 Call the meeting to order it's seven o'clock of the Colchester Planning Commission January 3rd so agenda considerations reserved for changes to the agenda items and Order all set Good. I just want to add a quick welcome. Yep. I'll do that right now. You want to do that? You do it. Go ahead Are you sure? Oh, yeah, jump right in. So I just want to add a quick welcome to Amy. Amy's newest member of the Planning Commission. She was appointed late December, I suppose. So she's sort of getting thrown right in with her first packet this past weekend. So. I would make a note so it's accurate on our website. All right, so we go on. Comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. We're good there. It's a number four. Discuss draft amendments to the Colchester Development Regulation Supplement 45. Okay. Can I just ask, how do I get connected to the Internet? It usually happens automatically. Oh, it's not connecting automatically. It should be Colchester with a capital C. I'll give you guys a few minutes if you need to. Mine went automatic. Just as a quick note, and I don't remember if I've told Amy this, we do have iPads for the commissioners. They're being changed over and updated. So hopefully by the next meeting, I'll have one for Amy and one for Wendy. I did finally snag. One out of Bob's hands. I'm just going to get my hands on the second one. But yes, if you need to get on. Also, we, can you see from that seat? Can you see the TV? Okay. Okay. And I can make it anytime you want to zoom in on anything. Happy to make it bigger. What's, is the password just Colchester with a capital C? Let me know if that doesn't work for you. Thank you. Okay. So as a quick introduction here, I've been sort of previewing these to you for a couple meetings. The, the text here is not necessarily anything groundbreaking, but there's a lot of it. And so it's going to take us a little time to go through all of them. Congratulations to you. If you did follow along through the entirety of the text and find where everything was, we did try to at least put the section numbers in here so you could find them that way. So Bear with me. I'm actually going to open a word version of this just in case there's changes. We can just make them while you see them as I put in the memo. The goal is that hopefully by the next meeting you will have a complete package that you can consider warning for a public hearing probably at the end of February or early March. So no pressure to take any votes on these tonight. Amy, we don't typically run through updates this quick, but the wastewater regulations are under sort of more of a time crunch than usual. Colchester has been a delegation community for more than a decade, I suppose. In December, the select board voted to cease that delegation and has notified the state of that. The ordinance to do so would take effect April 1st. So we're trying to get our regulations in line as close to possible as that April 1st date so that we don't have anything in our regulations that references a chapter out of our code of ordinances that is not aligned. It doesn't really matter that much if we're just ahead or just behind, but we're trying to be as close as possible so that we don't have conflicting regulations on the books. Just as a quick reminder, when we do do regulatory updates, the process is that we will consider them until you're comfortable. You will then make a vote if you are to warn them for a public hearing. The public hearing has to be at least 15 days later than your vote tends to be closer to 30 because of the way that we have to warn them in the paper and notify other communities. Then you'll have a vote. If you take a vote on it that evening, your vote is to forward those to the Select Board for review. The Select Board at one meeting will receive them and then they can either hear them again at another meeting or they can immediately warn a public hearing for themselves typically about 30 days later. So that could put us close to the April timeline if all goes smoothly. Okay, let me dig right in. There are a few spaces here that I think are less about just hitting on text. Can you also explain for the new members to what you do to show the changes you made for color? Yes, I've opened the wrong one here. I'm sorry, I guess I don't have the I don't have the word version that I thought I did. So we'll go through the ones that you have in your packet. Okay, so we're going to start with A here. This will be the bulkiest section. This is related to the water and wastewater. Okay, we'll go through my list here. We'll start with 204 and 205. Can you do page numbers too? Yes, hopefully your page numbers will align with mine. So 204 is found on article two, page four. In your PDF, that is page nine of the PDF, if that helps. That's where we are here. This one's very boring. It just changes chapter eight to the statement Vermont environmental protection rules chapter one. That's state wastewater rules. So you'll see this a lot. We're just replacing our reference, our regulations with the state ones. Holler at me if I'm going at any point too fast, do you want me to slow down or have a question? Okay, so now we were on article two, page seven of the PDF. That's page 12. So these have to do with setbacks, but they connect to chapter eight. So all we've done there is remove anything related to chapter eight. We can't regulate setbacks from your wastewater infrastructure if we don't regulate the wastewater infrastructure, essentially what it says. Okay, scrolling down. This one I think we're actually going to come back to this here, or we could do it now since we're going in order if you'd prefer. This is item C. This is a request while we're talking about public infrastructure that came from the Department of Public Works. It looks, let me just do it since we're here. Okay, so again, this is under item C. This says that it says exactly what it reads that temporary structures, uses or structures, can't be within 10 horizontal feet of existing underground public infrastructure. Portable trailers for construction, porta-potties. This isn't regulating new construction of buildings or existing construction of buildings, but you have a temporary structure. You got to keep it 10 feet away from underground public infrastructure so that we're not having to go through expensive or messy movement of anything. I think it's pretty, a pretty low bar. Okay. Oh, sorry. Rich, to get back to what you said, red, any strike-throughs or removal of text? It does show up in here in two colors because we had two staff members work on it. I apologize. Red was me, and then as some other staff members joined in it started to show up in blue, but they both mean the same. So anywhere you see a strike-through is a removal of text. A replacement of text tends to show up in green in here. I don't think that we have any. That was sort of cut and pasted elsewhere, but I'll point it out if there is anything underlined but not struck through is new text. I like the colors, catches the eyes. Potable water supply. It's been entirely removed. I keep saying wastewater, but the state environmental rules also covers potable water. So it's removed. I did add reserved in there. I'm not entirely sure why it says B. It'll probably just be for the whole section. This just saves us from having to renumber everything after. So at some point, actually I'm going to make a note. Looks like the A is there. Yeah, the number has to change, and so does that the potable water supply will also be struck out. It'll just say 2.14 reserved. Sorry, I don't have my word version here. So imagine in your mind what you will see is everything struck out. It will simply say 2.14 reserved, 2.15 wastewater disposal. So there's still some pieces that will remain under review from our local Department of Public Works to talk about how you're placing your infrastructure. But again, we've removed anything related to Chapter 8 of the Code of Ordinances, replaced that with State of Vermont Environmental Protection Rules. Again, Chapter 1 is in blue only because it was added by a different staff member. It wasn't specific enough. Cross District Sewage also removed. We'll have no authority over that. Let me make that a little bigger. We'll have no authority over that once we no longer have delegation. It's exciting stuff, I know. So new text here, 2.19. If you're following along, it's Article 2, Page 27, Page 32 of the PDF. This is again, 10 feet of no new land development related to public infrastructure. Anybody who has ever seen a pipe in the ground knows you don't just put it straight down to get to it. If you don't want the soil to collapse, you need to sort of dig in from the sides. Having 10 feet gives room to get to a pipe safely and hopefully not destroy anybody's property that they've built afterwards. So that's really all that is saying there. Can these were at the request of our Public Works Department? Okay, cruising along. There's one. Just removing reference to Chapter 8. Doesn't change the requirement though about encroaching into stepbacks. That is in the Lakeshore District. Same thing here on Article 3, Page 6, just removing reference to Chapter 8. We're going through these fast, but this is probably going to be our next conversation. This is all of the form-based code stuff here in this chapter. Pretty bulky. Okay. This one looks a little different. So I am on Article 4, Page 19. That's Page 60 of the PDF. We are under Lakeshore 1. Okay. So as part of our conversations last summer about Lakeshore 3 and 4, we had a conversation about rebuilding in the footprint and how long that could take. Commission ultimately decided to make that five years. We noted at the time that the Lakeshore 1 and 2 districts were listed as having 10 years of rebuilding, but we didn't want to touch anything there at the time. So because so much of this section is already being changed, I just wanted to flag it to check in with you guys and give you some options. You can leave 10 years. This is again, if you tear down and rebuild, after you've torn it down, this would give you 10 years to rebuild that. Options include leaving it at 10 years, choosing five years to be consistent with what was done on East Lakeshore Drive for Lakeshore 3 and 4. Again, Lakeshore 1 is the lakeside of West Lakeshore Drive. Okay, water side. A third option you might have, if I understand correctly about what some of the reasoning behind 10 years was, is you could say that 10 years is allocated for any properties that were demolished before the date of adoption of Supplement 45, but going forward. So if anybody did tear down thinking that they had 10 years, they would still have those 10 years. But going forward, if somebody were to tear down sort of the yacht club that's over there, they would only have five years to rebuild. So under this, they have 10. Most of the rest of the town is one year. Lakeshore 3 and 4 along East Lakeshore Drive is five years. So you'd have to follow the current regulations, which is almost impossible in those districts because almost everything is within the shoreland overlay of 250 feet or in the floodplain. So most properties on the lakeside of West Lakeshore and East Lakeshore really benefit by having this ability to rebuild in their footprint, even if the footprint is not something that would be permissible to be built today. So basically it just, it grandfathers them for what they already have. If you wait too long, you would lose that. The advantage to the town is that at some point if you've got us, the idea is that if you've gone a certain amount of time without rebuilding it, and regulations have changed, thoughts have changed. Lakeshore 3 and 4, for example, has changed considerably in terms of what's allowed. Is 10 years too long to allow that to be rebuilt? And I bring this one to you with absolutely no professional direction. I'm still in favor of a 10-year from this particular area because I definitely want them to be rebuilt if they can. It takes in commercial world. Everything's so slow-moving and they kind of like to go with the times. I personally would like to leave it at 10 years, but I'm open. Yep. I just have two questions. Do you know what the tax implications are for either leaving and building up or tearing it down? And then would there be any benefit to tie it into the town plan? Like when the, you know, at all? Well, it's probably already tied into the town plan just because everything that we write in our regulations has to align with that. I didn't pull this chapter specifically, but I could look into it if you find yourselves at any sort of a split vote. The tax implications, I'm really not sure. When you hit the ground, once it hits the ground, you have open land. Yeah, I mean, I would guess that a lot of it here is once it hits the ground and nobody builds, it's going to be dead land, right? Because you can't rebuild because of this unique situation here. I don't think that's very fair, the property owner. That's what my concern is too. Not only that, I think the amenities that it brings to the Bay are important. And like I'm thinking at five years, we would begin to be able to tax that property, right? But 10 years, we're losing 10 years or at least five years. Yeah, until you're right. It'll have a different use. Right. That's correct. Right. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I know that taxation will often consider what the potential of a property is, but I don't know much more than that as to how much it gets considered. Obviously, a half acre of vacant land that sits on the lake is inherently more valuable, whether it's vacant or not, than a half acre of land that exists probably in some other areas of town. But I don't know how much different. Is it like the potential every year it's reassessed? I mean, are we evaluated? Because I'm assuming in 10 years it's going to be a very different yeah. I understand that there's different trigger points. Obviously, the town does its own reassessments on some sort of cycle. Anytime there's a permit, our tax office does get notified. So if there is a demolition, they would know about it. So monthly we export to them and say, here's our permits. They look through them and say, oh boy, this person put in a $1 million innovation. They're probably going to take note of that. Or if there is a demolition. So they would get notice of that provided the person did do a permit. I believe that they may also consider re-evaluations at time of sales. But definitely don't quote me on that. That's a barely educated guess. But I don't know. Tell me your rationale for allowing 10 years. I think it takes time. Well, there's a piece of property right now that's had the old hotel on it. It's been taken down. And they're not really sure what they want to do with it. But I hate to see that property go dead when a great idea shows up. It takes the commercial just from the idea. Concepts can take years before you even break ground. And I hate to see if it'll lose any of that. The whole idea of this was to keep the babe vibrant. So I think we need amenities where we can. And there's not a lot of properties left. And there's no doubt once it becomes dead, it's dead. I mean, they're so close to the lakeshow. There's nothing they can do with that property again. There's an old hotel. There's an old hotel. And there was. You know where the moorings is? If you look to the world or hazlets, where across the street there's an open parking lot. That was a little hotel. Oh yeah. Okay. I remember that now. I remember that now. Yeah, I remember that now. It doesn't have to be so quick. The Harbor Hotel. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. That's pretty dilapidated. Yeah, it was falling apart. Yeah. So that's been vacant for a long time. Has it been 10 years? No. Yes, they would have to build as though they were... That's all? It's all grandfathers. Yeah, it hasn't been that long. Okay. But what Kathy was saying though, if we had it, West Lakeshore has a mixed bat of commercial and residential. I would think residential would want to be rebuilt quickly. Maybe not so much for the commercial because it takes them longer to get the financing. So I don't know whether we can address two different uses. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, residential has surprised me. I can tell you of three properties that I know of that have been torn down and exceeded their time. In interest, I say I shouldn't say that automatically the result is that they cannot rebuild. I know of at least two properties who have entered into settlement agreements with the town. So basically they came to the town and said, hey, we're not going to make it because of X, Y, and Z. Can we work with you to secure an agreement to give us an extension? Yeah, I think you would think that property residential or otherwise, but especially residential given the market, would be rebuilt very quickly. I know of at least two that have exceeded their 10 years, and it surprises me. It doesn't take much. You can look around and see even the properties that are in very poor shape. And you wonder, how do you hold on to that tax burden when it should be very easy to resell and market? But it happens. It happens more than make sense to me. But yeah, I can name at least a few that have exceeded the 10 years they were given from the time they tore it down. This is an LS1, too. Right, the Lakeside. Right, that's the commercial we didn't really allow for residential. But there is some residential in that. On the Lakeside? Yeah, there's at least the first three or four properties after the park. Lower Bayside? Oh yeah, yeah, okay. I'm just taking way down. Oh yeah, yeah. Before we get to the boat, there's a lot more, too. Yeah, but they're on tiny pieces of land. That's right, that's right. Yeah, going to Airbnb anyways. One, wondering if there are any requirements for the land after requirements for the land after it's been demolished? Or are they supposed to leave it in a certain state? Yeah, so technically, again, if they get a permit from us, we give them a sheet that talks about like an erosion control plan that they're supposed to meet. Again, that's if they get a permit and we know about it. And that goes for any, regardless of where you are, but you obviously have to demonstrate more if you're on the Lakeside. So yeah, they do have to show at least an erosion prevention control plan. Okay, and then the other one is I wonder if it's five years that might incentivize them to not demolish it because they don't know what's going to happen. And then you're stuck with this dilapidated building or, you know, a safety hazard or problem or yeah, some collapsing and who knows what else if they're they don't want to do anything because they're not sure what they're going to do. So they're just going to wait to demolish it. That would be one thought. I'm absolutely right on that. That's why the hotel wasn't demolished. They waited a while. They just let it sit right on track. Yeah, and that happens other cities and towns too. So you're saying that in order to avoid having like dilapidated properties, maybe to extend it to 10 years? Yeah, I'm leaning towards the 10 years. Also five years seems too short to go through design, planning, approvals, and if like funding is an issue, you know, that could take a few years too depending on what they're trying to build. So I think 10 years seems more appropriate based on what I know of the area and what the zoning is, you know, what we've discussed here. A little information I have. What do you think of the record? I'm leaning towards keeping LS1 as 10 years. And now that we have LS3 and 4 on the five-year plan, you know, see how it tests up over the period of time, see if we have any future issues. We won't know until five or six years down the road, but I think let's just keep it the way it is. I think that the other reason we talked about five for the other ones, just in case you're like, what are we doing? I think was to get it in line with the wastewater rules, which say four. So even though you tore down your building, you could only be grandfathered with your system for four years plus an extension of one, which is how we get to five. So I think it was to bring those in alignment, but they don't necessarily need to be in alignment. So if you take down your building and you don't rebuild within five years, you probably lose any grandfathered access to your system or use of your system. But that doesn't mean you can't rebuild your structure. You probably just have to get in line with the new system requirements. That mean if you, after five years, you rebuild, but you had a failing system and the piece of property doesn't have enough room to put a regulated system on that you can't build because you don't have a septic system. Yeah. Because we do define a habitable structure and that does include having a functioning approved wastewater system. That'll keep some properties vacant. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there are lots of alternatives these days for wastewater. It could be like the size of a shed for a small house. And, you know, I know some of these lots are small, but I've seen really small like raised bed systems that are for a maybe 1200 foot house the size of a 10 by 12 shed or something. And it's approved by the state or the town. I think we received some testimony. We were talking about Eastlake Shore Drive from a resident who shared with us that she wasn't sure she could do her system, but ultimately she could. It was just very, very expensive. Better engineering I guess costs more money. Okay. I'm going to leave it at 10. That's what I'm hearing. Yep. And we may ask that again here for LS2. Let me check. Perhaps not, but let me make a note to check that. Okay. And if I find that we'll keep that one as well. Yeah. That may not have been in there actually. I think it was put in there intentionally for the lakeside properties, but I'll double check. I predated me. Zipping. Actually, maybe I should look at this here. We're in four. So I'm going to go ahead to 703. 703. Oh, all it does is remove chapter eight reference. Exciting. 704E just removes that reference to chapter eight. Again, chapter eight of our code is where the wastewater and potable water supply rules were referenced. Okay. 902 now. We're going to come back to eight. Don't worry that I'm zipping by all that blue string. That's what I'm saying. Okay. We're going to come back. It's part of another one. Alright. 902B1. So instead of saying that you comply with chapter eight, we're saying you got to give us proof that you comply with the state rules. Nothing too interesting there. Ignore this strike through. We're going to come back. This is actually, this is all moved text. Just so you know what this is. This is, we took all of the requirements. This is what you'll see under B, the reorganization of application requirements. We just moved them. We're not actually deleting requirements. I was wondering about, I was like, what? Yeah. 905A. Okay. Same thing. Chains from chapter eight. Nothing interesting there. 905G. Same thing. Changes there and then a strike through which deals with them proving that their water system is compliant. That'll now be regulated by the state. Let's look closer here. Again, this is just, I am on page 122 of the PDF under H. Again, it's just changing from chapter eight to the state rules. 907C. Should I say wastewater facilities for that last section instead of septic? I don't know. Which one? 905? Let me get back there. Yeah. Where it says, installed septic facilities must be built. Oh, I guess it's on site. Septic is the name of the, that number. So the number two. So I guess that makes sense just because septic up front was changed to wastewater. That's why it was question. Oh, do we still have septic in here? Yeah, H2. It says on site septic. Oh, yeah, septic facility. I'm happy to make that. If you guys agree, just to stay consistent. H2. I think you're still gonna say on site though, right? Yes. Okay. We're just trying to get rid of the septic reference to wastewater in 14. We do have somebody working on making these a little more user friendly at 11, 10, 12, 13, and 14. Okay. So we are under seasonal dwelling units. Same thing. They had some requirements related to showing us that they're in compliance with our local wastewater ordinance. This has now been deleted and where necessary change to a reference for the state permit. To be clear, I work through all of these with our Department of Public Work staff, including our town engineer and our designated wastewater officials. So this is, it looks like more text rather than just a cross-through, but basically says the same thing. Should you need to have such a permit for converting a seasonal dwelling unit or doing any sort of construction extension, you need to show that you've got said permit. 1101 just removes local authority for water and wastewater. We've changed all references from wastewater official to Department of Public Work staff because that title will be going away. Three and four. This is just a rewrite of sort of what's below that's been crossed out. But really effectively, it just does the same thing. Take some time to read that if you'd like. I had a question. Just having gone past the 11.04 certificate of occupancy. I am on 1103. Okay. B, that is page 172 of the PDF or article 11, page 2. If you're following that way, I'll ignore my formatting that I forgot to remove. I don't think there's any substantive change there. You can see that this is just really bulleted in order to read a little bit cleaner than the run-on paragraph that existed before. So 1104 now. This is some of our newest texts. We added it in the last supplement. Now it's coming out. So this just says that we add the authority to review certain things prior to giving a CO for said structure. So if you were to get a permit for a new house, we do certificate of occupancies for anything that needs a permit in Colchester. And this would say that we have the right to make sure you built your system the right way before we're going to give you a CO. It was important that we put that in here in our last update because most of that language existed in Chapter 8 and not in our development regulations. So in order for staff to enforce that, it had to be here. But now staff won't be enforcing that. So I mean, I just noted that it wasn't like a shout. Just that they would have the right. I mean, will the state have the right? I mean, it seems someone should have the right before the place is occupied that someone has a right to, especially inspect the system before it's covered. I'm not intimately familiar with their process into when they can have those rights. It probably would not read anything like this if only for the fact that most communities don't require a CO or a certificate of occupancy for single family homes. It's pretty unusual here in Colchester that we do. So I'd be surprised if the state had any language that was similar just because it wouldn't be applicable in most parts of the state. But I also would be very surprised if they didn't have language that says that they could inspect as needed. Probably just a different trigger point. I can't say that for a fact because I'm not a wastewater engineer or expert. I would be very surprised having seen how other state departments work that they wouldn't keep this authority to them. It just probably wouldn't have that trigger point. So properties in Colchester don't need a certificate of occupancy. The owners of people moving don't need a certificate. It needs some kind of inspection that they've done what they said they were going to do. So they do but only from a zoning perspective. So if somebody were to build a new home, for example, they do need to get a CO. But what we are checking in a CO is did you build what you said you were going to on your permit? So if you said you're going to build a three bedroom house that is 90 by 25 and has a two car garage. We're going to go out there and measure that you have a three bedroom house and it's 90 by 25 and it has your two car garage. We're not going to inspect a wastewater system. We won't have the authority to do that. I think we haven't necessarily been doing a lot of it before this. So I don't know that it's a big change. It just takes away any ability that we had to do that. Most engineers are actually very good about getting in their certificate. For that wastewater system. I'm not aware of any issues that we've ever had. But, Tim. Do you remember the family, just before you came back the end, that bought a house. It was a blue house on East Lakes Road Drive. And the septic failed like right after they bought the house. And I think they were required to replace it with like a $40,000. And I think with now the septic going and that will be a new point. But it was just, I felt bad as consumers they weren't protected. Yeah. And I don't think they ever would have been even prior to this change. What this would have done is just said that your engineer has to give us the certificate for new construction. But at the time of sale, we would never have had anything where we would have inspected. It really has to be on on the buyer or the property. And I'm sure all kinds of crazy things were happening in the markets of the last few years where people weren't inspecting anything. But the town never would have done that. Yeah. And I don't think the state will either. Okay. Let's see. 11. Oh, we're at the end. 1105A. Very, very simple. We don't need to expire wastewater permits because they're not ours. Thanks for bearing with me as we scrolled through. Any questions on wastewater? Again, these all come with the blessing of our DPW staff. We worked through several hours with them to make sure that nothing was in here that was inaccurate or problematic for their enforcement. Okay. Let's go up to B. There's really two parts of this that I want to highlight for you. One is a simple reorganization of application requirements. There's a bunch of text that existed throughout. And it's one thing when we get used to doing review to find out what you're supposed to do when you submit an application. But we are hearing from others with very good feedback that the application requirements are sort of scattered. So we put them all in a nice handy dandy chart. Yeah, I like that chart itself. Chart. I like charts. Chart. Shows up as red. It shows up as new. It's really not. It's just moved and reorganized. So there's nothing substantive in here. There is no new requirement in here that did not already exist. I want to make that very clear. We're not asking for anything new. It's just a little bit easier to figure out, especially if you're doing combined application, what you need to show. So that's the first part of this one. Again, really nothing substantive. It's an organizational piece. It had lived in the body. This is now an appendix G. Also an appendix G. You're probably like Cathy, you said we were just going to do wastewater. Why is there something else? Well, because I've been promising this one to the staff since I came here. So I'm hoping you'll let me deliver it as part of this supplement. When we do any application for the DRB, we have to notify our butters. It's time consuming and expensive. We couldn't add the paper, which we'll still continue to do, regardless. We have to find the butters list, everyone who lives next to a property. We have to then draft the letter to them, fold and stuff envelopes to send to every a butter. Sometimes with certain properties, you'd be surprised and amazed at how many of butters you can have. You go over to the fort, we've had upwards of 55 plus. We've lost entire afternoons of staff productivity, folding letters, stuffing them into envelopes, and mailing them. We've lost money on applications because the cost of mailing those, and then later decisions, which have to be sent certified, are very expensive. Statue allows us to transfer that burden to an applicant. Other towns already doing it. When I worked in South Burlington, we adopted this, put it into practice for several years, never had an issue. A natural question you probably have is, Kathy, how do we know they did it? So we have handy dandy certificate of service form that requires them to attest that they did it. Any good program that requires this will also spot check. Staff will here and there pick up in a butters list, give it a good read through and call someone on it and say, did you indeed get this? You'll see there's a memo in your packet from Zach. Zach is our main staff to the DRB. He's the guy who's mostly doing all of this work. I know that his time and intelligence can be better spent elsewhere. Zach and I are asking for your support in this amendment. Just a couple of questions. I'm just thinking of someone who works, a couple who work. They work 40 hours a week so they can't come to the town offices. I mean, how do they, in terms of their time, and translating that into money, I mean, how do they find out who, I mean, the stuffing of envelopes I think they should be able to do, but finding out who amongst their problem. Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We would help anyone with that and we even help professionals. It's not uncommon for a law office, a real estate office, an engineering office to give us a call and say, hey, I can't quite find this. That part is actually one of the simpler parts for us. We run it off our tax map. We teach people how to do it in case they do it frequently. Some people will never probably have to do it more than once. I'm thinking of the person who's probably once on every agenda or once every couple of agendas. There's somebody who comes in who's simply maybe building a garage that is a conditional use for some reason. We would definitely help them through those. What we see a lot of though are the applications where we have frequent frequent applications. You get certain site plans and say the Fort, for example, where tenants change and that requires something. So you get, you see the same people over and over again. Like I said, I have some experience with this. Most people are very happy to do it or they understand even if they're not happy. They may already be doing it for other towns. Can they do it online? Like the notice, no, it still has to be mailed. Can they find out who abouts? Yes. They can. We will train anyone who wants to do that, but your frequent flyers, for lack of a more elegant term, they know how to do it using our online mapping. Our online GIS map connects with our tax map. So it's only as good as the tax data, but it will bring up a list of a butters for you. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Rebecca. I think it's good. I think it's about time. Well, that makes me feel good. I'm all good with that, especially to cost tax peers money, and necessarily too. I get that. I am just wondering that you're saying the interactive mapper is based on the tax data and what happens if it's not updated in time when someone's putting together the butters list. Maybe the address is right. So maybe it gets there, but it's addressed to the wrong person, or potentially it could be the wrong address. How does that get addressed? I guess the same way it would now. I mean, they'd be pulling from the same list that we would now. So you guys wouldn't have anything different? No. Okay. No. We would just say automatically. Yeah. I don't know about automatically. I don't know what the, I don't know how often things are updated. I think pretty frequently. I bought property in Colchester last year, and I know that I'm listed as the owner on it. I don't know how soon after it took. It doesn't take that long. Yeah. My daughter bought a piece of property. Yep. She's still listed. My neighbors sold their house, built new. It's already, and it got listed. Yeah. Yeah. Almost right away. So we would use the exact same. We'd even use the public link. We wouldn't have access to anything different than anyone else. And hopefully they're getting the right information, but it's not unheard of. But there's, I just don't solely so much you could do. Wendy, what's that? I say yes. She says yes. There you go. Congratulations to your staff. Yes. That could be very happy. You know, at some point we're probably going to come back and readdress this. If you guys read this, you probably laughed or scratched your head a little bit. This information, I didn't want to overdo it in this supplement, but would you talk about like how big your file can be and ignore all that? I'm not trying to fix everything at once, but just know that I know it's outdated. We don't check whether the PDFs are 300 DPI. We don't reject any that come in black and white. Yeah. We'll just ignore that for now. Okay. Moving on. I think we covered all of C. But D, here's one that I want to talk about. This is one that definitely could use some clarity. And it is another one, again, that has been really frustrating to staff, property owners and applicants for a long time. And I think it is just, I think we could just tackle this one as part of the supplement somewhat quickly to either say yes or no and move on with this. So I did print out what I think is a little bit closer up if you'd like one of the drawings that were included in that memo from Zach. Which memo was this one? Pam, did you have, do you want one? Five, four D. There we go. So let me explain this problem. So let me actually. I could follow this drawing at all. Yeah, no, that's okay. I had to put something in there. It's okay that you couldn't follow. I'm going to walk you through it now. It took me actually a minute to figure out the drawing. But it does make sense. Yeah, I'm navigating to here. That shoreline just kept changing. So I'm going to bounce back and forth here between this memo from Zach and the actual text. He doesn't include the actual text in here, but I think that's important. Well, I guess he's got a part of it here. So in the shoreland district, that's anything that's within 250 feet of the high water mark of the lake. So most everything, Eastlake shore, Westlake shore, both sides of some of those goes pretty far. But especially to those properties within 100 feet. So we have language in here that says you can increase or enlarge your residential structure. So long as it doesn't increase the degree of encroachment within the first 100 feet. Okay, so there's two numbers. Shoreland is 250. Okay, so you could have a structure that's sitting somewhere in 250, partially or all of which is also within 100 feet. Okay, where's my drawing? I'll pull that up. You make it bigger. Okay, so let's just start at the beginning. You've got a camp or a building you just don't like. It is per this drawing within 100 feet of the lake. So here's your lake at the bottom. Okay, your whole campus here. When someone comes in to tear that down and rebuild it, we look at this language that says increase the degree of nonconformity. All right, well, the heck does that mean? Historically, interpretation has varied. Our current staff interpretation is consistent among our staff but does not please applicants because historical interpretation has somewhat been different sometimes. You have, I'm going to go here. So what does increase the degree of nonconformity mean? We, because this 100 foot is a linear measurement, linear is how we have been interpreting that. We have people who are saying, okay, so let me see this. Here's your structure, right? You've got this amount 20 feet of your structure in that 100 foot. Well, someone comes in and says, I can have more as long as I'm going closer. So if my old camp was here and it was only 20 feet wide, I can have 40, 60, 80, 100. As long as I'm not getting any closer to the lake, their increase of the nonconformity interpretation is, I'm not getting closer. Staff interpretation has been, but you're putting a whole lot more in that 100 feet than you have ever had there. Purpose of the 100 feet, just as a reminder, is to protect against adverse impacts to the water body, especially shoreland, the soil erosion and anything else. Okay, pollution, especially erosion. So this has been the cause of a lot of heartache for a lot of people about what you can do there. So we're going to give you two options, one of which we like better than the other, and we're going to tell you that we like it better than the other, but you can disagree with us. So again, our interpretation has been, you have a certain amount of square feet in that area where you're not supposed to have anything, okay? But we're grandfathering you. We're going to, we get it. You had that home there, you've probably had it there, you bought it like that, you've probably had it in your family or someone's family for generations. You're entitled to that square footage. We do not believe that the regulation states or should state that you are entitled to more of that. And so hold the line approach here, again, old camp, that's my dotted line here. Let me make that just a little bigger. Okay, old camp, here's what you had. Again, some people's argument is, I'm not going any closer. I'm building a whole lot more, but I'm not going any closer, okay? That's how the property owner would want us to interpret that because it definitely benefits them more. In theory, not in language, what we are proposing is that you had x square feet, in this case, 20 by 15. And so you can continue to have that amount of square footage, that amount of non-conforming structure in that setback, but no more. You could relocate it if you want. You could put it in such a place. So this old camp would not be able to build under that interpretation here because that increases the amount if this is your 100 foot line. And this threw me off at first because I'm like, why is it wavy, Zach? It's because our 100 foot line is not straight because it follows the high water mark, which is not straight, the contour lines. So that's what this is here. If you were to move it, and some people have, you could expand that outside of that 100 foot as much as you want, but you still only get the same amount of impact, adverse impact, I'm arguing, in that 100 feet. Either way, we're begging you to clarify this. Even if you say, Kathy, you're crazy, we don't really care. Build away. I think everyone would benefit from some sort of clarity. What you see further up in your memo, just to circle back away from the pictures, because we're not going to put these pictures in the regulations, along with my video chat of explaining it, is to define in the definition section what degree of encroachment is. And so here you are, enlargement of, let me zoom out just a little bit so you can see the whole thing, enlargement of residential structures. Oh, that's the existing. Square footage approach. We're going to go back to the draft. It's in the definitions. A lot of definitions. There's so many. Degree of encroachment. So here are your two options. Can you get bigger? Yes. Now this is question one. I do reserve the right to ask you question two after you've discussed this one. So when you go to your proposed square footage approach, you're still allowing the structured self to be larger. This is right because he went from a 15 by 20 to 20 by 20. As long as what you are adding to it is beyond that 100 foot mark. So they have to go back further in order to get that extra? In this case, what we see a lot of are people trying to square off what they already had. That doesn't really show in the picture, but what we see a lot of is somebody has a little 5 by 5 deck that extends, this is very frequent actually, that extends into that 100 feet. Then they tear down that camp and rebuild and they say, well, I had this 5 by 5 deck. That got me that line. That got me to 44 feet instead of 48 feet. I already got that line. I'm going to build it out. So their new structure is what they had before, plus them taking advantage of that distance they already had. Does that make sense? That's more common to what we see. So this proposed square footage approach, the building, the new building will start at the back of the old building. That's where you're going to put your new mark. It doesn't have to. Again, this does give somebody the option to enlarge because they moved it, but they don't have to. So again, if you're old camp, what we see so much more is that the entire structure is within that 100 feet. But they've got some little portion. Sometimes it's only 5 feet out of the 80 feet wide that their camp is. So now they've had this camp that's in that 100 feet that's already impacting everything that 100 feet is meant to do. But it's what they have. They can't move it, especially on some of the lakeshore drive. So we get that, and that's why this is in here. You get to rebuild that even though it could have, its very presence has adverse impacts. But what we're seeing is I'm already this close. There's my lake. I'm already this close to the lake, and I've got itty-bitty deck. Right poking off here. They want to now say my new home. I had, I already established my line is here. That's my line. I can build anything I want up to that line. Staff interpretation has been no. But admittedly, the regulations just say degree of encroachment. Or, but it doesn't really say clearly. Is that a line? Is it a linear approach? Or is it how much you are putting into the no-go area? And you're saying a pertinent features includes a pertinent features. Is that described in the definitions like what's considered a pertinent feature? Yeah. So your two options such as, I was wondering, are in here like an all-inclusive description of a pertinent feature. So the bottom one is the one just to be clear that we are recommending because it takes a gross floor area approach. So when we say you can't increase it, we're saying you cannot increase the gross floor area of your building that is already in that you shall not build zone. So if they had a deck they could rebuild and they could put instead of a deck there, put a structure going out that followed that deck. Yes. So if you already had the deck, you'd still get that square footage. Right. But now the square footage is of overhanging the lot. It could now go all the way down and have a foundation. Yes. Okay. But hold that thought for question two because that's another question. Yes, this includes overhangs as in roof overhangs. Is that or is that what you're referring to? Well, so question two, let me preview this for you is you have your current camp is one story. Okay. So pretty much everything on West Lakeshore and East Lakeshore is in this 100 feet. You have a camp. It's one story. The entirety of it is in there. You take down that camp, you rebuild it even if you rebuild it exactly in the same square footprint. Questions that have come to us. I said, all right, we know that we're in that 100 feet. Can we put more in 100 feet in the form of a second story, third story, well, whatever the tight limit is or not. We have interpreted that to date as saying it's really been a footprint issue. And so we have allowed that. But I wanted to make sure that you guys are weighing in on that. This is LS3 and LS4 you're talking about. Anything within 100 feet. So it could also be up in Clay Point or LS1 and 2 or Mills Point or. So you address this for LS3 and LS4 already. You went through all that. Right. So this is extending. This is anything in 100 feet. Different parts of town for Lakeshore. Lakeshore. Yeah. So shoreland overlay. So that normally gets regulated by the state. But Colchester, we love delegation. Most places, most towns in the state, defer to the state to regulate that. Colchester, we have our own delegation. We make this determination. But it largely mirrors what the state says. Yeah. So basically, though, this is outside of our district for LS3. We already went through all this. We're talking outside of that now. It still would include that. Heights. Yeah. I mean, as far as the heights go, it's mostly about clarifying for us. We would treat something in LS3 and 4 the same as we would anywhere else as far as new livable space within the 100 foot step back. Right. So zoning allowed for two-story structure. Yeah. 25 foot high ridge line. Anywhere in Colchester. Yeah. We've got a lot of shoreline. Yes, we do. They had a one-story building. They could build up to that limit. Yeah. So that's question two. It had three-story limit. You could build up to a three-story limit. Yes. Okay. Even within that overlay, we can circle back to that. So the first question is, how are you viewing this degree of encouragement? And to be clear, the state doesn't allow building at all if this was not a locally regulated area. You wouldn't be able to build in it at all. So part of their reason that we have delegation is because we recognize that we have so many properties and they all have their own history and some of them simply could not exist if they could not rebuild. Yep. I shouldn't say that. The state would allow you to rebuild in your exact footprint only but would not allow any increase. What we are saying is that you can have this increase as long as you are not increasing the degree of nonconformity. Well, my take before I saw any of this was I always thought here in Colchester along the lake, you could rebuild on the same footprint. Same footprint to me means foundation wall. A deck that doesn't go all the way down and have a frost wall is a deck. It's attached to it, but your footprint is the foundation wall. To me decks can come in and out all over the place and that doesn't affect the structure. Unless you're building a tree house where you have post and then you can build out, I guess, but I've always interpreted what Colchester had was building on the same foundation footprint. If the decks are overhiding or concerned, maybe that could be limited not increasing it beyond the percentage that is currently on the existing property. I'm leaning more towards the square footage one because I think the linear one I have never interpreted Colchester's regs to mean that. I have not either. However, some property owners and some iterations of staff before me have. One thing I've seen is where people build like on the footprint, but it's like storage or it's a gym or something and then the second and third floor come way out. That's enclosed. That's why I think it's no longer a deck or a port. Well, it never was a deck. It was never a deck. I mean, I would think that the structure itself can't increase over the existing footprint of the structure that was there before. So if you have a 15 by 20 ranch little camp, you could build up from that or make it smaller but not any bigger. But I would say you could probably make a little staircase going down because it's not really a structure. It's not a living structure. It's a way to get up and down of your new two story structure. I would tend to be okay with that because it's not part of a living area. It doesn't increase the living area, but I wouldn't want to see. I'd like to put a limit on that because I wouldn't want to see the structure and then someone putting, you know, you've got 15 by 20 house. I wouldn't want to see a 15 by 20 deck off of it. I think so I would limit it to a certain percentage or something tied to something. So let me give you an example here. It already has a deck. Do we limit? I'm not trying to pick on any in particular property and these are terrible images but humor me and pretend that you see what I'm showing you. So much shadow. It's hard to, okay, let's pretend. Let's pretend here. So we've got this house here. The deck's already there so we have the footprint of the house but the deck that's already there we would allow to put back on. So see that's where I kind of differing because to me the deck is an add-on to the existing footprint. The deck is not. So even if it's not a deck, let's ask this question first and then we'll come back to whether the deck should count because I think that's an excellent question. So somebody's got this house. Let's pretend it's one story. I don't know. I'm not trying to pick on anyone. If anyone's watching this and like, that's my house. I'm sorry. Let's pretend that this is some sort of small addition here, right? So we'll pretend this is a one-story house they want to take down, rebuild. What we are hearing from a lot of people is they want to rebuild the whole new house up to this line all the way across. Whether it was a deck, whether it was living space regardless, they are saying this is my line, lady. This is my degree of encroachment all the way the length of the home. Does that make a little more sense now? Rebecca is asking a very good question and says, is there a difference if does this square footage get to count even if it was simply a deck versus whether it's a living space, right? So question one is, and it, no matter what, is there anything that should get them an allowance to build here? Assuming this is all in 100 feet and I'm pretty sure it is. This line here is my first question for you. Some would argue I'm not increasing my degree of encroachment. I'm not any closer than I was before but you're increasing the square footage in that encroachment. That's what I think is what we don't want them to do. Right, so we have to think it's negative towards the lake. If you think, I mean I'm not saying I'm kind of thinking like you but the claim is that especially now that we have sewers coming, the septic won't be a problem anymore. Now you're talking just east Lakeshore and west Lakeshore but yeah. But I get that, that'd be part of it. So the other guys would be setting problems too. Yes, to me if it's something, if you had brawland today, had nothing on that piece of property, you would not be able to build within that 100 mark and that's to protect the water source which is here's Lake Champlain, Mallets Bay. I would say if you already have an encroachment and at 100 foot square foot, you cannot increase it. I don't think it should be a linear line, it's just you cannot increase your current out of compliance encroachment. Everything that's on the foundation. Yeah, I understand it. Well that's actually a huge part of the problem because people have historically built these decks especially on the back where nobody can see them and so they are establishing lines that may only be three, four, five, ten years old that have never been allowed and it keeps leapfrogging and that's part of the problem. I mean here's probably another good example where you have this whole building. They might say, this is my line. Now look how close we are to the lake. This is my line. If I were to rebuild this, I'm building this and everything in it because this is my line. I'm not getting any closer staff. I'm not. I promise. But they are increasing their encroachment. That has been our position for the last year. Pam, you live on the lake. You're awfully quiet over there. We also see this is a good one too if you have a property that's not straight. You see this point? This is their closest point, right? Their line under some interpretation is this. That's more encroachment. That's my point. They take that closest point and say that is my line. Okay, I agree. That changes. And again, I'm not just picking on this. We've seen applications come in from all around town, Clay Point. There's a lot of rebuilds up there in that area. That Porter's Point, Mills Point, that area. All of them. Not as many in Mills Point. There's not a lot of rebuilds. And where they are, they are purely in the footprint, I think, just because of the topography? I don't know. Did they go closer to the lake? Yeah, I'll have to look. I don't know. But are they far enough away? Are they beyond the lake? Yeah, they're probably closer. Yeah, I don't know the history of that one. That was approved before Zach and I got here. We inspected it. I don't think that was ever the intent of these regs was to build along the line, a linear line. So again, what I'm really hopefully asking from you, if I can see any of the ones up here. Is this one? This might be one of the ones. I don't know. I'm sorry if I'm picking on you and you're watching this. This might not be you. I don't live on the lake. Let's just say there's this one, right, where they've got this point here, right? And so if you were to say 100 feet back and they're like, I'm already at this point, that means that I can go all of this. No, and they're drawing their line that way, even though the entirety of this sits. I'm sorry. So explain this new provost. I guess I don't understand if you have an existing 15 by 20 that was sitting here. Did you turn your mic on? Probably just going to be closer. If you were, you have a new camp that you have just moved away from the lake, which is good, but it's bigger. How are you, I guess I just don't understand if you're talking about the existing foot print. I'm just talking about the existing foot print. I'm talking about this first one where they're saying the encroachment. The second drawing where they're taking the existing proposed square footage, they're still taking, the example is a 15 by 20, which is, that's not very big at all, is it? No. Quite a 300 square feet. Forgive us our examples. Yeah. It's a tiny house. What that second diagram is showing is that you're taking that same 300 square feet, and it doesn't have to be 15 by 20. It's 300 square feet can be within that 100 foot setback. You're not increasing the square footage. You might be changing the shape of it, but the rest of the build out is beyond the 100 foot setback. If the zoning allows it, you can build it out to a certain amount. Okay. And you can go up, right? As long as the zoning of the area allows it, yeah. I prefer the square footage approach in order to get past question one. Just drop a poll? I do have questions about some of the other pieces, but, and you're trying to get this into supplement 45. Yeah. Okay. So the goal is, let's clarify this with the commission to see what the intent is. So that's the goal. And then how's the best way, so let's just say you guys are all on the same page and say, yeah, square footage, that's what we want. How's the best way to pop that into the regs? And what we've brought to you is we say, shall not increase the degree of nonconformity. What the heck is the degree of nonconformity? That's now in the definition section. But degree of nonconformity or the degree of encroachment? Oh, degree of encroachment. I'm sorry. Degree of encroachment. Okay. Which is very important because we use degree of nonconformity elsewhere. And to cover our behinds on that one, we do say it only applies in the shoreline overlay. So anywhere else where degree of anything is mentioned, this is not the definition for that. But can they go back? Let's say they don't encroach in the hundred feet. Could they, it depends on the zoning. Not if they're still within. So here, right? Here's your old camp. Here's your hundred foot line. Right? This is, I'll just call the area of protection. Right? That's the idea. This would say, no, you cannot build more in that hundred feet. This is an important area. Unless you already had something there, you would be entitled to, I think we have recognized it is very important for people to keep what they have had. And so where you have not trying to take that, that's actually what was there before that you would be allowed to keep it. You'd be allowed to keep it. But you would not be able to put new square footage in that hundred foot sensitive area. And just, we have that old camp on its foundation. You could rebuild on the foundation, yes. Right. So we're not going to do the whole porch thing. We're going to put a word in to kill that. Well, let's talk about that. That's question two, or three. I don't know how many we're up to. It looks like the new camp is behind the hundred foot encroachment area. Is that right? In this one? Yes. Well, this would say that part of it is, right? So this is the argument we've seen. The majority is still. But the majority is new impact. Right. Within that hundred foot. And that would not be permitted. Would they only be? We are recommending it would not be permitted. You could decide you're okay with that. Our recommendation is that it would not be. So they'd only be able to build on the footprint of the old camp? In a situation like this, they could build on the footprint of the old camp. They could rebuild this in its entirety. And expand it, right? They could not expand here. Right. What they could do if you're already tearing it down, is move it to such a place that anything new is outside of that protected area. But the lower part below the 100 foot line is equal to the same square footage as the old camp. Yes. So is there a formula in terms of, let's say, what they could build beyond the old camp's footprint? So we have coverage limitations, just like you would have anywhere else on your lot. We have the other setbacks. I mean, this doesn't tell you where the road is. Do you have to be setback from that? So it would just apply in the same way that anything else would. But I think what's important to note is that no matter what, you can at least rebuild what you had. And we wouldn't want to change that. Really, staff is not recommending to change that. So that brings up the next question. Can you build up? Can you build up? And then your question, I think of like, let's just say this was the old camp. Let's just pretend for the argument of this talk, this was the old camp. And this is your deck. So I think the question you've raised is, do you get this as well? If this was just an overhanging deck, I could say you get the deck back, but the foundation is the footprint. That's what's encroaching on that piece of property. You have the deck back, but you could not convert this deck to living space. Is that what I'm hearing? Is that sound accurate? That's what I'm saying. Let me write this stuff down. I would say anytime you have to dig into the ground and have living space there is an additional encroachment. You have a deck that's overhanging. It's not really encroaching on that property. You're saying new living space, or anything with a foundation wall? Does that sound like a thing? Yeah, that's how I'm defining it. Development with... I think the tricky thing with the deck is that it's going to have some foundations for the pose. But it's not a living space. Right. And then you have hard impervious surface. Maybe there's gaps between the boards and stuff, but in protecting the water quality of the lake, you want less impervious surface within that protected area. So if you're not counting the deck, that's why I was questioning impertinent features because it's kind of a little bit of a gray area. Are we back to the definition here? You know, are we just including foot print, foundations, hard foundation surfaces, or overhangs in a lot of regulations that are considering hard surfaces, gravel, roof overhangs. So how far do we want to go with limiting... Well, there are other regulations on that, Cathy, about which part of the... We're basically talking about water runoff. Yeah, I mean, we hear a lot of from people which frustrates me, even though I'm... I don't pretend to be a hydrologist in any way, is that a deck is not impervious surface. We hear it a lot, our staff interpretation is to say that we treat it that way. And I think that the state does as well, anyone? Yeah, that's kind of a great area, I don't know, for sure. You know, people say water runs through the deck boards. It does, but a lot of people will put furniture and rugs and even a roof over their deck. And that makes it impervious in every way. But the ground below isn't covered, I mean, yeah. Yeah. But I have a deck on top of a deck and we put plywood under the top deck. Right. So now all of a sudden... You're impervious. That's impervious. Right. But the ground's not impervious, I think that's sort of... Right, but it's the water getting to it to be treated. Yeah, if you're getting an impervious surface, not allowing the water to get to the ground, essentially. Yeah. So if you have a cantilever deck in some way and you've put something, and oftentimes people will, because they want that patio down at the bottom or something, right, or, I don't know. Or they want some lawn furniture there that's gut shade. They will put something on that deck to make it so water cannot penetrate through it to the ground below. The thing with this is... The thing with this is we're talking about existing decks. We give it back, we give the deck back that was already there. So the question I've asked and what I've heard so far from Rebecca is if somebody does... I need a whiteboard. I wonder if I can find a drawing tool on here. Yeah. If you have... Like a notepad or something. Notepad. Actually, I don't think I've played with this since I was in high school. All right, let's see. Bear with me. Not to use the spray can. All right, so... That I find it hard to draw three hands. Water, lake, okay. This is going to be preserved too for posterity, right. So you have your... Let me make it bigger. Marker. Oh, wow. Okay. You have your house. Right. And then you have... I'm using here... You have a nice little deck over here, right? Deck house. You have this deck. You're tearing down your rebuild line. And again, we'll assume this is built into a hill. They often are. You have your rebuild line. Is it just where the heavy line is? What happens here? The question is... There's three questions. Do you get... And I think the question you've already answered is... Do you get new house all the way up to this line? Question one. I think I'm hearing from folks no. No new house up to that line. Question two. Okay. Go to green. This area here, can it be rebuilt as a deck? Can it be rebuilt as a living space? I would say rebuilt as a deck now. You had a deck. I'd like you to get your deck back. What's a living space? That's the next part. And question three, just because I'm full of questions. If you take advantage of the square footage thing, and that's a 80 square foot deck, does that 80 square feet move with you in any way? Does that count? So this is... So in the... These of you asking, like this diagram, if you had a big back deck off of here, do you get that big back deck back? Can you go through all the trouble of tearing down a camp and putting something on? Why would you want to put a deck in the exact same place? I don't know. I've always thought of decks as so temporary. I guess I'm just having a hard time thinking that you're going to... Share my thing. That you would include it in the square footage. I mean, it just seems like you could put a deck all around the entire building if you wanted to, and that would count too. That's the trick. So that deck, with an X in it right now, sits there. That's existing. So we let you rebuild on your little foundation. You're perfect. You can rebuild your little deck right there. So you're perfect. You're perfect to square one. But now you want to move this back. Are you... Are we going to allow that little square, part of the square footage, when you move it back? Is that right? I think that's the question. It goes with the building, the square. So yeah, two questions. One, let's pretend that you rebuild... You're going to rebuild this exact footprint, right? You're building this house just like you had it. You're going to make an argument that this is part of your footprint and this can become your new master bedroom. There's no foundation for that. This is a deck at this point too. There is no foundation wall. I suppose there could be... There has to be something supporting the deck. Support posts. Support posts. Are we going to allow you to close it and now become a... Is this your footprint? Is the question. So do we then say, here's your footprint. It's everything that existed. So I get that part. So that's a question. Make it all on board with that. We always say... I don't know if I've heard the answer, but that's the question. We're on board with the foundation part. The foundation is the footprint. The square footage footprint. It does not include a deck. It doesn't include the overhangs or the decks. I think that's what we're arguing about right now. We're discussing not arguing. Well, that's the question she's asking. I've asked a lot of questions. I'm so sorry. Yeah. Yeah, the deck's separate from that issue. Because it's not considered... I think the way we look at it is not considered part of the structure. But the question is, what you're saying is that... This would be... Do we allow that to happen? You build a deck? Just a regular deck? Well, they'll come to you and say, can we build that into a new bench? We'll say no. Does it stop permitting? I don't know historically what has happened. I believe though, and again, the clarity is so important, I believe that there's precedence for saying this is part of your footprint. As long as it was permitted. Has some or existed more than 15 years. Has some sort of staying power. That that has historically been included as part of your rebuild footprint. So your new build is the solid line plus this line. Whether you believe that should be true or not is entirely up to you. I think either way. And footprint could be enclosed or not enclosed? Well, I looked when Rebecca brought it up. We don't have a definition of footprint. Probably should. I wrote a note. Okay, we should. Maybe what I'm going to see come back to you is some definition of footprint. But philosophically, policy-wise, what do we do with this base in terms of a rebuild? What I'm hearing from Rich so far, as somebody who's put something out there, is that he would at least like to make sure they at least get a deck back. I don't think he's weighed in yet on anything more. Is that sound fair? Yes, absolutely. So you're thinking. But if they knocked everything down and rebuilt it, he does not want them to lose at least the ability for a deck here. Is that accurate? But it couldn't go any further out than where it was before. Yeah, your square footage is what it is. And could not get wider too. So even if it was just a deck, you don't get to make your deck. Well, let's say it was 100 square feet. So if it was a 10 by 10, you could make it 5 by 20, if it works better for your plan. And doesn't go closer. And doesn't get any closer. Yeah. But as long as it doesn't increase in size. Just to be clear, there was no existing deck there. You're saying they could not build one. Correct. Yeah. Because they'll have to get closer to the lake. So we want to eliminate everything that goes out towards the lake as far as new construction is concerned. Okay. So if they want that deck, they can push their whole, according to this, they push that whole gap back, go at it. Yeah. You know, as long as they push it back beyond that 100 feet, they can get that deck. They've got to go right behind that 100 feet. So you only want to give it to them in this particular case right here because it was already existing. Exactly. Okay. If I had a chem. I get that. If I want to rebuild, I go to the town and I say, I had a nice little deck. No. So would you support something that said, you get the same square footage of living space? Let's just say you're moving it. And the same square footage of a pertinences? Am I saying that right? A pertinences. Mm-hmm. Sure. Yep. Yep. Okay. So that's one option I suppose, right? You get the same square footage of living space, the same square footage of a pertinences. As long as... It's permitted, right? It permitted. Right. If it's out of compliance and was never permitted and they have a huge deck, no. They don't get away with something. That's an important point. Yeah. For sure. But you're making a very strong distinction between your footprint being a living space footprint and a deck footprint. What's that? It's not fair. This is also for like kind of grandfathering features in. And a lot of these decks may not have been permitted because there weren't... Permits back then? That's possibility. Yeah. It's not uncommon. And we do struggle with it a lot daily when someone's like, I've had this here for 50 years and we're like... Kind of looks this color, I don't know. But then again, something that could be five years old could look like it's 40 years old. Stuff weathers pretty quickly. So yeah, it's going to be hard. I mean, I don't know how many properties there are that have huge decks off towards the lake that are in the 100 foot setback. I don't know whether it's a big problem or not. I don't know. Yeah, I think, again, what we see mostly is people wanting that actual distance. So they may have only a small... What's happening, what has happened a lot is that there's a small deck. Usually it's a landing because that's how they get down. They come out on a landing. It might have a chair or two, but it's usually not very big. But that's how they take the stairs from their living space here to the water, to the beach front. And so that has created some sort of line here. And at rebuild time, knockdown rebuild, they say, this is my footprint. But they lose their way to get down to the lake. Yeah, they get pretty creative. They'll stick it on the side now. They're willing to come out the front and go down. Yeah, I think that defeats the whole idea of keeping the encroachment in the 100 foot setback as small as possible. I think it defeats the whole idea of protecting the leg. Yeah, I do feel very strongly about that pink line that I've shown. I'm willing to argue it. But other than that, I'm feeling... I say that to people, too. And they think I'm crazy. No, I think we definitely have to... Yeah, we just don't want them to get closer. Gotcha. Have a better definition. Yeah. So... I don't think we answered all your questions, though. Do we add more questions as a question? Are there any other features besides decks? Okay, so here's what I'm going to do. And if it is just the deck, we have to make sure we define what that is and that it doesn't have concrete or foundation below it or if it's not a deck... Yeah, I think the definition of footprint would be important. How do we define that footprint? Yeah, yeah, because we say you can rebuild in the same footprint. And I think it's never been controversial because we've had a very, I think, liberal definition of that to date. It's up to you guys to tell me if that's been too liberal or not. I'm not saying I agree with it. What stops? At least it's been consistent. What stops someone having a stone patio going out towards the lake within that 100-foot setback? That's impervious to me. It is impervious, but is that an issue? Yeah, so no patios either within the 100 feet, no new... So that's already in there. Yeah, we track pretty close to the state shoreland regs, so they would not allow that. That's what I've been doing on my phone, by the way. I'm not looking at the shoreland protect. And something, since we're already talking about the shoreland, something that you will hear, not for this supplement, but you will hear it in two weeks when we meet with the DRB. They struggle with the shoreland stuff. There's something in there about cutting trees in the shoreland and new trees and something about, like, they have to be randomly placed. And they're like, what the heck does that mean? How do you randomly place trees? It is a difficult regulation to follow. They're going to be bringing that up to you in two weeks because it's something that has been really bothering them. So not the last year of shoreland. Okay. So one thing... Okay, let me see if I can summarize us and get us ordinarily. I'd be like, why don't you think about it? We'll talk about it again in two weeks. I think what I'm hearing consistently is you don't get to build out to that pink line in any case. Your degree of encroachment is not... You've already gone to 40 feet instead of 80 and you can keep going to 40. That makes sense. However, and you do like the square footage approach of if you've had 1,000 square feet in that 100 foot, you can keep 1,000 square feet somewhere. Footprint. Footprint. But now we are asking ourselves, how are we saying if you had 1,000 square feet? They might say, I had 1,100. Do they have 1,100? Does this example have 1,100 square feet? When you say 11, are you counting the depth? Yes. It's not living space. So one option is to simply say you don't get that at all. You have 1,000 square feet that you can rebuild. One option is to say put this in the two buckets like I brought up. This will be tricky, but I think we can do it if you want to. You get the bucket of living space, foundation wall, maybe being the definition. We'll have to work our way through that. And you get the bucket of appurtenances and you can keep that provided it has existed for longer than our statute of limitations of 15 years and or you actually got a legal permit for it. But it can only be kept as that same bucket, as an appurtenance. Same square footage. Same square footage, not any closer. Right. And you can't take that number, whatever it is, and convert it to new living space with this foundation wall. No. Yeah, I agree with that. Because you could have a shed or a gazebo and you should be able to keep or rebuild or have those. So you would not support? Take red here, this is fun. Gazebo is another question. Yeah, I just thought of that one. There's been a lot of discussions about that. Red, so Newhouse, pardon the line, that's actually meant to follow. Ignore the fact that it does it. Newhouse does not get to be here. The one that's going back beyond 100, is that what we're talking about here? That would not be a new foundation. So I'm like, I don't need a deck. I'd rather have a master bedroom worth so much more. That's my Newhouse. Ignore this, it was a mistake. I thought that was the garage. It's the garage, yeah. They can keep the garage too. That has a foundation under it, even though it's not as deep. This does not become the new footprint of the house, is that what I'm hearing? Right, that's right. You can put a deck back here. You do not get to make this your new layout. New foundation wall, new upstairs, downstairs, third floor, fourth floor. And it doesn't extend the width of the house. That's a no. Red. No. Okay, so new. Let's go with that. I'm so out of colors. It's a happy color. We'll go blue. Blue. Okay. So you're rebuilding it. You can knock it down and rebuild it. You get this. Let me get the garage too. Oh yeah, in the garage. I'll just forget the garage. And that's not bigger. Just pretend it follows it, but I needed you to see it. The same deck as a deck. I'll put lines on it. Those are your boards that you're not going to put a carpet on. And in this particular case, the deck is just because they had it before. Correct. Okay. I'm good with that. And they didn't have a deck. They don't get a deck. Okay. But if they had four acres of land, they could build a bigger house behind a hundred foot mark. Yeah. So and that's the one I think that's represented in the drawing you have. So they could also, let's go back to blue. That one. They could also take this thousand. They could even go probably nice and long here, as long as they don't exceed a thousand. Beyond that yellow line. Yeah. And have a big old place. Okay. And our reason for all that. As long as this is not larger than this. Yep. And why we want that is because we want to protect the lake, as I'm sure they do. And since I'm getting good at this. So no, I don't know that that would be allowed in the shoreland protection act, though. In the 250 part, you mean? Yeah, the state. The state does not act 250. It's the. Right. So we don't follow the state ranks. We follow our own ranks. Okay. Which are closely modeled after, but you don't have to actually meet them. So we've replaced them with the language. We're the obligating authority for shoreland protection. What's that? If you're, if you live in Colchester, you don't have to get a shoreland protection. Nope. You do not. That's why this is where we're at in protecting the lake. You do not. Got it. What about the rest of that 150 feet? That's important to the quality of the lake. So that that's in there. Okay. At some point, if you would like to revisit that, I'll leave that up for you guys, but so just to finish this off, even if you moved it, you can still get your little deck. You can still get your 100 feet a deck. Yep. Gotcha. Yeah. It's stinky. I'm going to look at this tomorrow. I'll be like, what was I doing? Just going to drop it on Zach's desk and say here. Let's see. I'm more likely if you're starting to scratch and moving it back, you'll probably fix that deck. So it works out well. Regulations. It's like we're not saving this lady. Okay. Anyone disagree with how we've summarized this? I think I've heard. Oh, good. I'm good. Okay. I'm good. So here's the plan. The next meeting, hopefully all of pretty this up. We're going to start the meeting with a joint meeting with the DRB. It's six. I don't know how long we'll go, but we have food and conversation. Mostly we're going to hear from them. I'll put an agenda together. We'll dismiss them at some point. Let them go home. And then we will review this. Hopefully I'll have text to match. Everything else seemed pretty straightforward. So I don't think we need to review the wastewater stuff again, except for the small edits that I noted. I do want to make sure that this represents what you want it to do. The hope is to warn it for a public hearing, but I want to make sure that we don't do that if you don't like the text. It's more critical to get that right. Yeah. I have to say the two definitions. Yeah, they were meant to be in question. I found very confusing. Okay. I had a, I've read them over and over again, trying to figure out, okay, what's the big difference between these two. But I mean, you've, you've defined it, but it, Okay. I'll work on that. Yeah. I think the idea, they were meant to be oars. The top one is if you did the hold the line approach, which you've said that you don't want to do. So ignore it. Right. Don't look at the top one again. The bottom one is you're meant to like sort of plug it in. If you don't increase the gross floor area of the principal building, we'll have to rewrite it and any appartances, pertinences such as decks, porches, overhangs and stairs in existence on a lot than a hundred foot setback of mean watermark. So it's meant to be like a, a plug in, right? If, as long as you don't increase the amount of gross floor area, but I don't think it reflects what you talked about tonight. So I got to fix it anyway. You need to add like the permitted or, you know, beyond the statute of limitation. Yeah. I got to figure it out. We've got two weeks. But yes, hopefully it'll reflect in some way everything you've said. It won't look just like this, but the idea is that when someone says, increase the degree of encroachment, what is the degree of encroachment? We can plug it in. Well, Amy also brought up a thing about the gazebo. I know it's come up in other towns, whether a gazebo is a encroachment or not. Is that a pertinent feature? Attached or unattached? Unattached. Detached. Detached. You know, sitting out, you know, it's a little picnic area, you know, you have a little gazebo covering your picnic table. Well, I think, I think that gets picked up largely by the floodplain rags. Let's look that as a shed in town, right? Yeah, so I don't think you'd be able to build new ones. I don't think you need to build ones, but if you had an existing one, are you allowed to keep it? I don't think so. Let's come up in other places. But I'm thinking more from a floodplain perspective, I think, because once you get past, you're probably. So just to put it in perspective, along East Lakeshore Drive, the back or front lakeside corner of a lot of those structures sort of hit the floodplain mark. Yeah, I'm not thinking of East Lakeshore Drive. There's other properties. There's a lot of properties around the lake. Okay. And the house may be, you know, not in the 100 foot setback, but the gazebo could be. You know, a little, I wouldn't call it a picnic area, but you have a little place to sit, you have a little roof over it. It's a gazebo. So, okay. So we're thinking it's out of the floodplain, but within the 100 foot. Yeah. Yes. We need a permit for everything. It's like a shed you need a permit for. Yeah, we would treat it like a shed. Okay. Wait, no, I asked that a long time ago. Not that I can't answer to. How about a pagoda? Same thing. Well, are you putting canvas over the top or not? Let me, I haven't heard that come in, but I will look into that, because I think the whole goal is to clarify and know and make it predictable. We should include whatever you want to include on it. The popular, and you can buy nice ones. Costs go anywhere. Real structures. So it's your self kit that you can build up yourself. Yeah. And that's a new thing. My guess, just knowing what I know about sort of the history of the Shoreland delegation and why Colchester took it on. So just a very quick history. It's a little bit different than wastewater regulation, delegation where we take the statewide sort of rules and keep them and enforce them. With the Shoreland delegation, we took oversight. We created our own rules and we had to have them reviewed by the state. So we could make them different and we did. Well predated me. As long as they were approved and they were by the state. So they do look different. For what I know about the history of it, a lot of it was to protect existing homes in that 100 foot. Because it was deemed very important. And that was the basis of a lot of that conversation, Pam. Were you around? You can kick me if you're like, that's not it at all. But that was so much it. I don't know how much thought or even consideration was given to those types of structures because that wasn't the priority. So it may have been that those things just default to whatever they would have been under the state rules. But I'll look into it. Happy being interesting. I don't know. If you came to me today and said, Kathy, I want to rebuild my gazebo, which is sitting out on the bluff. Can I do it? I'd say I'll call you back. I have a nice little gazebo out in a rocky bluff. You know, it's a flat rock. Yeah, I just want to rebuild it. No, I guess I could see that coming in. I wouldn't blame you for asking. I'll find out. I don't know. But I've got a note. That is all I have on these items. But I'll turn it back over to Rich to ask, talk. What's that here? Share. All good? All right, we're all good on that. Yes? Yes. Meeting schedule. Meeting schedule. Okay. We are meeting in two weeks with the DRB. We just covered that. I have to look at what your warning schedule will be. It might be that I'm, and I can connect with Rich specifically about this, but it might be that if we have a public hearing at the end of February that you might want to take your first meeting off. If you don't have anything from the next meeting to continue, it'll be tough to bring you something in between because I'll be working on, I think you'd have a meeting just for the sake of having a meeting. So my recommendation is if you continue, if you have a meeting two weeks from now, you are not ready to warn a public hearing, we'd want that early February meeting. I don't have the date in front of me, but that first Tuesday in February, if however you like whatever everything you see two weeks from now, and you say, let's warn this for a public hearing, I'd recommend that you have that late February meeting and not have that first February meeting. All right. I realize that means you don't know for sure until two weeks from now, but... It's in my calendar anyway. Dude, does someone have a calendar? First Tuesday is the 7th, February 7th, and then February 21st would be the 3rd, Tuesday. So put those on our calendar and then we may take one off. I would hold them both, but know that you'll probably have one and not the other. Because if two weeks from now on the 17th you say, we're not ready, we want to see this again, come back to us February 7th. You won't have a public hearing on the 21st. You'll have it in March, because we need enough time to warn it. So hold both dates, but plan on only attending one. So we're good there. So I jumped over five. I just realized that I don't know why, but... It's your meeting. Yeah, I guess. So if we're good on that one, let's get to five, because first we need a letter from Town of Colchester. That was pretty straightforward. We're happy with that. That happens before our supplement. That's the letter about the... Yeah, that's just the letter about... So what we're doing. Okay. Yeah. So what about this letter from David Cohen? Town Management asked that I just give you guys that as an FYI. There are, as you know, quite a few seasonal dwelling units. Throughout town. Some people overstay their welcome, overstay their allowances. Seasonal dwellings run April 1st to October 31st. You're supposed to vacate by November 1st. Like anything, enforcement of that can vary depending on staff resources. Sometimes there's just other things going on. Sometimes even if we have the time, it is a process to warn someone. This letter is from somebody who's frustrated that somebody has overstayed. Spoken with Mr. Cohen many times. He's very nice, but is very frustrated by this and wants the town to do more than we have been. And his more per this letter is to utilize the water department. From what I understand, the select board said we don't control the water department or the water district, Fire District 2. We don't set their rules. You need to take it to them. I'm not asking for any action from you. Well, I'm just thinking as a clinic mission, we really don't have any other than listening to this story. It just sounds inevitable. I don't think so. So it just sounds like some homeowners somehow have a relationship with the water department or district where they leave it on or they don't. It just seems very unfair to me. And I just, I just am for one, I am just really an enforcer, you know, because it's just unfair. It's empty people that have a relationship. You know, they get some kind of benefit that other citizens don't get. Yeah, I mean, and again, I'm not, I've talked with the Fire District from what I understand, the few exceptions that they have made. Just by way of example, there was, I mean, COVID I think had some impact on it. There was a resident who is a Canadian citizen who contracted COVID. The end of October couldn't cross the border until he had a negative PCR test. It was staying his home or staying a hotel with COVID. Well, that sounds reasonable, you know, in terms of that. So I think that they, they'd like to retain their ability to make those decisions. Beyond that, I mean, I don't know how, I don't know how organized it is. It could be extremely organized. It could be extremely not. There's also, you know, an argument about whether or not, you know, using the water district as your enforcer makes a lot of sense. I've had this conversation with some folks. So you own a seasonal unit. We say that you cannot live in it. We don't say you can't visit it. So you own a camp. I'll put myself as an example out there. I own a camp. I want to go over in February and paint. When I'm done painting, I want to wash my hands. Can I do that? Just do that in the bathroom, that's all. So I, can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom while I'm there? Can I wash my hands? So you turn the water off, you remove that ability. We have a lot of people who do renovations. We have a lot of people who do renovations over those winter months. Do you want to remove that? And I'm not making any argument whatsoever. Just so you know, I'm not actually painting. But I think it's a fair consideration that might factor into whether or not using the water department, not that it's your call, but using the water department as the appropriate way to enforce. So there's just, there's just things to think about. Good news is, there's nothing you guys can do about it. Oh, correct. That's it, read the letter. Yeah. Well, we can. Not your circus. Move on to the minutes. I need a motion. Oh, there was something in the minutes. Okay, we can make the motion and fix it. Oh, and I did have to change the printed copy you have in front of you. Yep. Was slightly changed because the agenda item said the wrong month in the title, but not in the text. So I think it said September or October. In the one that I emailed you. Item, I don't have a copy here in front of me. Wherever it says minutes, approved minutes in the minutes. It had the wrong month. I fixed that for the copy that you're signing. You approved the minutes of November 6th. November 1st. And remember 1st, yes. It had said September. It still says September here. I thought I swapped it. This one says the right one. Sign this one. Okay, so yeah, let's sign the right one. Hang on, we'll wait for you in the minutes. No, no, I just want to say that I thought during that discussion you know I had talked about addressing possibly to relook at residential development in the commercial district. I thought we were going to have that conversation or relook at that at some point. Yep, we still are. We still are. Okay, I just didn't see it yet. This is just to get 45 and get the wastewater deal. Okay. Did you want to add it? I mean, I don't want to add it as long as we have. Forgive my minutes. I'm supposed to write things as we go. But then I talk and I don't write them. Yeah, it's fine. I just want to come back to that conversation at some point. Yeah, I can make a motion that we approve the minutes of. In a second. December 6th. Second. You don't mean a second? I'll second the motion. All right, discussion. Let me see if there's another page here. I don't think you can sign it, but you can call me a second. Did you want to make a change? I thought there was something I read earlier, but I can't see my finger on it. You could also put them off for two weeks if you want to. It wasn't a big deal. I think it was just like a wording. But we're going to be readdressing it all anyway. So we're good? We're good. We're good. So all in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion. All with families? No. Good. We're all with it. Nothing else left? And then I'll make a motion to adjourn. In a second. I'll second back. All right. There you go. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion dismissed. We are adjourned.