're too damn expensive for individual homeowners or individual property owners to consider doing it. I think there are too many barriers, and one of the big barriers again is infrastructure. If you have to put in a foundation and sewers and water and so on and so forth. I mean, you can't possibly pay for itself. So again, I think you guys need to be thinking there, you know, I mean Josh has advertised that there's some money for the Vermont housing improvement program. I hope that's true. But it's still something which we may need to figure out some ways that from a zoning and building code standpoint, we can make these more possible for people and to work with people to actually do it. Most people are just scared away by it. And the final thing I want to say is that I don't know if you guys know but there's getting to be more and more talk about rental issues, both about just cause evictions. I think that this is probably going to come up in the city council and talking about people continuing to insist that short term rentals are part of the problem. I personally don't think so, but we need to find out if they are and what's generally related to all of that is the idea of a rental registry governor vetoed event rental registry at the state level, but that doesn't mean that Montpelier can't have a rental registry. And I think that that could be very important in in increasing the amount and the quality of rental properties in rental units in Montpelier. And all of these are, to some extent, these are these are sort of more immediate and more down in the weeds than than a planning commission is ordinarily concerned with, but I really think that if you're going to keep up with what's happening. And if your, your plan is going to be a plan for the future, you need to consider these. Thank you. Thanks, Peter. So you know, you know what what we're working on I think I think a lot of the things you just mentioned are things that we're considering with the plan, but yeah it's the plans. Not directly in the weeds as much as you were saying. I think this consumes much of our time. We are soon going to tackle the recommendations from Congress for new urbanism, which is zoning related to, you know, you know, making room for housing. So, just to give you a heads up I mean, you can you can I think you probably have access at some point through emails. I don't know if there's an urbanism report, but take a look at that again as a way to know what we're going to be, you know, tackling soon, as far as those issues. But yeah, thanks a lot for bringing this into our attention I think that's all good stuff for us to be thinking about and it's definitely stuff that we are thinking about. Do we have anybody else from the public to make any comments. Okay. So, the next thing on the agenda is just to mention reappointments. We are still looking for good candidates. If anyone knows, I've been trying to reach out to folks. Most of the people I'm thinking of don't live in Montpelier right now. So we need to find some some residents. They keep up the look if you've been trying because we definitely need that. Mike, did you have anything to add there. The person I contacted apparently didn't follow through so maybe I'll give her another reminder and see if she's interested and otherwise. We're just gonna have to keep looking. Mike, this is Meredith do double check because I had some issues and people are trying to apply the HPC that sometimes the applications were submitted but the with the transfer of different people upstairs. Those emails are being directed, not appropriately so the applications are getting submitted but not getting to the right people who are handling the agendas right now. So do double check on that if they if they sent one in just make sure they like they should have gotten an email confirmation they can forward that to you and you can actually take it upstairs. Okay. Yeah, that's concerning. I hope that hasn't happened. Okay. Well, we. We have a couple of things that we would like to have on the agenda the presentation about the design review guide. So can hand it off to Meredith and. Awesome. Thank you Kirby. I'd hope Eric Gilbertson would be on but I don't think it's absolutely necessary that he'd be here. So I'm going to share my screen some. Feel free to interrupt at any point. I think just about everybody who is here this evening was here when we brought through the design review regulations. So I'm going to probably skip over some of the, how we got here aspect of this app of this presentation but I can always go back to that if you have questions. Can everybody see my screen. Yes. Awesome. Yeah. All right. So, first thing here. What are the design review guidelines. So these are the guidance, the, how, how do people meet the design review regulations right these are not actually regulations these are not rules. They can can be found in violation of a permit because they didn't do something that's in here as an example. But these are ways for both people who are applying to for a permit, as well as the design review committee to understand how they might apply the actual regulations. There's also guidance in here just generally on upkeep of homes, especially historic homes, you know ways to if you're if you're trying to do an update to your home ways to make that compatible, as well as just some general maintenance guidance, like things about sleep and there's references in here about ways to get more information on, you know, dealing with asbestos covers the whole gamut. So the main point here is that this is going to take the place of the city cityscape workbook that was adopted in 1970 published I guess in 1976. That was the illustrated guideline on how to follow along with the 1973 regulations. So, 2021 city adopted those new design review regulations that most of you looked at before they went to city council. And so once that happened, the HPC could move forward with working on the guidelines, they got a consultant who did a lot of the work. I'm actually going to pause out of here. So this is the core of these guidelines, these different sections that most of which tie into specific design review regulations. All of these different sections, including how to comply with building code and how to do other things. A lot of it is geared toward historic buildings but not everything. All right, let me end my share screen. And just go to the actual guidelines. Did everybody get a chance to look at the guidelines the link that Mike sent around. Not seeing any thumbs up or anything. I took, I took a peek, but you can assume that we did not scour them. Okay, I don't want to I just I don't want to do a whole lot if you guys. All right, so, let me go. I'm not going to go through the whole thing. Let me go because it's fairly long. So here's the table of contents right so there's a whole introduction section. This is going to have information a lot for applicants including how to prepare a design review permit application. So here's the terms how to understand some of the language that's in the regulations. A whole bunch of context. This includes both the history of Montpelier, as well as describing different architectural styles of buildings, building forms as a whole bunch of just background educational information here about the buildings in Montpelier. The really fun thing about these guidelines is that with HPC's help, and the files that the city has and new photos that people were able to go out and take. We were able to pull examples of city buildings for a lot for most of these things but the learning as well as the examples for guidelines. Again, here's more information different building components right. But then let's go back to the meat here. So, the different guidelines sections. So, like I said each of these ties into a specific regulatory requirement in the design review regulations. And so this is all this this section here is all about building maintenance or rehabilitation specifically windows and doors. And the bold sentence here at the top of these numbers is reflective and echoes a language that's in the regulations. And then we went in and tried to flush that out a little bit more for people so they understand what that sentence actually means. And then when they click on these different numbers, they get actual illustrated examples of what we're talking about. And sometimes with a little bit more explanation in the associate with that particular photo. So we have done this for all of the different guidelines both maintenance and rehabilitation of all the different aspects of a building, as well as building buildings, or if you have to demolish something or there's some information in there on if you need to deal with flood hazard area and you have to elevate a historic building. It's all all of these different aspects are in here. You know, porches and entries, when you talk about historic preservation or design review, you have different things you worry about when you talk about a portrait entry or a roof. What are the issues, you know, do you want to, what kinds of things can you do deciding with or without permission. So it's, it's pretty extensive. And what historic preservation commissions really looking for from the planning commission is basically a blessing on this as a policy document. Because the planning department and HPC really want to be able to put this out as something that is a resource both for the design review committee, when they're making decisions about permit applications for applicants when they're trying to put together a permit application so that they understand what standard it is they're trying to meet. And what it is that if they follow along with this, they can get the right information and make some different decisions about how to meet how their project can meet the design review regulations and get that, you know, quick okay from the design review committee. Generally, there's a fairly quick okay anyway. The design review committee is is pretty good at giving guidance versus being really critical of things, but we do have some projects sometimes that have to go to a couple of different meetings and this kind of information would be really really helpful. So we're looking for the planning commission to bless this and then get the same from city council before we release it as actual policy. So as released as policy we'd be able to name it in the design review regulations when we put those forward we left spaces for that stop my share here because there's hands. But we left a space in the design review regulations themselves because we knew we needed to replace the city escape document. So that's where this would go in probably in the next next set of revisions that the planning commission made the regulations. Yeah, so I think I'm probably the only member that wasn't here when you introduced this and so and I haven't read through the whole document looks like a lot of really good hard work. Can you just review for me the. I mentioned that it's sort of guidance as opposed to requirements right so we're trying to help them but there are things that are required. So the design review is that that's, can you just educate me that's the historic district has to go through design review is that right or who goes through designer. So there's two different districts. There's the design review overlay district that's defined by the basically it's in the zoning district map. Right, and that is got you know governed by the design review regulations which is section 2201 of the zoning regulations. The historic district has a role to play in the zoning. But its boundaries are not exactly the same as the design review overlay district and the historic district is something that was mapped out. Even before historic preservation Commission, and is defined as put forward in a nomination to the National Register of Historic Places at the national level. So the bounds of that are we actually can't make it any bigger right now it's like the largest historic district in the state if not the country, when it comes to the number of individual properties listed in it. So they they don't his historic district bounds, don't have any regulatory, you know, power when it comes to the design review overlay, we've tried to make those bounds fairly close. But they they don't overlap 100%. Okay, so this is really guidance for that design review overlay and I'll look at that now. And so basically this is trying to give guidance on how that review committee would interpret the guidance and how somebody that's trying to renovate a building or make modifications to building would stay in compliance but there's room for there's room for conversation. Right there's definitely there's and that's that's why these those projects have to go to a committee of people. I can't make that decision because there's always room for some discussion. And you know when a building is on the historic register as well as in the designer relay there's sometimes a little tighter standard and the regulations. So, if you're making changes to a building that's on the national register historic district, there's is on that that register. They're going to look more closely at the very specific details on those buildings and are you changing those details are you removing those details versus a more modern building that hasn't been called out for being a prime example of its type. Thank you Meredith I'm probably the only one here that didn't know that appreciate appreciate the guidance. It's, it's, it's not a problem. You know the the original designer you regulations in the 70s were very very basic and and you know seven criteria with just a few sentences for each to explain it the new regulations are 14 pages and have a lot of detail to make sure that things are clear and there's less. There's actually less wiggle room there's still, you know, there's still judgment calls to be made, but it's a lot more predictable. And so these guidelines will hopefully further that even more as well as just put out information and education there's links in the online version to guidance from the National Park Service. There's also links to other resources all around the state that we're really hoping will help people be able to do their full project with a little more certainty. Okay, so give me a second here. Were there any other questions comments before I sort of moved on a little bit. Okay. So I've got just a couple of other things to highlight from the guidelines. We go back to the presentation. So is this the, this popping up on people screens. Okay. So, like I said, one of the things that is in the guidelines is guidance for people on what the design review process is. And in the, you know, this is just the PowerPoint but in the actual electronic internet based guidelines, when you click on some of these windows pop ups open up to actually explain even more what's going on in that step. So, you know, whether or not something requires administrative review which is just here in the planning department or fast to go to the committee, following that steps along to how you get to your permit. I've also got, like I said before, there's some really in depth explanation about what different key terms mean so terms that are used throughout the regulations are compatibility, essential form and character in kind replacement and matching quality. So in the online version if you just click, there's a little eye down here if you click the image, that's how you get this text explaining to you what that phrase or term means. And then we try to make sure that in a few different places we have links and phone numbers things so that they know who to reach out to. If anybody's getting in here without us having pointed them there in the first place. As I said, hoping to get your blessing city councils blessing. And then we would roll this out to a big roll out to the public. It probably be more of an online roll out we're not going to do big mailings like we did during the drafting process. But you know send it out from porch forum city website city Facebook, make sure people know that this document is out there as well as making sure that our design review committee has it in their pocket for when they're looking at applications. We do have a version that is printable that still has all the pictures. It's a little clunkier, but we did make sure we have a version that's set up that way. I don't really have a whole lot more to talk about unless you really want to dig more into the guidelines themselves which I'm happy to do but it really gets down into the weeds a little bit on that. You know unless there's a particular guideline and how we dealt with it that you want to take a look at. And then we have some code compliance information that is separate it's not something that's actually in the design review regulations so much. But they wanted to elaborate and let people take a look at examples of how to do a ramps or fire escapes, or, you know, egress windows that don't then mess with the character of a building ways to do it and ways that the design review committee would like. You know that's something that the design review committee can't say no to if it's a code compliance request, but to steer people in ways to be able to propose these things that still fit with a building or, you know, tuck it away somewhere and things like that. So there's some interesting things in here but I don't know what people want to look at it would take a really long time to go through all of it. So planning commissioners do you have any parts of the guidelines you'd like to focus on or anything that stood out to you. I mean, if we if we don't if you don't have anything then I can ask you some questions Meredith. Let me know if this is putting you in like a, I don't know, uncomfortable position but are there places that you're aware of that may have deviated from the regulations or have elaborated kind of freely. When it comes to the regulations. No, I mean that was that was the whole point this is guidance right and so the like the regulations right don't regulate paint color. There's a section in here on color but it's, it's, it's not, it's not it's never putting itself forward as this is what you must do it's a hey if you're interested in historic color here's some ideas. I can actually show you that page right now so you can get a sense for how we tried to approach this. Right, it starts out right at the beginning, the city of Montpellier does not regulate color. But some people want to select appropriate colors for the historic buildings. So then it gives all of these examples for, you know, your main color. If there's, you know, typical colors for other trim what those might be. And Queen Anna has a whole ton of different colors because they used a bunch of different colors. And these colors were just pulled from the national preservation brief from the national level. But, you know, there's a little bit of information here, right, about what to do when you're trying to strip off paint or deal with paint on a building. And again, it's not, it's not going. It's not stretching beyond the regulation. You know, we've got where is it. You know, the key thing that we have in the regulations is this do not use harsh cleaning or stripping treatments that can damage the original materials of a building. We don't want people to use these chemical compounds that are going to totally break down the brick or the original wood, if that can be avoided. But other than that, in the actual guidelines part, you're not going into color choices, things like that, that was all in the sort of the context section, you know, some additional bonus stuff that people want to make use of it. And where we tried to be really, really clear from the get go in the introduction. This is not, this is not regulations. This is information on a potential path to follow to meet the regulations. That doesn't mean that when a particular situation arises, that you're not going to need to weave in and out. You know, it's, that's why the regulations themselves are phrased the way they are as well. Give me one second, and I can pull up an example there. One of those regulations. And this is why we had to try and explain what some of these terms meant. Alright, so, you know, one of some of our key design regulations applicable to all projects. Exterior design and materials of new construction or alterations shall be consistent and compatible with the characteristics of the existing building or other properties in the district. That's the rule. So, a lot of people have no idea what that actually means. That's why we need the guidelines to give people context to give people examples of great. I just want to replace my door. How do I do that and meet that standard. I guess. I guess, technically, I should let Kirby say yes, but. It might be for, for Mike more, but you know, when we had the discussion of reducing the density requirements in the 1500 zoning area. It's been in place it looks like it doesn't quite overlap when I'm looking at the maps it doesn't quite overlap that same space but it's pretty close if these standards were applied. Does that answer that was an ARP or somebody you know there's concerns about design standards with with the density with with something like this answer that. Yeah, that was the one of the main concerns that came up is that. And that was a little bit of the conversation that we were trying to get out of the city council was whether or not they would be comfortable. And they could have expanded the design review regulations to apply to more neighborhoods, and they chose not to because they felt that it's been very contentious and that's why we, you know, in 2016 and 17 we took a revised design review. We had originally the planning commission had proposed to match design review boundaries to the historic district boundaries, and I was probably the biggest outpouring of committee and or public opinion, all negative on us doing that. It was just crazy. I mean I think we had 60 people here in city hall to go and talk about how they did not want to have design review regulations expanded to include some of the residential neighborhoods like Liberty and Loomis or they're in the historic district but they're not in design review and they were very much opposed to being moved in so it's always been a thing that there really wasn't the push but we have design review that includes part of the historic district and part of stuff that's not historic, and actually it's a big chunk that's not historic all of national life is not in the historic district, but is in design review. So we've got a lot of these areas that that are not historic so these design review rules are kind of broken into pieces, all projects have to meet a certain chunk. If you're historic then you're meeting this chunk as well as well and then if you're not historic, or you're doing something not historic then you're in a third box. It's a whole separate new construction box where it's much more about okay. Great. You still got to, you know, be compatible with your surroundings. Okay, so, so I'm hearing it would need that record you know that content from ARP, however expanding it would be contentious. Yeah, and that's you know it's, it's part of the part of the argument is you know ARP said we don't have strong enough design review rules I felt we have design review rules and I think they're they're very good I think they wanted us Congress for new urbanism is they're really focused on form based codes so I think we'd have to read carefully into what that document said as to whether or not what they really wanted to see was more form based code type rules. Form based code kind of works well for new builds. So if you, you know, they were designed for places you know we're building a new city in Florida so we'll we can do very form based codes and it becomes trickier to overlay form based codes on to existing development it's possible and everybody and people do it it's just a little bit more tricky and I think we would have to consider and the public would have to be willing to accept some design review rules being put in place. And I don't think it has to be a full form based code to to meet the concerns that they had. And I think with a few modifications we would be fine with in a lot of our areas but I think we just, I think we just have to think through all of the possible ways that this could be an issue and then find the least restrictive way of kind of getting those design review rules in effect. But one is I think just simply putting it into the design review district, because it is difficult. It's not difficult to get approved but it would be difficult to do something really bad. If you were in the design review district. Yeah, you can, there can still be stuff that people don't like, but it helps. It doesn't as as many people in the design review committee had said design review regulations do not guarantee good projects but they help weed out the bad ones. I mean, I think Mike covered it, but I would just just to be extra clear that report from Congress and your urbanism and an ARP was basically saying throw out a whole lot of zoning regulations and try to handle it all through design review, which as we know from our experiences is probably not going to go over well there but as also I think Mike was suggesting we have plenty of room though to get to make the suggestions that they that they're putting forward. I think that they can be compatible with what will work here. We'll just have to finesse it a little bit, but it's not going to be as simple as just design review everything probably when we get to it. But the fact that we do have design review over so much area is certainly really helpful in my mind to making some of the changes that they're suggesting, because because we do have that, you know, and so okay. So sorry for the tangent there, Meredith, but yeah, this is this is how design reviews going to comment are like near future discussions. Okay, so did you have anything more Meredith or are we still doing. Yeah, I don't have anything more to put forward, depending on you know it's like I said, going through the guidelines page by page just takes a long time so I don't know is y'all are really up for that you have other things on your agenda as well. I'm kind of curious about the process, since this isn't a rule adoption it's not like you have to have public hearings. I'm guessing you would want to discuss the guidelines again probably before you give them any kind of blessing because you all probably want to look at them a little more in depth in case you have some little tweaks or things that you don't like in there we this is something where we can make changes if we need to we we own the the language. It's a little tricky because we've had a hard time finding a way to host it ourselves so it's still hosted on the consultants website for the moment. But it is something where we can change some of the text. It's not something where we can probably do a massive rejigger because this was all funded with a grant. But if there are small things or photos that people want to tweak out or some language we want to tweak that is definitely something that could be done if on review people saw some things that they really didn't like. Yeah so I imagine how it would go down is if we do have things we'd like to change we could either send it back to stored preservation and let let them know, or we could just, you know, give our approval as a suggestion for city council but with the caveats of you know, ABC, not being things we love or something. I'm not sure. Mike and Meredith what you guys would prefer for us to do but I could see us doing either of those. Mike I'm sort of thinking the second option with the opportunity for HPC that submit its comments for work as the city council versus us trying to actually make changes. Before we find out if they, if that makes sense. Yeah, I think the planning commission comes up with it's going to be one where it's going to be helpful for the HPC to provide some comment or staff to provide some comment because it may just be a misunderstanding or something else that the planning commission members just need to be made aware of to understand the context. I think, yeah, I think, I think if the, yeah, I think so I think you, if you the planning commission want to, you know, take a couple weeks to look at it. Then we can put it on the agenda and, you know, people just going to say yeah we, I didn't see anything that jumped out at me, then you guys can vote it on through gives everybody a couple weeks to take a look at it. And then we can send it on to city council for their consideration. That that's what I'm thinking. We'll put it on our agenda for next time so folks will have between now and then to look it over more closely and if anyone has any reservations in particular about any parts of this, then just bring them to our next meeting and we'll handle it then. So we'll plan to vote next meeting that's all right with everybody. And unless we have any more questions for Meredith I think we could probably let her go. And Meredith used it a lot so and is using it and it's is getting to test it now so it's kind of getting some tests so I think that parts good I did review it very carefully. I'm not part of the development but I did go through it pretty carefully from, you know, understanding the, some of the history of the design review, and trying to kind of be an extra set of eyes at the last minute to look through it. And I made, you know, a set of recommendations and they they made all those changes so I think I think it looks pretty good at this point. So hopefully you guys don't find anything that's too out of line. It's an incredible piece of work that it's amazing. We had, we had a very good consultant who had done something similar but without the interactive aspect to it. And HPC really wanted something that let people find the information they needed specific to their project so I'm glad you like it. It's I think it's going to be a big benefit. Yeah, it does look tremendously helpful, especially for people who are have no familiarity and they're like all the background information seems that it's also nice looking. Well, another thing that's great is you know somebody comes in and they let us know what their project is we can go in print off a few select pages with the information pulled up for them print that off, and then also give them the link, so that they can dig around somewhere on their own, but it's it's got a lot of uses to it. I think it does a great job of just thinking back to a lot of the comments and criticisms we heard in the past like it felt like, or it seems like they listened and and it was a lot of like I don't understand what this, this means this is vague. So clue how I'm supposed to respond to this can you. Someone just tell me and it seems like they tried really hard to do that but but also provide the depth and the why and some of the context, but adding that interactivity is also important. Otherwise it just becomes this huge document that's impossible to find anything in to working that balance is hard and I think I'm impressed by the work that was done here. Thanks john. Yeah, I was just going to dovetail on that very quickly just say this might be the first regulations based guidance document that I actually enjoyed reading so I thought. I think I just think the layout is really well it's just really well done it's just it's very engaging and I think the examples. You know, that are given throughout are really helpful to sort of contextualize a lot of the regs so I think this is really great. So I will, I will have to pass those thoughts on to both the consultant and HPC. So there's a lot of work went into this one. So thank you. Okay, well thank you so much Meredith for your wonderful work on this also. And yeah we'll just we'll plan to vote next time give people some time and I will I will try to get that meeting I'll try and see if Eric's there too in case there are concerns that are raised that we can just address. You know at the meeting and explain things a little bit more if needed. All right, awesome. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot. Okay, let's move along on our agenda. Moving along requires a secret. I'm they were planning to join Mike. No, we were just going to be reviewing ourselves they're coming back in the next meeting. Okay, we did just one because we didn't have a quorum and we did miss a few people. I just wanted to make sure I put in there. The links to the current historic resources draft. Which they want us to kind of look at and go through and make some comments on. The historic resource draft. And then the other examples that they had provided us which I think was like Toronto and another one. So, just for Paul's benefit because he's on the historic preservation commission, although it's the historic resources draft that we're working on this is at this point we're doing the structure in the outline. And then we're going to have a template for the city plan so we're not really in the details. We have gone to the planning historic plane preservation commission, and we did the implementation strategy, and we did the written bulk of the chapter, which is going to be used to develop the plan and now we're kind of taking those pieces that HPC had already looked at to kind of go and build out the web page of the storyboard. And then we'll go back and show the HPC but we weren't going to get into the technical pieces of. Well, maybe we should talk about this or maybe we should talk about that in the H in this historic resources chapter. This is mostly for us to kind of look through, you know, do we want this section down here should we move this section above this section and and how does the chapter is kind of thinking about this not only for historic but how would this flow for would this also work for transportation and housing and energy and land use. So that's a little bit of what we're doing at this stage, and then se group will help us to populate all the rest of the chapters that we have that are done. And then hopefully, after the new year will be able to start rolling these chapters out and getting a lot of public input, and that's our, that's our goal at this point. So one thing that we talked about last time with them, we provide a lot of feedback about the headings, I think that their first draft, they didn't seem to to completely get power, how the chapter headings were meant to kind of be like, I don't know an anchor for structuring the chapter so they, they change those. And so my first question for you Mike is, it seems like based on the link that those are not changed yet. And I look last when I last looked at it I hadn't seen many changes from the last time but I also know they were going to be busy on another project which is why they were waiting, they were going to skip this meeting to go to the next one. Because they weren't going to have anything ready for this meeting because they they had worked for another project they were working on. Okay. So, this is what it looks like right now, of course, very early draft mode. This would be what the, the historic preservation chapter as we, as we put it together will look. This, you know it has these the photos it has the side by side stuff as you scroll down. And so I'm just kind of slowly scrolling. And then below that initial part with the blurbs and the photos, they have a map with, as I assume like just landmarks that are related to that chapter so in this case, and some some info. So I'll, I'll jump in real quick sorry Kirby just to go through and say I did reach out to Brian at the Regional Planning Commission, and he has sent those new data layers to Aiden so she has them. So, a number of the things that were on my punch list we did get through. So hopefully, they've got what they need to be able to start making adjustments to the maps that they have here to put in the, put in the new data. Great. So as you see like that, you know they flag some of these locations and it kind of hops around the map as you get to each one which is, I mean, it's kind of fun or action. And so what, so they label this the issues, what we had labeled as how this relates to other chapters, right. So the text down here is how it relates to other chapters. So, so we're going to probably change that, I imagine. And then background is the part of the chapter that discussed the this, I guess, I guess it's kind of background is this is like our intro section right Mike. I had a kind of expected when we put put stuff together that the background was going to end up being integrated into the introduction. So we kind of had some of these background things that we were just, it was a little bit more of in our written part was kind of a dumping ground of background information what studies have been done what things have been done and maybe some of these maybe not all of these. But here's some background information that we need to have that might that maybe we put in here, maybe we don't. So that was a little bit of my thought for the background as opposed to having a separate section and introduction. And then a separate section I would kind of expect the background to be above the issues. The maps are being integrated to because we're trying to tell a story that's our primary thing is in what is the story we want to tell about historic resources, and then make sure we add in enough background information into the general topic of what's important. And then the background information of what we've been doing to kind of add context. That was my, my thought and then we'd eventually get down to. All right, what are the issues, how is this related to other chapters and then what are our goals and what are we going to do about it and how are we going to link to our implementation strategies. I think I think this documented historic district with 535 contributing structures I think that is part of the background. That's a study that was done. Yeah, so what I'm hearing you say is this section up here where it kind of takes you to the map. That's where we put a lot of our background blurbs. And I think that that would be good. I do think though, I think I actually honestly, I'm just going to be brutally honest because we're trying to improve things. It's a little bit too fluffy for me right now. It's like it has four historic markers. It's like, it's like, that's a little fluffy for like, this is a city plan supposed to be something in my mind. So yeah, if we have more background stuff up here, and other people please feel free to jump in. If we had the background covered through the map process. I think that this could be made. Really, really a lot better that way. And then fall and then having that and then not having a background section here, right. That's what you're saying like. And then instead of the issues we can have like a way that we signify this section is about how it relates to other parts of the plan. We didn't come up with a great word in our last meeting that like a short succinct way to say this is about the other, how this relates to the chapters. Cross cutting issues. I think a little bit of what we were saying was it's not necessarily issues that section of how this relates to other chapters sometimes talks about how this supports other chapters now is why we're a little bit trying to. The word issues was what was hanging us up a little bit. I mean, sometimes things aren't issues sometimes they they support this this really is supporting. The word that comes to my mind it's not perfect maybe but like synergies or something like that is I think more descriptive of what this is trying to say. And did the did the language for the issues did that come from what we already had or did they just write that themselves I can't remember. They peeled the issues out but they didn't take the. Like I said didn't take the positive so they really did I mean when it says it's the issues they went through our section that says how this compares to other chapters and they plucked out the things that were negatives. So I think when we wrote it we were trying to think holistically of well you know how does this also support other things so. These are these are because I. Yeah, okay, because I well when they're put in bullet points I had a reaction I didn't really. I didn't really like the bullet points of the issues. I thought the other parts look fine but I welcome you know Kirby's suggestions to but. I guess this was already in the chapter the issues but somehow in bullet points I didn't really. I thought it was too sort of simplified to me but. And I think that's what they're going to be looking for and that's what we're looking for is you know I don't like the bullets that's a perfect commentary on it. And then review and see is there a different way because they were just trying to show a number of ways ways of displaying information. And we can go through and make an evaluation of, you know, I really don't like the bullets, or at least not in this context, I think we should find a different way of presenting. You know it could pop up as you're scrolling down it could pop up in various boxes of how it's relating to these different items. And maybe we didn't have this in the chapter originally but I mean always for me like the tension with historic preservation is. You know, we also have a big need for housing and affordable housing and housing that's affordable to maintain so I. I don't know to me that's a big relation to other issues in our city plan, but maybe we didn't have that in the HP chapter and I just forgot that was in there. I think there's, there's got we had to mention that I would think, or maybe we thought of it is just too obvious. I don't know, but I'm with you. If we don't have that somewhere. It's worth mentioning. No, I'm pretty sure it is in there. Yeah, that tension that we're we're trying to balance it I mean I think it was pretty clear actually and as it was talking historic preservation and energy conservation it was very clear about this balance of these the historic the embedded carbon which it talks about in that third, you know, and tearing down these buildings to build new ones, you know, from an energy standpoint you're better off to renovate and maintain these historic buildings but at the same time. The windows are inefficient and they're, they've got lead paint and they've got, you know, how do we, how do we both keep keep it for its, its energy that is embedded in its already construction and at the same time how do we improve the energy efficiency of actually using it. And that's this balancing act that we have. I think about about feedback I mean they've already heard some of the stuff from us before the next meeting. Like just for like what we're doing right now. Should we write down some notes to send along to aid and before the next meeting as like a productive use of our comments right now. Yeah, people have them certainly get them to me by next week. I'm going to be working on a couple of other chapters this week, but my plan was to dive in and do a deep dive on this. Next week, early next week, and maybe I'll get to it later this week. I'm working with Jake, quite a bit on public safety. And I have a meeting on with two of the folks for community services this week so I'm trying to really work on community services and public safety chapter this week, and that's going to probably take a lot of my time. But I do want to get in on this of other people have ideas and thoughts, like you said just anything. And as and they were saying this anything. I don't like the font. I don't like the layout, or I don't like the bullets or I think that slider bars wonky and doesn't really do much for me and I don't think we need to be dealing with the slider bar. They just put a bunch of things in here to see what we thought. I think part of it does get into a little bit of the of the detail and I, what I was going to try to read for was the story and for in the back of my mind I want to be able to write down this is the story we're trying to tell and then be able to go through this and say, we are telling this story. Like you said do we really need to talk about the historic markers, probably not. I think it's, it's highly relevant to the story we're trying to tell about historic resources and why they're important. It may be a side note, you know, there are historic markers or, you know, I mean if they want to mark where the historic markers are on the map here, but but yeah as far as the text that people are reading about. I think you're putting a little differently than me but I think we're saying the same thing it's like this stuff's getting in the way of the story. And I thought we laid out the story with the chapter and the and the way that we did our goals and such. Yeah, if I come up with if I come up with some comments I'll shoot them out to the planning commission shoot them out to all of you guys to take a thought, you'll give it a thought and then we could send that to any group and get a working on it I don't think it'll take them long. I think a lot of these. A lot of the maneuvers don't take long once you've got stuff going. So, I don't think it's going to take them a long time to go through and make a bunch of edits. I was going to ask as far as a process here. So, anyone, you know, give your feedback give your impressions to Mike, and the next week. If you have them, and that copy everyone else, like just so that we're all aware of what each other are saying, like, you know, copy the entire planning commission and then Mike yeah if you would please just copy all of us and what you're going to see, so that so that we're all using, you know, it's more efficient. First do that. So let's do that, but also just quick reminder, don't get into a discussion and email chain because of the open meetings laws to share those and then whatever we need to discuss we will we will discuss at the meetings. When this comes up. So, so let's plan to do that. I'm definitely going to, yeah I'll send my comments to you Mike then in that case. So okay so anyways let's move along here, the issues. Actually that's more like synergies. The background yet can be moved up into the map, for the most part, I think. And she did change this because I think this, or did she not. Yeah this should have been aspirations and goals. Yeah, so so yeah so what it act what it is is the other the subheader here is the aspiration. And then the things below are the goals with their edits I think we can, I think we might go through and make some tweaks. It's accurate. And what we did one thing that we discussed last time was having in this section, a way for people to easily access the strategies from the goals here. So the people who are interested in a particular goal. I think it's important that they can conveniently discover what we're planning to actually do about it right here where they're reading the goal. So we talked about that last time. And Aiden's feedback was she's still learning like what our websites capable of I think to know what the options are for different ways to link from here or I'm saying link but you know there's different ways to provide that information here. Is everyone like, okay with that kind of approach for this or what are people's thoughts about how we're going to display our aspirations and then goals and then strategies here. Yeah, because this wasn't you're saying. Oh, go ahead. Okay, you're saying that would be like a link in the goals that goes to the more specific. Tangible goal. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's, I mean, like I'm not, I don't have a certain particular thing envisioned. So I'm trying to be, you know, just open minded about the presentation side of it. But I do think it's important for when, when the public when a user is interacting with the goal here that they're able to conveniently find the strategies from that same place. Oh, the strategies right okay yeah yeah that makes sense. I just wanted to clarify sounds good to me. I think what we had talked about at the last meeting was maybe having. I mean, we're going to have a separate. We're going to go to a separate page or a separate place where we have all of that Excel table that'll come out and in a different program, you know, with the way john had showed it before. But within here, we're just trying to you know that's for people really want to dig in deep and understand all of our goals and all of our strategies but in here we just wanted to be able to go through and say, you know, I think the way it was it's written in in here it's understand appreciate and preserve. So I think these headers you know understanding what are we going to do to understand that you might have some buttons that if you click on it it'll just pop up a little box that would go through and say, you know, engage might have public outreach program, you might be able to click on it and go through and say, you know, the Historic Preservation Commission will annually be going through and doing, you know, these these types of efforts in order to accomplish these goals. You know, it'd be just a pop up box and you could click on the different boxes and it would just tell you briefly what each one of these things is that we're going to do in order to understand our resources in order to appreciate, have the community appreciate our resources and what do we do to preserve our resources, but it's not the full report that is in the Excel tables that are the implementation strategies. And I think if we do that we might not need to do as you scroll down Kirby, you know the the how do we get this done that was originally a summary of the strategies and maybe if we're having those little pop up boxes maybe we don't need these down here. Mike actually correction, the content that they put under this. It sounds like it's the strategies based on the heading they used but this content is actually the, what have we done in the past. Oh, yeah it is like this, this content is like you know if you remember from when we wrote the chapters there was a section each chapter of about, you know what have we, what have we done up until now. So this is more like the history of what's been done, and I don't know where we got to with our discussion last time, but it sounded like people were in agreement that this can be moved down because this isn't the main, a main part of the story we're telling. That was my recollection. Yeah, I mean the Historic Preservation Commission in the CLG I think are important they could be up top somewhere not not at the top of that discussion, but I think they're important pieces to have in your introduction and your background to talk about who, you know who are the players. And in this case the Historic Preservation Commission, as a certified local government is a pretty is a significant player in this and maybe that or maybe it is down here. You know, I think we'll just have to kind of look at the context and see if it makes sense to talk about the players. Up here or down at the up top or down when we talk about the strategies. Yeah, I think that it put, I mean putting it up here. It is more helpful for the story than some stuff that is here right now. So yeah, I think that could be a appropriate place for it. So the question about the, you know, that whatever this becomes, as opposed to the spreadsheet and the documents that we've approved in the past. I know this is more policy related than it is regulatory but people do use these when they come to public meetings they cite them. What's the authoritative word is will it be the online with online content, or will it be, you know the excels and the other things that we've worked on. It's going to eventually be the adoption of what's on the website and what we have in the Excel table is going to be used to populate the implementation strategy in the website so all that information will still be captured. We just built it in Excel and in a Word document and we're taking those and embedding them in here. And that's why I mean I think that we should make sure that a secret realizes that that, like, you know, we welcome like wordsmithing that that helps make things readable plain language. But the substance of it is does have like actual legal weight to it so they should be aware of that when they're if they're going to change something. And I think at this step they're looking at the like we said we're kind of looking at it as a template and deciding, you know, because probably if we have a how, how do we get this done we're going to have that in every chapter. And we'll talk about what commission so in transportation you'll have the transportation infrastructure committee and the, and the other transportation committee, you know, energy will talk about me act here. There's, you know, there can be a repeating part of this that the question is, do we want to talk about these in our chapter is this important. And the main reason I asked and I wasn't on the original discussion of this but I didn't work. And I look what's in the folder and I look at what's here. It's more than just wordsmith right it's like, it doesn't really look the same. It's almost like totally different. So, I just want to make sure whatever we're doing that, you know, we spent many months working on that so. Yeah, we'll need we'll need to make sure as we approve this as it goes that that they're sticking to, you know, our intention. I'm a little bit of a mixing because when we when we hired them one of the big things we hired them was that you know we're this is a new. This is a new media that we aren't familiar with on you know how do you communicate well in a storyboard format. We're not experts in doing that, and they are so part of their job was to kind of go through and take what we had written, and then start to turn it into something that would function well in a storyboard and if they're. You know, obviously, if they're taking too much. I don't know, artistic license, then we'll just have to go and make sure they understand that no we're kind of wanting to go back and but we'll want their input on whether or you know, ultimately they're the experts and how to communicate in this format and we need to kind of work with them to go through and say okay. Here are the rules you should be following and then we should go be able to go back and say right well this is what we wrote and this is how I would adjust it to fit the best way to communicate. So I think they'll be a little bit of a balancing a little bit of back and forth. Because we do have to, we can't just write text and drop it in there like a big written chunk. Or at least that wasn't our intent to just use a big written chunk with some pictures it was really kind of meant to fit this storyboard format. Yeah, I'm confident that this is going to work out wonderfully. But this is like our first steps this is why we're going through. This first example. So moving on. So how will we measure progress. And this one I think I'd mentioned was was the only this is the only chapter we talk about those. And I think that was going to be a place where we're going to have to either draw draw a line or move things out because we really we we can't have anything that changes we can't have anything dynamic in a city plan it's got to all be static. So, linking to things that track progress. And it may be one that, you know, I'm thinking a little bit. You know, maybe this is a place where we get through all these other things let's let's approve the plan and then we can always work on these benchmarks and other points afterwards because so many times city councils and Kirby you've been through this. And so that city council can go through and take things back out and change everything. So sometimes coming up with a benchmark it might be a little bit better to have them approve it in the same way that we just looked at a design review guideline there's no sense building a design review guideline until after they adopt the design review rules. I think, let's see where they end up with their where they where they end up approving and then we can always come back afterwards to go through and say Okay, if this is if this ends up being your benchmark because we could end up. They can end up we could think this is what the goal is going to be so here's a good benchmark. They change the goal now we have to go back and change the benchmark or else we've got things that don't match up. Yeah, I think it'd be fine to wait on that. I do like the idea of having the section. And then if we were if we're trying to make this like a friendlier kind of subheading it's like something like how are we doing or something like that. And then each chapter will be a bit different, but I think a lot of our strategies lend themselves to a sort of how are we doing approach because a lot of the strategies are about increasing this or you know, furthering that or whatever. So anyway, I'm with you Mike that we can, we don't have to spend a lot of time developing that out right now. Anybody have any more thoughts or things they want to discuss now. It's totally okay to take your time and then just send feedback later to Mike and copy all of us. Next meeting we Yeah, I understand it hasn't changed we are planning to hear from se group in our next meeting so they'll be responding to the feedback that we're going to be providing. And we're also going to vote on the store preservation guidelines. And we'll probably also try to look at Mike you think one of the outstanding chapter aspiration goal strategies will be ready to look at by then. Okay, maybe, maybe at least we could try to shoot for having aspirations and goals. Or is that worth it. Okay. Yeah, no I don't think so I don't think we. We did not. So you were just to clarify what you said about arts and culture is. The thought you had is that you'd like for me to flush out more of the chapter implementation strategy, and then you were going to pull together the chapter. Yeah, so we and if you recall we did. Alright, there's like I don't know four or five paragraphs of the chapter. And then you had talked about possibly like filling in some things that you were thinking about. But, but if, but if that's not something that you're wanting to do. Then yeah I can try to flush it out some more. It's also fine for it to be a not long chapter, in my mind, at least, especially since as we see you like when it's being adapted to the story board. Things are being kept pretty short. Like I said, I think that piece is going. It's just whether I get to wrap them up. I'm being a cemetery and. creation. So you're saying. You're going to get a number of pieces of services that you can start to look at. Okay. Sounds good. All right, so that's what I think we, we know what we're what's in for next week. So yeah, folks, get your feedback about the two things tonight. Ready, if you have it. And I think we're good for now anybody have anything, any more instant feedback about the website before we move on to the minutes. Okay. Let's move on. So yeah, let's let's go ahead and just get these minutes done. Okay, so that's it for this week. We didn't have any minutes for September 12 because we didn't have minutes for the other meetings because we didn't have quorum. So if everybody can take a look at, like, I think there were minutes for the 26, which is helpful for people to get caught up, but we don't need to approve those. We just need to prove the 12. I did have one small thing on the 12th I think Marcel his name was Marcel. It matters, but it just looked funny. But otherwise I move approval of the minutes from September 12. Oh, second. Okay, so we have a motion to approve with the, the, the one correction to the name. From Ariane and we have a second from John. Do people need more time before we vote. Okay. Those in favor of approving our own motion say aye. Aye. Most. Okay, so the minutes are approved with the one correction. Thanks for catching that. That's all we've got for tonight. All right. We have a motion to adjourn. I move to adjourn. I don't have a second. Just has to stay. What would happen. Good bye. Kirby just makes a declaration that this is hereby closed. I'm going to, I'm going to take John's joke as a second to Ariane's motion to adjourn. Those in favor. And those in favor say aye or cough or make any noise or don't make any noise. Aye. I have a great night. Unanimous. Have a good night. Thanks guys. Thank you. Thank you for seeing us. See you next Monday.