 This January 27th meeting of the Popular Planning Commission tonight we are mostly going to be having presentation and a public hearing on the design review regulations with the public comment. Before we get to that we have to real quickly just go through some of our procedural things that we need to go through as a planning commission because this is a regular planning commission meeting as well as a hearing. So I'll try to get through that very quickly so we can get to what people came here for. So the first thing is an approval of the agenda so if the planning commissioners could take a look at that and let me know if everything's fine. John Adams has moved to approve. Do we have a second? Seconded by Stephanie. All in favor of approving the agenda? Say aye. Opposed? Okay so the agenda is being approved. Next comes comments from the chair. I don't have any comments except that I'm looking forward to a wonderful feedback on the design review regulations tonight. And after that is general business comments from the public about something not on the genders so we should ask the folks who are here tonight if there's anyone here that would like to speak about something other than the design review now would be the opportunity for that. Anyone here for any other purpose? Okay. Consider there's no comments there. We'll move on. And the next thing to do is to review and approve the minutes from January 13th. So we could take a look at those. Okay. Yeah, it passed. So also all that ends well. Sorry. I'll move to approve the minutes. Okay. We have much to approve from Stephanie. Do we have a second? Seconded by John. All in favor of approving the minutes from January 13. Aye. Okay. Any opposed? Any abstentions? I do. Wasn't there so. Okay. So Barb's abstaining. I'll vote to approve. So it's we have a 4 to 1 vote to approve the minutes from January 13 or 4 to 0 to 1. But that is okay. Well that brings us through. So that was that was kind of quick. And with that, we can turn over the public hearing or we can start the public hearing on the design review regulations and turn things over to Mike and Meredith, who are staff for the presentation. Okay, well, thank I want to thank everyone for taking some time to come out. And to be able to talk about this. How many folks were here 2016? Made the comments for that one? Couple. Okay, so this will be a little make it a little bit easier because we don't have to explain the last time and how this is different. So real quick, I just wanted to go and spend some time just to introduce the planning commissioners who are up here. And we have some historic preservation folks also here. And then in my presentation, I want to just go through a real quick history of how we got here, a review of the proposed rules review of the foundry changes. And then we can open up to the public comment. We don't want my presentation to take a long time. We're really more interested in hearing what you have to say and what questions you guys have. So you're more than welcome to ask questions along the way. Is it possible to turn off the light right over the screen? Not specifically that one, but we could turn off this bank if it's difficult to see. John, over to that side, there's one that's labeled council. So that works a little better. Of course, now we've got our commissioners in the dark. If you guys want to just quickly introduce yourselves. And then I think we've got two historic preservation folks in the back. So sure. So I'm Kirby Keaton. I'm the chair of our work. Henry Stephanie Smith. I'm John Adams. And we have in the back we've got Eric Okay, so and again, I'm Mike Miller. I'm the planning director for the city. So this has been a project that goes back to when the city spent about seven years working on the zoning regulations in the update. And in 2016, there was a large public hearing about design review changes that didn't get a lot of support. And so at that time, the Planning Commission voted to keep the rules the same as they were and adopt them into the zoning, which is what happened. And to have the Historic Preservation Commission go back and do some work on ever on a new set of design rules. And then the Planning Commission will work on some new boundaries once we had those rules. So that was the strategy. And so back in September 2017, that process kicked off with Historic Preservation Commission, and they started the remainder of 2017 and 2018. They worked on a bunch of resources, looked at national models, and best practices, and they hired a consultant to help them take a public review, get some public input and come up with a new set of rules. To regulate what we call the design, what is now called the design control district, it would be under the new rules be a design review district. What were their goals when they laid it out? The first two were to improve the predictability and consistency of applications and to improve the defensibility of decisions. So these two points came from a lot of the public comment we got in 2016, which was that we've had design review in effect for a long time. There are some approvals that happened in the 1980s that would be denied in the 1990s that would be approved in 2000. They weren't there wasn't a consistency because as members of the design review board changed, how the rules got enforced changed. And so that's not only a problem on how the rules work, but it also is legally problematic because we need to have rules that can be consistently applied. There may be some subtle differences in interpretations, but there shouldn't be these broad changes over time. So we needed to make those two improvements. So that was two of their big tasks were to make it more predictable. And then to, as I mentioned, be a design review district, not a design control district. So that would mean there's under statute two ways you could do it. You can have a historic design review district or you can have a design review district. And they chose to go the design review district. They also had to meet the certified local government requirements. We are a certified local government. So that's a national program that we are a part of. And that meant we would have to meet the National Park Service requirements. So they reviewed those. We wanted to make more flexible design standards as compared to the current rules. And with some more clear exemptions and more options for administrative reviews, not everything should have to go through the design review commission if it's a simple project. So we wanted to make rules that would more flow with what what we're trying to accomplish. And then we wanted to establish more transparent guidelines. So the core changes, which hopefully most of you had mailed to you if you didn't get them, there should be some copies and we can certainly answer any questions. The core changes really come down to standards for alterations in addition to historic buildings as one group and projects that don't involve historic buildings into another. So right now the rules are the same for both groups. But what we had what they proposed was a set of rules for the historic, a set of rules for non historic, and then some rules that cover all applications. They went through in sections F and G and added some of those application process rules and review rules. Those were things we talked about how do we make the process operate better with those are in sections F and G. And then we increased exemptions from design review, which is in section E. So there were a number of projects that now wouldn't need required and wouldn't need reviews at all anymore. So this slide really just lays out those same requirements. Section three talks about three a talks about standards for all projects. Three B talked about standards for historic buildings. And three C for projects that don't involve historic buildings. Administrative officer may approve the following without DRB decisions. So this is new. The primary approval of seven categories and changes such as removal of signs, ADA features certain awnings. These are all things that wouldn't need to go to DRB and DRC anymore. They could be approved administratively as well as minor amendments to previously approved projects. So sometimes what we get is somebody who comes in goes through DRC gets an approval. And when they get into construction, they need to make a change. Oh, we had planned on using material access got to be material wide. Some cases we can make that approval administratively rather than having a new set of hearings. And the exceptions as we talked about there are a few things that we wanted to just eliminate from design review in these new rules. So one is the repainting of already painted surface surfaces. So that means changing paint color. If your house is painted red and you want to paint it blue, paint it blue. The only requirement is you can't use a destructive method before the repainting. So you couldn't sandblast your house. So because we don't want to damage the historic materials, but we don't care about the changing of the color anymore, which had been a requirement and is a requirement right now. If you want to make in kind repairs for deteriorated porches, cornice, exterior siding. So this goes to right now, if you went and said I've got a historic house and the porch is rotten out, I'm going to replace it. I'm going to replace it and make it look exactly the same. Well, today you'd have to go through the whole hearing process to get that approval, even though that's exactly what we want you to do. So if you're going to do that, if you're going to replace it in kind, then that can be an administrative permit. And same with repair and replacement of some roof drainage systems and some other pieces. Then there's some discussion also on how to handle municipal projects, which was unclear in our current rules. Won't apply to anybody here, but will apply to some projects. When historic preservation was done with their piece, the Planning Commission had to take over and make a decision on their part, which was, okay, what are the boundary changes that we want to make or need to make? So currently the boundary is arbitrary, doesn't follow any logical place. It doesn't follow the historic district. It doesn't follow zoning district boundaries. So our goal was to have boundaries that had some justification. So the rules they had to follow, it must include the designated downtown. Because we are a designated downtown, all the properties in the designated downtown must be in design review. That's just a requirement for that program. It cannot include the capital complex. So that area that is right around the capital is exempt by state statute. So what the Planning Commission chose was to match lines to neighborhood boundaries in the zoning. So our zoning district, our zoning bylaws have the city broken into about 50 different neighborhoods. And what they chose to do was to try to match them as best we could to those boundaries. So in some cases, that meant adding in or taking off a parcel here and there, if it crossed over. But the idea was to try to capture as many of those neighborhoods. With some exceptions, that's how it kind of worked out. And there was a focus on the downtown and gateway areas. So that was really where the map that you ended up getting mailed to kind of shows. And so where we ended up mostly the same as today with a few changes, we kept in VCFA in the college, but we removed CCB. So currently the design review regulations apply to the CCB CCB building. It's just a single parcel out in the out on Elm Street. We removed CCB because there's nothing else out there. But we kept VCFA national life stayed in, but the boundaries were adjusted to clean up the parcel lines. We added the north side of Berry Street out to Granite Street. So that's a difference. Currently today, only the south properties on the south side of Berry Street were in design review. Because the neighborhood included both sides of the street, we added the north side in. We added in Downing Street, which is that little road that goes up across from guys farm and yard. There's a little road that goes up to Blanchard Park. That was currently not in design review, but all the properties around it were. So we added those guys in. We added in the rest of the crossroads neighborhood that's better than most people called gasoline alley. So currently the gas station on the corner was in design review, but Cumberland Farms was not Duncan Donuts was not Domino's Pizza was not. So we would now be adding in all those commercial properties out to the to the garage. That's where the change of the neighborhoods are. We would add in the redstone building. So that formerly was a state owned building is not privately owned building. So that was getting added in that's over on Terra Street. And then last we added in the rest of the redstone north neighborhood. So that was a neighborhood that we had some questions on because half the neighborhood currently is in design review and the other half is not. And so the question came up of what do we do at this neighborhood? And the decision was at this point was put everybody in and and then review where that goes. So the redstone north neighborhood is Bailey, some of the Bailey north of Terra Street kind of up the material. So the next steps that we would be having here is it really depends on public comment. This was a proposal same as it was in 2016. We everyone put a lot of work in historic preservation has put a lot of work into coming up with some new rules that are kind of addressing the issue differently than the 2016 proposal was. The idea is not to regulate more. If anything, we're regulating a little bit less. The idea is to add more detail into the rules so that way it can be more consistently applied over time. So our goal is not to try to figure out how we're going to how we're going to be denying permits that we are approving today. We actually want to just keep approving the same permits. We just want to have the consistency with the rules. But again, if we get positive feedback, then this would probably move forward towards adoption. It would probably take another six or seven months to get through all the hearing process. If we get negative input, then we'll probably revise or remain back to the Historic Preservation Commission for additional study. Typically, there'll be a set of changes that the Planning Commission will be voting on. So we'll take a bunch of comments and then we'll look at making some decisions to vote on. And once it's completed, it goes to City Council for more hearings. And then the last thing is once this is adopted, Historic Preservation will develop guidelines to help applicants. One of the difficulties is there's a little bit of a chicken and egg. They want to adopt and have guidelines. So that way, we've got a work book. There are a number of communities in the country that have done this. There are a number of communities in Vermont that have done this. And the guidebooks are really helpful to help people know. Yes, you should do this. No, you shouldn't do this or you should avoid this. And the guidebooks are really helpful. But we really can't spend that time and money to do a guidebook until we know really what the rules are. So we want to have both. We've got to start with this. But Historic Preservation is already prepared to do the next step on that. And so that was all I had. As I said, I wanted to keep it relatively quick so we can get to your comments and questions and we can get into as much detail as you guys want. I guess we'll open up the floor and I've got a number of comments from people who couldn't make it tonight that I'll read into the record at some point when everyone else is all set. Okay, so I think I guess with that, we don't have any more PowerPoint presentation. Okay, so should we hit the lights then? Will you get the lights, John? Okay, with that we'd like to invite anyone to come up to the mic with your comments or questions about either the proposed new regulations or the proposed new boundary. And we need folks at the mic so people at home can hear. Anyone? So if you could introduce yourself and then proceed. For slide 10, see exemptions and limitations. Number one there, section 2201.E1, you know, lists a few new exemption examples. But the first one, when you look at the actual proposed draft, is the subdivision of land being exempt from design review approval requirements. I just question why that wasn't highlighted, because it's an extreme change. And I don't agree with it on the next page when you're looking at the actual draft of the Montpelier Unified Development Regulations proposed section 2201. If you look at F, for example, if you're repairing or partially replacing anything, you know, it's making an effort to preserve spatial relationships that characterize a property. And that is not an exempt activity. I would argue that subdividing land would definitely change the spatial relationships that characterize a property and that they should not be exempt activities. What was the second reference? I'm sorry, the one that you said was included? I was just using F that follows in section one. Just how carefully spatial relationships that characterize a property are not considered exempt? I agree with that. And I believe that subdividing should be looked at in much the same manner. Okay, what I can say about subdivision of land is, okay. I'm sorry. Could you just speak to why it wasn't on this slide? Oh, for reasons of time, I didn't go through all looks like there are probably 1112 exemptions. So I summarized the exemptions as to which ones we would go through. As I said, I can certainly expand and make this a much more much longer presentation. But my intent was to go through and highlight the critical differences between them. This is a critical difference subdividing land without review. It's still going to get reviewed as a development review proposal. It would not go through design review because of the requirements that are looked at in design review. The subdivision of land doesn't actually make a building. Putting a new building on that piece of land will require the design review. If you had a space that was sufficient to subdivide, you could subdivide. But there's no change in appearance. So we wouldn't have any rules within design review. They're looking at the appearance. That's what design review is looking at. But what is more important to the appearance of a parcel than how big it is. I mean, this opens up all sorts of different possibilities for projects that weren't there before. So this is a major characterization of the parcel is how big it is. All I can say is that's why it's not it was an exempt activity. It's because it isn't actually constructing any new buildings. And therefore that's what these rules are looking at. These are rules to evaluate building, bulk, massing, space, those types of issues. Certainly, Mike. By the same argument, then why would that be in applicability in the exempt development? If we're talking about development and you're saying that subdividing land has nothing to do with development, why is it in this section? In the exempt development section? Yes. Why is it listed here when you're saying it has nothing to do with building anything? That's what the other things do. So why is it here? It is here because it's when you do an applicability, you create a large umbrella. You have two ways of doing it. You can write an applicability statement that specifically says only these five projects need to get a permit. So this is just getting to any regulation. You can be very specific about this, this, this and this need to get permits. The other way of doing it is to cast a wide net and to go through and say everything needs to permit and then give a bunch of exceptions. The way most zoning rules are set up is you have a definition called development and development is the creation of anything, including, because this is part of the zoning bylaws, it's included, the full definition of development includes subdivision. So when we get to this subsection of the zoning, what we're going through is saying of the big definition of development, except here in development within the design review overlay district, so that's a big broad definition development applies to this section except for these things. So subdivision is development, but it's not going to apply to the design review because we've excluded it here. So as the person who drafted the original version of this, this is supposed to show us some of the things that changed. Subdivision in the Bland is currently exempted from design review under the current 2201. So that's one reason if you're going specifically as to why it's not listed here as one of the exemptions in this look at what has changed in the design review regs. Exempting subdivision of land, it's not something that's changing at all. That's the way things are dealt with currently. Subdivision of land is not subject to design review. In the overlay district that's proposed? Correct. In the current design review district and the one that's proposed, subdivision of land is exempt from design review. When you start dealing with the structures, then you start thinking about design review. But I don't know if subdivision of land was ever subject to design review. I haven't looked back at the, if there was a previous version before this. Thank you, Meredith. I have another unrelated comment. My comment is about the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission. It seems like it's a new year. It's a new map. It's a new district every couple of months. You know, it seems too frequent because it's a lot of investment of taxpayer money and why we keep tweaking it every year or so. I have put in a request for the information concerning the communications between the city of Montpelier and this organization for the development of these maps, because it just seems to go on and on. Like, can't we decide what our objectives are, do the work, do good work, and leave it at that? So why does this change so frequently? It changed. So it has changed somewhat. Getting to the cost of these, we are a member of the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission. We pay dues every year to this organization. And I have not received any invoices from them for the work that they've done for us. We pay a lot of money to them as members. So this is part of the services they provide. They are the GIS center, the geographic information system. That means they do the maps. So they do a lot of work for us. We direct them. We direct them as to what we want and they basically make these maps for us. Right, but couldn't they do things besides making maps? And they have build for small fees for providing the maps, small fees, because I know that the dues are, I think they're $23,000 a year, $23,500. So it just seems like that money could be used for other things than just changing this road and that road all the time. That's my comment. Thank you. Okay. Anyone else like to provide any comments or feedback or questions? Please, please come up. Hello, I'm Tim Heaney. I live in Montpelier and work here. I have a number of properties in the design control district. So we've had the experience of working with it for years and generally it's been a good experience. Years ago it wasn't as smooth as it is now. So I think this is anything I think it's much more reasonable from an applicant point of view from the side of the table I've been on. As I look this over, it's interesting. I received it in the mail and read it and happened to also have a conversation that day with an executive of a company looking in Montpelier and kind of an unsolicited comment from her was, boy, it's really hard to do things there, isn't it? And looking at a downtown property and considering what they might do with it. I had just read this and looking at how detailed and long it is. And it's really the way we went with our new zoning code too. It's much, there's much more meat to it. There's a lot more there and it's a lot longer. I'm really concerned that we've over-regulated to a point where it's really not practical for people and then they look at this process and try to get a handle on because this is just one layer of a big process that one faces trying to do anything in downtown Montpelier or in this district. It's not just this commission and just this set of rules and regs. And these are pretty onerous. I looked at the line that you're trying to set rules to be consistent with national park service rehabilitation standards, which I did look up. And they seem really rigid and inflexible, really focused on maintaining just traditional materials and not being open to other options if I read it right. I guess I don't take many examples from the federal government right now in my life and look to that as a great example. So I look at this and go, hmm, I just, that doesn't feel right to me. I think we need to preserve some flexibility in how we work with our properties. I do believe in conserving and preserving our historic properties and we and we do ourselves a lot. But I think we've got to keep an atmosphere where we can all work together. You know, things like the Kellogg Hubbard Library, you know, is one of the most beautiful buildings in Montpelier, I think. I think most folks would agree and it has this lovely new addition that went on a number of years ago that's rather contemporary. And there's a lot of flexibility in making that come together and I think it's a wonderful outcome. I just hope that this type of policy will allow things like that to continue. So that's my concern is it's a lot of work and I appreciate it, but I think it's too much. Thank you. Thank you, Tim. Yeah, I do know it does. It's kind of the the one side and the other in order to take away that arbitrariness that we had experienced for a number of years where projects would get approved one year and an identical project would get denied the next. It requires to add more words to kind of go and say these are the types of things that should be approved and these are the types of things that shouldn't be. And that does add more language. We do have very good staff who help people. So we don't expect anyone to sit down and read the rules before they apply. People are encouraged to contact the planning department and the zoning administrator and they'll go through the rules with you to go and say your project. You don't even have to look at these, you know, if this is 12 pages they may go through and say there are eight of these pages that don't even apply to you and we can narrow you down to what what are the important conditions and things that you have to me. We really walk people right through the process, but having the rules written out means you're more likely to get a consistent answer and that that was what our hope was was that people could feel comfortable knowing that the rules and if the rules are not resulting in what we want to see then we can always adjust how it's worded and that's our hope is that we've got the ability to, you know, if a project gets approved that we think is a bad idea we can make the rules that change that so it doesn't happen again. But that, like I said, that takes words and unfortunately that takes a short design review rules and makes them much bigger. Okay. We would, as a follow up from the planning commission I would invite if there are specific parts where you think it could be really hard to comply with like you mentioned materials and the material requirements. If you could forward those onto Mike we would love to consider like specific parts that may seem on the rest of this point. Just I want to throw that out there, that invitation. My name is Lindy Biggs. I think expanding the neighborhoods makes a lot of sense because as I've looked at the historic design review neighborhoods things are kind of chopped up so I just wanted to say I think that's a good idea. I have just a little clarification question. It's on page 6 22011 to the first section under number two. I don't know how you call that. Double I. It says changes that create a false sense of historical development shall not be undertaken. And so this is a personal question. I have you might know this funky little gray house on Berry Street. It's the only not historic house on Berry Street and we're wanting to improve the appearance of that house siding that's a no brainer but a couple of other things that might say oh that's trying to make it look historic when we really just want to make it fit into the neighborhood a little nicer because it's not a particularly attractive house right now. So I just wondered if maybe I could get a little bit of clarification on that particular point. That one might be a little bit easier for some of the design reviewer historic preservation folks to kind of answer that it really it always depends on the project. What they don't want to do is to have people intentionally make you know kind of this false history. They would rather have a modern looking building. It may have elements historic elements in there but they don't want the buildings to look artificially historic and maybe Meredith will be able to give a little well just because this example already came up at this meeting. So the addition to the Kellogg Hubbard Library that went through the design review process and the addition clearly is of a different era than the original building but there's still some continuity. There's some design continuity between the two. They look together. They fit together but you can tell that that addition is not the same era. And I mean if you're talking about changes to your porch tweaks to you know an addition of a little I don't even know what but those those are not the concern. Eric Robertson I'm chair of the Start Preservation Commission and sit on design review. One of the things I would suggest one of the changes that didn't get mentioned is that there's specific invitation of people that come to design review with their ideas not a formal application it's an informal process and I would suggest you take care of that. I have a couple of ones that from people who had emailed me who couldn't make it tonight. I'll quickly summarize so there was I received something from Karen Schwartz who lives at 29 Territory so that's the area that is in the Redstone North that was added in. Her concern really was about the fact that her property as well as two properties next to her really are not historic and we took a look and what happened was after the neighborhoods were made the design the historic district changed and those three parcels were actually removed. So her concern was that she didn't want to be included in the design review district because she kind of felt like she was out Terrace Street far enough that she should be included with the light blue neighborhood that's next to her. So that was her request that 29 Terrace, 27 Terrace and 25 Terrace she wasn't asking for the other two but we have heard from 25 Terrace as well that they would be interested in not being included in design review and that at a future date that they would be changed neighborhoods to the other run because they're not historic unlike the rest of that neighborhood. So that neighborhood in the historic district those three are now not in the historic district so that was her request to summarize. Under the zoning there in the same neighborhood still under the zoning there in the same neighborhood those neighborhood lines were drawn before the 2016 changes went through. So in 2016 they were in the historic district. They were then removed from the historic district. So we should have probably updated those. So that would be their request. I received Jessa and Justin Barnard also in that same neighborhood but they are in 30 Bailey Ave. They opposed being added to the district. They live along the north edge of the property of that neighborhood. Boundary does not reflect the contours of the neighborhood as we consider our home more naturally a part of the neighboring neighborhood existing along West Clarendon and would ask that they would be omitted going forward from this proposal. They felt the regulations were unnecessary unnecessarily burdensome. It concerns about the costs and administrative burdens for property owners and they felt that historic preservation standards to houses like their own are problematic. Many neighborhoods have gone through a series of renovations. Many of the elements around the exterior of the house come from different eras and do not share common aesthetics and attempt to divine what is truly historic features on a home that should not be that should be frozen in time and preserve that as a difficult task. We feel that the requirements of the proposed regulations impose an arbitrary preservation obligation. We thank we thank you for your thoughts and considerations. So I will get copies of these out to all of you. Some of these came in most of these came in today and for the planning commissioners we plan to discuss this next next meeting. Does that particular parcel fall within the historic district? It is in the historic district. Yes. In the new historic district or in the old one as well? Both. Both. Okay. So it was already it was already in the historic district but it was not in the design review district. Right. There now because of the proposal to add the rest of the neighborhood in they would be included so there is a description of that buildings Yes. with the there they're actually if you see on this map there's a little nose that sticks out. Yeah. That's their property and that's why I think I think that's why they were concerned with the fact that north south or north east and west of them the parcels are all out but they're in. Is this the same neighborhood that's terraces in? The same neighborhood that terraces in. Okay. So we could possibly just discuss the entire neighborhood. Yeah. We can discuss that entire neighborhood. At the base of Clarendon, right? Yes. I received an email from the solid waste management district saying they would like to have an opportunity to comment but they didn't have anything ready at this time. I received an email from Stephanie Pinard who is part of the condominiums at Franklin Square and so that's 158, 160, 162 Main Street as well as 4 Franklin. So we tried to follow parcel lines and their property actually ends up because it's a strange property they're actually the same parcel except that 4 Franklin is not included in design control but the Main Street is. So originally her proposal was to go and have them all removed. We also could add 4 Franklin in. We explained to her some of the rules and the changes including the fact that changing paint color isn't a requirement and she felt a little bit more comfortable with the revised or with the rules as we explained them to her changing paint color that it's not a matter of if there's a change to a building they need approval from all she thought the application would have to be from all the all the residents of the condo association and I explained no there'll be one condo association that can apply for a project that covers the entire parcel or if an individual person wants to come in just to fix something on their unit that individual person can come in we don't need every an application from everybody so it sounded like there was some confusion. I received one from John Anderson. He was just checking in on 59, 72, 76 and 83 East State and wanted to make sure they were not in the proposed district and if that if my understanding is correct we do not much care what you do although the ordinance does seem to make it more difficult to replace old windows. John's comment. Let's see. I think that might be it. Lisa, Bernard and so I believe that was all of the ones that I had. Thanks Mike. Do we have anyone else from the audience here? We'll speak. Everybody. I'm Ruth here and I think I have maybe two brief comments and one question. I'm a hold over from the 2016 attempt to rewrite and a couple of things I remember that I didn't think were positive in that proposal was as I recall it said that it was allowed to replace a home or replace a roof and put on a standing seam roof because that was considered sort of a Vermont vernacular thing which I thought was positive and I think it was a little more explicit maybe I felt a little more explicit about saying we're not going to regulate paint colors things like that. I know that's in here but it didn't seem like it was quite as clear and the other thing I was thinking about was whether you want to consider maybe going a little bit farther or being a little more explicit in whether improvements are for the purposes of things like energy efficiency weatherization are maybe get a little bit more leeway because as I understand you know energy goals are definitely something that's on the radar the city and solar panels was another thing I thought of if if I'm reading this correctly it would not allow so roof mounted solar panels unless they're hidden from view. So then the question just was as someone who potentially could be in the district in the design review district but not in the historic district as I understand it and I just want to see if I'm right if I wanted to make alterations to my home I would still come to I would still go through the design review process but from what I'm seeing the only things that really would apply are as I believe in the design standards in section three saying that alterations shall be consistent and compatible with the characteristics of the existing building or other properties and then there's a mention which I've probably lost at this point but there was a mention later oh that additions and alterations to non-historic and non-contributing building shall respect and be compatible with exist existing patterns and setbacks I was wondering if there's any further you might say standards that would indicate what you know what would what standards would apply I guess in that situation and I'll listen thank you so Mike do you have an answer or should we should we ask Eric about part of that yeah don't so I mean just generally speaking in under the design review standard so this is subsection I three all projects are then subject to 3a so you talk about the exterior design and materials of new construction or alterations like you said have to be consistent and compatible with characteristics of the existing building or other properties in the zoning district and then as you go along there's also the note about location and appearance of utilities mechanical equipment trash storage have to be cited to minimize adverse visual impact then you know depending on where the property is I mean not yours so much there isn't an application of a you know development has to be designed to respect view corridors and significant vistas generally including gateway views at the city and state house so if you know somebody's going to do something to their building that's an alteration it's not a historic building but it's going to block a view of the state house that could be an issue you also have well that's really more new development but for river and street frontage parcels with river and street frontage but that's not you but that's a that's another criteria you still have height proportion rhythm these are general standards that apply to all projects about looking at those issues if you're making a change in shape to your roof that's something that goes but it's pretty basic in that similarity or compatibility of roof shapes just has to be considered in the alteration of a building so that's not something that's saying what that roof shape has to be it's just something the design review committee might comment on again architectural features they need to be considered but if it's if it's not a historic building there's not as much detail about what that consideration entails as you've noted when you go ahead to the projects that do not involve historic buildings if you're talking about additions and alterations it's basically you know one paragraph there it's really once you start doing a full you know new development that's not a historic building that you start having more detailed standards again so the question touched on the consideration of whether our historic preservation parts of the new design review regulations will apply to a particular house so you just for everyone's benefit to make sure everyone's clear about that speak about when when when a when a person should be concerned with historic price for preservation and when they should not um under the proposed right it's really when you have a historic building so you to be in the boundary and you have to be a historic designated building yeah that's when you start really digging into the historic preservation standards and they're really not supposed to be it's a lot of those standards we're really trying to match up to the historic rehabilitation standards which are not as strict as the historic preservation standards there's multiple national park service standards and the historic preservation commission opted to go with the rehabilitation standards because they do provide more flexibility and Eric if I've got that wrong correct me and so to clarify the the the other side of that coin then is if if your property is within the boundary but it's it doesn't have that designation as a start building then the the regulations would still apply to you but not the parts having to do with the historic preservation yeah okay and Mary she said is it the national park standards that basically excluded the possibility of having solar panels and historic buildings I'm sitting here going I don't know where it says I thought maybe I just missed it no I I don't know this excludes the possibility of solar panels I think that it needs to go through design review so that design review can step in as to potential placement but I don't think there was an intent to bar solar panels from being on historic buildings I think that's just I mean we can all look at it again and see if there's a clause in here that would do that you don't believe that was the intent Eric will you speak to that I think that would be helpful because it's going to be something that comes up about how you think these regulations interact with solar panels I was looking at the regs and that it's it's interesting it just addresses rooftop people doing things on the roof and that was mostly dealing with flat roof buildings and I think we ought to take a look at the house part of it where you have a house that's you know as long as you don't change the roof line but that really I want to talk with the rest of my committee that way about that but I think there ought to be a further explanation on that if you apply them over a roof would that be changing the roof line? Yeah without changing the the shape of the roof right or the ridge or anything like that I would be okay about that I don't know how other people feel one thing I wanted to address what Tim had to say I think an example of a development in downtown that was went through design review went through the state review process and with problems with the park service and the park service is wrong by the way and that's that the old capital market building it's no I place I can't remember the name shipy eye care shipy eye care yeah we you've received local approval but did not receive chief local approval and it got I wrote a letter about it I think other people did so you know we're supporting that kind of development in a downtown and design review supports that so and that was quite a bit of change to the building was that primarily replacing the picture so-called picture windows with no they're what they did at the park service I have a huge problem with this is that they said the building wasn't historic so they couldn't take advantage of the historic tax credits because it used to be a three-story building now it's been listed on the national register twice gone through two reviews for the national register and they didn't say anything about it and it I think that top burn may be in the 60s University in the 50s so they're looking back at and what we said when we did the national register is there's enough left to the historic building the storefronts that it could should be an historic building I don't think they've got an answer and it was almost a year ago now I think that so I that's just kind of addressed your issue to them about so can you still do stuff down the answers yes so I think where the the solar panels may come in is on the top of page seven rooftop equipment and fixtures shall be concealed from my level from public rights of way and from ground level of any adjacent properties so I think that's probably we'll need to look at we'll need to reexamine that one to go and make sure that that's not prohibiting something that we're not trying to do so we should review that one it's come up on flat roof buildings certainly but now if we're yeah usually this was written so people weren't putting HVAC in air air compressors that on on the edges of the buildings are in places where they were within I view you usually want to set them backs but in this case it could be read that we weren't going to allow rooftop equipment on slow so as in solar panels yeah slower buildings they would might be visible I think we have at least one other person who is please come up hi I'm Dick Smith chairman of the trustees attorney of the united methodist church at 137 main street and the reason wanted to come tonight is to increase my education about historic preservation historic buildings and I just assume but they said you never should assume anything that we are historic building historic in a historic district 137 main street so I've had a chance just to kind of look at page seven the additions alteration historic buildings I think they're pretty thorough pretty reasonable and I think the kind of the rule of thumb here is that when in question we should contact you folks the planning commission would probably be involved in painting of the sanctuary ceiling and at some point quite soon because some water damage happened again I don't know if that would go through the design review or not that's a maintenance issue repainting it's going to be pretty much the same color yep most interior stuff does not we only look at things that are exterior on the building so in any interior work would not although it's always good to contact the planning office downstairs as well we do have building permits that sometimes they need to be aware of in case of lead paint or other other issues but right there may be a need in fact there is a need for replacement repair of stained glass windows that be taken out shipped away and then reestablished I probably would again when in doubt ask ask the question we always going to say it's free to it's free to call and talk to us or email Meredith is actually the person you'd want she's the zoning administrator and you'd want to touch base with her on any project and she can let you know definitively whether you do or don't need a permit for a specific project and when I mentioned earlier I was like it doesn't the additional work in here that talks about certain statutory exemptions that won't apply to anybody in here I was wrong it applies to you those statutory exemptions involve churches and houses of worship so you have special allowances that other buildings would not and we describe them in a little bit more detail in here rather than just there used to be just a blanket exemption and now it's a little bit clearer that you do have to go through the process but you're given special consideration the same package do we get from you in the mail yeah I don't know if I've got the exact we don't run into that one too too often it's page three and about a little more than halfway down there's a number two that says limitations I think that's that's what consistent with the goals laid out and under municipal exemptions certain classes schools churches municipal buildings are often key resources and essential to a city sense of place as well as to the significant viewsheds and historic architecture therefore in accordance with state law those structures related to uses specified under state law shall be limited to regulations only with respect to and then there's a list of things those are the only things that we would look at and only to the extent that these regulations do not affect and interfering with the intended functional use of those structures so we could not do anything that would limit your ability to use your church as a church so there's there's a process but as far as coming up with an addition to the building and so on so forth I mean we've run in a pretty hot water if we did it without design you do need permit yeah you do need permits but when you go through that permit process you'd have special given more leeway than a than a commercial project that's very helpful I appreciate it okay thank you all right well do we have anyone else from the audience who'd like to speak okay final chance before we move on Mike Meredith anyone else anyone in the planning commission so Mike anyone who's watching could still submit written questions to you yes I mean we'll close the hearing tonight but we won't be making any determination unless we stay here and make some decisions tonight we would still have some conversation in February we won't be voting to move anything forward tonight so we may make some conversations tonight make some decisions tonight but there'll be additional decisions at our regular planning commission meeting which is in this room on February 10th so that would be the planning commission's next meeting where we will kind of consolidate all of the comments that we've received and make some formal decisions as to whether or not we want to make amendments to what we have so if people have comments you can send them to to me as usual I have nothing to say but what I wanted to do is thank Mike and Meredith particularly in helping us through this and make to make sense and thank the planning commission for their consideration and the meetings we've had I hope this well we're thankful to the historic preservation commission because it's done the line share of the work on on these ranks and it was excellent work so thanks to Meredith for that too okay well before we adjourn I'd like to thank everyone for coming out its feedback was wonderful we will be discussing a lot of it at our next meeting on February 10th like Mike mentioned we'll be discussing the emails that Mike has received as well and considering considered changes based on that any further emails that we receive between now and then we will consider so we would invite people from the public who happen to see this to send those so long to Mike Miller at the planning office and with that do we have any other comments from the planning commission okay well we'll meet again on the 10th and until then thanks a lot to everyone and do we have a motion to adjourn for that were you going to read some comments into the record or uh yeah yeah I summarized them when I read them in okay those yeah those were the comments from those four or five individuals that I got would it make sense to send those on to us? yeah I'll forward them on to you guys I should have done that earlier while I was going through them I was too busy responding to them yeah that's good yeah okay so do we have a motion to adjourn? so move okay move by bar move a second I'll second okay second by Marcella and we are adjourned