 I guess I'll call this meeting of the development or reboard to order. Introduce the members starting on my right. Hi, Jean Leon. Kevin McConnell. Meredith Crandall, staff. Rob Goodwin, the chair. Chair now and vice chair. We're live. Abby White. And we have nobody on our zoom platform this evening. Would you have a special guest, Mike Miller? She'd like to introduce yourself real quick. Mike Miller, planning director for the city. Wonderful. We have Joe Kiernan just joining us. So I'm sure this would be very brief tonight for Meredith. We will check the box. And we are talking about rules and procedures. And we're going to be talking about rules and procedures. We're going to be talking about rules and procedures. We wouldn't want to skip a beat. Alrighty. So this is going to be for anybody who is watching our. DRB meeting tonight remotely via Orca media. We don't have any applications on our agenda tonight, but if you still want to log into the meeting. And participate remotely to be able to ask questions. You can type this link into your web browser. And that will bring you right into the meeting. I will see you on a committee and I'll let you in. Or you can call this phone number. Plug in this meeting ID when prompted. And you'll be able to hear what's going on over your phone, as well as ask questions. If you have any problems accessing the meeting, please email me. If you have any questions, please email me at mcrandle at Montpelier. I will be monitoring my email throughout the meeting. We're going to skip most of this stuff. Because you don't have anybody on remotely, but if somebody does attend log on remotely, please know you're turning on your video as optional. You don't have to do that part. I'll now hand the meeting back over to the chair. All right, thank you, Meredith. Agenda approval. Move to approve the agenda. Second. Motion by Sharon second by Kevin. All those in favor of approving the agenda say hi. Hi. Wonderful. Agenda is approved. Okay. Yeah. So we just wanted to have a quick meeting this evening, maybe like an annual cleanup. Yeah. I was just talking, it's been since 2018. Since the rules of the VRB were updated. A pandemic is thrown in the middle of that. We just wanted to go through and make sure that. Things still make sense. I don't think we need to take a whole lot of time. We also have Mike here to give an update on the. And it's going on the planning commission. Ask some questions. And so I guess with that, I'll hand it over to Mike and let you go ahead. Did you skip something? One of my things was to move the minutes to the end. Still, I always want to do it. All right. It's the flickets of minutes here from November 7th. Anyone have any provisions or comments? Seeing none. Motion for approval. So moved. Motion by Kevin. Second. Second by Abby. All those in favor of proving the minutes for November 7th. Hi. Hi. And it's approved for November 7th. Now you can talk like. Now I can talk. Okay. So Meredith asked. That I kind of come in just to give a quick update on. A little bit of what the planning commission is doing a little bit of what planning commission. So the planning commission is just another. It's kind of the compliment body to the development review board, but they handle the policy side. So while you are. The quasi judicial board and forcing and administering the zoning regulation is the planning commission's job to, they have two major responsibilities. The first one is to adopt the city plan. And the second one is to adopt any zoning regulations that help implement that plan. So any zoning regulations that are passed in any amendments that are passed, I'll have to be consistent with. With the city plan. And there's legal requirements in there for both documents. But really that's the, the purview. That's where the kind of. The two boards here overlap is that they're going to write the rules that you guys are going to be responsible for with the city plan. And then there's also some things that need. Clarification or editing or fixing or whatever that comes up. Those are things that you could get to marriage. She'll give them to me. And then the planning commission will consider them or go back and try to make revisions that will. Improve the process for you. So as you go forward, not necessarily new rules of procedure. You guys can do whatever you want with your rules of procedure within the guidelines under the state laws. But the rules of procedure are really different. So for example, chapter four of your regulations, you've got something like, boy, this would be easier if we could make this edit. Sometimes you can. Sometimes you can't depending on state law. But some things where you do have flexibility, we can go through and make those edits. So. That would be kind of a big. Kind of a big overarching thing between the planning commission. plan that we were talking about mentioning. It's been a long time. It was originally kind of adopted. Well, it wasn't kind of adopted. It was adopted in 2009 originally. It's been around since the 1950s. It's been periodically updated. Last major revision was in 2009. We readopted it in 2017 before it went and expired because you have to do it every eight years. So we're trying at this point to adopt the new plan. We're doing comprehensive review. And we're hoping that 2023 is going to be a big year where we're going to be rolling out a number of chapters and get hopefully approval by the end of 2023. That would be a really big accomplishment if we can get it done next year. A lot of that has to do with how long it takes to get through the public process. And that takes as long as it's going to take, which anyone who did new the zoning provisions knows that that took a long time. The city plan update can also probably take a long time. So we'll see how that goes. Those are the big things that we're working on. We usually do one, sometimes two zoning updates a year. While we're doing these other things, we'll squeeze them in. So we haven't done one since March, maybe. So if there is a set of provisions, we have Meredith and I have a little running list. We haven't seen anything that's come up to really push us to get that next round of amendments going. But if things come up, we'll get another set queued up. So when you do that revision, do we get like, is there an addition to our book? Is there? Oh, of the reg changes? Oh, yeah. Every time we issue new regulations, we circulate all those around. And we usually, I try and give previews when we know what sections we're working on next. And when that process gets going. So yes, no, you will get, like you said, there hasn't been a big stumbling block issue in the last several months. So we've been able to focus on other things. There are some provisions we know we need to work on. But there are either things that it's not a major priority or we have to wait for other issues to resolve before we can really dig into what we're going to make for changes. Is there a kind of a theme as to the kinds of things that you're finding that pop up as something that's worthy of consideration for revising? For zoning revisions? Yes. Usually they, a lot of them are technical. They'll come up as Meredith or Audra are actually enforcing the rules. And they'll say there's, you know, we've got an inconsistency or it's clearly, you know, A, B and C are being talked about, but it never really considered D. And we have a D application. And what do we do? It doesn't fit into this other box. So we need to make a revision. So a lot of them are those types of things that we did. And some of them, when the big zoning, so our major zoning went through in 2018, and that was after seven years of work. Even when that passed, we knew in the office, there were a number of chapters that needed work and that included, and they're still in need of work. We still know the sign regulations need work. We still know the subdivision regulations need work. But at the time, we're working with a consultant where we're getting things done, we got things to a point where, you know, don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. And we passed what we had and then knew we would go back for some regular, some changes. So we know there's some in there that could be better. You know, in particular the sign ordinance would be much better, could be much better. The subdivision regulations that are in there are a little more, I would call them suburban than they are urban, that they're really kind of set up for a different type of community. So I think I had a little bit more new development versus infill or whatnot. Yeah, really that up for, oh, so when you're going in there with your 20 acres and you're going to subdivide it into 80 lots, this is how you would do it. And we're kind of like, we haven't had that in decades. I don't know if we'll have that, except for maybe Elks Club. And even that won't be that big for subdivision. But that's the type of things. It really needs to be more focused towards a more urban environment. Yeah. And so, you know, we, those of us who've gone through all that, we've found workarounds, we've found ways to make it work, but we'd like to clean it up. And that's, you know, the big, oh, this doesn't work. Shortly after I got hired, we did the whole, oh, right, steep slopes. We can't ban all construction on steep slopes and the mountainous river valley. So we had a big deal. That was a really big deal. So we've tried to deal with those kinds of, you know, issues where it just put massive breaks on projects that really shouldn't have had them. And now we're dealing with a little bit more of the finesse issues. So I guess, yeah, one thing that has seemed like over the last few years, we've been sort of trying to address some of these technical issues in a piecemeal fashion. And, you know, I think that like, maybe more generally, and I'm kind of interested in the important board members on that, is that it seems like we often get into situations where our hands are tied and it's so clear in the regs that like, you know, Mayor, that's no discretion to do anything different. Like we, there's a board of no discretion to do anything different. It says what it says. And like we end up having to make a decision at which maybe we're not happy with, but it's what the regs say that we're supposed, you know, it's supposed to do. And that it just seems like there should be a process at which this board can take, you know, any legitimate application at face value and look at the facts and make it, you know, make a decision as to like how to get around a, oh, I don't know, I'm going to give a fictitious, you know, example, say the regs say that you can not develop if the slopes are above 11%, but they show 10%. You know, it's like this board should be able to sort of make a discretionary decision as to like clearly in the regs that like, oh, obviously like the intent here was something different. I just feel like there's a lot of instances where we don't necessarily have that latitude because it spells out specific members, numbers and metrics. And I mean, I would, I just would, I would do decide with that line was though on what, where our discretion goes. I mean, I think that that's, that's a, yeah, that's a good question. That's a good question. But I think that in many ways, like there are a lot of resources go into us having meetings and us being a board of seven and us having having a quorum and like, you know, review of evidence and comment by the public and that there's a big process there. And so that like, I think that by going through that process, in many ways, you can afford us to have a little bit more leeway into taking a application where they're hung or hung up on like a specific number, a specific metric and to be able to get around it. Cause I don't know, these regs are like 250 pages or whatever, you know, long, like we're never going to like fix every single, you know, sentence to like be able to spell out every single, every single scenario. And I think you can set the bar pretty high for like, when we go down the road of using our discretion, I mean, you do that, but sometimes I feel like sometimes it's a dead end and we don't have anywhere to go. Yeah, we've tried as we run into these, we certainly try to go through and put, make things more flexible where that ability exists. I think of like the waiver for footprint size, there's a footprint requirement says, you know, maximum footprint for this neighborhood is 2,500 square feet. But you can get a waiver, the DRB can issue and it can, it's an unlimited waiver. You can get a waiver up to any size and the conditions are, has to, can't impact the character of the neighborhood. So then you guys can make that determination. And so those are good. And as we've gone through and kind of tackled these, and a little bit of this comes down to having a set of regulations that were, it's kind of like writing, writing a story or something by committee. And the same thing happens in writing zoning, it isn't written by one person. You know, it's a consultant, it's been amended by the planning commission, it's then been further amended by city council. And so things kind of get jumbled in and not everything works together. And in certain cases, as I said, with the 2018, we knew looking at it in 2018, that's not the way I would do it. But we've been working on this for seven years, and we need to get this across the finish line, and then go back afterwards and make the repairs. And some of these were things we could foresee, we were like, it's going to be unlikely that happens. And it happens. And we're like, all right, well, now we're going to have to deal with it. But that gives me the excuse to go back to the planning commission and say, you know, we knew we recognize this was possibility. Now it's here, we've got to deal with it. But I think the revisions we've been making have in general been pretty good. We haven't had too many of the revisions that we've gone through, where we've gotten done with it and said, we got to go back and revise the revision. So I think it's going to take some time. The pieces we've gone through, we've been very deliberate and careful to really add more text to think about it, make it more flexible. Oh, as best we can. And again, we talk about it at a big level as well of what can we move down and make it administrative, so that way it doesn't come to you at all. I mean, there's sometimes you guys get applications where it's kind of like, what's everybody doing here? This is so obvious. There's no reason for it to be here. And those are the ones that we're trying to move. And for folks who haven't been here, back in 2017, there were, the city issued 146 building permits or zoning permits. And 72 of them went to the DRB and 74 of them were administrative permits. And last year, there were about 140 permits issued, and only 22 of them went to you. So we vastly pulled things back and made them administrative. So we've certainly cleaned up that portion of it, but there's still some things that get through that were like, yep, this has to go, you know, which actually didn't need a permit at all, the cliff street for the, just that one driveway, temporary access going up a hill, it's going to impact a 30% slope. And we're all like, oh, I mean, that one turned into its own thing. But again, you get these small permits, small projects that eventually you kind of, we try to work ways out where we can make the process better for everybody. Absolutely. Did you have a specific areas where you thought that in particular? Well, I think that that application Mike just spoke of Steve Slopes was, you know, was particular. I mean, I think that like fences or maybe another area where we don't have a whole lot of leeway into how those are, you know, done, not to say that I think that everyone should be able to put a 10 foot 12 fence in front of their house. However, I don't, I don't see a reason why the board should be prohibited in a certain instance, with a nice application that's, he has good, you know, good merits from issuing some sort of waiver that's greater than what's afforded in the right. There are some waivers for that in there. They're very specific, but I think it was like 10%, like 10% of the height or something like that. That's for your standard one. If there's other specific conditions where like you're on the highway or you have a situation where you're on a slope, right, and you're dealing with a slope, it should where they do allow the higher fences. But yeah, I mean, that was one, if you have specific things that you think would make the regs better, or you want that percentage height to be different, those are things that we can always investigate and push forward to planning commission. Like if anybody, any members of the board are like, this really doesn't make sense. I'd like to see something different as individuals, you can put that forward, you know, or as a board as a whole, talk about it. Those are always options. I guess, I don't know, just just just to speak freely, you know, as the chair, I would be in favor of a general waiver with some rigorous criteria for the board to evaluate. We got into a unique situation that we could fall back on. And yeah, it would be some rigorous criteria, but I think it would avoid us from having to sort of like, I don't know, be up to in a situation where the planning commission came up with some, you know, information that or some rules that, you know, the situation that couldn't be anticipated. And I feel like sometimes we don't have that flexibility. What are you thinking? What would be an example of that? I mean, just hypothetical objects. Well, I think an example of a fence is, you know, it's perfect. Someone, you know, comes in and wants to build a four foot fence with a vegetated trellis on top of it in a very, you know, like a sort of place of town that maybe needs some greenery and needs some, you know, sort of screedscaping and improvement. And, you know, it's a great addition to the community, but we're not allowed to prove it because, you know, the fence is going to be over the height at which is allowed specifically in the reds and like, we can't issue issue a waiver. I mean, not just one, but I think my point is that like, I don't know what the specific things, if we knew what the specific thing was, we would write the regs to account for the specific thing. And I feel like our job as the board is to just sit here and to be able to like address those issues where there's irregularity and there are issues that could happen. I totally agree with that. But I have yet to see a zoning board have a universal waiver authority. And that's also just as a note, when we get those kinds of applications, a lot of the time we filter them out on our end. And sometimes we go, well, yeah, that makes sense. And so that becomes part of the next round of zoning regulations changes where we tweak it. If it's something that really makes absolute sense to have allowed, we've done some things like that where people just held up their projects until we changed the zoning regulations. Sure. I mean, I guess I wouldn't call that process, necessarily a very efficient process. But it's also, when you're talking about specific numbers, speaking from a supporting the decision point of view, if you start just throwing in sort of more amorphous waiver criteria, you start getting decisions that are not supported by the regs, which are what your authority are, and make them more appealable. Because they say you're exercising too broad of a discretion, right? So just throwing that out there. Oh, I think it's a valid point. Yeah, I kind of feel like in a lot of circumstances, numbers are difficult to get around. But a lot of times the language, you can enest it a little bit. And it gets to the point where if somebody were to appeal it, they'd probably win. And so then it's really almost like a general waiver of sorts, where you just kind of throw it out there and you see if anyone cares. And usually, nobody cares. Like the that overhang over those compsters for the little old ladies, they're like, I don't think we really followed the letter of the law on that one at all. Sure, we just kind of took it apart ourselves and say, this makes sense for them to build this thing. So we're just going to build it. And we're going to see if anyone's big enough jerk to say something about it. And no one did, right? Now it's built. And so that was an instance where it kind of just, I mean, you know, finessed our language a little bit. Because if I remember correctly, they were not allowed to build that thing, according to like the letter of law. And we just let them build it. And the key is that there's an appeal process. And that's what like gives it a mandate, you know, like, it went out there, it went up on, you know, online, anyone could have seen it, anyone could have complained and they would have been legally able to do so. But no one cared. So it slipped through the cracks. And here we are now they have covering over their dumpster. So it was a fence, right? There's some thing, some reason they couldn't feel it. It was too close to the road or something, I forget what it was, but yeah, be converting the fence to a other kind of structure. But is it really? It was really, yeah, it was, it was silly. It was basically like, sure. Exactly. Oh, it's a no Franklin. So I get your point with like, when it's numbers, those are hard to get around. Like you can't build a building that's taller than 35 feet, someone wants to build a 30 foot and a half foot tall building. And although there are like 10% waivers in there, you know, the numbers can be difficult to get around. But at the same time, it kind of gives us an out also sometimes, you know, like the last meeting we had where everyone showed up to try and complain about that little apartment building they want to build. And, you know, the regs give us a reason to tell them all, sorry, there's nothing we can do, you know, because we aren't really, we don't really don't have that much power. Like we really just kind of sit here and take it when the public wants to yell at somebody. Take it on the chin. It's the, the PUD. Yep, the PUD where they want to build the five units in the existing barn. And yeah, there are a lot of aspects of this job that are kind of frustrating. Well, especially the part like I want to give these people a lot of suggestions sometimes and like that is just not an inner scope of work. So we cannot do that. And I want to tell them like there's a way you could do this, you know, but be like this, you know, we can't do that. We really do just have to, a lot of times, I mean, 90% of our work is done by Meredith and the staff. 95%. Most weeks, 99%. We're very, we're very fortunate here in Montpelier to have that asset. Yes, can rarely get an opportunity to actually do anything. And me, and that's probably, you know, ultimately a good thing because one day we'll all be dead and gone, but the planning commission DRB will still be here, you know, and you don't know who's going to end up on these boards, they get appointed and you don't want like some guy who's got a buddy like, oh, if I go on the DRB, because I know the mayor, you know, I get appointed and we can make this happen, you know, because there's this variance, this general waiver, you know, it's right now it's fine to have something like that, but it's not written for just today, you know, it's written for kind of foresee into the future, you know, forever, which is impossible, which is why it keeps on getting rewritten. But yeah, I get what you're saying. I do wish sometimes people could just say like, Oh, well, let me bring it before the board and see what they think, you know, but I don't know if that's really feasible to do that. That's done. Don't see it really. And I do think that we have a lot of leeway when we want to, but the ultimate check is the public, they get the complaint. And if they have valid complaint, then we're kind of kind of in trouble, I think, especially when they bring in lawyers and stuff that's pretty intimidating. Probably the biggest place you have power is when you when you're looking at a project that has something that has as a requirement, the character of the area, that's probably the area that I mean, you're you guys are the the board of reasonable persons. So we merit deals with objective standards, you guys deal with some subjective standards, most of what you should be looking at are subjective. And it's hopeful that the rules have been written with enough guidance that everybody kind of uniformly says, yeah, that's that meets it, that meets it, that meets it. And where you've got the most discretion is when it comes down to something as vague as the character of the area. And it is a vague term, but it's a term of art. There's a lot of legal things and Meredith can get into it as your as you debate those. But that's where you've got the most flexibility. That's where we can really give the least advice from staff standpoint is what the public and the applicant and you interpret as what is the character of that neighborhood. How do I define that neighborhood is it just that street, because some neighborhoods in the zoning are quite big. I mean, you look at the rights filled neighborhood is everything north of Nature Center. So that's that's a huge, huge area of what's what's the character of that area. You know, in some places, there's little little places where lots of small houses are together, there's some places that are, you know, out by themselves on 50 acres. So what's the character. And I think that's when when it comes to you guys, it's like, All right, well, we've got a proposal here, it might be okay on this property in this instance. But in the same neighborhood, it's not okay in this parcel. And that's part of kind of what what goes in for that character of the neighborhood. And I want to have any more questions for Mike. Yeah, just one kind of procedural question. I know that periodically in meeting kind of not big things, but that there's all sort of go, oh, what? Yeah. And it's like, no, that's going to change. I have the sense that you're keeping track of those narratives that when you get that that comes up that you keep track of that. And it goes to Mike and some fashion or another. Yep. No, that's my my regulation book is marked up with all sorts of things. All the little things and the big things and then big things get reported to make. And then as we go along, when we go to the next round of changes, we usually look at our books together and make sure we've grabbed everything we can. Yeah, I guess the only other thing is that, is that maybe we could do sort of the same thing around where places where you'd be like, this is the place where we would have had, we should have some room, you know, and we don't right now, we could say like, can you look at this and figure out how to give us a little bit of wiggle room near, because this is ridiculous. You know, when we'd like to keep track of that, and then we could shift it that way. Yes. And there are times the planning commission has tried, and it hasn't gotten past the city council too. So they're different. I'm sorry. Different times times that the planning commission does things and it doesn't get through city council. So it's not always, you know, that that it goes through most notably the one was the the shading criteria, which was an issue for It came up over on Ewing Street with the solar shading criteria and how you measure that. And, you know, the whole like specific dates when you have to look at whether or not you're shading the neighboring building. So we tried to remove it and city council kept it back in. So so it's still there. So we we keep looking at things and we'll see. We'll see where that where that goes. But again, any of these changes, you're always welcome to let Meredith know and I can work on them. We don't have anything, like I said, queued up at this point, but we'll probably look at something in the in the winter months a little bit more time. Probably that demolition provision demolition provision could be one demolition science or two of our biggies. What's the demolition? Especially in demolition, the whole how you determine whether or not you can demolish part of or an entire historic structure. That part is that how you guys evaluate that. That one needs to be reworked. It's kind of a mess. Every time it's come before you guys, it's been a difficult one to parse out and figure out what's the appropriate information to have from the applicant and exactly how you weigh that information of the criteria. It's not very clear. We've got to dig into that one. I wonder where we see a lot of where driveway spacing is in the regs and we see a number of applications on that. I think the board has generally concluded it's really a public work's opinion as to whether it's sufficient or not. I don't know that those things sometimes we get applications here that are specifically related to that. I think that that's something I don't know. Maybe we could spare the applicant of if there's a way around it. Maybe they're not, I don't know. It depends where it is in the regs. There's certain things under state law that have to go to the board, but we do try as much as we can if there is a requirement. If something's part of a subdivision, it has to go to you guys for approval. As much as possible, we try to go through and make the requirement be has to be approved by the DPW chair or a DPW director. Yeah, it's the two driveways or driveway less than the minimum spacing that we have. I don't know if that's something that could be administrative with DPW approval or not. We'd have to look in the statutes. I guess you're onto it. We talked about it earlier and it's like this sort of separation between existing development and proposed development. The regs doesn't necessarily do a very good job of making those very separate from each other. If you're going to do a subdivision, the driveway spacing has to be X amount. There's many drives and there's many trees, but if you're going to go redevelop St. Paul Street where the lot lines aren't going to change, the driveways really aren't going to change. It should be a whole different... Yeah, a couple of transportation. We mentioned the subdivisions being a little bit more suburban. Some of the transportation standards that were in there did fall into that as well. These access, obviously it's easy to have driveway separations when everybody's on a quarter acre lot, but we actually have most of our downtown are on much smaller than... It's not hitting quarter acre lots until you're up on Town Hill. Everybody who's down in Liberty, Loomis, St. Paul, all the way down to Berry Street, those are all 3,000. Some of them down to... We have 1,500 to 1,800 square foot lots in different areas. Then you have to have 15 foot separation between driveways and you're like, what do I do? Drive right into the center of my house? It's not that street trees are not important for these existing neighborhoods, and they absolutely are, but I think the regs for a new development lead into the existing development on that concept too, and it can be a bit difficult to decipher because I think it themes throughout the entire document. Yeah, so we hit the existing downtown stuff. We hit the street tree criteria as an issue, both for the parking garage and for the Gary residence addition, where we had to look at when they use its judgment on, well, what do we do with these trees that are already existing but don't necessarily need the criteria? And we know they're going to tear things up, so how do they deal with that street tree requirement? So maybe it was the attempt of planning mission with any new development left of a braid of grass is going to require a street siege wrong. Main street, maybe that's the case, but it doesn't appear very clear and I don't think that that's what was intended. All right, good. Okay, Mike, have a good night. All righty. So Meredith, were there any key sections for Chief Loughlin? It's important for us to just sort of like go over real quick. We don't need to go through the whole document, I think. And then you have some note on the procedural stuff with whether it makes sense. Yeah, I had it when I went through just on my own, there are a few little things that I know have come up here in the board as we have, especially over the last few years, as we have dealt with with things and absences, that I think it makes sense to maybe try and do a revision of the rules of procedure, specifically making sure that there is a, that it clearly states in here that the board has the authority to nominate and appoint an acting chair when neither the chair, nor the vice chair are either available or are conflicted out of an application, that we have that in here clearly. It's right now in the rules of procedure that only appears with the conflicted out, and it's sort of buried in the rules. You don't have that option just because people are out of the country or somebody's away. Or are sick, right? I think that should be something that's in here. There are a few little things. That's actually for a vice chair, right? If the chair and the vice chair are both out, then they temporarily elect a vice chair. But in here, I think it's called an acting chair. You can just say an acting chair. Right. It's a vice chair. I didn't notice that. I thought it was a weird one. I don't think that we, I can double check into the statute what, if anywhere, it specifies that and if there's one term or the other. But something along those lines I think should begin here. There were some other tweaks that were a little strange where, so some of the board's decisions pre-2018 were actually made in the minutes. That was the only written expression of the decisions. And so these rules of procedure actually say that the DRBs minutes are recorded in the city clerk's office, not just the decisions that hasn't been done since before I got here. That's not true. That doesn't happen. So I think that should be tweaked. We also have this in the order of business section, report on administrative approvals and report on actions taken in prior deliberative sessions. I don't think those are things that we have to have in there. I think those are things that used to happen by the board. And so keeping that in here in the order of business doesn't really make sense unless the board really wants it. And doing a report on administrative approvals every meeting would be pretty long. Well, it's available. I guess there's not a congregated list that's available. Maybe you have a system that exists. Yep. Audra can, we generate that report every year for the annual reports. So Audra has that information available on our database anytime somebody requests it for the administrative approvals. And reports on deliberative sessions, those are always, that's already in a written decision. So I think that those could be struck. Some of the key provisions in here that we don't necessarily work with every day are the whole, it's not very well spelled out, but there's one paragraph on conflict of interest that just goes back to the ethics policy. The ethics policy is rolled into the open meetings document that is part of the guidance packet that everybody got. It's pretty basic stuff. If you know you have a conflict that involves financial or other game, you're supposed to recuse yourself. If there's something that's the appearance, you have to at the very least disclose it during the public hearing process and give people the opportunity to object to you taking part. That's the real basics. There's more involved there. And the ex parte communications part, that's one of those things where I think the easiest thing to do if somebody's trying to talk to you about either an application that you know is coming or a project where you're like, that project could come before the board, either as something that will come before the board as a first instance or pretty sure that's going to need a zoning permit. So technically it could get appealed to the board. Just be like, Hey, I'm on the DRB. I really can't talk about this. If you have questions or you want to know what's going on, contact the planning department, contact Androg, contact Merrick, but probably you want me to be on the board if this comes before me. So don't talk to me because if you do, I might have to recuse myself. I mean, we, Katz and I were talking about it at one point and I think you know that I mean, I feel comfortable talking to people about procedures, but nothing project-specific and that if people say so about that, I'm like, if you need information about the project, call the planning office. That's okay. Thanks. Yeah, and that works. That works well sharing. Just referring people to the office or if there's a question might just be, you know, is this on the schedule? Something that's simple and easy. Right. In which case, you can answer that. Right. But you know, don't want to get into that. Yeah, no. You know, I'm thinking about the time I've been on the board, how often that's come up as an issue. It comes up relatively frequently, but it's usually just the age, you know, when this is going to be earned. Something really basic. Can I ask that? This is kind of a silly question, maybe, but I'm not aware of who our secretary is. Do we even have one? That's me. That's the planning department. So it's sort of a combined thing. We have a recording secretary who she used to attend. So you knew all the minutes. I review them. So we have a recording secretary who listens to every single meeting. Wow. I'll try and log it back in. So does that mean our whole Orca media thing went down to or streaming? It's so good because the Zoom on mine that's running it is working. We had a center one. So give me just a second. Just to see if I can get that up and running. So yeah, we have a recording secretary. She listens to the audio to the video of every single meeting and types up the minutes and then I review those minutes almost 99% of the time. Every once in a while I'm out or whatever and we just need to get them posted. But I review those and make edits and then what's just okay. Interesting. It's Google. Maybe. Honestly, I don't have the bandwidth to type out every single meeting minutes. I do them for one of my committees but not this one or design review. Yeah, it's just council chambers that are you is yours not in either? No, I'm recording in progress. Yeah, something happened with that laptop. It wanted to do an update earlier and I told it to wait for like 720 minutes or whatever. So maybe that's the problem that it's trying to do the update still. Okay, you're back online. So yeah, that wasn't okay. It wasn't a silly question. It is a weird thing in here. But the ZA and the Department of Planning have basically been nominated as secretary. Yeah, okay. It's just funny because it's like they're written as different roles but they're actually okay. Maybe potentially reward that a little bit. If they're ever going to be separate roles again, then it's probably fine. But yeah, secretary who may or may not be a member of the board and maybe designated as the Department of Planning and Community Development. So yeah, I mean the zoning administrator has a very specific role. And then the secretary part, if for some reason we lost the person that we contract out to to do the minutes, the planning department as a whole would need to do that. So it could be like the zoning assistant somebody else or if we had actually had an administrative assistant planning department, which we don't, they could come in and do those minutes. And it wouldn't necessarily have to be the zoning administrator with which written. Somebody other comments. Want to move the minutes, is that what you said? Yeah, I was going to get to that. I just, I feel like we did it one meeting. It's actually, I think it makes it a little better in the sense that we just end the meeting and then we sort of like say thank you and then we do adjourn. I think that like having it at the end works and then the applicants don't have to sit through us the minutes and the chair doesn't have to forget. Bringing up the minutes. And that's, yeah, that's not a, that's not an important procedure of what the order should be. I did think we should get, yeah, you have people that are coming in for these meetings and they don't want to sit here and listen to us for the minutes, even though it only takes like a literally a minute. Yeah, just get to the end. Move that above other business. So then I just did have one note here and it's interesting that there's like a general thing on like the oaths here and it's almost like during sketch plan it might make it clear that like that's not necessary, but maybe we don't do that because it's not that like every single person that speaks before the, I don't know, maybe I'm not, maybe I'm wrong on that. Yeah, because I specified testimony by witnesses, right? Mike wasn't a witness giving testimony, so we didn't have to give him a note. Yep. Sketch plan, there's no official testimony. Right. So, I mean, we could, but do that. Do attorneys have to swear in? Oh boy. I don't think so. Not historically, anything. Not historically, not according to any attorney that's been here before the board in the last four years. Right then. Well, it goes back a lot for me the most. Experience, but yeah, because they are there representing their clients, so they are not a witness. No, that's right. Right. So, but that's the, that's the line, whereas if they start bleeding over and it starts being like, hmm, can your client actually do that because they're starting, you're starting to bleed it at testimony, right? If it seems like the lawyer starting to bleed into testimony, it really could be someone else giving that information. We have every right to remind them they are not testifying, so. Yeah. We did the building that didn't happen in front of the thrash. I feel like it was another one though, was the Liberty Street. Yeah, that attorney was trying to testify. Did that ever get it? Oh, I don't know. Oh, 14 Liberty Street. That's still before the environmental court. That's actually because that's an appeal of the demolition provision. Right. That's part of what we're waiting for before we do any digging, any more work on revisions to the demolition provision. We actually have a revision, a draft revision from the director of the historic preservation department at UMM, who's on HPC, Montpelier's historic renovation commission, but which like we're not even going to touch it until we find out what the court says about the provision that we've already got. All right. So if you did come up here on live all under oath, is there any consequences there? Pains of penalties are perjury. Yeah, I have no idea who would enforce that, other than that it could make the permit void. If it was in support of a permit that was then granted, and that's the applicants who attest to things in their application, which anything here would be part of that and part of the decision, that's what they're bound by. And if they lied and then they don't do it or they didn't do it. Okay. That could be a civil action. That could be a civil action and as well as just the while your permits void. Right. The permit could be void, but they can appeal it and then that would be the civic part. Yeah. I'm thinking. Yeah. Of course. And somebody else could potentially appeal it. Yes. Especially, you know, that might void the timeline too. I don't know. I think probably most likely a topic that would be battled in environmental court on appeal. It would be part of the decision as to like whether someone purchased their cell or not. Yeah. And if it's not already there, it would then become part of the notes in the statutory books. Yeah. All right. I think that's good. I guess Meredith had talked briefly about there's nothing in here yet about like sort of the hybrid format, digital like meeting materials, the remote meeting procedures. And Meredith mentioned that the legislature is going to take us up this session generally in Vermont. Hopefully. Hopefully. But I think if we do sort of make some revisions here, we might want to think of some very basic things that don't even apply to that, that we might want included. Or just provide some like maybe clarity too in a written extra document that's not part of our rules as to like what our preference is, as opposed to like, you know, just so that maybe like they hire a consultant. We like it when people hire consultants, they like do good work, but we don't want to make the consultant drive all the way here. It's been like three hours of their day and our applicant pay them so that I think that that's always permissible for someone to be online. But on the other hand, I don't know, just being the chair, I wouldn't, I would prefer if we had a very controversial with 100 plus people commenting to not necessarily have an option for everybody to be commenting on the platform, but also not limited to those with accessibility issues. And, you know, good reason for not being able to attend, you know, in person. And so like that's a, I think a difficult area to navigate. But I think the reality of it is, is that for these public hearings, like if people are in person in making comments, it's much more productive than it is with the Zoom platform. I'm totally supportive of that, Rob. But it's going to be, it's going to be like herding cats in the legislature when they try to figure out how to on tangles. I wonder if you could do something. I mean, obviously it wouldn't be foolproof, but just ask, you know, for public, you know, for, for here and where you really want everybody here, if you could just say, you know, if there's an accessibility issue or another reason that you can't attend in person, we have an easy peasy waiver and just fill it out and, and we're happy to put you online and that would weed out a bunch of them, you know. Well, and that's the, where we have to think about what the standard practices are, right? Right. As long as Zoom is listed as a way to access via, in the public hearing notice, anything like that, then that has to be just available to anybody. Right. Yep. If you want us to pair that back and only provide that link when people request it, whether it's board members or others, you know, we can do that as of right now is my understanding, but it's also a bit of an optics situation, I think with the city at this point, because every single committee now has that option and some of them are completely remote, although the ones that are completely remote, if Act 78 expires like it's supposed to on January 15th, they can't do that anymore. That has to be renewed by the governor or that completely remote public meeting option is out the window and they have to, at the minimum, I think be hybrid where somebody is in person in a room, which is one reason I was like, let's not do any like required changes to hear when it comes to the remote meeting part yet, because I don't want to see, well, like you said, how it boils down, but yeah, it's going to be hard. It's going to be hard. I mean, there's a lot of people who really like Zooming, you know, and it's, he had also cases when we were just going by a little gear that people didn't have access to the internet. And so, what was there out from it? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think, I don't, yeah, I don't think it's something we can really put into rules because it's always changing, but something clearly stating our preferences, you know, making that clear, I think is something we could do that's not binding. You know, it's just really the way to do it because then you don't get in trouble for saying it's this way or that way. You just say, well, this is what we prefer. How do we disseminate this to the public? Well, yeah, so that, that is something where it comes down to the board, basically asking us, tasking the department with having that be something that we just express to people and or put on the website, put where, you know, people are applying for zoning permits. We could, if there is this sort of policy that you want to get out, we could just go through our communications director and make sure that that's disseminated sort of our basic announcement ways via the city website, Facebook, front porch forum, that type of stuff, if you wanted the broader notice. I'm not sure that that really makes sense. I mean, I think maybe like adding what's sense to like the general notice, like, you know, people are people are girls who intend in person. However, there are these other options. We could do that. The notice that gets mailed out to everybody and the the hearing. I like that saying that we prefer because I do for coming in here. It seems like it really facilitates the whole process when it does make it easy. Yeah, we just can't force them to do it yet because no, that's that's easy. That's easy to do is to change some of the text and like the footers and other places in our hearing notices. Yeah, we can start there. And the technology is going to continue to evolve. So, you know, and people are going to get better with it. They're going to get better with it. I mean, it'll be holograms. Yeah. One thing on the technology and this is going to be kind of a continued thing. And it sounds like it really is. This is a horrible location. So I am not part and parcel of this. There is a whole technology updating process that will hopefully be happening. How that all boils down to. I'm not sure. My hope is we'll see large like TV screens in a few different places throughout the room versus this crazy projector situation. Yeah, I mean, it's just the back and forth between people who are here and not here. So that, you know, both the people in the audience and people in the round here have a screen that they can look to to see who's up there. You know, it would be lovely if board members, you know, if we just had screens here on the tables built in that just logged into the Zoom and you could see that. I think that's going to be a little beyond the city. I mean, this technology is, you know, circa 1978. Oh, well, maybe not that one, but almost. Oh, not that. That. Just, yeah. What was that in there with all of your slides here? Oh, I agree. I want to go back to this point about in person versus remote. And I am uncomfortable stating a preference for having people present because I think Zoom is a game changer for accessibility or for parents, for people that have transportation challenges, disabled, et cetera. And I feel as if putting a preference is just, is biased. And I'm just uncomfortable with that. I think we just have to find a way of like managing whatever risk or concern we see with people, a lot of traffic over Zoom. Well, one of the things, you know, when we have the bigger applications, that's where it really starts to get complicated. And I think, you know, the department is of the opinion that when we can try and have as many people as possible in person without overflowing the room, right? So that, you know, we have talked to people to say, hey, if you can, it really makes sense for you to be in person for this, especially with somebody who hasn't submitted other testimony. I see what you're saying. No. I mean, we have had a lot of people who have said, thank you so much. This is letting me actually participate on, you know, at the most, at the most, you know, the quickest hearing possible versus, nope, I can't do that meeting because I don't have childcare. So I have to wait another two weeks. Because it's still created by us. If you say, you know, if you can be here and if you can't come on Zoom, you know, I mean, like, I mean, just, I don't know. I feel like it says a subtle message that it's not exclusionary, but I feel like it could send a message that you're less important to breathe in on the room. Yeah. Right. So I, I don't really, I think you're like, we might be worrying a little bit too much about hurting people's feelings. We're not stopping anybody from accessing this without being here. It's not a waiver. That's easy to fill out. It's nothing literally. It's just, it is easier if people are here. And with this kind of ambiguity of whether people should be on Zoom or come in just saying we have a preference if you're here, but, or it's recommended you come here, however you word it so that it's not overly biased. I do think that we do have a preference to have people here and communicating that to the public isn't, isn't wrong. And having the options, all these accessibility options we have, mostly Zoom, that's still available to everyone. We're not closing anyone off from that. We're not going to be biased against people who are, but, you know, if you have a little lady on Zoom and she, oh, you're muted of this, that, you know, like it is kind of a pain in the butt to have people on Zoom sometimes. I don't think there's anything wrong with the request thing that if you can be here, please be here. You know, if I could be here, if I come here and when I can't, I don't. Kids do. And sometimes I can't be here. And sometimes it's all right at the last minute. I got to send Meredith an email having to be remote today. And that's easy enough to do. And it's not like we're going to be pushing back against these people if they do say that. Right. It's just something in there that kind of when someone has either option totally available to them, it's like, oh, they want me to be there. So I'm going to go, as opposed to them saying, well, it's nice and warm in my house. It's cold outside. And I don't want to get out of my car and start it up. It's like, I'd rather they come here, you know, personally. Yeah. Yeah. I think especially when there's in some minor cases where there might be a hundred people that might have, you know, those cases, those cases, yeah, we'll, we'll, yeah. And then there's the next calendar. Well, it's like most sure, like the entire structure of this board is like structuring around those minor cases because, you know, they many times were overkill. And then we hit the, you know, application where there's all of this development that Peeler's ever seen. And, you know, now every single aspect of the regulations is in play. And we need seven of us to, you know, really dig into it. So there's that, but yeah, I think it's a good discussion. I agree with you, Abby. I think that we don't want to give this idea of like a preference to like make people obligated to come. I think on the other hand, I would really like to figure out a way to just lean on the Zoom platform, the technology and like kind of like identifying it as this space of this opportunity for those that have those, have those circumstances and really continue to recognize that and be thankful that they can't participate. And, but I don't think we have to set it in stone in any, you know, any policy, but just have messaging about like, you know, just be clear that like, oh, like, you know, it's, you can't get here in person, like, you know, you're busy or whatever. It's like, this platform is for, you know, is for you. Okay. So I'm not sure if any of you actually see the public notices that go out, the public hearing notices. So what I might be able to do is just tweak those a little bit. You know, the agendas, I think we still look the same because on here, your, you know, in-person location and the Zoom option are all sort of the same font. They're given the same weight. The public hearing notices may be just the way they're presented visually, giving more weight to the Zoom option. So we could always adjust that a little bit without giving any preference to sort of give this as, this is the alternative versus here are these two, here are these, here's where the meeting is, here's, because during COVID, it was like, no, no, no, access it through the Zoom platform, making that really clean. No, they're equal way. And you're just saying, reduce the weight of one. Yeah. Well, it's also, the Zoom on the, the public hearing notices that get mailed to neighbors may actually more heavily weight Zoom. Yeah. So it may be just a presentation versus language situation. Yeah, it's start for sure. Which will, you know, maybe achieve some of what you want without running into the implied preference that makes some people feel like they have to be in person, even when that makes it right. Or just like, and it's a preference with power and balance as well. Yeah. Because we're a decision maker. Yeah. They're not. Yeah, it's an equity. Yeah. I guess, I know that there's been some work done around diversity and inclusion, like in the city and what, and then there's also organizations that work up to six billion have each Zoom input guidance as to how we should address this. Whatever you guys wanted to. All right. Well, let's go forward with the small steps. I can definitely make some tweaks to how some of the written notices are come across. And then, yeah, I don't even know who's on those committees, but it might be a bigger picture question, right, for all the committees and boards as to how do we, if one has a preference for in person, how do you then balance that with the accessibility and equity issues? Yeah. I mean, my dad's on the Unitarian George board and they had that same thing where with Zoom, all kinds of people were just like, this is so great. I can actually get to church now. And they have, they're all excited to come back together, but they're still just really strong. Like, yeah, you can access it this way. This is great. And we never want to lose this kind of thing. So there must be a way to do that. Yep. There's been cases too. I've seen some council meetings where it's just been bombs, like, I don't know. Speaking of which, is there any public comment for this evening? We have no public comment. Does anyone have any other items? I feel like we're wrapping up here and we've made some great progress. So thank you all for the discussion. So no further meetings this month, not till the New Year. Next year. Yeah, next meeting will be January 3rd. Yes. Sorry, I got an application today. And there is no meeting January 17. We just have a one January meeting. So enjoy your holidays. Likely. Thank you. Yes, thank you. You too. Make a move to adjourn. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I'll adjourn. Second. Second by Gene and all those in favor? Aye. Chairman is absent and we're adjourned. Bye.