 So my name is Kevin Geiger. I'm the director of planning at the two rivers of the Creechee Regional Commission and You are at the second forum tonight. We're going to talk about Zoning tools. We're not going to apply them. We're going to talk about all the different tools That can be used to help for the recording in progress. Oh, there's more. Okay, so now Yeah, click the got it part tools to help further housing that's affordable in your town in your regulations and We're going to go around real quick and just say who you are what town you are maybe your role And so I'll call on you because it's always awkward. And so first Stephen from our shop Yeah, good to see everyone again, Stephen Bauer senior planner at two rivers great and Gregory Colling Thanks Trevor Trevor last one the town manager and Randall and Ann Reynolds from the town of Pomford Planning Commission and Trying to figure out what to do in little Pomford Thanks John Haffner John Haffner Housing and transportation program manager at vital communities Rick Benson Rick Benson Bethel Planning Commission And Sandy Haas Sandy Haas Rochester Planning Commission Matt Osborne Hey Matt Osborne on a planner with the town of Hartford Thanks, Pat Sally Miller. Hi Sally Miller. I'm on the Woodstock Planning Commission and Lee Shannon Lee Shannon set for select board and liaison to the set for planning Commission Thanks, John Reed Yes, some of the Hartford Planning Commission Okay, Jamaica Hi, I'm Jamaica Kelly and I am from Randolph and I'm covering this for the Randolph the White River Herald Thanks Sean I can't don't know if I could say your last name Sean So I'm a grand again. I'm the ordinance administrator and planner in Hollywood. Okay, we're grand again Very good Chris Brimmer Yeah, I'm the zoning planning and economic development administrator for the town of Fairleigh Good to see you Chris. John Heath. I'm on the Hartford Planning Commission Great Colin Butler Good evening. I'm Colin Butler. I'm on the Hartford Planning Commission as well Thanks, Mary Bryant at first select board and liaison to the housing committee Wonderful DC Forbes I'm David Forbes chair of the Petford Planning Commission Orca many media. Can you identify yourself? Whoever shows up as Orca media? Otherwise Stephen will zap you We'll have to see they're just recording it. Oh, maybe they're just recording it. Okay, yeah Bruce Riddle Town of Hartford Planning Commission There's Anna Hi, I live in White River Junction and I work for vital communities. Oh good Kathy Hi, Kathy Melisick historic Wilder Vermont resident Very good Zoe Cartwright Hi there. I'm Zoe. I'm on the town of Bethel Planning Commission excellent and Allie is that how you said Allie? Yes, Allie to Fengen. It's pronounced like a tough engine and I'm a member of the Hartford select board Tough engine tough engine. Okay. Very good Great. Good to see y'all here. Make sure you're at the right meeting. We're going to talk about in particular The work going forward with the seven towns Which are all of you and stuff we're not working with Pomfret, but that's okay Pomfret any town is welcome to kind of watch us do this thing and kind of glean what they can from it and Just to recap for those seven towns tonight We're going to kind of be talking about a bunch of the tools of the trade in terms of working on zoning and then we're actually going to work on each of your zoning's at various times over the next year or so and Come out with a series of targeted recommendations As I say, it's likely to end up like maybe a hundred words. It's not necessarily going to be a lot of stuff But a lot of important little tweaks to your zoning and we're going to be looking at zoning bylaws in particular and And and then hopefully all the towns will adopt those things like of these split Which would be great. And so I'm going to share my screen And as I do it Steven you want to just kind of run everybody through the zoom protocol stuff First off you want to speak unmute yourself But if everyone on the on the bottom doesn't know where the reactions are to to put your hand up There's actually a hand raised function If you so if you go down to share screen and over to the right You'll see your reactions and at the bottom of that you'll raise your hand like that and then once you're done You'll just lower your hand. I'll try and lower people's hands as we go through but that's kind of how we queue up for for questions and answers and and if you have questions while Kevin's in the middle of something And you want to kind of ask the question but wait you can put it in the chat that's on the right side and I will follow that Thank you I kind of have to do something here because you all went away and so I couldn't see anybody here So hopefully Oh, I still can't see you so tonight For whatever reason on zoom I can see the slides. Uh, can you see my slide? No, no, we don't see yourself Okay, I cannot hang on a second here Fix that pink Kevin I just switched you to the main host. Okay. I thought we had we Thought we had that before but that's okay. Can you see my slide now? Yes, okay good everything's everything's working again wonderful Um, so as Steven said, uh, just keep yourself on mute. You can raise hand use the raise hand Reaction thing down bottom stop us at any time We have more to cover tonight in some ways than we had last night's those last little pieces I forget because I've been doing this a long time That not all this stuff is obvious and some of it's downright arcane So, um, if if I use an acronym or Something strikes you fancy stuff us and we'll we'll talk about it But we're here tonight to talk specifically about zoning standards and the processes There that act as obstacles And so we're gonna I'm going to talk about each of these in specific as we go along But these are a bunch of standards that we see in zoning bylaws And we're going to run through each of these and talk about Suggested ways to be dealing with them somewhat And then we're also going to talk about the standard the processes that we go one of which Is the easiest is maybe don't regulate it at all and then You know it's easy for you easy for them But the approvals that you go through and appeals and we'll also talk about We won't talk about just straight permits so much But we will Remind me if I forget the alternate approval process where the zoning administrator can act As the appropriate municipal panel because that can be a little bit easier on people And so now we're going to just go through each of the standards And why you have them and what you need to do with them and we have parking requirements out there Most towns have them sometimes don't have them in the more rural areas But in general, we're not going to be dealing a lot With your zoning standards in rural areas unless we see a real glaring thing because that's not where most of the housing is going on And it's usually not where most the housing is restricted In terms of what could logically be built be built there But there are some things that we may see out in your rural areas where we go. Okay, you know, we can can fiddle with something there But in general as for those of you who are here last night We're looking at smaller and smaller households out there. They have less people And they don't need a lot of cars and so in general what we're going to be doing is we see a parking standard is to say How about one parking place per house unit? out there Where you're in a downtown or other more built-up area We may be looking at off-site stuff or shared use. Is there are there public spaces nearby? Is there on-street parking nearby? And a shared use is in particular come up More in site plan approval or in conditional use approval Where the standard could be like oh You're a bank You're a nightclub Don't need to have this each of you make parking off you go same thing Housing and dentist office. Well, when you're at the dentist, you're not at your house. You know that type of thing So so those things can often share parking in between them saves everybody some money. It saves the world some asphalt And the other thing Is especially in more dense areas looking at connections requiring connections between especially commercial establishments I was just on the road out in Denver and stuff and I can't tell you how many times I had to drive into someplace And then drive back out to drive to the next place I could see But there was a berm a fence or something so I couldn't actually walk from one place to the other place to the other place And and there are ways to do that even when they're not built yet and so When we can we'll get people to walk places And that fits in sidewalks and parking sidewalks and pedestrian connections fit in with parking because if you move people around they don't have to Jump to the next parking spot Lot size This is a little aerial view of woodstock just so you know Woodstock in its core area has an 8,000 square foot lot size Fifth of an acre or so pretty small But works perfectly fine and people you know aren't driving through going. Oh my god. Look at that thing They're driving through going. Oh my god. Look at that thing. That's what they do in woodstock, right? So we're going to talk about lot size We're also going to talk about lot size per unit And so that's the type of thing where you may say, okay, you know, you you only need a A quarter acre or which like you only need a fifth of an acre per unit But now all of a sudden we have two units Do you need a tenth of an acre and doesn't keep going up like that? Or really a lot of these houses are potentially four units So does a quarter acres or a fifth of an acre here still work? and some of that may be For the places with good swoon water or we say it doesn't matter how many What what we care about more is the shape and the size and the setbacks and other things there But if it looks like one of these houses in the picture If you want to fit 12 in there Maybe that's fine Why worry when we have no need to worry about sewage treatment if you do have sewage or water constraints Like your systems are maxed out those are real things And then we're going to look at at rural areas for that don't have public sewer water They have septic stuff and in general we're going to be looking at one acre out there for where you want moderately dense development You don't need a lot more than one acre, but there are ways to keep One acre lots from just stacking all the way and we do that through density where we may say Oh, it's a you can go to a one acre lot But you can use a five acre or 10 acre density and so Doesn't mean you get houses every acre because they have to Have those other lands involved, but there are ways to do that And keep the density that rural feel out in your back roads Still light but not having everybody have to buy 10 acres Pretty easy fixes along the way there And this is just a graphic to show you an example of of what different densities look like from six dwelling units on 0.3 acres, which is actually 20 units per acre To the middle one, which is 12 units per acre to the top seven units per acre And to the bottom right five units per acre Just to give you kind of that bird's-eye view to say when we're talking 20 units even we're not necessarily talking wall-to-wall building at all and As brought up last night You you may want to look at having minimums out there So just because that's a you know one dwelling unit on the right lower right corner there You can see well that could be three But just because you allow three doesn't mean somebody's going to build three. Maybe somebody just comes in and builds one And so maybe instead of saying just the maximum You also want to say the minimum say you can't just come in and build one because you can build three there We're trying to get more units in where we need them That's very much the same size as the unit on the left, which is actually six And these are some visuals Oh, let's see if this actually works This is a shot of wilder historic wilder. Kathy's here from wilder Um, and so actually this is right. Maybe in Kathy's neck of the woods. This is like fern street and And that uh area by the post office. That's the post office the left there root five on the right But if I let's see if I do something here. Yes, aha it worked That's just to show you they're not the same picture It's not immediately obvious all of those units that are circled in yellow on the right Are either put into the picture or are repurposed and so We have like a six unit out by the road. We've got a five unit at the back there We've got a little accessory dwelling unit behind the house And we have an existing garage that we turned into accessory dwelling in so just on that one edge Of a neighborhood we've made essentially a dozen units and to the average person looking at those pictures or driving by There's nothing that jumps out and says oh my gosh. They just did a bunch of housing And that's where we want to be in lots of places So we we can fit it to community values to mass scale And there's ways we can talk about that so that The things that we love about the place are kept as we go forward But lots and lots of room out there. There's room of wilder. There's room in rock gesture There's room in even in woodstock There's not as much room for this room at woodstock and there's certainly room in bevel Places like that where we can look and go there's actually Lots of spots to do some of this And some of these existing structures are also single family homes that may be Barely occupied I think lee mentioned last night, you know, there's a lot of houses That just have one person left in them a lot of house for one person Maybe we can make it advantageous to to break that up and put more units inside the same box height and setbacks We don't deal with height too much But you may want to look at your maximum height level You may want to look at a minimum height level. You may want to say this is not where we want one story flat construction We want you to be going up, you know, you may be next to a downtown That's got three story brick structures and go what we want is three story brick structures here Um, it is a way to limit density you do want to talk to your fire department and not go too too high Make sure that they can do that And you don't want to get into a shading adjacent property Sometimes if it is a small neighborhood of smaller houses, one big house in there Would really feel out of place Setbacks are the distance our front setbacks. Of course our distance from lot lines and Side setbacks and rear setbacks also distant from lot lines And there's we when we're in there. That's one of the little uh kind of Peves of mine sometimes since I'll look at setbacks and I'll go oh, that's That's not a very good definition because how do you measure? From the edge of the lot line to the building isn't the building wall Is the building drip edges at the edge of the material? Um, and sometimes it's not clear So we we may fiddle around with that or you may have had issues and say You know what? We're always trying to figure out where the edge of our setback is Um oftentimes in the village though, you don't need a lot of front setback and historically you don't have a lot of front setbacks So if all the houses are you know five feet off the sidewalk Why make the new person build 20 feet off the sidewalk? Pull them up to there And side setbacks Can and even rear setbacks can go down as low as zero Um when you're just building wall-to-wall buildings like you're on some of our downtowns And here's just a schematic for those Um folks who need a little bit of picture to go the setbacks form that box which you can build And we think about measuring our front setbacks from the road lot line the the center line Because it's always findable a lot of time setbacks are from the right of way But often the right of way is an unknown critter Out there and it can take you a lot of time to actually find it Types of houses. This is actually my house my town. This is Harding Place in Pomfrey And there are several units in here in kind of what looks like an old extended kind of farm compound But uh single families are out there of course I think single families aren't bad in of themselves Um, but every single family gets to have an accessory dwelling An extra apartment however you want to think of that out there in vermont law right now And I think we need to do maybe a better Job explaining that to the general public and showing them how they can do that But everybody gets to do an adu which can be inside attached or detached in vermont Not everybody gets to do a duplex but in most of our towns The zoning is the same for one or two family houses um One of the things I think we want to look at is condominiumized houses or adus so um, if there's an existing house And it's a big house and it's existing Maybe there's duplexes allowed in that district But maybe we want to say but you can do a triplex in there if you can cut up that existing house Um, we just don't want a certain size master six scale Maybe we want to allow the condominiumization of the adu meaning I can build an adu on my lot And I can actually sell it Or I could move into it and sell my house There are issues there around Setbacks and lot sizes and stuff But that may be more useful and it may fit once a particular situation more than actually just renting something Out there then we have triplexes quads and multifamily Most of our towns define multifamily up to five But it's what there's no definition you know set by Statute or anything you can figure out what you want to be as your multifamily limit And then we have apartment buildings which are often defined slightly differently And again, you might say well, we're good, you know for mass and scale purposes We're good at 10 or 20 or something out there, but we just we don't want a hundred unit apartment building And if you want to build a hundred units, it's just going to build five twenties break it up a little bit something like that Obviously those are only taking place where we have sewer and water Then all of these other things some of which Uh, we hit upon last night Some of which are basically can also be just defined as this means the same thing as a single-family house So a tiny home is just a tiny home Um, it isn't necessarily have to be treated any differently than a house But as a foundation or as on wheels that may be a distinction Maybe we want to allow more tiny homes. So instead of building a four bedroom house We allow four one bedroom tiny homes on the lot Um, I have less mass and scale. They're all small you can fit on there same exact septic system going out the door Uh, maybe we want to look at that Boarding houses and old use not commonly straight permitted In in zoning, but that's it's not a hotel. It's not an in Uh, it's long-term housing where you kind of go downstairs and get your meals that type of thing Certainly appropriate for lots of people A bungalow court, uh, actually I think that even got mentioned in the paper today for those of you who read the valley news they were talking about Work that leaven and may do to allow more kinds of housing The bungalow court, which is that an older style of a bunch of small homes kind of are usually around a central little green Which is very similar to what's known as horizontal apartments Where a developer instead of building a box that has a bunch of apartments They build what we would think of as a subdivision But they treat it like an apartment building. They manage it except you own or you rent a little house versus part of a big building It's just kind of deconstructed For those of you watch all those cooking shows like I do short-term rentals I want to go on about that a little bit. They are not inherently evil But they can do things to your town that you don't want to have happened They can provide housing They can be turned into permanent housing pretty easily But they can also suck up the air that you're trying to create affordable housing with by people turning Potential lots or potential houses into just short-term rentals That aren't doing anything for existing residents And for the work you want on the other hand Maybe your existing residents, you know, they just want to go on vacation and they just want to rent their house for two weeks This is short-term That might be a great way to have a bunch of residents Help them pay for whatever And so how you want to craft those things is important is the number of units isn't the size Is the neighborhood is the how much you can rent it part of life all of those things Get into short-term rentals Mobile homes are protected in Vermont. You can't regulate mobile homes out of existence as our mobile home parks And they're a very affordable option for a lot of people So we'll we want to look in there at your standards around mobile homes mobile home parks And modular homes are the same thing modular homes are just another way to build a home They're not a mobile home But vermods were brought up last night and there are vermods that are similar in shape and size to some mobile homes and so maybe When we're talking about mobile home parks We also want to allow Modular or stick-built structures in those mobile home parks So they can enjoy the perks that mobile home parks have in terms of kind of more dense than regular Um, but they're not a mobile home Co-housing We don't have a lot of co-housing. Uh, probably the biggest co-housing project in the region is cob hill down in heartland Which doesn't have zoning But there you're you're talking kind of an amalgamation of different stuff Stuck together and so your rules are going to want to allow that Up to maybe a certain scale. Maybe you go, you can do that, but it's 10 units or 15 units 20 units But if you can all make it look like a barn and a couple of farmhouses have at it Uh, we've talked to about campgrounds As as kind of a stopgap measure potentially to deal with affordability and especially homelessness Do we want to allow people to build campgrounds in some way shape or form? So that they can you can put up a bunch of small housing units even if temporary To help us deal with what we have and then dorms we have dorms in places But you can build a dorm as a housing type of situation And then there are others out there. I'm sure beyond this This just gives you an example of accessory dwelling units. Uh, the the lawn Vermont actually changed Uh, a couple years ago because you used to have An accessory dwelling unit was an owner-occupied house and you could build the adu Next to the house like on the far Left over there But maybe You don't want to do that. Maybe you want to do more of the far right you want to move into the adu and Rent the house out there and that's now perfectly allowed the the lawn Vermont out that Preamps local zoning and just says everybody gets adu's Is uh, it's just that the lot is owner-occupied so the owner can live in either of the structures And then the law around adu's also allows you to loosen up things as much as you want So you can say well, we don't care if the owner lives neither Um, we don't care that you just have one you ever gets two adu's You can keep going however you want to go but there is a minimum floor Set by the law and it's not used very much and that's again one of the things that's not Really a zoning thing It may be more an outreach thing. It may be more explaining to people This is actually how our bylaw now works Just so you all know You can make an apartment And come see me and get a permit for that type of thing Uh, many of our bylaws have some type of incentives around this Um, so that's typically done through a waiver process um, you know Not a variance process and not a special exemption process because there's no such thing as a special exemption process in vermont You can get a variance in vermont, but that is a A five-part mandatory test. It's a very difficult to get I always joke that you should get a variance about as often as you get struck by lightning Which hopefully isn't often But it's a variance is difficult whereas a waiver Is only for dimensional requirements And you just give yourself the rule you have to put a rule about how you're going to do that Oh, who's that there? Oh You john there we go um But a waiver can be around lot size can be around density and stuff and you that can be a perk So if you say oh if you're going to do an affordable unit But However, you define that you might not pick the standard affordability HUD guidelines you might say well, you know, you can be um Up to this price range or up to you know, this friend Uh, we'll we'll give you extra house out there um Don we I don't know if I see tonight don don mentioned plan unit developments Of several of our towns have planned unit development or pud provisions Planned unit developments the way you can think about that is is number one. They're not just one structure. That doesn't make any sense There's many structures Out there and you're going to move them around on the lot in a way that you usually would In order usually to cluster things so it's It can be thought of like a conservation subdivision in some ways But the difference between a planned unit development and often subdivisions is you don't need to subdivide the the person The developer can still own all of the structures and hasn't subdivided the lots and they get all done It's one of the things that i'm i'm ambivalent about not about the the effects or the The goals of that but i'm not so sure that sometimes we can't do it through just a waiver provision inclusionary zoning is allowed in vermont and you can do that through fees or mandatory requirements on affordability so you can say if you're going to build 10 The tenth one is affordable Or you pay a certain amount of money and stuff. It helps to have development pressure On places to be able to say, you know, we're going to make you do this Burlington has inclusionary zoning and a few other places in vermont I don't believe anybody down here does has inclusionary zoning requirements But it's a pretty good idea usually only applied to larger projects And then somebody mentioned form-based review last night form-based code Our form-based review is not something we're going to do a lot of in this particular project Just because it's a pretty heavy-duty revamp of your by-law and it takes a lot of visual work But I do think that we should be able to To do kind of a low budget easy form-based code Mainly where we're getting away from numbers of units and getting more into shape mass and scale So where we have a picture And say more if you want to build that we really don't care how many people are inside of that When you get all said Up to a certain point There are things with people, you know, that's where parking and and other things come in and you may want to say Well, you know, there's a certain amount of parking or noise or lighting or landscaping or whatever Where we're going to we're going to constrain that box, but oftentimes For neighbors And for the general public what they really care about is what it's going to look like when things get done That's what form-based codes can have Our way to attack that Those are all standards. I'm going to stop there for a sec Steven his can see all of you and the chat and stuff and see if there's questions out there And I see lori right away and so steven you can I can only see like four people on my little screen So so you just kind of figure out who's going to be next but lori what you got? Well, I just wanted to offer something up a little bit and and this goes for form-based code stuff that you're talking about And we're right in the middle of looking at doing zoning changes to increase residential We may know the ic district and stuff like that So we were having this conversation the other night and there's other members of the commission Planning commission that are here that might want to chime in And you know, I was talking just about the same kind of stuff that you were talking about that we're sort of in this quasi using the concepts of forming it So obviously we're looking at floor area ratio is one of the things which is the mechanism to say Hey, we don't care how many units you do You'll go at you know, we're saying x number square feet can be dedicated towards residential And now we're looking more at the envelope of what we want to do and we're looking at Putting it within the context of the objective of the zoning district So using that as our way of shaping it But anything, you know, I don't know how others have been thinking about it Because it is it is the form basis something that we're trying to achieve in a similar manner of what you're doing But I'd be interested to see how other communities might be thinking about it if they are Because we're right in the crux of that process right now and we're trying to figure out what's the right ratio of square footage to allocate towards Residential it's in a different zoning district. We already have far in our downtown district But I just be interested in other thoughts that people may have at this juncture To help us get thinking more about it. Oh, okay. Um, I I don't know if if anybody wants to speak to that in particular Kind of let us know I think you may be leading the pack in the region on on that particular thing lorry as far as I know Out there with what's going on with our towns. We we do tend to be doing that sometimes, but okay Which is okay So I think cathy cathy next to you. Is that right? Yep. Kathy's in the lead. Okay Hey, this is cathy melistic from wilder. Hey, lorry So the um, I'm curious. Can you pop up that wilder slide again because oh, yeah Kind of related to what I think you're saying with form-based zoning Okay, so yes, I live about a block away from all this Okay, you can see we're generally pretty compact and it's interesting some of the circles that you've put in are things that where I've asked people Hey, wouldn't it be great to talk infill here? So if you look at the picture on the right the circle that's on the far right. Yeah, that's a huge You know where you have a two-story put in That's a huge empty lot that I believe belongs to the house just to its well, it's north in real life Just to the bottom right there um The lowest circle there the garage Um, I believe that that house and property I think don't quote me on this But I think that's the one that no longer looks exactly like that It was a historic house that I believe has been switched over to an incredibly standard looking cape that does not fit in With the contributing historic structures Um, and to be clear, I'm all for infill and smart use of this When you have a historic district as you can see with a lot of these planned worker houses on here I would look to something like I think is possible with form-based zoning for You know make seeing that it fits in we're generally on one tenth and two tenth acre lots around here So it's not, you know, my neighbor lives in a tiny house in a one tenth big not a tiny house tiny house like a legit small old house and Raise three kids in there with a one tenth acre lot um The as a Is an interesting thing the biggest circle that you have kind of in the center That's actually a parking lot that is used for the house That's all kind of built up just above that across the side street Oh Yeah, yeah, there's a parking lot kind of near the road Yeah, well, it's it's just a parking lot behind You know behind what used to be our post office and all and you know It's seems like kind of a waste because the house itself does have a large lot around it Um, and it is that house that's just above it which was converted into um, you'd like kind of rehab departments Over time So one thing that I look at instead of just going to a zoning meeting and you know people and I wish we had Some zoning people from Hartford on here. I don't think I saw any from the commit from the zba um But one thing that I would look at is Yeah, can we really I think it would be more helpful with a lot of this stuff to have more site visits To talk about you know settlement patterns the way they exist more than they are now Um, it's I go to a lot of the meetings and you just hear Oh, there's this square footage and there's this and there's the setback and all and then you look at it And you're like wow that might fit the numbers But it doesn't at all pass the smell test when you look at the neighborhood so, um So yeah, I'm intrigued by this form based zoning even though it does sound like it is more of a hall work wise That it is um, once you get it though, it's not so much of a whole but but Doing the transition from what you have to that is Lori knows I'm always happy to help with whatever I can Okay, Ali Oh, hi there. Um, I have a very different kind of question. It was it sort of related to There was a slide way back That I there's not up anymore that you had all these different kinds of Situations with different lot sizes and at the very bottom you said well rural lots where there's no town sewer Water you basically advised or Recommended or at least said that one acre lots are suitable. Well in fetford Nobody has town water or town sewer. There's some private water companies, but there are lots of areas where Where in villages people have somehow managed to have lots that are much smaller And we are reviewing our water systems now. I don't know what you know, eventually we're going to hire a consultant But there is some dense development That you know, some people pipe their water from a long way away from a spring and they have a cistern And I know the state doesn't really like that, but there's no law against it unless your The number of people exceeds 10. I think right. Yeah Yeah, I I see you say increases likelihood for onsite. I mean I I would like to see and and then what about um A multi unit thing in a rural area, but yeah, yeah, it's um One of the things uh, one of the kind of kind of you know Things it's attention is a lot of rural areas people like a certain Level of density of development. They just certain like a certain feel And but every now and then like in in my town, we have a very large big old farmhouse up the road here And if somewhere were to go and propose eight of those farmhouses, I think people would just freak But that farmhouse exists And so one of the things in rural areas that I think we'll be looking at is what we call an adaptive reuse provision Which is if you have an existing Big house or a barn or maybe it's even an old industrial structure out there Not that people can build new ones because that level of scale You don't want necessarily out there but um The the big house up the road here for me could easily have eight units um, if If you included the barn you could have a lot more That's where uh, you could do potentially an onsite system that works Uh chris primers here from fairly They're looking they don't have they have water, but they don't have sewer And uh, and the water doesn't go all over the town But they're looking at some specific sites where maybe they could and they have good soils Maybe they could build essentially communal joint um, you know septic fields That they would serve maybe it serves that house and three more houses that they build Maybe it's the one field across the way And you know you connect several to it A bunch of our villages you could not build now With permitting safely that's it's different than like whether you want to do it aesthetically It's just a mystery Where the water and sewer goes, but it's it's the way they they are and they can keep going under what we call about There was somebody in the last meeting talked about this idea of building a hamlet You know a cluster of houses in a Maybe near a village, but or at a junction or something that were close because what I Makes me slightly worried is this idea of chopping up the countryside along roads that lead into villages There's a one acre lots and having that kind of appearance And that frag fragmentation of the natural, you know resources Where you could still cluster in rural areas and not have one acre lots But then you know and still provide maybe communal septics or communal water or something like that Right, and and you may want to deal with it through site plan Restrictions where you go. Well, you can have that but we're going to make you sit back further off the road or you know Plant a hedge in front or something so that the person just traveling down the road They don't get a feel of like oh, there's a bunch of stuff Or you may want to make I think it might have been tim taylor last night talking about what we call a neighborhood development areas um Which is is a state designation, but you could you don't need to go that route where you a town Typically through a town planning process would say we'd like a new note out here Maybe the even was a historic node out there that had several houses and you know Sewer and water would work and we want to build up So I think of places like south bradford Um You know try to think of some other places in the region where there there is a You know, there's there's several things going on and you could do more right instead of just having a strip of more development Further further and further out Very much so on all of those tweaks. That's why when we get into each of your towns There may be a particular spot Where where you want a new district? Um, or you you really want to say well over here. We could do this um We did a bunch of work in bradford on their zoning and figured out that a lot of the lots in the village are really double lots um doable they have sewer and water um and they just They just do that way and so they could subdivide dozens of lots of towns put new houses on them Um and kind of meet the current overall pattern Out there. Yeah, you're right. Uh lee. So that's where um, especially in strafford and fetford Where your downtown options are more limited We will be looking I think a little harder at the rural areas to what we can do That also meets all those other planning goals about fields farms forests Any other questions out there you see steven on the standards then i'll going to go to processes Nope nothing else Kathy shared a shared a good article. Oh good about uh watering structuring towns. All right, wonderful um So besides the standards out there in your bylaw, there's there's a couple of things There's the applicability of the bylaw to a project and then there's the What process do you run them through and then there's the actual administration of it so Maybe you've You've got a good bylaw And maybe the processes are even fine But what you really need help with is just how do we use this thing? How do we You know help applicants. Do we need a cheat sheet ahead of time? Do we need you know to try to do Some towns have like preliminary meetings with applicants just to to ease the flow You're not going to bend the rules, but just like this stuff Is not things that people look at every day How do you get them from point a to point b as quickly as you can to build the house that you want And so first off would be exemptions don't need a permit from us Don't have to come here off you go. Good luck And do we want to be looking at exemptions for certain things the nice thing about exemptions is there's no appeal Because anybody can appeal anything And clog you up For a while, but if there's no permit there's no appeal One of the particular places I I think that we can start on all those with you is 80 use inside existing structures So, you know, there's there's virtually no visual change The 80 use inside the existing structure the house is there without worry about footprints setbacks and all that type of stuff Why do we care if somebody goes ahead and Carves off a one better unit inside their house right now We may say well, you need a septic permit that's over there. That's not in the zoning We may have some standard and you can have a standard that applies even to exempt usage like Oh, you can go to an ad you as long as there's an extra parking space or something Don't need a permit Whatever you want to do in in those particular things in the villages. I wouldn't even think about parking And other some other uses you may say exempt Changes to existing projects Oftentimes go back through the whole permit shoots and ladders type of thing and sometimes those changes can be just like nope Don't worry about it or are a straight permit out there Anything that you've been running through site plan or conditional use And end up always attaching the same rules to To me that's an opportunity to just go to a straight permit process and say these are the rules that apply to those things Go get a zoning permit We don't need to review this again. We've seen 10 of these things already We always say put the dumpster out back, you know, put the bush in the front Um, and a couple other things like fine. Those are just general conditions for specific use go to it site plan approval In vermont there are no required parts of site plan approval There are common ones that are in there because the statute says you can do this this this or anything else you want And people often read that to mean well, we need to do this this this which is not true But typically in there what we see is traffic circulation parking and landscaping But again, maybe we mean certain things And can show that in a picture or write it down such that you don't have to come and go through a hearing process You can just be like yep at that the other um avenue that's not commonly used in the law but is out there now and has been there for maybe 10 years or so Is that your zoning administrator is empowered If your bylaw says this to do basically site plan approval and conditional use So you can run it to them instead of running it over here to a body um It's not commonly used, but I think that especially on certain things where you go Yeah, that we don't need to be dealing with that small enough or minor enough Or we want to be You know making it easier to build affordable housing and we're like we're just not going to overly chew on that thing Conditional use approval and remember site plan approval and conditional use approval are approvals prior to permits being issued conditional use approval is a as a tougher road a hoe and should be used very sparingly Site plan approval is for when we're not debating the use So we don't care that you build a multifamily there We just want to make sure the parking is right and the sidewalk is right And that type of thing the things that show up on a site plan conditional use approval is much more like. Hmm. I don't know if we want multifamily there And it's really about decisions about can we condition the use such that it fits in that neighborhood Uh, and and I would say we want to be very judicious how we use that around the housing that we want because That's the conditional use implies that you're not sure you want that use And in particular, this is where we see a multifamily Housing and many of our towns being able to go from a conditional use to a site plan approval to maybe even just a permitted use Because we want them and maybe there's a limit where you go. Well, if it's going to be four to six units We're going to put you through a different process Then the the three to the four units or something out there And appeals again, if you don't have a permit you can appeal it Um, but appeal processes. How do people go through those appeals letting them know? They they are there for a reason uh appeals are But they can come up a process certainly right now And then the other part of permit as I as I mentioned is just the administration. How do you actually do this? Do you meet? often enough Are your rules clear? Are there cheat sheets? Do you can you handhold people through the process? Do you do you kind of go out and help them do those things? So that come Permit time everything flows Equally and remember, you know, it's not just your It's due processes is due process because it's the constitution, right? uh, it doesn't matter if you like the person or whatnot, but if you If you don't make rules around it and it's just as easy to build the high-end luxury homes that people are only going to Come through one day a year as it is to build the exact same thing you want You can't in the permit process go. Oh gosh, we wish you wouldn't do that That is not the time to be doing that the time to be doing that is when you write the rules um Not in the permit process which is And it should never be a popularity contest as I as I try to repeat myself The democracy does not happen in the permit process. The democracy happens in writing the permit process What you all are going to be doing with us the next year. That's the democracy not when developer shows up And now we're getting near the end. I'm going to open it wide up for anybody Just remind folks. So we're we are going to be doing a zoning review for each town We're going to be doing revisions, which is planned to be three meetings per town. So a pretty condensed process We will come to the first meeting With what we call a desk review of your bylaw that essentially is a checklist where we've gone through the bylaw highlighted all the parts that we think Um, we should be touching and put little notes in about Oh, that should be a one that should be a two that should be 15 You know, this should go up. There's another use in your district. It'll look pretty small um but I don't think we're going to in generally be building new districts Out there because that's a that's a can get us back into the town plan, which we don't want to go um But it's really going to be around useless and standards and things like that And then the idea is we adopt all this Our hope is that you can you can use the interim adoption process, which is fast Or you can do the regular adoption process But that that we we really really really want this stuff adopted um So that it's getting used so people can go ahead and build stuff And with that i'm going to stop sharing my screen Now I can see you all out there um So uh any questions around the pieces or I didn't mention something or Or uh, you know, gosh when can we start? can't wait Whatever Take take any any questions you have We are going to I am going to be doing A week from today. I am going to be doing a decisions training too. So um, if you're on a drb, especially um come to that because that's how one actually issues a decision um the processes you go through the steps To make sure that you're doing that right and how to get it actually out the door and what it contains um, because could all of those things are not natural Unless you're maybe Raised by a lawyer like I was um Hi tim. Tim's joined us. I see and Kevin went um, we have our first Question the chat from mary. Yeah, he was asking in in our review What would be making suggestions for future community septic sites for those towns that do not have public septic? No No, um is the short answer on that because that's really, uh Not a zoning issue so much But uh, maybe a town plan aura or your utility and facilities things. You know, you're going to be building something However, um, if you want to kind of put the car before the horse And there are a place you might want to do the zoning first and then Work on the septic system afterwards because you could write the zoning bylaws such that, you know If septic system is available and then that the answers constantly know Um, but then it'll you know two years down the road you build it and now all of a sudden they become class a lot uh that have sewer the other um thing about that is um We we may look at soils there. There are some soil maps and And if it matches a district, right? We might kind of go oh in this district, you know, you really could do more dense stuff Um than what you're doing based on the soils out there But in general, no Hey, and then Kathy Hey, it's Kathy and wilder again. I had a couple questions one was who who would coordinate any eventual zoning rig changes zoning regulation changes With the state to make sure that statutory regulations are being met after we go through this process and especially with concern to Especially with concern to town charters as those are being done whoa, um I still may have another answer for this in general Did you just pass that football? Well, he went to law school. I just grew up in law school. Um in general All everything that we're doing is pretty much um standard stuff Out there and so I I would doubt that you need to go check on your charter There are there are going to be some cases where we may be pushing the envelope on what's clearly enabled in vermont because in Vermont you can't just make up things unless the legislature said you can go make up things Like with 80 things. Yeah, like with 80 you as they said, you know You got to allow this but have at it the rest of the way out there So so I think that that'll be the way that we do it. I've never had to check a charter on a on a change But yeah, I'm just wondering before we go through all the work if someone you know if it turns out like Oh, by the way, the state says you can't do this. I would be like well Stephen and I Stephen and I would be kind of in trouble if we wrote something that was illegal Um, my other question was and and if this is a serious question, why aren't I mean, I know the answer is money But why aren't new infrastructure systems being built? I mean, particularly there's a lot of wealthy towns that do not have water and sewer yet Those are considered environmentally better in particular than septic and well They're more reliable than septic and well they help with the increasing number of severe storms that we're having due to climate change and You know, it almost seems like an excuse for some towns to say well We don't have infrastructure so we can't do this and I'm like I'm kind of tired of hearing that like if hardford can have infrastructure You know, maybe someone else can put in some Yeah, well and a lot of our infrastructure was built in the 60s and 70s a lot of our sewer and water infrastructure Well sewer infrastructure Especially and now it's getting near the end of their lifespan and people are realized Oh, there's there's a big number attached to this a lot of our water systems are 100 years old out there And um, they are often a mystery until they fail Well, believe me, we know that in Wilder Yeah, and so those those are big big numbers if we had to put a big number on Existing infrastructure not new infrastructure just fixing stuff you have water systems are Are a giant hole that we can spend all of the ARPA money could just fix existing water systems Yeah, it just seems like one of those things that keeps getting pushed down the road and you know We're not I mean frankly, we're not going to have great housing solutions unless something unless infrastructure is dealt with Yeah, I think it needs to be dealt with on a more Um level playing field among the towns. Yeah, and that's I'm with you Kathy on that. It's not it's not a zoning issue. Um, it's really a taxation and and funding of infrastructure Well, no, but it relates to our planning and zoning. It does because because it it constrains you Yeah, okay. Thank you. That's okay John I see it has a question in the chat, which is if we're already working on zoning When are they raised and that is an issue? I know in some towns Um where you already have one iron in the fire Um, or you may be about to do some other things like rock gesture was talking about maybe working on their zoning anyways That's just mainly going to be um on our end Where we kind of have to say oh We're here to operate on the patient's foot I see the patient's hand is messed up Not our operation. We're just standing on the foot. Um And and we have to be careful that because otherwise we just end up, you know Getting spread way too far and beyond our means So there'll be places where steven and I are going to be gone Not our zebra not our zoo Nice thing. Hope you do it if The parts that you're already working on in our parts get to the process at the same time Then um taking something through a hearing, you know doing a hearing notice and that type of thing if we're doing a hearing notice on change a And you're doing change b. It's just one hearing notice and so we may There may be ways to to kind of create some synergy there um but There are some other things though. Just this is not the only uh, you know grant and funding in the world um, so for example, there may be uh Something that relates to health and walkability. There may be something that relates to energy um There may be something that relates to water where we can pull from one of our other contracts and say, you know what? We can spend a couple hours on that particular thing because we have some other money to do it But otherwise we're probably going to be going That's nice. Good luck Have at it, but we can't really get into that pickle um, I see lory's hand Yeah, I I'd like to just respond a little bit to that item john because I There there have been conversations and coordination that we're doing already with two rivers Because we are getting that other grant that we have to look at the planning section of our town plan looking at housing So we've had even before we apply for the grant applications both of these We've had conversations about the overlap in the interplay and how we will be Coordinating a lot of that together So if that if your concern was that that you know when we put forth both of these applications We made that known. I think at our public hearings with the select board or public meeting to make sure that We we recognize that there's an overlap and there is a coordination and in addition to that because we have membership Within the two rivers and we get certain basic services just by virtue of our membership We're you know, that's part of what we're doing um And if we need to contract with them a little bit separately to help us do mapping and that kind of stuff We've also talked about that. So there's a there's a There's a process that I think these things will work well hand in hand if that was the the concern you had Yeah, actually lauri. I was uh also thinking about the climate action plan which I'm involved with the implementation of and there are a laundry list of zoning items to be considered in implementing the climate action plan and having watched how Long and drawn out Changing any zoning provision is the more we can combine these various Zoning considerations the better off will all be from a time point of view Right and I and I understand that and I I think part of what maybe we touched on a little bit yesterday too Is that there is overlap between affordability and a lot of the recommendations that To affect climate change as well and access to transportation that If I'm not wrong Kevin, you would be looking at The proximity of these things in relationship to trans good transportation systems um also, uh encouraging regulations to take into consideration issues of affordability relative to energy efficiency improvements and so forth Or maybe you could speak to that Kevin, right? I mean so for example and hard for it's a little bit of a it's individual case But if somewhere to or to propose Um a larger residential development or even a mixed use with a large residential component development that wasn't near a transit stop You might have a standard in your bylaw that says, you know If you're not within a thousand feet of another transit stop as part of your project under site plan review We're going to be looking because you're going to be building a transit stop Um, even if the transit doesn't yet park there Um, so there could be something like that Steven works on energy stuff Um over in the region and we have some money this year We may not have money next year from the legislature, but who knows maybe we'll get some climate money Um, and so we have a little grab bag of odds and ends around energy that It may be relatively easy to stick in mostly around commercial structures And so there again, there may be a spot where we can go, you know Like while we're here we can we can do that, but we can't have like three meetings about that provision Uh, we can we can just say oh here's a little fix. You guys good good go And just to add a little bit to that I think more to what kind of what you're getting at is that We're the focus is on housing, but it has all these different spokes and that went in That went into this project from from the get-go before the application process. We really We looked at even the the districts and how we're we didn't just go to google maps and say what's within a mile of Where google app google maps lands in hartford? um, we actually looked at the districts and kind of considered that you know Kind of the cutoff for for for what we were gonna the zones that we were really trying to look at um, and they're all a little bit different, but Uh, and then the the reality of this is just seven of the 30 towns Um, I mean we we continue to hope that not only with these seven towns will lead the way for the Other 30 much like you you all have and the energy and transportation and other areas Uh, that this program will actually this project will will lead into The other 23 being involved eventually as well Thank you. Yeah, sure thing. John. Yeah, and that's a lot of it um I think we will we will try to coordinate behind the scenes so that the public doesn't get confused about wait a minute You know, are there three things going on that I have to watch? Well, just like no, it's just one thing We're connecting it all back here Other questions or comments It's it's it's gonna be, uh, you know, it'll be pretty fast from our side and I'm pretty surgical um As far as what we're doing in there if we see something that you know, just makes our hair curl Um, because we go like whoa, that's you you know, your discontinuance clause. It's really strange or you know, you don't have anything about non-conformities or or any of those other You know, weedy things that our zoning people look at we may go, you know, here's a non-conformity provision Um Just you know and drop it in That type of stuff typically definitions are going to get all run through um to try to make sure that we Mean what do you say and that it's workable out there? I see can't be again. Do we have anybody else? Uh, oh and I see uh a Something in a chat chat too I just I question but I yeah person who hasn't spoken yet. So please Let me look at the chat Says what's the best way for housing and service organizations to participate in this process if it's unreasonable to expect attendance at all meetings um Yeah, again the plan is three meetings per town but you know, that's hours and hours of sitting there and waiting for your thing to come up I would I would defer to all of you as well, but in general If you can give somebody a written comment About the exact thing that you'd like, you know, I'd like this provision or I'd like that provision change This bothers me do something about it. Um, the best the better that is And come adoption time Um, there's bound to be somebody who doesn't like what we're going to be doing And to show up and go we like this thing, you know adopt this select board because It's it's not a mystery for those of you who do local politics, you know When you get a select board meeting if there's two angry people there and there's no happy people select board's like, I don't know This could be the end of the world Um, whereas if there's two angry people and five happy people they go. Yeah I just got two angry people keep going. Uh, so It's really it's really critical when we get at the end of the road That that you do have support And so the housing and service organizations That are thinking about this stuff all the time Um, and maybe churches we had two churches last night Who are dealing with this stuff non-stop because people are coming to them with their issues To have them show up and go this is what we need to do You know, you guys have done the technical work, but really this is a moral thing Make this thing happen So that's my answer racdc But kathy you have a question I have so many questions But I'm not going to monopolize. I don't see hands go up. I'm like, oh, I'll ask again Okay, so two things I wonder about I have always wondered why Planning and zoning are separate in towns that have both because I learned belatedly as a civilian who was involved in an appeal once, um I real, you know As someone else has said there's so many moving parts to all of this That, you know, did I know that you had to appeal zoning and or planning as separate entities? And, um, you know without sounding I don't want to sound negative. I want to seem very positive about this But as an experience in the past, um, it seems hard to let the individual It seems like the system is not set up to let the individual who lives in a neighborhood or something like that Um address some issues with some of their commissions or god forbid if they go to an appeal an appeal I mean you with apologies anybody here with a jg We are like There are so many lawyers involved in all of this stuff with every group And it's not really set the system's not really set up. I think to let individuals Or to help individuals or to be proactive to individuals who are trying to do something um either with their own place or You know in i'm trying to think of a polite way to say this or in addressing issues they see coming up with um developers and that includes nonprofits Yeah, well, and that's a on a project by project level I would say there is enormous opportunity for people to take part in the making of the rules You know all the arm all your meetings are public and and stuff although sometimes people go well, I didn't get a you know I didn't get a postcard telling me to come to the meetings tonight You go well, you know the planning commission just posted on the wall like come to the meetings. Oh, yeah, I hear that. Yeah the There is an approachability issue in the whole field I think which is sometimes like What does that thing mean? You know, how are you writing it? And so how is the the bylaw or the plan actually written so that it's just understandable And you know again the plans and bylaws by law are separate projects As far as people go though like in a Hartford lorries both hats We're always writing both things on our on our planning commissions write both sets of plans and bylaws So it's it's pretty much the same people I mean with the planning commission like we have a planning commission and we have a zoning board of adjustment Yes, and those are different rules and regs that You know god forbid there is an appeal Have to be addressed separately and I've often wondered why as we have a planning and zoning department Why are these often separate entities in towns? It's just that's the way the law is In many towns, they're the same people and they have to remember just like wait We're not the planning commission tonight where there's only board of adjustment. We have to switch hats But yeah, the law is just set up that way For for towns Yeah, I you know and You know one example of this that's pretty basic, but it's not at all basic when you get into it Is you know when you read ordinances when you read, you know stuff from the environmental court You will hear this is such a Vermont thing You will read about character An adverse effect. Okay, you will not find a definition Of either one of those two things and I mentioned that to a lawyer who used to work with the a and r ones And their response was yeah, that's job security for lawyers well And those are the kinds of things though that I would like to see defined more specifically as we move forward because I think it would spell that kind of stuff out for both developers and the people who are going to these meetings as members of the public Yeah, and and and steven and I we you know, that's when we're in the definitions. We'll try to go out that needs to define There is a limit to that, you know, which is kind of like web's just dictionaries over there for For all those things and and there's kind of a prudent test in the law Which is what we're just a reasonable person reading this thing do That's that's what the law means but there are places where you know, like Especially setbacks where you go to the building and and there We can really get into drip edge footprint disturbed area Shadow, there are all sorts of ways to go. This is actually the edge So everybody can know that's the edge of the building that we're talking about If I can just wrap up my feedback, I would look I would ask that as we go forward. There are more defined Examples of or clearer definitions for things like character adverse effect and the all famous qui-chi test Um, you know, because those are the things that people are addressing when they tend to feel like they want to do an appeal or you know Will something coming before our board because yeah, it's like affordable when you say affordable housing There's no definition. Well, actually there is there is a definition. There's a statutory definition of affordable as that word itself Oh, yeah of affordable housing In vermont in vermont. Yeah. Oh, I would love to know what that is Yeah, and it's based upon the area median income is set by HUD for the county and stuff. It's not to me necessarily where we want to be operating in terms of missing middle housing and so That's why that particular thing like if you're giving a A bonus or an incentive for affordable housing You better define it or send it to the statute or as an example We've seen people talk about affordable housing and it hasn't been Specifically affordable housing you I have found that you have to go and say what of this is affordable housing What of this is 80 to 120 percent market rate housing? It will it has not in my experience been brought forward by people at these meetings first Well, we will be discussing all of those. Good. Thank you. Yeah, lee um The point that I was trying to address has has passed quite a long time ago and you're in your back and forth, but what I was trying to say was that The planning commission at least in fetford writes the plans writes the town plan writes the zoning regulations that interpret the town plan and then it's the development review board that actually puts interprets that and actually here's the cases and Says yes, you know, these are the zoning regs and we think that the zoning regs this applies to this, but you know your project is not Covered by this kind of thing. So if anyone wants to appeal anything, I would say you go to the drp the planning commission is not in is not involved in the Execution of any of the things Right that you do it. Kathy. We were when I could get in the back of her so Yes, you're you're right that in that the the Depending upon towns now in some towns that don't have drbs planning commissions still perform a quasi judicial review function, but you're you're right in that And in act 250 different ballgame planning commissions or parties, but in straight zoning Yeah, it's it's the drb or the zoning administrator And we're going to talk about that next weekend and decisions a lot Which is who should be weighing in on these things and who shouldn't be and don't be asking the slack board member a question when you're pumping gas about whether you need a permit and that type of thing because Those those things can can cause you grief Trying to be nice to your neighbor Or pushing against the limit here again Each town is going to be its own little custom fit Um, but there's going to be a bunch of what I call kind of lego that may fit from town to town and um, and if process is an issue come next week and we'll talk process Anything else you have steven No Oh good Well, we're looking forward to this again It's you know for most of your bylaws. It's going to be like a hundred words or less But they're going to be a hundred important words Okay, somebody found that funny um already Well with that, uh, we're going to stop the recording and we'll see you all uh sometime in the near future recording stopped If I end will that end it for everybody? Oh, I don't know it will Oh, I'll wait. I won't just I find it slightly psychically disconcerting when I'm kind of like sucked in or out of zone Okay now There might be people just eating dinner now. Yeah now now I'm gonna okay. See you. See you