 Are there considerations or changes to our agenda? Comment questions from the public, not the way as we agenda. Cheating or Micah? Better. Okay. How's that? Better? Probably. Okay. How's that? Alright. So number four tonight is our informational presentation on our Community Rec Racial Center from Guentida Parks and Rec. Welcome, Glenn. I'm joined by Adrienne Martin, who's our Parks and Recreation Advisory Board chair. Hello, Adrienne. And in the audience we have Dave Peepcourt, Scott Perrin, David Schaefer, and Jim Meary, who are also members of our Recreation Advisory Board. Great. Welcome. Now we're going to go white still. Yeah. It should get a little brighter as it warms up. So, if you've been in the community for a while, for probably the last 20 years, you've known that there's been a lot of talk of a Recreation Center in our community. And so, this is an informational meeting. We're kind of doing a boards and committee tour, updating the various boards and committees of our community where we are in relation to the Recreation Center, which I'm working on. If you remember, in 2016, we did a conceptual master plan. And then we did a green play, LLC out of Colorado. And we are also then which transitioned into a master planning effort in 2017 and 18. And the information that we've garnered from those master planning and central master planning efforts has led us to then start looking at how and where the Recreation Center would be built in the community. So, this is kind of an update. You as a board, where we started 20 years ago where we are today. And then also give you some looks at what the Community Center, Recreation Center will look like and where we stand at this point. So, there's a lot of kind of just an update, but we have, there's a lot of answers still to be questions still to be answered in the process as far as budgeting and such. But just kind of give you an idea of what we're currently with the plan. So, as I mentioned earlier, First Recreation Center Committee was formed in 2002. Just after I came on board in 1999, we had a community survey that was completed. And one of the questions on that survey amongst others was, is there a want or a need for a Recreation Center in our community? Of those who responded over 60% said yes or probably for a center of almost 30 or 25% we're not sure or hoping maybe we've gotten half of those to say yes. So, there's a strong interest in having a Recreation Center in our community. We moved forward, we had a committee and we were focused. And then it kind of slowed down as we saw a need for other his amenity improvements in the community and being in town office as the police department in the town office were being shared. Another question that we had was where this center might potentially go. In 2005, the voters approved the Hazelett property purchase for $1.1 million. I'm familiar with where this property is. It's a 14-acre parcel that has road frontage on Blinkley Road across from Laker Lane so as the town was proceeding with looking at a new town office a second committee was formed in 2009 to kind of continue the movement toward a Recreation Center and once again the need to actually build this building and updates to the police department and the public works garage kind of put the stall so we kind of fell in line as those were more pressing needs for the community than a Recreation Center. In the history of the Bayside Hazel property purchase on March of 2004, again the select board put out to the voters to purchase the property for $1.1 million. It was approved and as of June 30th of 2022 there's only 153,000 left on that bond and will be paid off in June 30th of 2025. So a part of that process of purchasing that property the planning commission in fact put out a survey to the community to determine what the best use of that property would be and it came back as a need for it to be a public use property and that they felt that the community felt that a multi-generational facility such as a Recreation Center would be a great use for that property and then it was later supported by the the Colchester Community Center Initiative Heritage Project the Mallets Bay Initiative that it kind of fits into the town plan as well. So as I mentioned earlier in 2016 we brought in Green Play they came and they looked. We had a series of three focus group meetings community-wide meeting that was held at the Colchester High School Auditorium and I'd say we probably had 150 or 200 people that evening we had we also did a random survey of 3200 random surveys and also for those who didn't get random surveys there was also an open link online survey that people could go on if they didn't get one in the mail The final sample size of that was we received back 360 and 76 open link responses for a total of 436 which made it a statistically valid survey and then to follow up the conceptual earlier than the master planning or master planning took place to kind of refine those things that were coming out of the conceptual design to have more public input specify amenities within the Bayside Park and upper Bayside Park to mower and the Bayside Hazelip and then we brought it to the select board and they approved us to move forward with moving forward with some of those master planning efforts so conclusions from the 2016 conceptual master plans was that there is a demand and need for more recreation facilities in our community which we already know were a very recreationally based community with the lake here and all of the recreation amenities we already have in place they felt businesses would benefit from a year-round recreation facility it would also improve our community's health economy and social fabric and that it would benefit the community to have a year-round recreational space such as a recreation center in our community so I mentioned earlier in the survey that we did in 2016 what we saw was that of those who responded 63% identified an indoor pool as important 61% identified exercise rooms 60% exercise equipment 53% identified a multi-purpose gymnasium that you could play basketball volleyball, fitness classes, etc but what we also did was we asked the question of what your top three amenities be if you were given choices and as you can see an indoor pool ranked number one as far as for first, second, third priorities followed by exercise equipment, gymnasium and exercise rooms it was interesting with the survey that was done in 2016 to the survey that was done in 2001 that the amenities that were identified in 2001 were the same as what was identified in 2016 but in a different border but the top four were still identified and that's kind of what we used to then move forward with the design of the recreation center so again the 2017-2018 master planning efforts kind of told us what we already knew from the 16 but honed it in a little bit more the desire more recreation opportunities, year round recreation opportunities it also helped us look at the big question of where should we locate this recreation center and in that study it identified as being a potential location and so to move forward we felt that using architects and planners from Colorado wasn't a good idea and that we should bring in people close to our community in the state of Vermont to help us refine those ideas that we got from the community and look forward so I'm going to go through some of this is a photo that you probably all remember from Axl who was here with design concepts and you were involved with some of those meetings this was an idea that what Bayside Hazel property would look like and the reason why it's like this is we needed a place to move the infrastructure that's currently at Upper Bayside Park to then free up space for the community center that was identified in the master planning effort so as you can see we moved a lot of hard cores from Upper Bayside to this location we added some pickleball cores playground area and a pavilion type style with walking trails there to kind of free up space to put the rec center on Upper Bayside so in 2019 the select board authorized us to move forward to look at what the cost to build out the Bayside Hazel property to make room for the community center at Upper Bayside Park and as you can see we're working through code at this point September 2019 and as we work in September 2020 we're kind of right in the middle of code but we're still working through the dimes based on the information we got from community input and we got to the 50% design cost estimates for the Bayside Hazel parcel the cost of that was about $6 million of which far exceeded our budget numbers and so at that point in time we felt like it made physical sense to put the hold on that design there and ultimately we'll get what the community's been wanting for 20 years as a recreation center so at that point we got permission from the select board to kind of pivot as we're all used to doing during COVID and we hired, we've been named here to work as an architect for the recreation center and from here I'm going to show you some of the designs and looks of what that recreation center will look like so this is a bird's eye view of to your left is Bayside Park Upper and Lower and then the Bayside Hazel parcel to your right which you can see that there is access to that property adjacent across from Laker Lane and then there's also a road front to a tiny spatial crime this rendering is also another bird's eye but what we did is we placed in what the building, how it would sit on the footprint of the property you can see that in that building we've also are very heavy on solar on this building, you can see it on the roof and then the block to the left of that is also a solar canopy that will be over the parking area and if you're walking from the back into the facility you'll see that this is what the exterior of the front of the building will look like and then just off to your left you can kind of see that parking canopy the solar canopy there as you enter into the facility this is the reception area lobby you'll see the reception desk on your left hand side on the right hand side there's a kitchen area that can be open for a big sales and such the reception desk on the left will be the men's and women's locker room and as I get a few slides in you'll also see a footprint view so you kind of see all the pictures and get an idea of where they all sit on the first floor just past the couch that's there is a stairway up to the second floor there's an elevator also just past the reception desk and you can kind of see the gymnasium straight ahead through that window on the left by the snacks bar and down the hallway you can see the gymnasium on your left down the right hand side there's classrooms and a studio space there that can be used for community gatherings and such in classes and fitness classes and this is the rendering of that classroom studio space you can see that it's an attractable wall you can divide the space into two rooms if you look straight ahead you see the barn style doors there that's an entry way into the kitchen area as well and then a view of the gymnasium you can also see that you can be divided into two courts above is the elevated walking running track and the flooring can be used for several different sports pickleball can be lined there volleyball courts can be lined there basketball courts I kind of joke with the sweatboard that there will be so many lines actually serves one sport so we try to be able to be used by as many different activities as possible so if you were to go to the second floor this is kind of the lobby area of the second floor we're straight ahead another studio space where there could be spinning classes exercise classes dance classes there to the left is the elevated running walking track entrance and then straight ahead you can see the fitness cardio weight area so this is kind of a view of what you're standing in the middle of that fitness recreation center so if you're looking down towards the building you can see the cardiovascular stuff on the right hand side weights down the middle of the left hand side so there'll be windows, bank of windows that look out to the front of the building with the cardio and then the weights and stuff there's a series of windows that then people can look out onto the elevated walking track and the gymnasium so the next floor is kind of you do about 180 turn this is how the other side is you were to enter into the fitness space with the different pieces of equipment there and the view of the elevated walking track the running track it's about 16 laps is a mile so this kind of gives you a, after you saw all the fancy pictures now this kind of gives you a blueprint of the layout of the first floor you saw the entryway coming in our rec department offices will be located to this building you can see the beds and women's locker room on the left hand side there's a hallway there that hallway there is designed for a phase 2 indoor pool segment so we're prepared when a phase 2 comes online to be able to add that right onto the building as well as why the locker rooms were a place where they were the doors that entered into the swimming pool area there's storage and you can see the classrooms and the studio space with the wall that can be open and closed and then there's lots of storage in the building I've been kind of consulting with a gentleman who was the recreation director in Claremont in Hampshire with a friend of mine who built a recreation center there his key component he said you can never have enough storage space so I've been using him to say we haven't have storage space and so he's been a great consultant for me on this project this slide identifies the square footage of all the different spaces this building is going to be a 27,700 square foot building a photo of the second floor layout where we reached pictures of the lobby area the corridor space the studio space the cardio vascular and weight equipment space this is another bird's eye view of what the layout would be of that space with all the equipment inside there so you can see the cardio vascular pieces of equipment the side vex machines down the middle and then three weights might be outside of the space and then the square footage of the space so the fitness weight room space would be about 4,000 square feet if you're driving in the entry road into the facility would be located off of Lakeley Road across from Lake Lane so when you drive in this is what you'll see the front of the building and then that solar canopy off to the left-hand side you also see the grass area in between the two parking lots is a storm water and again an overhead now we've just kind of seen back to what we started with the view of the overhead of the facility and then as we look at a potential phase two of an indoor pool space we've also factored that into the look of the exterior too as well you'll see that on the left-hand side attached to the phase one portion of the project and then an aerial view of how that would sit up and footprint what that would look like the solar on top of that building as well another exterior view and I think we're coming to the end and that's it very good very exciting yeah it is very exciting the size of it seems very manageable for a town our size it's like anything else you won't get something you can't afford to keep running we figured to put something out to the community that they would embrace and then put it on the footprint that expansion was necessary in the future that the options were there to do that that's a great idea any comments curious how much that estimate is we haven't got there yet it's a lot of changing and moving parts right now with different components of the building working with solar and the footprint during COVID number targets are keeping changing we're hoping to get to that number fairly shortly so is it like fee base I mean will people pay fees to come in or will it be taxpayer how will it be funded after you build it well we're trying to not have the operating cost impact the community and the taxes so we're looking at probably a membership base but also people to come and use the facility for various programs wouldn't necessarily need to be a member to join in they're going to use some of the facilities but if they're going to come in and do an arts and crafts class or something like that then there might be a fee attached to the class but they wouldn't need to be a member to do that class so what we're trying to do is keep the operating cost out of the tax base local option tax number one try for building potentially ultimately that will be in front of this like board to decide how they once we get that number how they want to fund that can you use local option tax for operating costs I I don't want I believe it's for capital expenditures only so for just for buildings but not for operating and my it's hard to believe 20 years ago we were talking about this when we first started I was on the wreck board at the time and it was like wow hopes and dreams even back then we're like that could take 20 years we hope that's all it takes we hope it's all it takes you know I was amazed how quick these things go up but it takes a lot of behind the scenes work to make that come to fruition and a lot of different faces have been involved with it through the 20 years and the information that we got from the information in 2016 to 2018 you know it's not something that we can put together overnight it's taken us several years because of COVID to get to this point but the information that we've gotten from the public input pretty important in getting us to where we are at this point I like how you're already thinking about the future too expansion is important it's great absolutely I think so yeah very big bonus to the town very impressive town art side should have something like this you know something community driven something we have no center that's our problem I think a lot of communities would be jealous we are able to pull it off thanks we already have fantastic rec programs good job there so we have great parks I hear about that all the time so this is just another added bonus for our community well I think the portion that makes it successful is it's always continuously being identified in the town plan as an important piece of our community the recreation component and so through the planning commission DRB select board constantly identifying recreation as an important piece has made that easy for us as a department to be as successful as we are because of the support in all of our commissions absolutely it's funny about being on a planning commission the difference is we run in policy all the time and people don't realize a lot of time that something like this all of a sudden we're involved in because we did put you at what the rest of the community wanted we can't make sure I was moving forward everybody's involved that way that's awesome any ideas? that's good anything else for us Kathy I have nothing specific to add did you want to ask if there's anything you can do in response to the presentation absolutely what do you need from us our hope would be a letter of recommendation and support for some of the elements we talked about the fact that the public then and now identified this land for public use and to use that in alignment with recreation as part of the town plan listening together in support of the community at the recreation center here we love that I think we could accommodate that staff can put that together for us yes I think given the timing because you won't have another meeting for a month it might be appropriate if you guys would maybe authorize Rich to write something related to support as it relates specifically to your role with the town plan with anything that is in our adopted 2019 town plan as far as how that relates to the presentation and the proposal unfortunately you won't be able to work on that collaboratively given our meeting law but certainly I could I could share a draft once it's written and you could reply to me does that sound acceptable if you authorize Rich to sort of get that started you have to put a vote to it I like votes we have Rich write a letter on the planning commission in favor of the reparational facility based on the meeting of town plan second all in favor there you go absolutely thank you can I just ask one more question do you think there could be a college of students like the junior high students and high school students in programming that they might like to see or if it could be a day or an afternoon that would be theirs you know kind of dedicated to the teenagers in the center definitely we talked about having some capacity once we build it hopefully okay thank you I have utmost faith you'll get us from birth to death and everybody will have a good time in here it's quite a task yeah I know you can do it heavy burden on my shoulders but thank you thank you all for your time thank you organizational meeting and election of officers so I added this on here because we're a little overdue but part of the reason I think we end up overdue is we try to get as many of our members as possible so we'll leave that up to you if you think you want to wait for Wendy to be present or to wait for a full board we do have applicants I'm hopeful that by the start of the new year you'll have a board of five so it's up to you how long can we put this off you're right it's really what you've done in October I don't think there's any consequences for not doing it if you want to make changes we don't want to make changes I don't think we have any changes I'm obsessed with keeping bridges I'm fine with both of them this is your secretary put Siri in there she wants it out good thing I showed up that's right so do I nominate you as a slave start with a nomination the question is if you'd like to do it today without Wendy present or without a fifth member you do have a forum, you're absolutely welcome to do so I do think to answer Serita's question a slate is probably the quickest most efficient way you could put that out there so I nominate Rich to be chair and Rebecca to be vice chair called Chester Planner Commission second second I want to nominate Serita for our secretary I'll second that there we go we're off and running thank you do I have to take notes or type up notes you do that you can delegate the whole thing that's the best part next we're going to run into our first discussion of possible work plan items for the calendar year and we have an attachment on our last work plan from 2018 give me a moment here to switch over yeah right after we've got some the input here working through this the goal as you can see in my memo is to get a start on our plan for work that probably began in January the idea is that tonight it's a whiteboard free for all it's anything you might think of work talked about that hasn't been done but you would like to put up for discussion of potential work in the start of the next calendar year I think this is the this is meant to be really creative and open for people to throw everything at we'll be able to use the we are in November my goodness the December meeting to start to filter those out where I can start to take some of this list give you some idea hey if we do pursue this it's likely to take 40 hours of staff time 6 hours of commission so that you can have an idea of where that might fit in as you start to start to work into the year and then again in December we'll have that a broader discussion about once you've got this list of items which ones you might favor the most but the goal for tonight is let's just get those items out there so one thing I thought of is that in the growth center even without changes it wouldn't be bad for us to review what we've decided and what we're looking at in the growth center now that we've got it building we started just the forum base code but even if we just go through it and check and see where we're at the developer will have an idea of something you'd like to see while we're looking at it it's going to be and we have the first reading for Paul Simon's part going to the DRB so they are at the preliminary flat level correct and that's how many units approximately exactly it's a big deal and I don't think I mean for us I'll be happy to take our time to look through it and see what we have there and what we've decided on want to see what's working and what's not working evaluated so I've set this up just to show you guys, I zoomed in so you can see the whole thing but hopefully you can read it three kind of categories here a development regulation related so possible supplement 45 we don't get to go a meeting without working on some sort of supplement we've finished up 44 congratulations that will be effective November 15 after it's 21 days of waiting these are things that you guys have it's a combination of stuff I started to fill in as ideas but here's the form-based codes GD3 update so it's been a while since we've taken a look I think that's a piece that's come up as a suggestion and at various points from various people over the last few years I think when we had this discussion last January the commission at that time felt that it would be more appropriate to look at the form-based code as a whole and not just a garage issue or just a street you know intersection issue not necessarily to to dive in head to toe in every paragraph but to look at it holistically so that's why I've got that on there there are two ideas that I've thrown on here again this is your work plan so feel free to delete anything I do like the idea of at least having things on here for now that you can delete later standards is something that's come up frequently from a wide variety of sources everything from the DRB to staff in how we are requiring them and a potential for is there a potential for reduction we have pretty high parking requirements there's some feeling that there might be some seas of unnecessary pavement that we require for our regulations that we might want to just take another look at that the potentially they're a little outdated in terms of the numbers so it may not be the case but it might be something that we can look at this is a something that one of our summer interns did start to look at for us already so the work might be halfway done at least as far as research of what you know what else is being done around them the country and towns that are similar in size to ours so that's one thing signage, I just threw it on there we've got some text updates no policy, no major changes but there's some language in there that could use some clarity so I didn't want to lose it and you had at one time Serita about about electric for PV charges that sort of activity that would be a good time to when you're looking at the future, this is the future we talked about bicycle parking as well, aside from just electric so I'll just give you a quick overview here of the three categories and then we can go back to any one of them special projects, these are things that might take quite a bit more time but may not translate directly to the development regulations the open space plan was last updated in 1999 to 2000 it's almost older than some members of my staff not older to me but it's probably ripe, I think that this could be a collaborative project with the conservation commission it's ripe for some summer intern work we access, if you don't know this already we have a great connection with the university with a wonderful internship program where we can interview interns and other projects that might also be a special interest to them, it's a great project where we could really get a lot of help outside of our office at a real bargain and with some passion so you've identified this, I saw it on the 2018 plan so I think it's been out there for a little bit, it's in the town plan as an item so I've got it on here I think it's important cool Chester I think the timing is right we can tackle that one yes, I agree and then we have a category here again, lots of blanks for you guys to fill in other tasks and events as you schedule your time we're probably ripe for some training opportunities hopefully some of these are fun they're definitely not meant to be anything that says you're not doing anything right or anything wrong but you know legal decisions that have come out that are good to know about or how to manage crowds so there's some time I think that might be fun to slide into something like that at least in my time here we haven't had the opportunity to meet with the DRP I know that that's something that's happened in the past maybe annually so it would be good to schedule a joint meeting with them talk through what they've seen in the regulations anything they might want clarity from you as to what your intent was or could be anything that they've seen a lot of as the people who are implementing these monthly it would be good to get that scheduled sometime in the new year now I saw we've had a couple of times here locally with some of the older lots we look at a lot of the newer stuff but we don't look at a lot of the older properties small homes small lots I wouldn't be opposed to looking at some of the regulations after setbacks how much lot coverage they can have we don't build even at the end of the road here we're looking to build duplexes triplexes big buildings and we don't build a lot of these smaller family lots these days with housing I'd like to make sure we're user friendly on these older lots make sure they're shed, they're usable pools can be made use of make sure they can make use of their lot properly the times have changed what people want to make use of their lots that's what I'd like to see I think that would be good with the DRV because they probably see a lot more of the issues coming up I'm writing as you tell me is your time to talk did you start to say something earlier? I wrote to both of you about housing my concern about the housing crisis and just I was really relieved when you said that Colchester was doing our part in taking on our responsibility I just want to make sure we do that and I'm just a couple of questions I've had just about infill in terms of people being able to build I think the goal is not to kind of be building out but to be infilling in communities again people don't have to drive so far and can walk or bike to places and then I'm just wondering about inclusionary zoning I'm just seeing that term a lot and I don't know what that means as a proposal to look at the housing issue just to tell you what it is and then you can decide whether it's anything you're interested in I'll tell you factually that it is very divisive inclusionary zoning is a requirement that some portion a percentage a minimum number of new housing units have to meet some affordability standard for example it could be that 10% of all new multi-family housing has to meet the traditional affordability restrictions of the county's median income that's of course there's a lot of play on that depending on which community in which part of a community you're in where they could say it doesn't have to be quite that lowest standard it could be a little bit higher to get workforce housing 100% or a smaller percentage it could be a base number that says you have to build 20 in a year regardless so there are some communities that have adopted that in Chittenden County probably just as many that have not I do know that it is it's not an easily adopted thing it's very safe to say that there are a lot of people with very strong feelings about either argument in there in both business community the development community local government I've actually heard that awesome I'm not really sure what we're talking about it's very buzzy I've worked on ordinances myself I do know that they are pretty complicated they seem so simple at first and then before you know it you have 20 pages of text just defining what affordable means and what a unit means and what multi-family means but isn't there when this development isn't usually that a portion of it is affordable or either that's what an inclusionary zoning would do it would require that out of anything there are other programs that exist so sometimes in Act 250 there are some priority housing requirements I know that at least in Severance Corners I think that they are meeting some priority housing requirements I don't know that they have been required in some of the other developments I'm not aware of any that's more of a funding source requirement it is purely a it's you must do it and then the town would also identify the mechanism for ensuring it happens it gets very complicated because you're talking when you talk about affordable you can talk about rental you can talk about ownership and then you have to figure out who manages it to make sure because you're talking not just about the first sale price of a unit so it's one thing to say a unit must sell for lower than $300,000 you also have to for identifying the appropriate buyer so you have two parts of that you have the what is the unit cost and then you have the who is the buyer doesn't really do you much good to make a unit affordable if the person buying it is far exceeds the income limit so then you have to work through what are the appropriate income limits that would go with that or who manages that so if you do identify successfully identify both of those things who's making sure that those limits are met that the house stays or the unit stays proportionally perpetually affordable and who's checking income of the tenant or owner as it turns over or as the years go by so that's what it is I guess I would just say it is that if it's something you look at it as a very large lift I don't believe without having checked that it is identified in the town plan as a specific it's a tool let me just say that it is a tool I don't think that it as a tool is identified in the town plan it does speak to affordability but I don't think it speaks to that as one of the tools to get there I guess I'm just wondering how we as a town with the housing crisis when we did the town plan the housing crisis wasn't honest just wondering how as a town we are responsible for meeting the needs of worker homes and people that can't afford some of the housing that then not everybody's moving out of Chinatown because they can't afford to live here anymore what's kind of philosophically what is the responsibility of our community to help out with that we're pretty diversified I'm wondering I think we're lucky in Colchester I hate to use the word organic but we kind of organically wrong diversified base of housing even some of that I'm not all that thrilled about myself I don't like a lot of congestion you get a lot better price tag and a lot of people like that stuff they don't want the hassles of the house and the yards they like to be able to do their own thing go to our parks, our new community centers such like that and I think we're pretty lucky in what we have fairly affordable housing still we go from one end to the other that's my feeling I think your options here are you could undertake a holistic affordable housing study project that I'm not trying to discourage you from that but if you did it's something you would probably want to set aside at least 12 to 18 months for we would probably want to grant fund a consultant for that those, I've seen them I've worked on those studies they're big and rightfully so because there are so many elements so if you did decide to pursue something like that I would not do it without having some sort of funding source to reach out to a professional consultant it would also I think take up a lot of your work program if you chose to do it so you could do that you could also sort of look at little pieces of it as you've started to talk about here infill housing is one very popular element that I've seen come from plans another might be to promote ADUs accessory dwelling units they are permitted mostly via state statute they require that towns allow them but there's other things that can be done in ways of promoting them educating people so that's something like the planning commission could have a role in as Rach said even the tangential things I own my 1300-1400 square foot house but I'm finding it very difficult to grow in it the pressure to either upsize when you can't do that or move can create some affordability issues for folks who may have outgrown their starter home but can't quite afford the next time we're outgrown they're small condo so what options can you provide them for I'm going to say aging in place because I'm not necessarily talking about an aged population so I think there are probably some bits that you could poke at and so we could explore them from a floating fruit sort of approach if you'd like because for me it's also an economic development issue if people can't find housing they're not going to move their businesses here they don't have places for their workers to live so that's really important to me that people move to provide especially people move to Colchester and so how to do that responsibly and not divisively but so whatever you recommend I don't really have a sense of it but I just want to I think a big part of that and we've identified one of the first presentations I think I made to you guys was about the housing stock, the affordable housing stock that Colchester has we look at numbers of what's come online across the county in the last two, three, four or five years and Colchester doesn't always rank very high but we have to remember that we have a very large base of older stock that meets this need and sometimes that gets lost when we start talking about regional numbers and it's very important for a town that's affordability market is made up in that way not to focus just on bringing in new units but how do you maintain key for stock that's there and that gets overlooked a lot because there's so much focus on the construction thankfully some of the most affordable units either through our mobile home parks do get protected by some state laws which is very helpful I haven't necessarily seen any pressure we have more than 500 units in Colchester that are in mobile home parks really nice well-loved communities with mobile home parks I think to Rich's point are they being served well or the folks who are there able to continue to live there and are they facing any pressures because of any zoning issues so we could take a look at that I haven't seen any but it's one element of maintaining your affordability stock that sounds good for our infill we did have to go to the 1.5 acre for a PUD that was a big deal for infill that was helpful and that's really we've seen that help in the village one of the areas that is targeted for some infill but there could be some additional work we could look at for infill housing it's a little challenging when you're talking about areas where you are limited by onsite septic you could dream and support and want density in certain areas but you know like the village maybe but if it can't be supported by its septic hands get a bit tired and the only other thing was Airbnb's and I'm not really clear I know I'm concerned with them because again they're tying up or utilizing affordable housing again what's the balance between you know Airbnb's or our policies on Airbnb's and you know keeping housing available we're going to put that one down in the special projects because that's a good question that's a very good question should I put this and I don't even know that'd be right Airbnb we're going to put that for now it might be something that we could look at jointly with our economic development office there's no shortages of presentation topics on these sorts of things people sharing their thoughts from around the country especially in communities like ours I'm not sure that I've seen much in the way of a planning or zoning tool where people do address them it's usually through wider municipal tool either to prohibit them some people have embraced them and said we love them but we need to see our share of resources from them whether through a registration or special tax but I don't know that those would relate to your work as a planning commission and just to the possible future projects I loved all of them you know so whatever anybody wants to work on on them the open space plan or any of them I just thought they would be very exciting things to work on should this be something also to kind of get public works get their feedback to on what their future plans are you know relate to and talk to them and say oh we want to do this we want to make a bike path here and that would kind of somewhat affect how we approach things the open space housing and they may just have some standalone projects related to stormwater and roadway design that inevitably that's us and so I'll reach out to other departments as well there may be something from our department for example that says hey we've always been thinking about this so we will collaborate with different departments if I wish that put some time schedule on that and we'll see what we can do at least it's not x, y and z it was this instance it's kind of short list yeah I know right it's much better and it's open of course we can add things to it I I'm also hopeful that the December meeting Rich and I have talked about this we haven't gotten any new requests for zoning changes since we last talked in April but there were three items from the April meeting which you did not make decisions on so it might be appropriate at the December meeting to invite them back and you can either hear from them again or make decisions if you want to include them in your next work plan I think that the three you'd previously heard from were all not aligned with the town plan I don't believe that the reason for continuance of any of them was necessarily just with the exception of the home base code piece that was one of the requests yeah so if there's anything that does come up and that you decide to take up from that we want to make sure we're leaving real many of your work plans as well for anything that might come up in the spring that you might find interesting and worth taking up okay all good you guys are so easy who has staff updates there are self through the work plan staff updates very briefly again supplement 44 was adopted by the select board at it's October 25th meeting that means it'll be effective November 15th I'm working on, I'm very close to getting the final document ready to go and then I'll get them online just a cleaned up version I'll get that in your inboxes I'm also working with somebody who will be able to take that document and make it a little bit more user friendly purely from a layout graphic standpoint who will make the numbers right and the indents right and put some color in there to make it more friendly put some nice cosmetic touches on it I know it's not an easy one to work through so that is the update there as soon as that's ready I'll let you know recruitment to boards and commissions as I stated a little bit earlier there is an open position on the planning commission there's an open regular position on the development review board and an open position for an alternate the DRV uses an alternate so that when there are form issues they don't have to post something that might be very time sensitive in meeting any statutory requirements for review so those two are open if you know of anybody who are interested especially in our DRV positions we have all jobs are hard that one tends to be a little bit more time consuming maybe a little harder to understand for people as to what the position does but you guys you know this you do this stuff if you know of anyone just talk to anyone trust that you can explain the work that goes into any of these to anybody that you talk to but if you don't want to feel free to send anyone our way you guys all know Zach Zach staffs the DRV and the chairman Matthew is happy to talk to anyone that's my pitch there's even something in here you can quote if you'd like the town is also referring to advertising its youth positions I haven't been fortunate enough to have been part of that just yet I think with COVID it stopped but for anyone who doesn't know the town has youth positions on its planning commission and DRV and maybe you recognize her as well is there a youth position there? no yeah they are still fully participatory so we had a presentation to protester high school about these and I understand there might be some interest so you may have a youth member in the new year we'll see that's good I also brought a readiness assessment just for boards and I was going to give a cue about having youth on the board and some recommendations on how to really engage them perfect and I'll give one to you so what was kind of neat if you don't mind me just saying real quick the staff members who went to the high school to present on this program that we have were both Colchester high school graduates nice so it was really nice I think to put those graduates back into and young graduates too so I mean these are not people who were there four years ago these are young people who were there probably in the last five to ten years at most but I understand connected very well with the students and hopefully made a very good impression about public service so we'll see where that goes moving on you have a set of amendments from city of Burlington I look through them like I always do and what I look for when I read these is to see is there anything that's going to affect Colchester we have to be worried that all of a sudden on our shared border there's going to be an industrial nuclear power station I also look I can also look to see if anybody's doing something super cool planners love to copy try not to recreate the wheel if we don't need to so I look for super cool things that maybe of interest to you or relate to anything like that this particular set of amendments sorry I didn't find either not that they haven't put hard work into it but the Trinity campus I think you guys know where that is does not border us and neither does there self and innovation district overlay I didn't necessarily find any compatibility with work that we're currently undertaking I was just wondering do you link to that or could if you can send it to me I'm curious about this out then yes I do have a link for that I'll forward that on there are some towns that are churning out amendments faster than they get adopted it's actually remarkable I don't know how they manage it Burlington does probably I think six or seven a year it seems but that was that so you are of course invited to comment as a body I have to ask you if you'd like to no me okay planning commission scheduling okay so we're approaching that time of year where there's a lot going on for a lot of people we're taking our victory lap after something like 44 adding new members hopefully by the new year so talking with Rich we've proposed a schedule here for you that includes just the one November meeting that we're having tonight not having a meeting on November the 15th December 6th we would come back as I've said talk about anything else you'd like to add to our list if you had some time to think about it any comments that you've heard from put your memory cap back on talk through that on the 6th and not have that second December meeting it starts to get close to several holidays so not have that second December meeting return in January and I did highlight here that the first meeting the first Tuesday of the month is that January 3rd so I wanted to get your thoughts on whether or not that's a bit too close to the the new year or travel plans for anyone if you're game to meter if you'd like to look at a different day that would work best for me what the third I don't mind coming back for Montcalier but if that was good for everybody it works for me if anyone was traveling enjoying their new year something exciting okay so we'll keep January 3rd and we can return to this in December to figure out if January is a one meeting or two meeting month but I at least wanted to get a date on on your calendars and zip for my stuff notes so we need a motion for the minutes we have the minutes yep motion that we the minutes of the last meeting on September one in second second thank you all in favor it's fast that's it nothing else you need from us we're all good over here so I need a motion to adjourn second all in favor thank you very much okay thank you thank you Kathy