 Good afternoon, everybody. Today is November 23rd. Welcome to the Moat Pillar Planning Commission meeting. So everybody have a copy of the agenda. This is a call to order. First order of business is the approval of the agenda. Any comments or anything? I'm sorry. You didn't get this consent to approve the agenda. Unless anybody says anything. Hearing nothing, the agenda is approved. Next is comments from the chair. I don't have any. Next is general business. So we have anybody from the public here. Sounds like we don't. Does anybody want to talk about anything that's not on the agenda? Nope. Okay. Moving on. Next is considering the minutes of their last meeting on November 9th. Like sent a copy of the minutes. It might take a minute to review them. I just left them. So I will approve all of the minutes. Okay. Do we have concerns about typos? Well, if you send me typos, I can always go and make the changes. You know, we can approve as amended. With the typos. Corrected if you've got them. Did you have some Stephanie? Yeah, the second paragraph under the city plan update. I'm going to read the second sentence. It should read. Two of the top goals are that public transportation. We'll be more available. Yeah. All right. Okay. And I had a question about the first paragraph. Just to clarify. Was it true that the committee didn't set a goal of reducing the number of vehicles? No, they didn't have a specific number. I have a negative goal on their part. Do you remember? I think we talked about that in the context of whether they had specific benchmarks and they didn't have a specific benchmark for that. Okay. But they didn't specifically say we don't want to reduce the number of vehicles. No, they just didn't have us. They just didn't come up with a specific number. Okay. I think they didn't think that would be a good benchmark. Didn't they tell, didn't I thought they said that that wasn't a good benchmark? Yeah. I think that's a good point. I think one of the problems will be we can't meet the energy requirement. Energy plan if we don't reduce the number of vehicles somehow. So anyway, but we'll worry about that later. Okay, thanks. Okay. With those changes in mind, Erin has moved for approval of the minutes. Well, second. All in favor. Hi. Anybody opposed. Great. Thank you. Minutes are approved. Next on the agenda is an update on the on review record or on the record review. For DRB hearings and report from the DRB chair and vice chair. All right. Well, I sent out. Hey. We met. Meredith and I met with. I'm. Kate McCarthy and Kevin O'Connell, who are the chair and vice chair of the development review boards, talk about what you and I, what we had all talked about, which was the adoption of MAPA, the municipal administrative procedures act. And also known as on the record review. So, you know, any one who forgot what this was all about, or as a member of the public and listening to this. On the record review changes how. We would run the development review board hearings, making them a little bit more formal. And in doing so, it would. It would be a little bit more formal. But it would be a little bit more formal. And then. Applications. If you were to make an appeal to environmental court, it would be reviewed what is called on the record. As opposed to being reviewed. De novo. And what that means is. The way things are right now is it is a de novo review, which means as new. So when somebody appeals, let's say they, the parking garage. It goes to the judge and the environmental court. And the judge is the judge is the judge. And the judge is the judge. And the judge is the judge. So it's a whole application again. Now they generally do. Try to limit the scope because they don't want to go and hear the entire application all over again. So they usually work to limit the scope of the appeal. But the judge is not bound by anything that. Any decision that was made by the development review board. It has heard anew. That's a process. And if. An interested person does not agree with the decisions that the development review board made, they could basically get another bite at the apple by going to the environmental court. And hearing the case anew with them. What the shift on the record review does is makes that appeal. To environmental court on the record, the judge is the judge. And the judge is the judge. And if you take the video that is used for the development review board meetings and will review the video and the transcripts. Of that hearing. And look at the material and determine whether or not the development review review board. Did their job correctly. So it's, it's a, it's a subtle difference, but it's a critical difference. So in other words, instead of looking at the evidence to decide whether or not. The judge is actually looking to see if everything was appropriately handled and managed at the development review board level. So it's a different. It's a completely different process. And what it usually does is it helps to limit the number of, of appeals. So you generally may get less frivolous appeals. Because you can't. Get a second bite at the apple. You have to. If we do our jobs, right? And then you can only appeal for procedural things. Did we not appropriately warn or notice the hearing? Did we not admit evidence appropriately? So it becomes a slightly more formal process. And the people this affects the most are the appellants, first of all, or, or, you know, butters to projects. And the development review board themselves. And when we talked about it at the planning commission level, your conversation was that you thought it would be important to hear from the DRB and the DRC. As to what their thoughts were, and it really doesn't affect the DRC design review committee as much as because they're, they're just an advisory to the development review board. They don't actually have any permitting authority. They, their advisory to either the administrative officer or the development review board. So we did. And we talked to the chair and what you have is, what they put together was after our conversation was a list of some of their concerns that they had. And I'll just read real quickly from the November 16th letter that take wrote. That, you know, this has been considered on and off for years. And. Due to the cost of. Expensive appeals projects may be fine. You know, people may find this desirable. It's a way has seven zoning. And these comments are based on her seven years of experience on the DRB. And a year and a half is, as, as vice chair and nine months now as chair. First she thought it seems like a very involved process for a very limited problem. And she notes that we have very few appeals in her seven years and her, her seven years actually overlap with my seven years here at the city. And she can remember only two, two appeals. There's the parking garage. And there was an existing of a, of a permit that was settled out of court. Up on college street. So she didn't think for all of the additional effort that there was that much of a problem that needed to be solved. And if anyone wants to jump in. Feel more than welcome, but I'll just go through these. I'll just go through them. I'll just go through them. I'll just go through them. I'll just go through them in a different way. Members of the public can, can hear what were the concerns. And then we can talk about them afterwards. If you want. The second complaint is a fair amount of training and support would be needed to implement MAPPA. And this could discourage participation. On the DRB. So the concern is that. We have a difficult time. Sometimes. Getting enough people to fill all of our boards. And what about the other two? Absolutely. So I'm not saying that there's a lack of hearing. They may kind of feel intimidated by the fact that this is so. Kind of legal and formal. And they may feel that, that they shouldn't participate. Like did. Or that they couldn't participate because it all works. Yeah. In your discussions with Kate. Did she point out any specific. Sort of procedural requirements under MAPPA that was getting her I don't see her pointing out anything specific in her map that sort of gives rise to these concerns. It's just sort of a general, Brad Bresch drew up. She did not point to anything specific when we talked. It was, and that was some of her things that she really didn't fully understand what would be involved in that. And when we talked from our end, Meredith is an attorney. And from my perspective, I'm not an attorney, but the thought was that we, you know, Meredith has an attorney, we may have to look when we hire zoning administrators, we may have to look at somebody who has some legal experience and that we may also have to appoint at least one person to the Development Review Board who has a legal background. Historically, we've had folks like Phil Zallinger and Dan Richardson, who are both attorneys who very easily could have understood the requirements of the rules of procedure to properly make sure that we are handling our DRB meetings. And so whether that's the chair or whether it's somebody who gets appointed as say a parliamentarian who is just an attorney, maybe they get a stipend to sit on the DRB to make sure that we meet those requirements. So we talked about those as options so that way we would kind of take that out, but she still felt that the process would be slightly more formal. And I personally don't know the rules of procedure. So I don't know how easy or complicated they are, but the thought was that this was gonna be more complicated than was necessary. Thanks. Mike, is this something that it's all or nothing? I mean, could it be requested by a very complex project? Or is it have to be all projects that would come up? It doesn't have to be all projects, but it can't be arbitrary as to which ones go through it. So different communities have different standards. In some cases, they'll say only projects with conditional use, or we might, for example, say that only projects that are major site plans will go through this process. Or some communities will say only Act 250 projects will go through. So it's slightly depends, we could limit it. And we did talk about that with them. So the third point was this could frustrate participation in DRB hearings in general, not just for the more controversial cases. So this was just a sense that some people may be intimidated and this could be neighbors or a butters or somebody else could be intimidated by the fact that this is a slightly more formal process. And in a community where we're trying to strive for inclusion and equity, that making a process slightly more formal is just going to perhaps lead to more people who don't wanna participate even as a butters because they just don't know when or how to participate in that process. I think some of that could be overcome. I don't think any of these things that are here are impossible to overcome, but these were certainly the concerns that she had and certainly things we should keep in mind as we're thinking about it is that, making a more legal process, if anyone has ever been put into a situation where you're going to court or you have to get in a more legal situation, it does feel more intimidating. You don't know when you're allowed to speak up or how to participate. And you feel like you might need an attorney to represent you when that's really not the case. So the fourth thing they talked about was the adoption map that could undermine the city's ongoing efforts of inclusion. Again, this relates to number three, formalizing the hearing process could make it more intimidating and less accessible to everybody. Five, it seems likely that for projects to which people are fiercely opposed, the appeals would simply shift to being procedural appeals. So the sense was that while we have to, while sometimes the sense might be, well, this will help cut down on some NIMBY type appeals. If somebody has an attorney and wants to appeal, they could file a whole bunch of complaints on, in the earlier steps they might go through and in turn, what is more of a citizen board into having somebody come in and say, I'm an attorney and in the first thing, I wanna depose any, as the attorney for the neighbor, I wanna depose all of the applicants, witnesses before we get into this process and really turn what is a citizen review into a very formal, and basically slow down the process by saying I wanna depose everybody who's putting in evidence. I wanna be able to file appeals and make claims on whether people can or can't provide testimony or questioning that testimony or providing cross-examination and really kind of turn the process which is usually driven by the chair into a process that's driven by two attorneys beating each other up back and forth over whether something is inappropriate or inappropriate and do we end up with 10 hearings to get through what we used to get done in three hearings because we have to have a whole bunch of formalities just because somebody decides their best approach to winning is by slowing down the process and beating things up. And so their sense was it's not gonna necessarily take away the appeals, the appeals are going to be appeals of, the DRB should have considered this, you need to remand this back to the DRB. And the DRB hears the hearing and then it goes back up to the environmental court where they say, well, but the DRB didn't do this and they should have allowed us to question the testimony of this and that's not appropriate and it gets kicked back down. So they felt it wasn't, although the goal was to let's remove the appeals, it's just gonna be different appeals was their opinion. So question, go ahead Marcella. Thanks, Mike, is there, do you see a lot of currently the e-court remanding stuff back to the DRB? They usually don't because most of them don't end up, most don't go back because they're de novo hearings. So you don't get remanded back if it's a de novo. I don't know if a lot of on the record ones I know in talking to Sarah McShane who was our zoning administrator before Meredith, Sarah went on to work for Stowe and she gets appealed all the time. She said she's always getting appealed, they're always going to back up the court and they're an on the record community. So from the standpoint of, well, this will cut down on appeals that certainly is not the case that Stowe finds. In her experience, I mean, to the extent that you feel comfortable sharing it or having a, do you have a sense of whether she feels that on the record review has been helpful in Stowe with all that litigation or not? I would have to, I think she kind of have to speak for herself. I think there's a mix of both, it has its pluses and it has its minuses. If you're doing it to avoid appeals, I think she would probably say it hasn't avoided the appeals on her case now, it just changes the dynamics. In Stowe, it's a little bit different community, which we talked about with Kate and Kevin in that there are a lot of people from other states, there are a lot of second homeowners, there are a lot of people who are from states that are very much used to, you just hire an attorney and you go back to the DRB and you fight everything out. And that's not historically the way Montpelier has been, Montpelier has always been more of a community of folks and a citizen board. And we don't get a lot of projects where attorneys show up at hearings. It does happen from time to time, but usually though it's, my brother-in-law is an attorney and he shows up or those types of attorneys not necessarily hiring somebody to fight it unless it's a big project like parking garage or savings pasture or in which case those are ones where groups will come together and appeal the project. Did this come up in the first place because of the parking garage? Was the idea that this process might have helped that run more smoothly? So this has been around for a long time. It's actually in the 2009 master plan that we've readopted. It was identified back in those days. And I think it dates back to even before then that there was a discussion that from time to time projects get backed up in 2006, the savings pasture project. And sometimes these get knocked off the rails because of neighborhood opposition and maybe if we had a more formal process, you couldn't be doing in making these decisions. It comes up is once it leaves our DRB and it goes as a de novo hearing to the e-court, it's somebody who may not have any familiarity with Montpelier and values here and they're gonna make a decision based on their opinions. And as opposed to having something that comes out of the municipality where we make the decisions for our community, once it gets appealed up, that's out of our hands. And it's an outside person who's gonna make that decision of whether or not that zoning permit gets appealed. And I think that's on the one side of why you want to do MAPPA, but at the same time, is it worth it? It's always been a conversation though to answer the question. It's been here since I came here, it's been a priority. It's actually on the city council's strategic plan to explore adopting MAPPA because they're just trying to make sure that we aren't getting unnecessary barriers put in the way of housing project. It wasn't necessarily, it wasn't actually at all about the parking garage. The parking garage just makes a good example. Mike, given the fit, go ahead. Oh, I was just gonna say to Kate's first point, I mean, I think just because there haven't been a lot of appeals, I mean, I know projects have not gone forward because they're worried about getting appealed. So, I mean, that's just another consideration that to think about. But I do, I think her other concerns are, yeah, I don't know. But just on that first point, I wanted to say that. It seems like given the fact that then it doesn't become a de novo appeal, it seems as if it could simplify things or at least shorten the process. Yes, it might get sent back to the DRB, but in some ways that's a more accessible board for local participation, even though it's, you know, perhaps only going back because of a procedural issue, it just seems as if it could simplify the appeal process, but. I also think when we talked about the first time. No, go ahead, Stephanie. Sorry. When we talked about this the first time, I think where we landed is that we wanted input from the DRB so that we could better understand the issue. And this seems like some pretty clear input to me coming from Kate that she's not interested. I think she definitely knows more about this than I do. So I respect that opinion and I know her. I respect her as a human. So I think her perspective here makes me think that maybe this isn't the right time to do it or maybe it doesn't make sense. I don't know that I'm hearing a lot of compelling reason to do it despite her comments. Yeah, I mean, I guess I feel like maybe this isn't the right tool, but I, again, because I've just heard of projects that don't even try because they're worried about getting appealed. I mean, like I think it's a very compelling, I think it's a problem in my appeal here. And I don't know, I wonder if there's a way to mitigate, I mean, I agree with you, I can't, I think she's brilliant. And the fact that she doesn't want to do it is important, but I wonder if there's a way to mitigate the other concerns or have a conversation with her about other possibilities to work on this problem. Yeah, I definitely, I would agree that it's an issue in terms of people not. Well, I think the challenge is that it feels a little bit like if someone wants to kill a project in Montpellier, they'll kill the project. So I think that's the perception anyway. I don't know how often that actually happens, but I feel like that's the perception. It feels like if someone doesn't want it to go through, it won't. And I don't know if this specifically would prevent that. Yeah, I agree with you. It's a perception, but when resources are limited, you can't always test that perception. I mean, coming from thinking about non-profit housing organizations and such, but, and then I lost my train of thought. But yeah, whether it's a perception or reality, it's sometimes you can't afford to test that. Yeah, so I'm saying at a minimum, it's a perception. I think it's likely a reality to you. Likely a reality, yeah. I mean, my other concern is the kinds of appeals that happen very late in the game. And that's what I would hope that something like this might be able to forestall. You know, people who don't get into the appeal until way, way into the process. And I think that's not fair to the applicant. And we've seen that happen before. Yeah, and I think with resources, I think there are ways to address, you know, if there was a desire to move forward and there was a concern about certain issues, I think there are ways of addressing those concerns. Again, I think the board would, the council would have to, in my opinion, appoint somebody who's either pertaining non-voting or a member to the DRB who is an attorney, who would be basically the parliamentarian to help them go through and to meet those requirements. I don't think we can expect it. The times I've been in support of this in the past have been times, as I said, when we had, you know, really top-notch attorneys that have been on the board. And we've had a turnover and we now don't have attorneys on our DRB. It's a much more diverse board. So it does present that question of, okay, how do we deal with those? How do we tackle the issue of being inclusive or having people feel outside? You know, there may have to be somebody who is available to provide assistance to people who are about us. I mean, they're not members of the board. You know, maybe they're, you know, I'm trying to think of what the legal term would be, but you know, there's just somebody who works to pro bono help comment. There's somebody there who can go through and say, okay, you know, I can let you know when to provide comments or I can provide your comments for you if you don't feel like helping people provide testimony without feeling like they're being excluded from the process because they don't understand how it works or whatever. You'd have somebody there who'd be an agent to help them navigate the process. I think there are ways of getting around it if we wanted to have a more formal process. Yeah, I just, if I can chime in with a comment and then a question, you know, I can only speak with my experience, you know, I've been working in administrative law for my entire lawyer career. And, you know, I can say that providing this sort of framework I think has a lot of benefits to, you know, the DRB in terms of creating structure for how they render their decisions and I think for the appeal reasons that we've discussed. You know, one of the downs, I wouldn't even call it a downside. I think one of the burdens that the board would have to carry in order to do it, I think, Mike, you hit the nail on the head is, and this has happened, this has been part of my experience working in administrative law in various other places is, yeah, you have to serve as sort of a public information resource for, you know, pro se people, you know, that want to participate in the process, but don't exactly know how to do it. You know, but in my experience is once you've done it once or twice, and I think anybody on the DRB can gain this experience, you know, then you have a good, once the process is put in place and people have some experience with it, it becomes pretty smooth and members of the board are able to provide that sort of general information to the public to help facilitate participation. That's just my experience, and I don't know how well it would translate to the DRB. With that said, is I get the sense that a lot of Keith's comments are sort of revolved around the concern that it might be overbroad to apply MAPA to all DRB cases. And so I think, Barb, maybe you were the one that talked about it, is there a way to sort of identify the types of cases that might come before the DRB where this process might be more appropriate to apply? I don't know the answer to that at all. I don't have enough experience with this stuff to know, but if anybody here does have a kind of a better sense of when it might be more appropriate or more advantageous to apply those processes, you know, I think that might be one way to do that because I think at the end of the day, what applying MAPA or on the record review to these types of proceedings is it dictates where the decision-making process ultimately lies. And sort of you have to answer the question, do you want it ultimately to, you know, when you have a case that's contentious and there's, you know, litigants or, you know, they're the applicant and a budding ruin owners and people with interests and other stakeholders really want to express those interests, do they want to be able to articulate that to the board and have that be the primary decision-maker or do you want to have the DRB function as almost sort of a perfunctory kind of first step to the ultimate, you know, resolution at the next level? I think there's a lot of benefit to having, you know, the parties take the DRB very serious, take that process very seriously. And I think MAPA does that, not withstanding the additional burdens that obviously are attendant with that. So that's just my comment. The question I have is because it's been a while, it's been long enough that I've forgotten enough about this is how are we involved in the decision-making process in terms of whether or not we do this and where do we fit into that decision-making process? And yeah, that's basically it. Thanks. Yeah, I would have to review the specific timing. We had brought this up because we were doing another, you know, adoption process and we had the, you know, we've got the zoning by-law window open and do we include the changes that would be necessary? Do we put them in this process into this adoption? There's a set of changes. And Meredith went through and laid them out in her memo about all the things that have to happen. There's got to be a motion by the city council to adopt MAPA, then we have to put those processes into our zoning regulations and then adopt the zoning regulations. And then there's like a follow-up step after everything is adopted to kind of go through that to implement those changes that have been put into the zoning. Sorry, if I remember correctly, Meredith had drafted some language with this but hadn't really done a complete draft of it yet, right? Yeah, correct. So she went through and put together a bunch of it but didn't go through and go any farther. The rest of it is, all right, this is going to be a lot of work. Decide on this first go, no go. And then we can move it to the next level and decide we want to drafting up the language. Can I add one other thought? I appreciate that she brought up the city's ongoing efforts at inclusion. I guess I wouldn't mind if we're going to do anything further. I wouldn't mind a little more conversation about that. I tend to not, I tend, well, I can see what she might mean by that. I'm also not sure that formalizing it will, I understand that there's like a learning curve and people would need to understand and may feel more intimidating. But I wonder if there might be some include, some equity benefits from formalizing the process as well. So because, and I don't really know exactly, I don't have more thoughts about this, but I just want to make sure we're not just thinking like, well, because it seems less friendly. Therefore it's going to be, it's going to be exclusive. I want to make sure that's actually the case. And that there wouldn't be any, equity benefits from creating something more formal. If that makes sense. Yeah. Just, just to dovetail on that. Again, I can only speak to my experience with these sorts of processes is, creating that sort of framework, that formal framework around the process. I think in a lot of ways. Democratize is, you know, the process a bit and. Because without the process. I've seen instances where sort of. Stakeholders come into the process. Did have concerns, but they just ended sort of shouting into the void. And there's, you know, there's no real sense of what their comments or participation is. To anything. Whereas if, you know, Once somebody comes into the process and there's, there's a certain level of responsibility that, that. That participant, you know, has in the process. You know, that's, that's a bit of a barrier, but I feel like it's fairly low. It's pretty small barrier, but. You know, it's understood what that person's participation means in the process a little more. And I think if we do have broader concerns as a city about public participation and equity issues. I think. There's like a whole host of other things we could do to. Make sure people feel welcome and. Able to be heard. And I don't think. Just not taking this up is going to really make that much of a difference. You know, I think there are, those would be very proactive efforts that would need to happen. Refreshments at the hearings. Agreed. I mean, honestly. Child care. I mean, just like, yeah, the thing you said, Mike, about like having somebody sort of walk people through and understanding what the process is. I mean. That could easily be happening. Now. So I don't want to, I don't want to downplay it. I mean, I do get that. Coming into a more legal thing is intimidating. I don't want to. I don't want to. I just don't want to. Go unexamined because I think the equity piece is really important. Yeah. And I agree. I think the, the. There are equity. Benefits in that one of the. You know, one of the arguments. In favor of the, the MAPA is that. It's, you know, it's, it's meant to address some of the NIMBY concerns, you know, you know, you're going to have your opportunity, but you're not going to be able to appeal this to somebody else. To have them decided because you don't like the answer here. And sometimes those. Applications that have come in our applications that provide benefit, you know, we, we, you know, you know, if neighbors don't want. You know, a group home or affordable housing or. You know, multi-family housing regardless of. Of the income. They may, they may fight it. And those projects don't happen. Or as Ariane says, they, they don't even bother applying because they don't think they'll ever get approved. And the, the formalized process actually helps those disadvantaged applications get approved. You know, if you flip it over, if you've got a negative impacts on, um, you know, somebody decides to, you know, put a, put. A waste transfer center on Berry street because they feel that's going to be the easiest place to get it approved because people, you know, are lower income and aren't going to be able to organize to fight it. Um, you know, they're not going to be able to do that. Um, And that is precisely what happens. Find the, find the poor and plunk that, that use that nobody wants in there because the, the citizens aren't going to be able to organize to be able to defeat the project. And so that's where MAPA can work the other way. And hurt. The equity issue in that, um, if you can't navigate the process and the bigger applicants can navigate the process, they may, you know, beat you up on the way through and simply get approved. So that's where MAPA can work. So that's where MAPA can work. Um, I don't know how to, how to defeat it. Um, I don't know if that would happen. Yeah. Thanks. It's tricky. So, uh, I guess next steps with respect to this issue. Um, Are we in a position to make a recommendation? Do we have a motion on anything? Or do we need to wall this over a little more? And we can make a decision of, you know, if we're in a position to make a recommendation. Um, I don't know if the idea is dead or the idea needs more. More. Conversation and. And discussion. What specifically would the, uh, The idea is alive next step. I would probably sit down with Meredith and, and re-review her memo. It's been a couple of months now. And I can't remember offhand what the next step is. If we go to city council. Um, I don't know. Um, I don't know if we, um, Simply start putting stuff together to put in. Um, to put in this, this zone, this round of zoning adoptions. It started to get a little late for this round of zoning adoptions. I can see how quick it would. We could put that together. Um, I think it depends whether or not we have to go to city council first. Um, one option is we put a packet together. Um, and then we go to the city council. Um, And then we go to the commission level. We go to the city council and then have the city council vote at that point to go through and say, yes, we should go forward. And, and we've isolated all of the changes. That are MAPA. Um, into one thing. So if you vote yes to go to MAPA, then that also means you're approving. This slate. And if you vote at the city council, no to MAPA, then we'll have a discussion and then we'll have a discussion. And then we'll have a discussion and then we'll have a discussion about how it works. I mean, maybe I'm being overly, um, diplomatic, but I do feel like we should, can we have a conversation with the DRB about it? Cause I don't want to just like start. Let's do on the record review. And we just heard from the chair that they don't want to do it. Like I like to talk to them. A little bit more about it or see if we can come to a, I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. And then we can work on some of these barriers. We could certainly set up a joint meeting. Um, to try to set something up where we, where we can have a conversation, a direct conversation between the two. Um, between the two commissions and boards. Um, and do it that way. Um, it also may be helpful if. If we did that. Um, And I think that it would be helpful to have a conversation with somebody who is. Familiar. With Mappa, maybe even inviting in, um, David Roo, who's our city attorney or somebody else to kind of go through and. You know, cause there's a lot, just so much stuff. I, I've never done Mappa. So, um, so many times I can usually come in and give people my experience and, you know, I've been doing it for a long time. Um, and how I've handled things or seen things done, but I've never honestly had to do Mappa for any community that I work for. So, um, it may be helpful to have somebody there who has the experience or has the legal background to say, no, no, no, you're, you're overdoing it. That that's not how this is going to happen. Um, It's, it's, it's much less. It's, it's not that when we say it's more formal. I mean, I don't know yet. I mean, that sounds like a good next step to me, but I don't know what others think. Yeah, I think so too. Yeah, I agree. I agree with Stephanie that I don't want, or both of you, I don't want to like her letter is fairly strong. I don't want to, but. Yeah. I like the idea of inviting expert, expert or two. And maybe someone who's gone through the process. I don't know if that means someone like Sarah or someone, you know, maybe an applicant who has gone through that process. Yeah, I mean, they're, they're different, different communities. Um, it's, it's a, it's a range. There's only eight communities that have gone through and done Mappa. Um, that hasn't been a lot. Hasn't been a big rush to do it. Um, some big communities that you would have expected like Burlington has not gone to Mappa. Um, other. Communities, Chittenden County communities have. Um, but it hasn't been, there hasn't been a big rush to do it. So, but we could certainly find, um, find someone, whether it's Sarah McShane or whether it's, um, somebody else. Uh, who could come over and give, give some, some of their experience about it. Okay. Um, Does that seem like a good plan for everybody? Okay. I don't think we need to vote. I think that's, that's. I know from the, from the past, I think. I don't think I'd be out of place by saying, I'm pretty sure John. Adams has been a supporter of Mappa. I can't remember where Kirby's been, but I was pretty sure I remember John being a supporter of it. Okay. So I guess we'll leave it up to you like to. Get somebody to come in and help us sort through this. Okay. All right. Next up is a summary of zoning updates for housing changes due to statutory changes. So we had, um, what was asked to 37 or 235 or something like that. That was approved. The legislature, um, recently actually it was only weeks before election day, basically, um, they finally wrapped up the legislative session. And on the last day they passed this housing bill. Um, which made a few requirements, um, some of them larger requirements. Um, and so because we're working on the zoning change already, I incorporated these into it. So when we've got the draft ready, I'll send it out. And it should be obvious where these are, um, because we're doing the strikeout copy. Um, so one. One change is that the legislature said. Um, that for any housing units up to four dwelling units. Um, that would be, um, you can no longer use character of the area as a reason to deny an application. So that's a little bit complicated. Um, so let me parse that out. Um, so we break our uses into, you know, the, um, the, um, the, um, the, um, the unit and then after that is multifamily. Anything bigger than four is multifamily. Um, Now, character of the area comes in during conditional use approval. And that's the only place it really comes into effect as conditional use approval. So, um, There are only three requirements in conditional use approval. One is, um, character of the area. Um, Now something as small as a one to four unit project. Um, Would never. Have an impact on the character on the capacity of facilities. So it's, it's, uh, you know, somebody putting in a four unit building, nobody's ever going to say there's not enough fire department capacity to provide for it. So. Um, And was that, um, because it was very limited, it didn't happen in very many places, any place where a one, two, three or four unit on the use table. If it said it was conditional, we're going to make it permitted. Um, so that just makes them administrative because we can't really deny them. For conditional use, we might as well just make them permitted uses. So, um, So, um, That makes sense. Not too confusing. Yup. So you said they were, there were three things for conditional use approval, character capacity and. What was the third one. Traffic was the other one. Okay. Um, yeah. So, So one is just a change to use table. Um, and that helps us meet that requirement. Um, The second set of changes were to accessory dwelling units. So they made a few subtle changes, some of which we already, we already had a more generous ADU. Provision. So some of them we already met one change that went through is that you can't limit the number of bedrooms anymore. So it used to be that. It used to be a two bedroom apartment. Now they said you can't limit the number of bedrooms. If it meets the square footage. So if you can put in a, you know, a two bedroom apartment over your garage. That's still an ADU as long as it meets the space requirement of less than 30%. Or 900 square feet. So there were a couple of little changes like that. I put them in there. I don't think they're very, um, too controversial. Most of which, as I said, I think we already, excuse me, we're meeting those requirements. Um, the next one they had were changes to small lots. This will affect us. So though I don't know how, how much. Any. Or in general, any lot that's less than the minimum lot size. Minimum lot size of 5,000 square feet. And you own a 3000 square foot lot. You have a small lot under state law. Um, and. Before they used to be treated. If it was a, um, An undeveloped lot. The old rule used to say is if it is less than 5,000 square feet. Then the city has the right or the municipality has the right to prohibit development. If that small lot is less than 5,000 square feet, basically if it's too small to develop. Then. You're allowed to prohibit development on small lights. And that was to, to kind of stop some. Some goers, um, survey goers or other, um, issues that would come up. Um, occasionally this would come up in places where people bought a double lot. Um, you know, especially lake shore communities or urban communities would have these, um, Old subdivisions that went through and maybe made 3000 square foot lots. People would buy up two lots. Um, but then later on decide, Hey, I've, I've got a separate lot. I can sell it. Well. Under, under the old rule, you couldn't. Um, under the new rules. Um, if it's on water and wastewater, then it is still a developable lot. So we had to change it. So we're not really sure how that's going to entirely play out. We did talk to David Roo, our city attorney. Um, and you know, we said, well, does that mean it's exempt from all requirements? You know, like setbacks. And he said, no, it's, it's developable, but it still has to meet the requirements. So it still may be undevelopable because it can't meet the setbacks. But we can't deny it simply because it is too small. Um, I think for the most part. We may get some, um, it's, it does, it's not going to happen a ton, but there may be a lot that's as small as, you know, a thousand square feet that we would simply have to look at as a building lot now. Mike, didn't we already say that any lot, even if it didn't meet the minimum lot size could be used for a single family dwelling? I thought that was already included. There's something in there about small ones. Yeah, there, there was, I'm trying to remember what I would have to go and I'd have to do some search to see if I could find that. Um, I think what that was getting at was that. Any. Any conforming lot can always be used. At least for a single family dwelling. I think that came up in like the steep slopes requirements and these other places where if, if the environmental rules were preventing development that we couldn't. Prohibit all development on that lot. As long as it was a sufficient size. You think the original long as it was of sufficient size. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But this, this just meant I had to make a few adjustments to. Those vested rights rules that are at the start. So you'll see some changes there. Again, I don't think it's a really big deal. But it is a change. And I thought I would give you the update on that. So the, the second set of changes that we went through. In the last couple of years. Um, Because we were adjusting some of those housing things on the use table. We had noticed in using the zoning for the past two years. That there's some inconsistencies in the use table and how we define them. So there were gaps in spaces where things didn't line up. And you kind of like to have things nested. So that way. You know, for example, it's one unit, two, three, four. It's a separate unit. It's a separate unit. It's a separate unit. Well, it's nice and clean. You know exactly where you fit on that spectrum. But sometimes you have things that don't fit into a box, like having senior housing. As a separate use. And you start trying to figure out whether. Senior housing, you know, isn't senior housing, just an apartment building or, um, you know, so we had some uses that didn't quite fit in. They kind of just kind of plunked in there. So we went through and cleaned up that, that use table a little bit. So that way it was a little bit cleaner. And we broke them into three groups. So you have your dwelling units, which I just discussed. There would be a second group, which we would just call congregate housing. And congregate housing is going to be any use that. Um, Doesn't have all of the independent living requirements. So for example, um, a dwelling unit has to have its own kitchen, its own bedroom, its own living in its own sanitation. Every unit is a contained unit that has all of the required elements. Uh, congregate living doesn't necessarily have that they may share some or all of those. Um, you may in, um, we used to have a separate use for rooming and boarding house. Um, so you might in a rooming and boarding house, rent a room, but share a bathroom and share a kitchen. Um, you might live in a dormitory. A dormitory is a congregate living where you, you live in a room and meals are provided to you. And you share sanitation facilities. Um, so. We, we left it as a congregate living as, as a. More general grouping because we feel there's a lot of other alternative living arrangements that just simply may fall into that. Um, there's some co-housing, um, a commune type arrangements that people could come up with. And rather than try to define each one, we just said, look, if everybody gets their own dwelling unit, then you're a dwelling unit. And if people are living in a different living arrangement where you're sharing these things, then you're going to be congregate living. And we made them mostly conditional uses because we're really leaving it broad and we don't know how that's going to. Um, look. So we really felt like. It would be appropriate to leave it broad. Um, and give the DRB discretion to approve and not approve based on, you know, mostly in this case, probably the character of the area. Um, because you can for these congregate living arrangements, you know, make a determination of whether, you know, living in dormitories is appropriate. It might make sense in, you know, up at VCFA, it might not make sense in a different area. Um, but the idea is we would just break into that. And then the third group are the state. So we have the dwelling units, the congregate living and the third group are the state licensed and registered facilities. Um, and they're very specific uses. They're, they're easy to distinguish because you need a state license for, and they may be either dwelling units or congregate living. Um, they're arranged either way. Um, some, um, residential care facilities, um, might be very much an assisted living where there's, um, meals are provided and, um, and in other cases, it may be more of a senior housing situation where, um, um, only certain facilities are shared. So, um, we left it, we left those as our own groups, because they can flex either way between, between the two, but we have to treat them differently because they're licensed. So, and I think that was about it. Oh, except for, um, one other change, which I think John would be happy for. If you were here, but he's not, um, we discussed in the definition of dwelling unit, we had inserted that dwelling units had to at least be 250 square feet in size. And we decided we would recommend striking that requirement because what that did was that made, it made it illegal to do tiny homes. And so either we were going to have to make tiny homes their own use. Um, or we were going to have to find some other way of managing them and knowing that that concept is out there and knowing that, that may come up from time to time that we should, if we just removed the 250 square foot minimum, then a tiny home is no different than any other home. As long as it contains the, the five required elements of a home of a dwelling unit, then it's a dwelling unit. If you can fit all five of those into 150 square feet or 100 square feet, then go for it. We just have to see that you've got, you know, wastewater, um, living, cooking, sleeping. Um, And something else. There's five, five of them that are in the definition of a dwelling unit. So as long as you can meet that. Go, go for it. Well, now you've piqued my curiosity, like, I need to know what the definition of dwelling unit is. You said wastewater. Is it just regular water? Water access. All right. So you're going to. Make me look it up. No, you don't have to look it up. Like I was just. I'm not looking to build a tiny house right now. So. Living, sleeping, eating. Well, I guess they have eating and cooking as separate. That's why I didn't get it. Eating, cooking and sanitation. Living, sleeping, eating, cooking and sanitation. So. You don't need electricity. Well, I'm, I'm legitimately surprised by that. If you can do that. Well, it's not a minimum for rental housing. Rental housing code is going to put you at a higher level. Yeah. Um, so if you wanted to rent that unit, then you must meet, um, which we don't enforce the rental code through the zoning. Um, rental code is, uh, is kind of vague. Unenforced and sitting on state law right now. Um, but there's a proposal to have division of fire safety take that over. So I'll be interested to see how that goes. Um, and. So we'll see. Okay. With that. Um, moving right along. We are now at our eighth agenda item. Presentation of capital improvement plan. For informational and educational background. All right. So I sent out, um, the, the Excel file. You know, I didn't bother trying to PDF it or anything. I just figured I would send it out. Um, there was some conversation. Last time when we were talking about the transportation plan about. What is the CIP? How does it work? Um, And I guess I can, people want, I can try to share my screen again. See if I can pull that up. Um, so this is our current draft CIP. Um, and what you see is, um, this is all proposed at this point, but the concepts are there. So in, in this case, equipment. Um, you know, uh, These are a little bit more general. Um, sometimes you're much more specific. About what the equipment is. I don't know what's under DPW equipment. Uh, so that's, there's the way DPW. Um, Breaks down their equipment. So you've got bucket loaders, trucks, F one fifties, the date purchased. The life expectancy. So what you can do once you've plugged all these factors in. And if you plug in a cost. What it can do is you know that, if you've got a life expectancy of a bucket loader for 15 years, you can place out where this is going to be. And I don't know how far out this goes. This only goes out to 20, 28. So what do we got? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight years. So it's a current year plus seven years. Um, they can be out as long as you want to make them. I've done them for 15 years. I don't know how far out this goes. Um, they can be out as long as you want to make them. I've done them for communities out to, to 11 years. And the idea is that you would be able to put in, in the purchase date and the life expectancy and know that 13 plus 15 is going to be 20, 28 is when we should be looking at. Um, purchasing a new bucket loader, for example. Um, and this goes right on through. You would simply put each one of these. Um, different, um, wing trucks, plow trucks, sweepers, and, and you factor them in, and you put in how much it costs for them. And then you've got two ways that you can pay for that equipment. One of which is to, uh, amortize it and put that money away. Um, so you might do that if you had a sale. Um, a large ladder truck or, or something that's really expensive for a fire department. Or you might have to bond for some of those, but the idea is that you can start thinking ahead and spacing out. Um, you know, you hope you get to a point where you can space them out. Well, um, you know, if your plow trucks are good for 10 years and you own 10 plow trucks and we might as well just buy one a year and be on a good replacement schedule. Um, and, and it gets more in depth than that. Uh, I know working with different DPW garage guys, they, they factor everything in to make sure that they are looking at the resale value, for example. Um, you know, a lot of their, I've heard complaints from counselors sometimes about, well, why do we have all these new trucks? Why don't we just drive the old trucks and keep driving them and sometimes to come down to resale value. Um, you know, they, they price the economics of, well, we're going to buy it at 150,000. And if we trade it in at eight years, then, then that's our best resale value. We can trade that in, get good trade in on a new truck. And then we don't have to pay people to fix truck. Um, otherwise you've got to have hired mechanics. To keep your trucks going. So it's a balancing act that they factor in. Um, so the idea that the capital plan, as I said, it's really to look in this case, equipment, what are our big capital purchases and how much is it going to cost for us to do? And what's our total, total costs that you can see there. They're looking at this year. COVID. We had to zero out most of the equipment fund. So rather than spending $300,000 on equipment this year, we only spent 45,000. So now we've got to push all of those other purchases later. So that's just an example. Um, of the equipment. And let me back up to the summary sheet here. The other one we were talking about as it applies to transportation was, um, Paving. And I think that's what this is here. This is our streets total for our paving. That's streets, bridges, transportation, retaining wall sidewalks. So yes. So this is the paving schedule. What's getting paid? How much is it going to cost? 120,000 for Clarendon 140 for Deerfield. These were actually last year's 2020. So these were projects that if you live on those streets, you probably saw we're done. And this is approximately what it costs to do them. Um, this is a 2021 plan and the, what we would be looking at budgeting for next year. And again, we're looking at all of the streets and all of the different projects we might have to do and trying to make sure that we meet the. Um, the paving schedule. Streets will be paved. Um, on average, it depends on how. Busy the road is, how much traffic they get, but we'll just. Put it in there, 12 to 15 years. So that's what we're looking for. So that's what we're looking for. Could be sooner. Could be, could take longer, you know, a small back road that doesn't get much traffic. May last longer. It really depends on how good the road base is, but they budget in how much it's going to cost to replace. Replace those roads. So that way they can get again, this, this sum total of projects. We will spend $500,000 a year paving streets. Approximately. What bridges have to get done. These are always very expensive bridges, including realto bridge. This is one we've talked about a lot for why we want to have state street ready to go. And that's a $700,000 project for, for replacing that bridge in 2024. Other projects in the transportation. Um, street lights, the very main intersection. Retaining walls. Um, being the city of Hills, we have a lot of retaining walls. Uh, again, they, they have identified what are the projects and when we're going to do them. Out 2024 and they probably on a separate sheet have much out much farther than 2024. Um, so again, the sidewalks that we're going to replace, we're spending. 285,000 on, on sidewalks in this year. Um, And varying amounts, 90, 160, 215. Um, So, again, this pulls everything together that, uh, the CIP are capital improvement plan. When you add everything up, uh, is, is a considerable amount of money that we spend 1.7 million last year. 1.3 million this year, 2 million next year, 1.8, 2.5. So it gives you an idea. Um, when we talk about how to implement our transportation plan, and most of these are transportation related, not all of them. Um, you know, this is buildings and grounds isn't really, um, Part of transportation, but a lot of these other pieces are. Um, that's, that's an important piece, how we implement our transportation plan. A lot of it comes down to how do we spend our 2 million dollars this year? Um, Or 1.5 million. Um, And how do we lay out these projects going forward? And are we putting enough money in that was part of the paving schedule. If anyone was remembering back eight years, um, seven, eight years ago now, There was a big issue with how bad streets were in Montpelier because they hadn't been, Nobody had been putting enough money into paving. And so every time we had a budget shortfall, the first thing that would get cut is paving and it would never come back. So they made an effort that every year they would add another 200,000 into the paving budget. To get it up to, um, a much higher amount. I want to say 800,000 a year. Where was streets? Yeah, it was to get up that 600, 700,000 a year, I think was where we were trying to get up to, um, This year will be an anomaly because it's COVID, but. That's, that's a little bit of what they're trying to do is to make sure we, you know, by looking at a sustainable, you know, how much money do we need to sustainably manage our streets? How much money do we need to sustainably replace our equipment? Um, and you put all that together into a big capital plan. And, um, you know, um, You know, your, your budget geeks love this stuff. It's, you know, put all on the tables and you, you can figure out exactly how much money you need and how much money we need to raise. And can we get grants to trust the most costs? Um, and go from there. So I guess I'll. Take some questions. So Mike, um, I assume a lot of these are connected. So if the storm. Water replace is being replaced on a certain street, then that's also going to get sidewalk work and street work in the same year. If you were to look through, you may find that, or what you may find is the storm water happens a year before. If you, if you were to pay attention, I get to see it a lot because I have a nice lung commute. Um, but if you ever watch the state, um, you'll see the state will go through in one year and they will go through and replace culverts and they may replace some bridges. And then they may do some ditching and then finally, like three, the fourth year out, they'll go through and repay everything. Um, and it's really because they're starting at the bottom and working their way up because they don't want to go through and repay the street and then have a culvert fail. So they'll go through in one year and replace all the culverts on that same road. And the roads are terrible still, and then they go through the next year and they work on something else and the roads are still terrible. And then finally they reach a point where they go through and they pay everything. And it's part of their CIP that in, at the state level that they'll go through and determine what happens. And I think that's a good point. And, um, you probably would find if there was a gap in a sidewalk. Um, And actually it's nice to, that it's actually highlighted here. Um, East state street. Um, needs a retaining wall. Um, East state street needs a sidewalk. And I'm surprised I don't see the numbers lining up, but I would have expected, because this is a project that's coming up that I would think is it's a stormwater project, a retaining wall project and a street project. But maybe they lumped some of them together. Oh, there it is. It's up here for 2024. For 275. And it's a retaining wall project. Maybe they put that separately somewhere. And it's a sidewalk for 150. So you see the sidewalk. And the street paving are being done on the same, in the same year at the same time. Okay. I thought that was coming up sooner, but maybe they're doing the right of way and acquisition. Because some of these projects like East state streets, a big project. And if you don't own the right of ways, you sometimes need to go through and purchase. Or go through taking process or something. If you don't, you know, not all places have uniform things. And sometimes you need to go by and pick up something. So getting the surveys and the planning done for a big project like this, you might have to do $50,000 worth of work here. In order to get the permits ready here in order to build the projects here. And one more quick question under buildings and grounds. Energy committee was actually asking about this because we didn't know if that was included in this. CIP. What is building slash land. For 254,000 in FY. 2021. How does that break down? That is. It must be a very specific project that that's, that's out there. Does it break, break out in your spreadsheet? Or not the 254. I don't see that it's broken out. So I don't know what, what that figure is. Okay. Looks like we're either buying something. We're building something. But it was originally slated for this fiscal year. Right. We are in 2021. Yes, we are in 2021. Okay. Well, that's a question. I know they did a roof. I know they did the roof on city hall, but I would have expected that in city hall. I don't know. But yeah, like I said, the big key to this is it's this, this is, this is a tool. You know, a lot of times how we spend our money is a very critical tool and how we implement our city plan. How we get our goals accomplished. So we talk a lot about. How we get our goals accomplished. And we're stuck in that world. And we miss the fact that. So much work gets done through the CIP. And. And making sure that we participate in that. Is the right way to make sure that our storm water goals are met. And that our. Our complete streets goals are met. And that's what we do. When the transportation committee talks about wanting to be on equal footing with alternative transportation and. Automobiles. You know, and, and, and, you know, you, you certainly have a point. When you look at this and go and say that, you know, you know, our, our paving and. You know, we're getting equal footing. Now it is more expensive to, to pave a 24 foot road than it is to build a six foot sidewalk. So. But are we, are we prioritizing these activities down here? To make sure that our goals are going to be accomplished within our time span. You know, it's this, is this good news. Mike, is this the current proposal? It's going to city council. I mean, they review this, right? Yeah, this was, this was just a draft. I was trying to get a copy of last year's because I didn't want to confuse people with an influx one, but the only one that I had. This was emailed to me. From the finance department as. To all those email to all department heads. As the primer for the budget Congress where we talked about. Developing the FY 22 budget. And so this, this is not by any means. The, the, this was just a draft that was in the, in the works. Some of which is capturing. The adjustments that were made to 2021. And some of them were, how are we going to meet our goals of 2022? And it may certainly have been that in. The budget discussion, we had to cut. $100,000 out of the budget in which case people would have to go through and figure out what. Where are we pulling $100,000 out of here? So this, this is by no means the V proposal. It was just a draft that was out there and it was, it's meant to really be just kind of educational to kind of show people what one looks like. And in fact, this is ours and, and reflects a number of years and. You know, hopefully people, you know, and it affects not only just transportation, but all departments. I mean, fired EMS. You know, they've got capital needs, whether it's, you know, buying ambulances or improving and building equipment. This could be the parks department. You know, it's a smaller capital fund, but they've got equipment that they need to maintain the cemetery. At the same time, they've, they've got trucks and equipment they need. And, and technology. So even things that you wouldn't think of, you know, your servers and your con contracts and computers to keep the city's IT department running. Recreation may need to fix a swimming pool or some of their equipment outside. So, and of course that's the police department equipment. They've got big needs. So. This is just meant to be an example, but if you want the version when the finance department and the budget goes to council, I think the budget is supposed to go to council in December. So if it goes to council, you should be able to get a copy of what is. The capital budget. That is being proposed. So give it a couple of weeks. All right. Well, thanks, Mike. Informative. Anybody have anything else they want to. Yes. Okay. Hearing nothing else. I'd ask for. Got any objection. I would suggest we adjourn. Here. Moved. Moved. It is seconded. Bar gives the hand wave. All in favor. I'll leave it on mute. All those opposed. We're adjourned. Thanks, everybody. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks. At that email. Thank you. Okay. Sure. It's fine. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks. I love you. Thanks. At that email. Thank you for that. Okay. Sure. It's fine. Thanks everyone. Thank you.