 I'm going to call the meeting to order. The full chest of planning commission is 703. So our first order tonight, I'm happy to say we're here for the first time all in person. A lot easier than Zoom. So we're going to have our introduction. Kathy Ann LaRose, our new Director of Planning and Zoning, will roll out Rene to the presentation for us. I am very pleased to have the honor of formally introducing you, Kathy Ann LaRose. Who also goes by Kathy. She's our new Director of Planning and Zoning. She started her role at town in early October. She brings with her about the knowledge and experience of both creation and administration of municipal planning bylaws and the implementation of community's desired goals and objectives. The most recently served in South Burlington as they're sitting here for the 15 years. It's been a true pleasure having Kathy join our team. And you'll also find pleasure working with her. Thank you, everyone. As Rene said, I came on board at the beginning of October. Doesn't feel like it was that long ago, but we've had some really exciting weeks. Rene, as you likely know, was with our department before I joined. And we had a little bit of overlap, so it's been really welcoming. We've had some other staff changes as well. And in my first few months here, we've onboarded, I'm now happy to say, two associate planners. John Fletcher joined us at the end of October. He is probably the voice you'd hear if you call for a zoning permit or walk in. Also in the associate planner role, we welcomed Kirk Dressing-Torchorian. He sits at that front desk. If you find yourself coming in by the office, he'll be the first face you can see from our window. He's in the same role. He's a little bit new. We're having just started last week after the Thanksgiving holiday break. So he's still learning as are the rest of us. So our team is coming together. We're working through learning some new and exciting things, learning each other. And the timing was right, I think, to ask you guys to come back and to help you to continue the work that you've already started and see where you wanna go into the new year. Very good. Thank you. Yeah, welcome. Nice to meet you. I'd like to add to that just the help of, we've had other staff that have been helping out in terms of carrying out some of the DPMU and the SET and last year has also been serving the panel. So we've really provided a lot of support which I was only preparing them for the summer. We have a show appreciation for them as well. Yes, I am especially grateful for their help. And Seth will be with us for a little while. Karen will be returning back to her original role soon. Good. Very good. Exciting. Also, yeah, all right. Thank you. Now we're up. So we're gonna do a brief update on the supplement for each theory. So, I'll get this started but I'm so glad to have Renee here as well because as you know, Renee, I had come in just prior to, I started just after the select board adoption but prior to the implementation during the waiting period after adoption. So I familiarized myself with some of the items that were adopted. Renee really did the bulk of the work on getting that from the Planning Commission I think she was selected for and through various iterations. I know she's already reached out to you earlier in the fall about that process but she's probably the person to ask any questions of as it relates to that part. But we did wanna bring it back up to you tonight to talk about the items that the commission or that the select board had kicked back for further work just to remind you of what they were. Again, I know Renee had already sent you a message to let you know what those items were. I understand that you guys were in full agreement at that time. We don't have to necessarily go into them in detail tonight. My goal is to have them as part of the next round for at least your consideration even if that said consideration is to say we don't wanna do anything with them anymore but at least we'll talk about them when we get to that. We didn't wanna lose them. So they're included here. I'll let you guys kick off. Any questions you might have about them if you have anything specific? So we're just looking at electrical field charging parking lots down to our bike racks. Yeah, and it's just the bolded piece. So all of these already have a space in the regulations. The bolded part would have been the part where there was a change. Yeah, so for example, the very first one about electric vehicle charging that was related to how they would be required for various single family dwelling projects or multi-families as they're listed there. It's like working with sending notes on their thoughts. I believe I included those and I can send to them and I'll look at it just so that everyone has a refresher. Yep, absolutely. I will hear that. Yeah, and I think we have it up here. I'll just scroll down a little bit more. Yes, Maria? Do you want to answer this question first or? I, yeah. Oh, she's there. No, we had notes on the other two. We can resend that. Yeah. So the question, can I ask a question? Sure. The question I had is now that the climate plan has just been released within the last two days. I'm wondering how this aligns with that and if it's gonna change the percentage or the numbers and just to know that ahead of time. So it's my understanding that at least related to the electric vehicle charging that most of that language is included in state regulation for new development. And to the extent possible, we don't always replicate what's in the state regulation because it's still applicable, even if it doesn't exist in the town by law. So I think that part of that was just not replicating language and requirements that exist elsewhere. I don't know if the state, I haven't heard yet if the state has any intentions of changing their language related to that. I suspect not because it's fairly new language. Not just the new climate plan, but the language that's already in the state regulations is fairly new. There are guidelines that are put out by various public entities and nonprofit entities. They all pretty much align with what exists, I think in the state regulations. There's certainly nothing in the current Colchester regulations that conflicts, even if it doesn't explicitly and directly say, this is the language. Sometimes it's wise to duplicate things for emphasis and for staff and landowner knowledge, because it makes it that much more front and center. And that's something we can talk about when it comes back about whether there's a goal there. But otherwise I think that it's a requirement that would be in place even if it isn't enforced through the code of ordinances or the Colchester regulations. Thank you. And that's just with respect to the vehicle charging. You see the verges here for the bike rack location. I think that was a very minor change that had been proposed at the start. And I think that's something else that has come out of a set of guidelines. This one I don't believe is a regulation. It's a set of guidelines for best practices. So we already will have the bike rack and storage facility regulations those stay. The question becomes whether or not, what the proximity of those bike racks are and whether or not they would be required to be close to an electrical outlet. Again, that's language we can talk about when it comes back on a specific agenda item. And then the commercial vehicle parking. I think that one, when we resend you the notes probably have the most amount of discussion as I understand it with the select board. And so that's one where you might see from us at that time, additional options for you. Maybe more so than the other two, which were I think very specific sentences. This might provide you a different range of policy and language options once we get back to this one. And we're just reviewing this quick. We're gonna have discussions about this. Yeah, just making sure. The purpose of tonight was just to let you know that we haven't forgotten about them to remind you of what was there and maybe let the public know if they'd had not been following. Any other questions on this one? Yep, just want a quick one. Just where it says, sorry, I forgot to put my glasses on. It says more than one vehicle can be permitted. Will we, can we, or will we, or is there a possibility that we come up with a number? So that would limit that number? I've given it a little bit of thought and I've communicated with the town manager's office and I'm understanding of what the select board's discussion was and I think again, when we come back to it, we'll bring you a variety of options that relate to, I think a lot of different parts of that sentence. So there's a, it's a short sentence, but you know, we're talking about the number of vehicles, we're talking about the location, we're talking about the size. So there's a lot of different elements. So we'll bring back to you some recommended language that will probably show some differences to all of those components because each one of them alone is pretty significant. And so we'll bring you those options. Thank you. We definitely will look at it. Certainly with the number, the size, the height, the location, the use that's associated with it. There's so much going on in that one sentence, I understand. Thank you very much. Good. Anything else on this one? Okay. All good? All good. All right. Till later. So now we're on to our work plan. Yeah, so I appreciate this opportunity to start with you guys as you're coming back to take a look at where things will go. My goal with this agenda item is to learn from you as to what your priorities are and what you would like them to be for the next year. Next we meet again, we will be in a fresh calendar year. And I'm hopeful that we'll be able to start that with a set of goals. We'll have time to refine them, I think. This is not something we'll solve in one meeting. But to hear, I've met with Rich, I've heard from him. I've read previous meeting minutes. I've obviously read the town plan. I've communicated with the administrative office. So I know what, I think I know what some of the priorities have been, what some of the priorities are that exist in the town plan, but hearing from you as you've had time to reflect on them, as you've had time to think more about the work that you've begun or you've identified that you haven't yet begun. So that when we do set agendas going forward, I'll have a good idea of really where you want to work to be and where you wanna invest your time and energy. And of course, as you've seen the next agenda item, we'll talk about how your proactive projects will relate to some more reactive projects with respect to the regulations and proposals and requests that have come and will come before you for changes to the actual regulatory text. And then we can talk about how those two will melt together to make up your Tuesday evenings. So this is sort of a broad kickoff at the beginning here just to hear from you guys about what you'd like to do in 2022. And then we can talk, I think after that about what a meeting schedule would look like. I'll say as you're staring at this up on the wall, these are dates that we've just put out there for discussion purposes based on a general idea of starting slow and working our way up to monthly meetings and then again to buy monthly meetings. This is by no means my suggestion of where I would think you would wanna be or where I want to be, but it's something to respond to. So there's a great big asterisk there. My thoughts where we would probably like to pick up and finish Mount Spade all the time, but enjoy it. We also want to make sure we address anybody's concerns and changes they need. Kind of get a flavor for that. And we'll fix what's left of four and three and that'll take, start slow, build up. Cause the Mount Spade, my view is the Mount Spade will probably start when the weather's nice. We'll probably want to do a walk of the flavor of the work we want us to do. Yeah, I think we have to review where we left off. So it's been a while. Yeah. I think we have to review everything that we kind of did up to that point where we've been longer than that. I know I need a refresher. I'm just wondering how the ARPA funds and the infrastructure funds, I mean, we're getting, Vermont is getting a lot of money to do projects. And I wonder how that might shift priorities. And I don't know if it's even the planning commission that would be making, I assume we'd make recommendations or I don't know what our role is on, you know, advising about those funds or being more informed about how those funds could be spent and then advise them. I'm not clear. I would definitely, if the slight word makes decisions it would definitely influence us where we want to go where the public probably wants to take it. Yeah. When you get to there, you know, in space, for example. Yeah. If we were all to imagine they'd influence our sewer system. Yeah. Yeah. But I just wanted to be really intentional and like I was noticing I think in the right up, you know, using some capital funds and I'm just wondering if we would have to use capital funds or if we use capital funds if they could be and maybe Pam knows more about whether that we could put federal funds back in, you know, just to use to not use capital funds if we don't have to on projects, if we have federal funding that would cover it. And again, I don't want to, I don't know the role of the planning commission. I know the role of the select board in terms of making decisions and, but I don't know what our role is in advising or suggesting or making recommendation or just being informed about that as well. So you don't need to answer that now. I'm just, that's a new piece of, I think, funding that has come in and we don't have a lot of time. I think it's two or three years. So just to kind of do that very wisely. Thank you. I think that the overall theme there is important of how does your work tie into the goals that the select board has set and where the funding sources are. And naturally they're going to overlap at least a little, maybe quite a bit depending on the year. And so I will connect with Renee and Aaron's office in the select board and see if there are any identified projects that come from the select board that would impact some work that you might wanna do in the next year. Certainly I know that they've, you guys have had a great relationship in the past, communicating priorities that arise here and priorities that have arisen with the sewer project and some other things. So I will make sure to keep those lines of communication open and share both ways. Thank you. Anything, Bob? Long for the ride. Learning today to see where we're going next month so we can work together as a team and move forward. All right, all right. Can I ask a question? Absolutely. So when you refer to Mallets Bay, do you mean specifically, do you mean the Lakeshore Zoning or do you mean? Yeah, we were talking about the LS3, LS4. Okay, okay. So when you say Mallets Bay. So at least Lakeshore Drive. It was a cousin to what we did in LS1, LS2. We wanted to end up finishing off the bay and when, because it was so many years of the game, we've spent a lot of time, we should finally say, we have a lot of people here for that discussion. Okay. So we should have some, we should get that final visit. Our time's come today. Yes. Yeah. And I don't want to take up a lot of the whole commission's time tonight, but I'm hopeful that at least one of you might be willing to sit down with me. At a time and tell me about where you've worked beyond what I can find on a paper file and hear from one or more of you directly as to what's been done. And mostly what the biggest goals are. My goal is to help you find the right tools, but the first thing I want to make sure I understand is what the goal is so that we're matching the tool to the purpose and that we're not either under thinking or overthinking a solution that doesn't match where you want to end up. And sometimes communicating the actual goal doesn't always get captured in language in the same way that a solution does. So it'll be helpful to me to hear from you directly as to what the goals are for East Lakeshore, whether they be ultimately LS three and four and what you're hoping to do. So again, I won't take up your time tonight with that, but it'll be really helpful before we meet again. Thank you. So we are looking at our next meeting dates that we're all set for this. And as you can see, we're basically balancing every couple of months, which is the worst thing I guess. We were set up to go out. And then be back on track in July. Yeah. Did you recognize after I typed it that July 5th might be a specifically an issue? So again, this was just supposed to reflect a general plan, but we can amend those either now or rather later date. Yeah, we can talk about July 5th later date. Okay. You know, we'll be moving to that one. But personally, I think it looks good. I guess it's time to communicate. Does it feel like the right pacing? Yep. Everybody's nodding, yes. I mean, I think we only warn our meetings 48 hours. So if February arises and you guys are thinking that you want to have that March meeting, we can, there's still time to add those. Sure. Just wanted to set general expectations. So that's okay. It gets us back in here. Okay. All right. So now we're on, so we're going to consider draft process. Ah, okay, yes, okay. Michael here and again, as with all drafts that you'll probably see for me, they're a mix of throwing something out there for you to respond to and putting together my most educated guess as to something that'll work. I'll share with you that I've already talked to Rich about this and he's already made a suggestion that I'll let him share with you about something we can add. The purpose of this is to set a full predictable policy for requests for amendments. So that everyone is on the same page as to how they are received, how they are shared with you and then how you share them with the public, how you discuss them when you discuss them and what guidelines you'll discuss them under. Is this a good place for you to wait? Because I think what you shared with me is sort of an early step. Of course. So what's missing from here that I think was a great suggestion is that as all suggestions come in, you will be given a copy of them regardless of what may come in even if they're not to be discussed just so you're in the know as things are coming in. I think that's a great suggestion that's something we can add to the policy. You'll see some blanks in here. So working through it, the first few are just sort of just logistics. You will, as you have already seen, requests are made by members of the public, property owners, larger developers, engineers representing developers or landowners, they may also come from the DRB. I've had now four meetings with the DRB. I'm getting to know them. I'm getting to know the regulations. We're starting to hear about language that could be made cleaner, clearer. And so I think there'll be a set of suggestions that might come from them. Staff, we keep an ongoing spreadsheet of pieces that are difficult for us to interpret either because we're not entirely sure of the meeting or because adding a word or changing a word might make the implementation easier. So you'll likely see some amendment requests that come directly from staff that aren't necessarily related to policy, but they're just an implementation tool. The big thing I think for discussion here is that I am recommending that there are reserved meetings to review these, but have a clear date so that if John Smith calls me tomorrow and says I wanna submit this, I can respond to John and say, this is the process. The commission will hear this on, or review this, discuss this on ex-date. You see, I left some blanks. I would recommend at least two of these types of meetings, probably no more than four. That ends up being quarterly, and then you're in a constant cycle of hearing these and talking about them. Even if a meeting were to only be two or three times a year, it doesn't mean that the actual meeting is only that one day. It just means that that's when you would start it, and then you could continue those after, but the date for reviewing new ones would be only the two, three, four times per year. As you know, if you've worked through these before, something can get started and they still take a while, so even if you're only talking about them or reviewing them two or three times, as they bleed into the next cycle, it ends up taking up, I think, quite a bit of your time. And again, this goes back to your planning for the year. If 2022 is the year of updates to the regulations and Lakeshore Drive, and so be it, if it's other, more pressing, more time consuming projects, then maybe you don't want to hear these quite as often or dedicate as much time to it, but this is all something I'm looking to learn from you. And I will follow your lead wherever you take it. Do we currently have a policy that's set in stone kinder? Has it been a? I found, you're probably better off to answer this than I am. I did find a request sheet. In my search, I was curious myself. I did find that there was an application form. I have to be honest with you. I didn't find it very helpful, the way that it was structured. I also don't know if it's a recent form. If it was a form from 15 years ago, it was a printed copy. It looked like older fonts, so maybe it's not even something that was recently used. So I've not been aware of one. I've read enough meeting minutes to know that things have been delivered to you fairly frequently. I couldn't tell in my reading of them how often the discussion took place, or if they were more of a heads up FYI type item. I have not found a formal policy. If one exists, you would know. Yep, me either. I was just kind of curious about that. As far as I know, there's no, it's been pretty casual. This whole definitely tight fit up. Definitely give us, which I do like gives it a number and you can reference it if you want to. If you decide you remember something, we have a look at it, it's time to look at it. You can let me do like that. I think it is a big question, is how often we want to look at throwing it in. But once we get into a supplement, we don't add. That's kind of, it doesn't matter if it's written down or not, we don't typically add to the supplement. Because it's complicated enough, we usually pick. We pick what we pick and we work our way through it. It takes us three to four months to get through it. I guess the question is, what are we thinking? Four times a year, put it in there, that would be tight at four, three might be more realistic. And you also want to know how many supplements and you want to add to your plan and everything else, we're at 43 now. Yeah, we'll get to 44. I don't think that ever ends. It's a living order and it's just like the 10 months I was changing. We're always adding and making adjustments. That I have no problem with. If I remember correctly, it typically is two to four months from the beginning of a supplement to finish. So if we do one every four months, we may never be able to do anything else. So three may be three months. Are we talking about meetings to review the request? Are we talking about meetings to change the supplement? And those are two different things as far as I'm seeing here. Yes, as I would envision it, it would be a meeting where you would hear everything that's gathered up to that point. You'd be given a copy of everything that had been received in those three, four, six months prior. And you would receive a copy of our thoughts on how long they might take. And then your job at that point would be to go through them, hear from people who come in. Not necessarily on the merits, although you might have questions to figure out, to dig into how deep they are. And then you would decide, we're just not taking this up at all. Or, yeah, we might take it up, but not till next year. Or yes, immediately we'd like to take this up as part of our next supplement. And so how long the work takes you after that really depends on what your decisions are with those you're heard. But at least everything that had come in in those preceding months would be reviewed on that one date for inclusion or not. Not necessarily for their merits. And then if you pick, say, three out of the six items, then you can decide what your pacing is on those three items. They might take you, they might be very simple, and they take one meeting, or they might very well take six meetings over the course of three months, depending on what they are. But at least then we'll have a date. And you're able to, I think, I think the real benefit of this is that you're able to compare a request against other requests. I think it could be very challenging if you're getting a request at every meeting and you're trying to figure out whether or not to take it up. You might very well take something up, and then the very next meeting, something more important, or something more critical to you, comes along, you say, why? We've already committed the time to this other one. So this lets you sort of weigh those requests against each other and make a determination based on what you know your time will be, knowing, at one time, how many items you're thinking about. And even though we see them every meeting, we won't make a decision on that. That'll just be informing us. So we understand what we've seen. We're not doing anything about it. We're going, April 15th, everything we've seen up until April 15th, that meeting will be to prioritize what we want to do. Now we're trying to take on some of that. So the only thing we don't know at this point is how many requests we're going to get during a three month, four month, six month period. Your first one's probably going to be a big pile. I keep stumbling across them. And I know there's some that you have received. And so there may be duplicative, but I think that the first, whenever you schedule this first one, will probably be the biggest one you see because they've been waiting for the summer without someone to bring them to you. Or some other items that you may have heard, but just weren't ready for at the time. And that could end up, plus the three items that have come back from the select board. And then yeah, who knows, in whatever that timeframe is, four months, six months between how many come in. So when do we need to fill in this blank? Tonight, not tonight. Not tonight, okay. No, we're definitely not going to go to tonight. That's where we're going. Yeah, this is figuring out, basically where everybody is on the page, explain where we are. Yeah, definitely not tonight. Nothing is going to be in still time. Okay. Yeah, we haven't been together long enough for you. Yeah. Yeah, we're still polite, so I heard it was out. What? Just to grab our head around what we want, kind of generalize. It's a cap against an idea of what we're thinking. I don't know who called. Yeah. Just, I'm curious about how much time of your time is used looking at amendments, like in terms of when I think of your time as a resource. Is it an inordinate amount of time, or is this like for a planner, this is part of your job doing this, and when does it become unbalanced, or what do you do if it becomes unbalanced? Such a lovely question. I think that that's reflected in sort of the schedule that we've put forth, where right now a lot of my time is getting the staff up and running, getting to learn some of the processes myself, learning how to issue a permit or a letter of compliance myself, and doing that. So a lot of my time right now is doing that, learning the systems, learning the budgets, learning the people, making connections. Eventually those things will be easier or at least more efficient, and there will certainly be more time, I think, to dedicate to planning efforts. And I think that like anything else, there's a cycle. It's as responsive as collectively you and the select board provide direction as far as the needs and interests. But my intention is to be open with you as far as how long something will take so that if you come in and say, we wanna start a new town plan tomorrow and we want it done by January, and I'm probably gonna be really honest with you and say that there's not enough hours to do that. So I hope to be extremely honest and responsive to you as to how long something takes and how much of a resource that'll be and whether it can be done in office or not, so that hopefully you can make your decisions with that in mind. Good, thank you. But I do like planning. So we've kind of rolled in that it's recognized as itemized outstanding, so. Yeah. There's something there I guess. So just a quick question on this. Sounds like it might be good to bring back at your next meeting and we'll finalize both the draft and the policy and maybe a timeline and maybe even set a first date, whatever that'll be, whether it'll be soon or later. Definitely. Because there are folks who are asking and that'll give us the ability to give them an answer as to when, does that sound like a good plan? So what do we say, February? February first, okay. We're one of the aged up just yet. So, that's the energy plan. So yeah, outstanding items. This is one where I don't necessarily wanna put you guys on the spot, but it might be a call for members who know about something that you've talked about that you're aware of, a call for anyone in the audience, a call for anyone watching this at home that might be aware of a request that's been made. I have started to go back through commission agendas and meetings to gather up what I can. I know they weren't always necessarily in there. Some were also received when you guys weren't meeting. Some I know date back a couple of years and some are more recent. So you're aware of the three that were in supplement 43, they got kicked back. There is a request that I know you were handed but I don't think you yet talked about about a rezoning of the hazelut property on Lake Shore Drive. So that one is still active. There was a request through O'Leary Burke for a high point center off, I think down close to exit 16. So there's a request there for, I won't call it a rezoning. I believe the request was to change an allowed user to add an allowed use. There has been, we had a more recent call regarding a change of a property on Blakely Road from agricultural zoning, a form of agricultural zoning to R1. No details on that yet, but that's a newer one that I don't have anything in writing or else I would have brought it to you tonight. So that's one you might see that we've received. Again, we won't be doing any filtering of these, but we'll be bringing them to you as they are given to us and we'll let you filter them back to us to get the information that you need. So those are the ones I'm aware of. I have heard at various DRB meetings, people mentioned some others that they're aware of. So I think as you think of anything or you're aware of anything you've discussed, I will do my part, of course. But if anything does come to mind when you leave here tonight, feel free to shoot me an email, call me up. And I'm happy to write it down and research it. And that goes for anyone watching at home as well that might have an interested request out there outstanding. Two what? Two is also that simple already. So. Two things, two things are. Yeah. That's that. And we're good. All right. I'll go on that. I think that's it on that one unless. All right. I don't know if anyone was here to talk to that. All right. So we'll move on. All right. So we'll do our annual energy report and then we'll run it. I'll show you three of them. How do you have the F-21 based on that occurred in F-21? Okay. Switch to the next slide. So each year the town full justice history, this is our energy goals. So the town full justice reduced energy use, reduced energy locally, state presidents and businesses money and provision of these municipal services and set an example for the community. So for F-21 we plan improvements. So each year we plan improvements that increase the efficiency and lower the cost of providing municipal services to the community of Colchester. And F-21 a variety of projects were completed for considerable efforts for the youth with these goals. In rescue, we added additional insulation to the attic to provide more efficient heating and cooling of the building. Parks and recreation added motion sensor lighting in the bathrooms at airport park and Bayside park at the police building. They completed a full cleaning of the HVAC system, including the filters and cleaning of duct work for more efficient operation of the system. And in our fire departments, the town hired a consultant to evaluate each of the fire stations in order to provide a complete list of improvements that were needed and their associated costs. As a result, we've developed a plan for the fire department facility improvements and have programs that work within the Apple budget program based on order of priority beginning in FY22 for a year. So the FY22 improvements will include installing a new roof at center station and changing all of the lighting to LED. In addition, we purchased an electric vehicle for the town staff used to it. And we also, so staff researched grants and rebates to offset the purchase of the electric vehicles and the associated charging stations that would be used. In late summer, we purchased a used 2019 Nissan Leaf and so that is currently being utilized by planning zoning staff as they're out doing site visits and building inspections and also other staff if they have other site visits and local news to attend. We have level two chargers that and I think they were stopped somewhere and they should be en route and arriving at town hall anytime now that we have already had our electrician do the installation work below ground so that as they do arrive, they can be installed. We've just been plugging it in at the highway around town. And we also ordered the solar photo will take speed signs. We purchased two of those. There's the night permanent speed signs. So that is the summary of the work for the different departments and then in general, a big, big, a lot of effort has gone into solar projects. So between the town manager's office and parking recreation department and our solar contractor, Aegis Renovals spent significant time and effort trying to locate a third solar farm and the goal of producing, moving from producing 66% which we are currently of electric energy consumed to 100%. So we submitted that permit application for the third 150 kilowatt solar farm that would be adjacent to an industrial park on Hercules Drive. But ultimately, we were informed by staff that we're not agency of natural resources that the application would be denied due to the planned removal of trees that they determined would have an undue adverse impact on a rare, irreplaceable natural area. So as a result of that permit input from A&R, staff has refocused our solar siting efforts on areas of town owned land adjacent to residential areas or farms despite a conscious effort to avoid those areas previously. And this is, there's a picture of the car. That's one of our solar farms. And on the left, bottom corner, that is what our AP Charger is going to look like when it arrives, hopefully tomorrow. So that is it. Have any questions? Is that car able to keep up with trees? It is. We make sure that we always bring it back on Fridays so that the, to the highway department, they charge it over the weekend. But it seems to have been monitoring how much that it goes down and everything, and it seems to be looking well for what our use is. Interesting. I think it has a fantastic range once, once we're able to charge it quickly. Right. Start somewhere. And so you as the energy, so if your role as the planning commission serves our energy committee, your role was just to sort of approve this report and if you have any other questions or feedback, and then I would be presenting it to the slide board as well. So we'll look for a motion and then we'll have a discussion. Okay, so a motion. Okay. A motion to approve. A motion to approve. All right. And that is the second. Second. All right. We'll have a discussion. Just, I'm wondering how this aligns with the energy chapter and priorities in the town plan. Yeah, so those are certainly things that we look at in your role as the energy committee. And when we're planning our capital projects and we're planning different activities throughout each year, we take those into consideration as well. Okay, so there's an alignment there. Right. Great, thank you. All right, so we need a vote on the favor. All right. All right. Thank you. I'm gonna switch presentations. I think next we're going into. Presentation of our coal chester housing for the light. This is just where we're at. You did see the brief memo. You have no, yes. Presentation with more glamorous graphics. Discovered this, this is a picture we have hanging in our hallway. And I keep coming back to it. I really like it. So, housing, I think housing is a topic that it comes up a lot. And I think naturally it comes up a lot because we all live in housing. Affordable housing especially. And we talk about affordable housing. I think that's something that struck me early on in learning about affordable housing. There's a question of who needs affordable housing? And the answer is everyone, right? Because affordability can be relative. And you'll see those numbers sort of come in as we talk about this. So housing, again, I wanna recognize that I know that housing reports have existed. This is not meant to be groundbreaking research. Not meant to be something that replaces all the studies that have been done. This is a brief update on some new information that looks at how Colchester is faring for access to housing and specifically access to various levels of affordable housing as it compares to our neighbors in Chittenden County. The town has done its own reports. The most recent I saw was from 2017. Looks like a great report. That was mostly a housing needs assessment. More about what's needed and less about what exists. The regional agencies and state agencies have produced a lot of wonderful reports as well. Our partner, the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission, CCRPC, is continuing through many studies. You've probably seen everything from their Ecos plans that they'd kicked off and reported on in 2018. And then Building Homes Together has a 2021 report. It was started five years ago. And so that is its five year report. That's the one that I referenced in the letter. Fun fact, if you do go to the first 100 signees for the Building Homes Together campaign, my name is on there. So I've been following access to housing, access to affordable housing for quite a while in Vermont. It holds a near and dear place to me. I grew up benefiting from federally subsidized and federally financed housing, my own personal life when I was young. So there's some great agencies out there. This doesn't necessarily intended to refute any of those, but to give you some additional context, specific to Colchester, that we're not able to get out of the broader regional and state plans. So the town worked with a wonderful consultant to do some work on examining our grand list and looking at not just what's been built in the last five years, which is what the Building Homes Together campaign looks at, but what exists and has existed for decades and what is part of the market and what's available now. Staff has added to that what our current permits are and what our expected construction is in hopes of painting a complete picture for you of where we really truly stand looking specifically at Colchester. So all of those have come together. The goal, again, is to assess the housing and affordability statistics in Colchester compared to the other core municipalities in Chittman County. So we're not comparing ourselves necessarily against Bolton or some of the really small communities, but against some of the other four ones, you know, the Burlington's, Williston's, South Burlington's of the region. The report, something to know about the report before I click on any more slides, is that it defines affordability in its own way. For the purposes of this report and I think it needed to be like this because of the way that the data aggregates. They are looking at housing as it's hard, I know it's hard to understand, the 300,000 in some realm could be considered affordable. It's a little easier to understand this year than it was two years ago. So for the purposes of this study, it's important to know up front that under 300,000 is defined in this report as affordable. Under 200,000, that's the price per unit, is considered as very affordable. And whether you support the use of those numbers or not, what is important to know is that that's the same metric that are used against all of the communities. So even if it's not the right metric, at least it's one that's being applied across all of the fortune in County communities. Something else to know, as you're looking at this, the census data comes in values of $50,000. So we couldn't, for example, say 325,000 is affordable or 275, it had to be these multiples of 50,000. And so I think that created some restrictions in the data, it's important to know about. So I'm not gonna pretend, I do have the consultant's name listed here. I'm not gonna pretend to be a tax expert, but the methodology is fascinating because it recognizes that every town has a different common level of appraisal. I'm sure each one of you are more familiar with what a common level appraisal is than I am, I'm learning. The report worked to normalize that across all of the communities with their different CLAs. You'll see that South Burlington's and Burlington's are really high, that's because they just did a reappraisal. And so that brought them over the 100. I think that's to be expected when you do a reappraisal, as I understand it. So when you normalize that, it gives you these equivalents, which makes it easier to compare community against community because otherwise, just pulling tax data, if I were to pull 52 Main Street in Burlington and look at the appraised value, it doesn't necessarily align with a market value because there's a number that it has to get multiplied by. Same thing with all the other communities. So what Mr. Vubble did was do that multiplication for us based on the assessment data that he was able to pull from all of these core communities, normalize that and give us some results. Something else to keep in mind, talk about these caveats and considerations. Something that I learned that makes a lot of sense to me is that grand lists are different from community to community. Different towns keep different levels of information. Multi-unit dwellings are significantly different in different grand lists. In some communities, an eight-unit building is listed merely as a building and not that it has eight units in it, if, especially if it's a rental, where there's one owner, one tax bill. So in the examples I showed you here, the same building in one town that could be a one and a half million dollar building that comes across as one building, one unit. That's not gonna fall into the affordable category. Definitely not gonna fall into the very affordable category. However, the same unit in another building or in the same unit in another town that does record the number of units in that building, even if they're rentals, is gonna tell us they're eight units in that dwelling. You divide that 1.5 million by eight units. All of a sudden, it's eight units of affordability. And that's a challenge when you're comparing towns because the data levels are so different. And so naturally we're going to be missing affordable units in some communities simply for the fact of how the grand list data is kept. And that's just a fact that's unavoidable. I do believe that Colchester lists at least in some format the number of units per building, but like anything, it's how you pull the data. And so when there are regional and state studies, if they don't know to pull the data to get, to dig down, it doesn't always reflect all of the affordable units that exist. And that's something important to know. If you're in a community that has a lot of multifamily dwellings because those will get lost. So that's really important to know. So it's, I mean, just hearing that it's, I mean, I'm thinking we're losing a lot of tax capacity with the way grand lists could be differentiated. Is that accurate? I don't know that there's any taxing issues because I don't want to speak as a tax assessor. It's definitely not my air of expertise, but I believe that they're always aware. It just might be that where they record that data in Colchester otherwise is not always intuitive to an outsider who's pulling the data. So I think that the assessor is very well aware of what's in there, but for their purposes, that's a $1.5 million building that gets sent to John Smith. They don't know the eight renters, the eight families that live there. They have no reason to, they don't get a tax bill. It doesn't mean that they don't have it recorded that there's eight units because eight units are probably a different value than four units, I guess, I don't know. So they probably have that, but it's how it's shared and uploaded to various state and regional partners. So it's something to be aware of that I think some research entities are not aware of. Well, disclosure, I didn't really think about it until I read this report and I think it's something to know. So that's important. Something else to know about Grandless, again, whether they're renters or owners isn't always listed. Residential and commercial, this is something else that's really important to know as you're reading reports. Most people think of an eight unit apartment building as a residential building. Residences are where people live and people live here. However, a lot of tax offices and even a lot of planning offices will look at an eight unit building as commercial. And that's something that can lead to a lot of misinterpretations of data. And it's always good to be aware of if you're reading a report, like the one I just sent out a couple of days ago that says this is the new residential in town, this is the new commercial in town. And so there's a lot of digging down that has to be done to really understand residential growth versus commercial growth because sometimes that commercial growth reflects what we think of as residential growth. And the tax, the grand list will do that too. They're often taxed at a commercial rate rather than a residential rate. And so that's how they are recorded. So that's a big thing that I think is important to know. You don't have to process it necessarily, but it's good to know when you're understanding data when it comes to affordability and how things get lost. Some other things, assessed value isn't always a good proxy for its market value, especially right now. I'm betting that most of you can sell your house at a different price than whatever it is your current assessed value is. In some towns, it's a much bigger gap than in others. So while we might find an assessed value that reflects an affordable value, it doesn't mean it's actually going to sell for that amount and we know that. Inflation isn't reflected. So when we're talking about a unit that was built in 2015 or a unit that was available in 2020, we're not adjusting for the 2020 value over 2015. And we all know in this room that it's different, especially 2021 value. And so that's I think what I'm saying here is that the affordability in grand list values don't reflect the real estate trends over the last six to 12 months. And so we know that. We just want to put it out there that we know that. And then again, some municipalities don't maintain data on a number of units on a given property. They just have the property. So findings, this is the fun part, right? So when we look at Colchester and we say, okay, what does it look like? What does our affordability picture look like? This is what we found. So we have a total number of housing units according to the census. There is a discrepancy between that and the grand list. There is for Auburn town, don't worry, it's not just us, some have a much bigger gap. Again, that goes back to how we're recording our multi-family buildings mostly. And when we look at all of the numbers for, again, we're defining this in this report. Units under 300,000 are considered affordable. Under 200,000 considered very affordable. When we look at the percentage of where Colchester ends up, it is higher, I'm telling you, than it was in the ECOS plan that just looked at the last five years. And I think that that says that a lot of our affordable housing stock has existed for some time. It's not new. It's not at the risk of using the word trendy. Affordable housing has been a fair amount of housing that has existed in Colchester for more than the last five years. And then I think that gets reflected here. I'll give you guys a minute with that before I go on. That's a lot of data. I think those numbers, I can't see them from here. Oh, sure. I think there's a way for me to see them differently. There might be. The last four columns, especially. Yeah, there we go. Where would you like to be? No, no. Right there? Yeah. Okay, you can't see the town, so let me see all of them. No, like, first one. Colchester? Yeah. That one. What's not necessarily surprising to me is that the town does really well for percent affordable, just about at the top when you're comparing these other four communities. The percent very affordable is still higher than most communities. It's not quite, I think, as high, relatively speaking, which is not surprising given that those that are are those that have many smaller units. This doesn't adjust for size, so when you're looking at the Burlington's and the Colchester, or the Burlington's and the Winooski's, where you're talking about the price for a studio or a one-bedroom, we don't have as many of those. We have larger units, and that doesn't get reflected here. I should have put that in the caveats, but that accounts for some of the differences. We're talking about different units when we're comparing them. Real quick, this also includes land value, correct? That's a great question. Because with the amount of lake shore we have, we have some expensive properties that help push the affordability out of context, perhaps. It certainly does for anything that's detached. I don't know how that gets accounted for in a multi-family building. It's a sale value, I think, the assessed value. But yeah, I would assume, at least for a single-family home on a lot, it includes the land. It's the total assessed value. Can we get a copy of this? Can you send it? Yeah, that would be great. I'd appreciate that. I'm gonna go down to my next. So this puts it together. This takes all those numbers and puts it into a nice little chart, so you're not just looking at numbers. So, percent affordable in coal chester, 68%. That was that same number that came over. Here we are, comparing ourselves with the current in-member. This is all ran-less data that is pulled. That's that $300,000 value. The very affordable is that $200,000 value. You see a little bit more variation there. Again, I think that's accounted for in-unit size. Those with smaller units, more multi-family buildings are naturally gonna rise to that very affordable range. More findings from this report. Let me go back. Where people live, coal chester's at the top. Let me zoom in for a pan, like it's really small. So we'll start on this side of the page here. So coal chester, I've got our total units. Again, we're talking about this one-unit structure to unit structure. So how are we dealing with multi-family versus others, percent mobile homes? I found this fascinating. I didn't know this. You guys all probably do. That's of the county's manufactured homes. You can't see it a little dots, but coal chester's the big blue one. I read in the report that if you were to take out Milton, coal chester would have more than all of the other one, two, three, four, five, six communities combined in manufactured homes. So that's where I think a large part of the affordable housing is. I know this is probably not a, this is kind of a dumb question, but when you say manufactured, I think like prefab, like pre, is that what you're- I think it means mobile homes. That's how they're recorded in the grand list. Gotcha. I don't know that it includes the few prefabricated homes. I don't know. I just didn't know what- A good question. Yeah. So owner occupied housing and how that compares to renter occupied housing. Again, I would take that all with a grain of salt because a grand list is not going to record necessarily if somebody is renting out their home without a rental registry. We won't know. You guys are happy there. We can move on. Okay. So, oh, I forgot a P. I'm sorry about that. The affordability. So we talked about all these other measures of affordability, but really I started this by telling you that affordability is relative. It is the percentage of a person's income that they spend on housing. Whether or not your income is $1 million a year or $30,000 a year, the affordability to you and as defined by HUD is that you can get housing for 30% or less than your income. So this is the really important number to me when we're looking at affordability. What percentage of Colchester, of all Colchester residents, what is the average of their income spent on housing? Colchester in this category rises to the absolute very top. And by that, I mean the bottom in the chart because it's the smallest number. The county average is 35. Again, 30 is where you wanna be. 35, I'm certain that if you were to rerun this in 2021, those numbers are gonna change, unfortunately. But relatively speaking, Colchester has the greatest access to housing based on what its residents own and that's at that 29%. The numbers are on the left if you wanna be able to see them. You can see in some communities, even though Burlington had rated very high for a lot of categories, it still has a lot of its residents paying more, well more than 30% of its income on housing. I've asked this before in another context, but is that net or gross income? Do you know? I believe that they use, HUD uses gross. I'm thinking gross. I've asked this before. I think it's the easiest way to compare. It's hard to compare net income. Again, I think if you were to look at all of the measures of affordability, this is the one you're gonna hear about a lot, especially recently when people are looking at their relatives. You'll hear me say, if you don't hear it tonight, you'll hear it again, that when we talk about affordability, we often use big A and little A. Affordability with a big A, I think of as often subsidized housing, meeting exactly those income limits that are defined by the federal agencies, but housing affordability can also exist with a little A. What is accessible to people? When we start talking about workforce housing, these are all words you've heard, resident housing, missing middle housing, all of that sort of falls into that little A category of affordable, maybe it's 120% of median income rather than 80%, which is used in a lot of other assessments. So that's the picture of where it exists now. Where are we going? Not just in policy, but actual implementation. So this, these are the numbers you did see already. Nothing is new here that wasn't in the memo. So these are things that are under review currently or have been approved. We're seeing some action at St. Michael's College, Champlain Housing Trust, Ever North have been involved in several projects. They've got the one at Fort Ethan Allen. There was the one that was just approved in our growth center, just permitted, very, very recently, wrote us the check just last week for their permit fees. Allenbrook Development, I don't know what you're about. This one, this one's sort of pending out there. This river's edge, 30 units. Tomorrow night in the same room, the DRB will be talking about this 585 unit proposal. This is the one that is at the Northeast, okay. I'm learning my quadrants. Thank you for bearing with me. So the Northeast Quadrant, you may have heard of it as I was glad in the past. Severance Park is the way we're referring to it now. So the opposite side of Severance Corner that is currently being developed, correct? Yes, where you see the construction vehicles directly across the street. Yeah. So Roosevelt Highway 2 and 7, that corner there. I believe that it had approval before, a preliminary approval that has expired. It's a slightly modified plan over that. Diverse mix of housing types, I've seen the plan. You know, there's things, obviously for the board to discuss, but it does have probably the most diverse mix that I've seen or would see. In Colchester, everything from single family detached to 12, maybe 30 unit buildings. Don't quote me on that, but somewhere in that range. Town houses, you know, duplexes, quadplexes. There's a range of any housing type you can think of, it probably exists there, which is kind of neat. Diverse housing, I think is what is called for in the town plan. Is there any commercial in there? There is, because it's a form-based code area, some non-residential uses are required. They're not necessarily identified yet as to whether or not their office or retail If I'm being honest, people are saying they don't, they're having a hard time building that, but that's a discussion for another day. But the goal, especially because this is a form-based code is to require and allow that to be built so that you do have this mixed use. So you have a place that is alive both during the day and at night. People are there and working and can walk to work if that's how it works out. So that'll be reviewed tomorrow night. It's just a sketch plan. You can tune in online and watch it if you'd like. And then the other Ireland sets, these are all in the growth center at the bottom there. Those are the various quadrants. Ever North is the one that Bob had asked about. That's the one that's across from, that's the one that's under construction. The roads are under construction now. And I believe that's the same quadrant where the rest of Sunderland is. Nothing that I have heard of that's planned for the other quadrant yet, the Northwest. Quick question on, since, didn't Ireland come in and ask for some supplement changes so they could change their design of their buildings and stuff? Thank you. So that is likely to be, that was I think what was, I did see that one in one year more recent, that was in spring. Correct. Yeah, I'm gonna add that to my list. Thank you for bringing that up as the garage issue. Correct. And the parking lot change. Yeah, they just missed out. They're five minutes late to do 42. So they'll probably be back. But what we'll probably do is talk about packaging that with other form-based code amendments because the DRB and staff, and I think other applicants have been sort of gathering up a list of them. And rather than take them one by one or do one this year and one next year, it's probably best to look at it as a whole package, which you'd be able to do if we're coordinating the requests. So I think you'll be seeing, I don't know that the form-based code has been updated since it's been adopted, it's probably ripe. Now that we've been using it and reviewing projects under it, we've gotten a better feel for what works, what doesn't work, what's clear, what's not clear, what's an intended consequence, what's an unintended consequence. So we're hoping that we'll bring those back to you before everything gets built so that there's time to actually apply them. So that's probably something that we'll be advocating for inclusion in your next supplement. I have another slide. Okay, so summary, summary, summary. I did take this directly from the report. I didn't want to represent it as my own language, but I do want to say that I fully concur with the conclusion of the report. So that's the source of most of the information there. Should Colchester to be one of the most affordable places to live in the core towns of Chittenden County? Those are the ones that were included on the charts. Significant supply of affordable housing units. And again, affordable, you can put it in quotes if you'd like, has a different definition to most people, but at least we're applying the same one across all of the communities. Residents, Colchester, this was that last slide that I was talking to you about, pay less of their income on housing on average than do residents of any of the other core communities. The new trend and the newest thing that's being talked about in housing is recognizing that it's not, that reaching affordability is not just about building subsidized units or income restricted units. This is supply and demand that you learned about in high school and college and it's supply lowers price. That's the theory anyway, that's the working adopted theory of many of the regional agencies that's sort of new. And so when you read an ECOs for plan or the building homes together plan, they're going to say they're looking at a number of affordable units, but they're also targeting just units and just adding the units leads to increased affordable access. Again, that might be a little A where it's not necessarily housing provided for somebody making below the median income, but maybe slightly above severance corners. I think even for units that are not dedicated as affordable, we'll probably meet that little A just by the nature of the units that are created. Most people aren't going to be paying well above that $300,000 range adjusted for 2021 for a one bedroom or studio apartment or condo. And so by its nature, it is more accessible because of the size of the units that you're seeing and the density that you're seeing in severance corners. So whether or not they're actually designated that way, my takeaway is that affordable isn't always with that big A, it can be with that little A. That's all I have on this. I'm glad to hear that Colchester is kind of meeting its obligation to providing affordable housing in Chittenden County. That's really good news. I was excited to read through it and learn more about it and no action is requested. I think this is more of an informative piece. We'll be bringing this to the select board as well. To share with them as there's just increased pressure and talk about what's going on in the housing realm. That's the only intention there. Thank you. Thank you. Very good. You all good on that? All right. Yeah, we could talk on that one more time. Yeah, I know. I don't want to be in the chat. Exactly. All right, so we just need to emotionally approve the minutes. I'd make a motion to approve the minutes. Oops, second. One more second. Discussion. One minute. All good. Not all in favor. All right. All right. This is proof. Thank you very much. Guess what the next one is. I'll make a motion to adjourn. Thank you. Yeah. Second. All right, discussion, all in favor. All right. All right. All right.