 Okay. Hello everybody. My name is Reagan. I'm a member of the steering committee from ward six. I would like to thank our neighbors Champlain College for the generosity in providing us with this meeting room. We are excited to announce that our new meeting location will be for ward six and PA meeting will be room 206 tonight and in the future. Which is really important because we're kind of not sure what we're going to end up. And the building can be accessed from the Maple Street and from Champlain College campus. Most importantly, I want to thank Nick Anderson, who will introduce himself, who is partially responsible that we are able to be in this room. And he's here today and Nick please introduce yourself and welcome us. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, so I'm Nick Anderson. I'm the vice president of planning and operations here so in charge of all the campus grounds buildings services everything that happens at Champlain is not academics, essentially. So yeah, welcome. We're always happy to play host. Be a good neighbor, you know we have the facilities so it makes sense to use them. A couple of housekeeping items for everyone restrooms are just straight outside the door over there. They're both, there's two of them gender neutral use whichever one you want. There's some cups on the counter over here if you want a drink of water just goes straight downstairs there's a bottle filling station there. So make yourself at home. And yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. It's very short today because again we moved from one place to the other. In addition to that I'm the only one from the steering committee that is in person here. Hello. And since we are such a small group, maybe we can introduce ourselves. And I would like to start with this wonderful young lady right here. Go ahead. I don't think it works. I have a very, very long. Hi, my name is Lydia. I'm a senior at UVM. I'm with the student government association there. And I'm the chair of the committee on legislative and community affairs I know that's a lot of names and a mouthful at once. But we're trying to one of our goals this year is to get more students engaged with the community and me and a few other members of my committee are going to all the NPAs this year. So I'll probably be here more frequently this year. Just to kind of report back to the campus what's been going on in town and kind of see if we can maybe do some collaboration if student government or you guys need help with anything like if you need volunteers for a project that's coming up. I think we can increase in the interface between the community and the UDM students so. Well, thank you for being here. And we are to my right, I have Megan. Hi, I'm Megan Tuttle I'm the director of city planning and I'll be talking tonight about a project that we're working on about zoning for our neighborhoods. Next to Megan. I'm Andy Montreal. I live on South Union Street. I'm also the chair of the planning commission so I'm joining the presentation. Nick, as already been introduced. Hi, my name is Sarah Hernandez Tim I'm the public information and community engagement officer with the Burlington police department. Sorry, I'm sweating I just came from I thought you guys have been at the Greek church or something. Oh yeah. Oh my goodness. Yeah. So sorry, you didn't get this notice in time. Yeah. Um, my name is Romeo von Herman. I am a stations and customer service supervisor at GMT. I am also a church street marketplace commissioner here in the city. And so we just joined word six, where I live, university terrace. And I do serve at the word a certain community as well. So now I'm joining both. And we have another gentleman. I'm DJ home. I'm the city arborist. You are another speaker. We are, we are all set to with our presenters. So if Megan is ready, I would say, let's start the presentation. Technical technical difficulties. For some reason I'm not getting the zoom link so I'm just trying one other option. Okay. And do we have any other people on zoom, Scott? Hi, this is Nancy Harkins. I'm also a stealing MIDI stealing committee members. French was unfortunately not able to be here today other than on screen. This is Taylor's area. I'm also attending by a state today. I was going to ask if we could get the contact and ask. Our guests from UVM. For her contact information so we can follow up with her offline. Should we maybe start with the trees? Should we maybe start with the trees and would that be okay? Sure. So that would be wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Would you be so kind and tell us what you have to. Provide on trees and all the new things that are coming at us. Sure. So I've been the city arborist for, it'll be six years in February. I came to the city with a background in nursery business and tree care. I've been planting a lot of trees. All the young trees with bags on them. I have a crew of four top full-time. Certified arborists that I work with. And we care for all the trees in the city right up ways, as well as all our managed park spaces, meaning all the mode manicured areas of the parks, as well as three cemeteries. So we have a long-standing relationship with the branch out Burlington, which is a volunteer group that's been around for about two decades. And along with them, we have a city tree nursery at the horticultural research center in South Burlington, where we grow about one-third of the trees that we plant in the city and have any given year. We manage about 13,000 trees city-wide. One of the goals of the climate management, which is to make sure that the trees are planted in the city. And we have a branch out Burlington, which is a volunteer group that's been around for about two decades. And along with them, we have a city tree nursery at the horticultural research center in South Burlington. And the goals of the climate action plan for the city that was developed, I don't know how long ago, 20 and 2014. So almost 10 years ago. Was to increase the city's canopy. And at the time that, the figure given was 50% canopy coverage. So in other words, looking at the city from above, the entire landmass of the city, our goal would be to have 50% of it. The city of Burlington had about 30% of the city's canopy. About 14 years ago, the city of Burlington had a first of its kind. Urban. Tree care study done by the spatial analysis lab at the university of Vermont. Where they flew over the city with drones and a high tech LiDAR, radar system. And mapped out the city's tree canopy. And at the time it was found that the city of Burlington had about 30% of the city's canopy. And so we got some grant money this first year. The second year I was here and we did that fly over again. And we found that in the 10 years that had elapsed. Burlington's tree canopy had actually grown by 4%. Which is very significant because. Municipalities of our size comparable around New England and around the United States. Are losing tree canopy. At an alarming rate. We've seen trees that were existing. You know, Burlington's always been very supportive of taking care of the trees that we have. And we have a very robust program compared to other. Municipalities, our size, having a full complement of equipment and people to take care of the trees. So we've seen our trees that were existing had grown significantly. Accounting for a lot of the canopy. The city has always had a tree planting program. And we've seen a lot of trees that have been planted. We've seen trees that have been planted for at least the last three decades. And they were averaging prior to my coming to the city, about 120 to 130 trees annually, new trees planted, which was great. And most of those trees were coming from our city tree nursery. But given our goal of trying to increase our tree canopy to 50%, when I came on, I thought, wow. I'm going to track all of our work and all the trees that we manage are in a inventory software system called tree works. Where I can go online and get into the system. And if you told me you lived at 22 Buell street, I can tell you what type of tree is in front of your house, how big it is when we last pruned it. If we have the information where, when it was planted and where it came from. And so using that data, we looked at the city and using this tree canopy study. And we targeted over the last four years, the starting with the words in the city with the lowest percentage of tree canopy coverage. And we found that from the study to be words two and three. The reason for that is obviously we're downtown core, old north end, lot smaller lots, lot less green belt space. You know, not a lot of trees on private properties because of the lot sizes. So three years ago we received a $25,000 grant from the National Arbor Day Foundation and started our tree planting efforts in wards two and three. We went through those two wards and identified all our open viable tree planting sites within those two wards. In that spring we planted 214 trees in those two wards. We also did was started buying trees bare root in the spring and fall to supplement what we were getting from the nursery because what I found was over the years, even though we were planting 120 to 130 trees a year, we remove at least that many on an annual basis for one reason or another, storm damage, vandalism, vehicle strikes, natural attrition, we remove trees. And that's primarily a public safety issue. When a tree hits a certain point becomes a hazard, we remove it and we replant. So we also, the city also only would plant new trees in the spring. And we're very busy in the spring because we're also cleaning up all the park spaces and doing all our landscape work. So we decided to start planting both spring and fall. And by doing that and using the bare root trees and also expanding the size of our city tree nursery for the last three years now, we have planted in excess of 400 trees a year. So we're really making a mark. And if you've driven around the city, you know, we've moved ward by ward, we started with two and three, then we moved to board eight and then five and six here. And then last fall in this spring, we're up in the new North end and you can see on North Ave, we planted a whole lot of trees on both sides of the avenue. And in addition to that, we've continued to try to have a policy of replacing any tree that we remove anywhere in the city within a calendar year. So it's been a pretty ambitious campaign. I think I'd like to think if we were to do this urban tree canopy study another 10 years from now, we're going to see a significant jump in our tree canopy city wide. A couple of real challenges that we're facing now, obviously is emerald ash borer. You've probably all heard of that by now, I hope. When I came to the city, we had about 1100 ash of just over 12,000 trees in the city were, were green or white ash, both susceptible to this insect. The only way to retain those trees long-term would be to treat them with an insecticide every two years for the foreseeable future. It's done by an injection into the base of the tree. It's safe, but there would be some questions about, you know, public safety and where is that chemical going? So we made the decision that we're not going to treat any of our ash trees. So in addition to targeting areas with low canopy coverage, places where we had removed trees, we also went through the city using our inventory system and identified areas of the city where we have a lot of ash trees. And we began systematically planting in between our existing ash trees where space permitted. And the idea was let's get some trees going, get them growing. And by time we have to remove the ash, when this insect gets to Burlington, which we have not officially found it here yet, but it's in communities all around us, Colchester, Williston, Richmond, it's going to be here, that we would have trees in place of a wide diversity of species to replace those ash over time. So, you know, it was a challenge, but I saw it also as an opportunity to further diversify our canopy, which down the road will insulate us from the next past or disease that comes along that is specific to one species of tree. So we're busy. We'll be planting another 150 trees this fall, about 160. And we've already started generating a list for next spring. So any residents that may be listening, I would encourage you, if there's any issues with the trees on your street, you know, see click fix or we, we get these work orders through view works that come to see click fix. If you see something, say something, let us know, and we're out there trying to respond as quickly as we can. Yeah, I was going to ask Scott, do you have anybody that would let have some questions, some questions maybe. There are no hands up at the moment. Oh, okay. I have a question. What does bear root mean? So bear root, if you go to a garden center and buy a tree, typically it's either grown in a pot, right with a heavy soil ball on it, or it was dug in a nursery and it's wrapped in burlap. Okay. So you can get a more sizable tree, but it's very, it's very hard to plant. We need a machinery to move it around. It's very cumbersome. Imagine us trying to move throughout the city with a trailer, a trailer load of trees with 400 pound root balls, trying to dig holes and plant them and park a rig. So bear root planting is the trees are harvested either spring or fall before they leaf out or after they go dormant. And all the soil is removed from the root system. And then the trees are dipped in a solution. It's like a gel that coats the root system keeps it moist. And they put a bag around the root system and they ship them to us. That has allowed us to up our tree planting incredibly last spring. We planted 240 trees. With five people and five work days. And we were moving throughout the city. So we can load 30 to 40 trees on a truck, two guys with shovels. And we can plant a whole lot more trees. Our success rate with that method today has been about 98%. So we lose very few trees and they're a lot cheaper. And, you know, it's just allowed us to really up our game. So we're pretty excited about what we're doing. And I hope we get a lot of good feedback from residents. And I hope they're noticing. I mean, you know, one of the best things we can do. For the climate is continue to plant trees. And I. Thank you for taking the time to come here and tell us all about this. Does anyone of the people here present would like to ask some questions. Oh, there are some people in line. Yes. So are you, would you hear. Hold on. We get some. Got it. Okay. What's the name of the project you're doing. So who is the person we take care of all the trees. Got it. We have some questions. Yep. Go ahead. Hi, this is Dale is area. Can you hear me? Okay. Got Dale. Yeah. She has a question. Can you hear me? Okay. Yes. Excellent. Hey, thank you, Vijay for that presentation. That was really interesting. Thank you. One thing that I was wondering about, I assume you're talking about trees that are on city property, right? Like, um, in parks or public lands or, or maybe, um, in the right of ways on roads. Um, and what I was wondering about was what, um, homeowners, if there's any advice or suggestions that you would like to give to homeowners in terms of trees on our property, would you like to give them advice or, or could do better or different? Um, Is she also. Yeah. I'm getting the neck down here. Um, yeah, I would say care for the trees on your property and always hire a certified arborist to come inspect your trees. And, um, one thing I will say is that we have found areas of the city and particularly in the new North end on the West side, there are a number of neighborhoods and there's one down here, Birchcliffe Parkway and the side streets there where the green belts, the space between the sidewalk and the road is very, very narrow and really is not conducive to planting a tree and having it have enough soil volume and enough space to grow and mature to a large size. And in those areas we have actually, and the city is willing to plant a tree on a front yard and we will pay for the tree and we will come in and properly plant it and we'll provide you with a watering bag. If you don't have a good space in your green belt in front of your house and then it becomes, we have you sign a very simple easement agreement and then it becomes the property owner's responsibility from that point on. You know, the goal here is to increase our canopy citywide. So anywhere we can put trees, you know, on a front lawn that has a lot of soil volume and a lot of space to grow is going to provide as many benefits to shading the street and the sidewalk and catching rainwater as it would if we tried to plant a tree in a space too small and it never does anything. So I would suggest for any homeowners and we don't find that much in the south end here where that's the case, but know that that is an option. Thank you. I appreciate that. You have some more, you have some more questions. No, no, but, but I appreciate hearing that about the fact that that they are willing to consider planting trees, even on private property. Because like on my street, there's no sidewalks. For example, there's no green belt, but that's just great to know. What street are you on? South prospect street, but at the very south end of it, south of prospect Parkway. Okay. Give me a call. I'll come look at your lawn. I'm not sure we have space for a new tree right now, but it's just good to keep in mind. Anybody else. Any questions for. Yes. I have a question. I live on ledge road and there's a city parcel that's to the west of me on the south side of ledge road. And years ago in the nineties, I think we tried to get a pocket park with some CDBG funds. And it was denied at the time, but they did a little bit of cleanup work in there because there's quite a bit of. There's a lot of damage to the quarry and right now I feel like it's completely unmanaged. There are a lot of damaged trees. I'm not sure if it's from storm or just from age. And there's a lot of growth that hangs out over the road on ledge road as you're, as you're heading up the hill. And I just wonder if that's something that perhaps if you had some time, you could take a look at. Yes, I definitely will take a look at that. So we, we do manage the trees in the right of way, but there are, there are trees where wooded areas above the roadways and we're always on the lookout for potential hazards along those roadways. But, you know, keep in mind that we're trying to see the whole city all the time and I'm out there every day, but we miss stuff. So again, if you, if you see something in particular, say something and we'll come and check it out, but I will put that on my list to take a look up there and see if there's work that needs to be done. Great. Thank you very much. Yeah. Anybody else? Last question. Nancy did have her hand up. Oh, she did. Okay. Actually CJ, well, well, we're asking personal question. We had trees taken down on our street. I'm just curious. They took a tree down. They planted actually two new ones on either side, but this big stump is still there. Is that the owner's responsibility or? I thought the stump question would come up. So the city does not own stump grinding equipment. They never have. In the past we have, we have rented one of those machines, but it is on our list. We're now shifting some funding around. And the last time we did stump grinding, we actually contracted it out because it's much more cost effective to have somebody come in with a machine that they use every day. And it's a lot more cost effective to have somebody come in. Right. So yes. And you're on South Union. I'm on summit. Sorry. I'm summit Ridge. Summit Ridge. Yeah. My neighbor and I were going to get it. And as I said, our inventory system, I can, I can do a query. And I know where every stump in the city is. Believe me. So. Good morning. Everyone taking down trees, right? One thing I was just going to mention is, um, you know, I think that's a really important thing. And one of the things that helps do is make data about the city available to anybody in the community who wants to look at it. And one resource that we have is actually a map of BJ's tree inventory. So, um, if you just Google the, um, BTV stat, um, you'll find a website that we've recently launched that has a lot of information about the city. And there's a map of the trees you can take a look at. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We have one too. Charlie has a question. Would you give us a quick update on the trees and city hall park? Are you satisfied with the way that's worked out? And any other. Any other parks in the city? I wondered if I get a city hall park question. I started this job at the beginning of that whole debate over city hall park. So I'm very tied to what happened there. I'm very happy with the way city hall park turned out. Um, I think we had a fair number of trees there. We ended up with no net loss of trees because we replanted as many as we had removed. Um, some of those trees were healthy that we had to take out to make way for the infrastructure that was built, but a number of them were in failing condition. Um, overall, the trees that we planted are have done really, really well there. Um, the nice thing is we now have a greater diversity of age of as well as a diversity of species, which in any urban space is really important. You don't want all your trees to be of the same age and maturity. And the more diversity, the better. So I think you're going to see city hall park is going to fill in very quickly. Some of those trees have grown very, very rapidly. And you know, there are four trees up against city hall facing the park to on either side of the steps that, you know, I think we're going to see a lot of that. I think we're going to see a lot of that debate. I argued for those trees to come down. They are, they are in decline. And that may be an issue down the road where we'll be removing and replacing those, but. You know, There isn't too compact or anything like that. No, because so much soil mitigation was done at the time of the renovation. New top soil was brought in there. There's just so much excavation. So the trees are much larger than they ever had. There's far less compassion to the soils around those tree roots. You'll notice that the tree rings around the existing trees in the park now are much larger than they ever were. So when you mulch a bigger area, it lessens the effects of foot traffic. Over that root zone. And there's an irrigation system in there. That's that's working all the time. So you know, there's a lot of water. Plenty of water. So I'm very happy overall with how that turned out. So are any of the other trees in the other parks in the city? Any other other trees in distress. Especially in one park or another. No, not particularly, you know, we, we. In any other park, if the four trees that are in front of city hall, we're in any other park, they would have been removed and replaced by now. Given the controversy surrounding that project. So I'm very happy with that. I'm happy with that. I'm happy with that. I'm happy with that. I'm happy with that. I'm happy with that. I'm a steered player of it. Although lately I've been. Tapping on the mayor's door about that. We'll see where that goes. Thank you very much. This was very informative. And I now know what. And thank you, Megan, for stepping back. And now it's your time. Great. And I want to hear what you have to say. Great. All right. Well, thank you. And for those of you who may not have joined when we did that. Thank you. My name is Megan Tuttle. I'm the planning director for the city. And this is Andy Montrell. He's the chair of our planning commission. So we're both here tonight to talk to you about a project that we're working on. That is about the zoning for the city's neighborhoods for the residential areas of Burlington. So Scott, if you could switch us over. Tonight, we're going to be talking about what this project is and how you can get engaged in the work that we're going to do. We're going to be talking about the city's neighborhoods. We're going to be talking about the city's neighborhoods. But just by way of introduction, the Burlington neighborhood code is. Really a process for us to look at the types of homes that are allowed in the city's neighborhoods, all of the city's neighborhoods. And specifically we're talking about ways to help promote more diversity of those housing types across the city. By allowing duplexes, by allowing the city's neighborhoods to be able to provide housing for all types of homes. And some other very specific housing types called cottage courts and townhouses. And we've got a request for high rises as well. So on the next slide, just a little bit of background. Many of you have probably heard conversations, maybe been part of conversations about the needs that the city has for housing of all types. But specifically the neighborhood code is just one of the many things that we are doing from a zoning policy perspective to try to help us address our housing needs. A lot of the work that we've been doing in the past few years, if you see this kind of series of maps has been focused in the areas on the left side of the screen. These are areas like downtown. Other parts of the city like the south end, if you've recently heard us talk about the south end and the north end and the north end and the north end, you know, these are, these are much smaller scale neighborhoods. These are areas of the city where we have and can expect to see more multi unit building apartments, condominium buildings. We're really focused now through the neighborhood code on the map on the right, which are the areas of the city that have always been zoned for residential development more in the neighborhood scale like you might expect here in the new city. We're going to be talking about ways that we can continue to maintain really strong and diverse neighborhoods. A lot of us identify very closely with the unique identities of our neighborhoods. And also identify ways that these neighborhoods can help us meet the needs of changing households, the changing climate, really help us address a wide variety of needs that we have over time and for the future. We are specifically talking about these housing types because we see that there are a lot of opportunities that they can bring for the city in addition to just creating more homes. Specifically the types of homes that we're talking about in the neighborhood code require less land per home and help us to better use the existing infrastructure that we have things like roads and sewers. They introduce more housing type choice and help to create more opportunity for where people are able to live in the city. We have been working really closely with AARP Vermont through a lot of this work because AARP sees the importance of having more housing types to help us address our multi-generational housing needs and provide more options for people to age in their neighborhood and in this community. And also to help us address the needs of our neighborhoods in this community. And also to help us expand our tax base and share our public, I shouldn't say burden, it shouldn't say tax burden, but share in our supporting our public infrastructure like Vijay and his tree work across more households across the city. And then finally, we're also doing this work in part in response to some changes to state law that were passed earlier this year. Some of you may have heard about a law that has been called the Vermont home act that was passed at the end of the legislative session that introduced new statewide requirements for duplexes, triplexes and four unit buildings in communities across the state of Vermont actually. So this is just a kind of simple image that helps break down the kinds of homes that we're talking about. And on the next slide, the kind of point that we want to share here is that while we do have some examples of these housing types in neighborhoods across the city, not all of these images are Burlington, but we do have examples of many of these housing types across the city. One of the challenges is that in order to create more of these housing types in the city today, the laws that regulate development or zoning laws actually make it very difficult in many cases for that to happen. So we are exploring changes with the planning commission and with the city council's ordinance committee. We are exploring changes to our zoning laws that would help make more of these housing types more permissible in more parts of the city. Scott, I actually can't remember what's on the next slide. If you go ahead and advance it for me. Okay, great. So we're doing this work in part based on a lot of research and conversations that our office has been having over the last year. In addition to that grid that I just showed you, we've been exploring a lot of the reasons why our zoning doesn't allow more of these housing types to be created. And specifically we'll be looking at some of those standards in our zoning to talk about making changes to. So one of the big things that we've identified is that the existing zoning laws that we have today actually wouldn't let a lot of the things that have already been built in Burlington be built today if we were trying to do that new. So this is a big challenge and really what this means is that if you have a property that doesn't meet those zoning laws, it could actually be very hard for you to make changes to your property to help you evolve it to meet your needs over time and for the future. On the next slide we also know that in some cases there's a mismatch between what our zoning laws say can be built and what we theoretically want to be built. For example, in Burlington today, we allow people to build single family homes, accessory dwelling units and even duplexes in virtually any neighborhood. But the reality is that those standards aren't necessarily aligned with the size of people's properties that would actually allow them to create those housing types. So we'll also be looking at some of those standards that just don't allow the things that we say we want. We'll also be addressing things and trying to more explicitly make sure our zoning laws are dealing with the kinds of things that we understand to be important when it comes to the sort of scale of buildings in our neighborhoods. This image here really is, or this slide here is really showing several images of nearly identical homes. These are all homes in the Old North End that are in a couple blocks of each other. You can see that they're virtually the same house. The only thing that's really different about them is that they're different colors. They're all duplexes, but they're about the same shape and size, but only the two on the left would be legal to build today if someone was trying to build those buildings and the two on the right would not be. The main reason here is that because we have rules in our neighborhoods, there's a lot of zoning that talk about how many homes can be built on a lot relative to the size of the lot itself. So we're going to be looking into these zoning rules and trying to approach this from the perspective of, you know, what's the right size of buildings that we think are appropriate for our neighborhoods and trying to be more explicit about guiding those building sizes rather than kind of approaching this as a math problem We're also going to be looking at a couple housing types, as I mentioned, that are not as common in Burlington today, but that we've heard a lot of interest and support for. So this image here is an example of a lot on Stanaford Road. There is currently one single family home on this very large lot on Stanaford Road. And this is an example showing the potential for that lot to become a place where several more freestanding single family homes could share that lot. Really, this is called a college cottage court. And the idea here is that these homes could share the price of the land. They could maybe share a parking area, maybe share some other utilities, have a common space. There's a garden that's illustrated in the back of this lot that could allow for more supportive and flexible living communities as well. There are a lot of reasons that this can't be built in our zoning today. And so we'll be exploring how we could make our standards more acceptable for these types of living arrangements. And then the last piece that we'll be looking at are places like North Avenue properties that are right along the North Avenue corridor. We've been talking to a lot of North, new North end residents about the neighborhood code. And we've heard a lot of interest and support for the idea that maybe the avenue is a place where we could also consider some bigger buildings for new housing opportunities. Maybe even some new support, you know, neighborhood commercial activity, like cafes and banks, things that would support nearby neighbors near their homes. So we'll also be exploring opportunities for making changes to the zoning that applies to places like the North Avenue corridor. We'll also be talking about places like maybe the properties that front along Shelburne road and parts of Colchester Avenue as well. I think. So the last piece here, I'll just quickly preview. There's a slide that shows if you skip ahead, one more, Scott. A couple, this just looks at the city more at, at a holistic level. Ultimately, our goal is for our zoning districts to kind of evolve in a way that opens up new neighborhood scale opportunities across the entire city. And I think there's one more slide, Scott. One more. I apologize. There we go. This one. These are a couple diagrams that just start to preview things that we're going to be talking about in our joint committee. We'll be talking about things like how big a lot needs to be in order to have a home on it. How much of the lot is allowed to be filled upon with either buildings or paved areas like for parking. We'll be talking about standards that could guide the kind of overall size and height of new buildings. And we'll also be looking into some specific ways that we can help support not mandate, but help support new home ownership opportunities. This is something that we've also heard a lot about as we've been having these conversations. So what the kind of third column here is illustrating is just different ways that people might be able to split a lot to create two lots for two homes. And trying to address some of the specific limitations in our zoning laws that are precluding that from happening today. I think then on the final slide, Scott. There are a lot of different things that we're doing to help make sure that the standards that the planning commission and council will be talking about kind of fit the context of Burlington. We've been exploring, you know, the existing patterns, you know, what's built in different neighborhoods, how bigger lots, how bigger buildings to make sure that the recommendations that we're offering are going to help be complementary to what exists in those neighborhoods. And we're also thinking about this from the perspective of what would be inside those buildings. While we may be less concerned about how many individual units are inside buildings, we are really interested in making sure that these standards would allow buildings to be built that could have, you know, one two bedroom unit so that we can talk about family sized units and really have a diversity of housing types that could be allowed across the city. So this is just kind of an over a quick overview of what the committee is going to be talking about in terms of the neighborhood code and potential changes to the zoning. We're going to be having five meetings this fall. The meeting dates are all listed here on the left. Our next meeting is in two weeks. We'll be talking much more specifically about these proposed zoning changes that I previewed. So definitely invite you to tune in. We'll be doing those meeting both in person and on zoom. If you're able to join us and listen to the conversation and share your feedback about these ideas. With us and with the planning commission. We'll also be working in collaboration with ARP. We're going to have a couple informal coffee hours over the next several months. You can come and chat with us about this, ask questions, share your ideas, and we'll be at all the rest of the NPA meetings as well this month if you want to tune into any of those as well. So happy to answer any questions that you might have tonight. And Andy, if there's anything else, do you want to add? Not a whole lot. Thanks for that. Megan, I think you did a great job introducing this. You know, for me as a planning commissioner, I think this is a really exciting project that we're taking on the city has evolved just continuously from the very beginning. So, you know, for the past 200 years, it's never been the same no matter what it continues to evolve. And, you know, for the first 100, almost 150 years, it was created without any zoning up until what was it in the 1940s was the first zoning that really came into play. So some of the zoning codes are how old? Well, the zoning codes that we have now go back to the 1940s, but it wasn't really until like the 1920s or 30s or something that cities were even doing much zoning. I mean, there were other things they were doing before that, but it wasn't until like there was a Supreme Court case back, back in I think the 20s or 30s, it said municipalities can do zoning without taking people's property rights away from them. And lots of places, including Burlington did. So the foundation of Burlington was all created prior to to any zoning and it's gone through a number of iterations since then and has brought us to where we are today. And every time we sit down and look at doing a significant kind of zoning like what we're doing now, you really want to think of why are you doing this? What's the goal? What are you trying to achieve? And over the years, there's been different reasons why it's been done. I think probably in the 1940s when they did it, it was, oh my goodness, things are out of control and we're allowed to do this. So let's create zoning so we have more control over it. There were times where one of the main goals of zoning was to separate out the uses. Like you have your neighborhoods, you have your downtime, you have commercial, you have this and everything was separated. And then there came a time when, no, let's combine some of this stuff together. And we've done some of that already in some different areas. Housing has always been a big issue obviously because housing is one of the main draws for the people that live here. But the need for housing, the purpose for housing, the goals of housing have evolved tremendously over the years. There was a time when what you thought of for housing was large families. And then there was a time after World War II when people were coming back and they were resettling and growing and the families. The whole housing concept has just evolved tremendously. So up until I'd say really up until what this project is, is it's really been incremental trying to say, okay, we really like what we have and let's not mess that up. So let's take incremental changes. I think what we're trying to do now is saying things have really shifted a lot. The needs have shifted a lot. But we still really like what we have and we don't want to mess that up, but we want to provide more opportunity and to provide more options and more, more abilities for people to stay, to live here, to enjoy, to let the city continue to evolve and not be tied in with the way things so much were maybe 150 years ago, but look towards the next, towards the future in trying to plan this out. So I really appreciate that. I had my own experiences with that type of thinking. I like to say hello to Camp Hall, our city council, right there. Say hello. You have any questions? Well, I've been through this. Anybody else has any questions for Megan and. Any questions or comments, you know, any, any, any of your thoughts and what we've been talking about experiences, experiences. I have a question. Charlie. Who do we have Scott. Okay. Go ahead Nancy. Thank you for that. I agree. This was a great presentation. Thanks for, thanks for coming tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Is there a timeline for when. We would start implementing this or seeing. Development using the new standards. You. Well, the time, the committees are working now. We have meeting scheduled through the end of this year. I imagine it's likely to go into next year as well. But it's all open. So we invite anyone to join us either by zoom or in person. And we really, you know, are open to hearing people's comments. But then once our work is done, we hand it off to the city council. And then the city council will go through it and. Do whatever magic they do to it. And then once that our plan is January. So to have something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's the goal is to, is to move this along. And then once it's done. A couple of things about zoning changes. Even once zoning changes are put in place. Things. Take a while to change. Things take a while to evolve. You won't. I doubt that you would see lots and lots of construction, lots of work, lots of lots of anything, you know, very quickly. It takes time. And especially on the housing types that we're talking about where. A lot of these are just in our neighborhoods. And so people don't move that fast to change their own home around. So that's going to take time. And then the other, the other piece on zoning that. I was talking about before is it's constantly changing anyhow. It's constantly changing. It's constantly changing. So even once this work is done, it's not like. It's done and it never gets changed again. It will continue to evolve as we see things that can be done to improve it. As we see things that might need adjustment. That will continue to happen over time. Yeah. And the only other thing, I think that's a great question, Nancy. The, the one thing I'll add is one recent experience we've had. That's similar to the neighborhood code. We've seen a lot of different neighborhoods that have added more homes and backyards through the changes that we made to the laws. And we've seen about 10% of the new homes that have been. Permitted to be built our ADUs. So. As Andy noted, you know, things can take time to. To change. And we're starting to see that that's representing a pretty good fraction, though, of the new homes that are being created. Again, with the idea that we're helping to add different types of homes in different places as well. Great. Thank you. Thank you. I had a question. Who do we have? Scott. Dale. Okay. Thanks. And thank you for this presentation. So I actually, I raised my hand to ask the same question that Nancy asked about what the new homes are being built. And I look forward to joining in some of those. Meetings that are up on the slide right now to say more about this, but I just really hope that this whole process. Bears in mind the importance of. Facilitating people getting where they want to go without driving. And so allowing. Greater population density, both to support walking and biking and to support use of public transit. And changing the zoning code will help with that. And I just hope that I expect that you're already keeping that in mind, but I just wanted to say it out loud. Great. Thank you. Yes. Definitely. Anybody in the room? We had Christina still, right? Scott. You had a question over here. Yeah. Christina was there first. Is she still online? Oh, okay. So anybody in the room that would like to have a comment or question. Would you introduce yourself, please? Yeah. Thank you. Yes, definitely. Anybody in the room that we had Christina still, right? Yeah. Yeah. So my question was. This plan that is being. Worked on. Of course there's meetings coming up and I guess. You guys will get information from the owners of the homes and all that kind of stuff. But while that is being done, I suspect it will be the consent of the owner of that. Property to allow something to be built on their property. I suspect. Great. Yeah. I think that's what Andy was saying. So the work that we're doing is about making sure that the laws allow that, you know, what do the laws allow to be built? And how do we make sure that they allow more. Different types of homes to be created. But ultimately, yes, it'll be up to the people who own the properties that will decide, you know, if they want to pursue those changes. Okay. Cause what I've seen was a first time that I've moved out of here was. Also living at a house where there was another house right next to them. I don't know where we're right here. And I almost was wondering who decided to make these houses so close to each other. Where your room could see the next person's bedroom. And then the other person's bedroom on this side. Wouldn't that create some kind of a. Situation problem down the line. We're having multiple units so close to each other. In the such. Area. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a good question about kind of how and why. Our residential neighborhoods were built the way they were. And I think as Andy was saying, a lot of the neighborhoods in the city were built really close to each other. Houses were built really close to each other. And that was actually how a lot of historic parts of the United States in general, including Burlington, but a lot of cities were built that way. There was, you know, then kind of a trend towards building, buildings much further apart. And having big yards. And now I think kind of to the point that you heard from Dale just before. Recognizing the opportunity for more homes to be a little bit closer to each other actually can help people with having better opportunities to get around the city without needing a car. I see you're here from GMT. You know, making sure that there are enough homes close to where people can access a bus stop. And really have different choices about how much land they need, how big their home needs to be, and how close they may want to live to other people. So I just want to top this off with one of the issues that I've heard a lot of time is. Even though city wants to have more units available to residents is that these units are being either rented away to non-residents. And so. What if there are more units. Not necessarily available to folks that live here. And rather that the renters or the owners of these homes or future homeowners end up. Renting to somebody who's here for like temporary purpose. And I'm nothing to take it from you, the students, but. That's what I hear a lot. So I was wondering what your thoughts are on that. I'll start. Okay. All right. You know, a lot, a lot of what we're doing here is city wide, you know, for the, if you're talking about student housing, that's, that's all going to be much closer to the campuses. And the city has also been working with the university and Champlain college for them to have more of their own housing. And I think that's, you know, the city has also been working with the university and Champlain college for them to have more of their own housing that frees up neighborhood housing. But what we're talking about really is city wide and not focused on. Just near the universities. And would this be available to sort of take the oxygen from the room. But there's a lot of homelessness going on here chronic homelessness. Would that be a, some kind of like a discount available to homeless folks, like a. Loving composing available to all these units. That's what the zoning is doing is really creating opportunities. It's, it's like enabling legislation. It's creating the ability for people who. For property owners for developers, whoever to be able to do a wider variety of things on their own property. And, but it's not mandating how anybody has to do anything. Or requires that. Really requires that you do anything. There are some like inclusionary zoning, some tools that we have that help with some of this, but really it's. Because it's private land is up to the property owners to decide how they want to best use their own land. And I don't know if you have. I have a comment about that. Yeah. Many of the AD use, do you keep track in any way? What they are being used for? Are they used for the families? Or the. Owners or are they becoming businesses? Like short-term rentals. We know that there's a mix of both of the ones that have been created in the city. And one of the things that the planning commission and the city council both worked on. Was getting a new policy in place to regulate the use of homes for short-term rental purposes. And so the ability for people to have a short-term rental on their property has become much more limited. It has to be a property where they live. So I think kind of to your point too, Romeo, about who might live in new buildings. That's certainly an important rule that we have in place that's going to. We'll have an effect on helping make sure that. Of these new homes that are being built, fewer of them are being used for as you come to business purpose. And making sure that they're more likely to be available to people who are living here that need housing. Yeah. I had a question. To be so kind and introduce yourself. I'm Bob White. I live. At the very edge of Ward six, which was the way that way. Ward eight right now. Yeah. So. One problem I have with this, that I think the zoning might be able to address is we have a, we want to give renter rights, right? We have. So they can't be thrown out of their properties. But on the other hand, we're trying to build housing. Where people are inviting people into their own homes to share their homes with those people. So that seems to be a, an internal conflict. And that's, I think why a lot of ADUs don't go is. The term external retelling. Because the people that are. Want to have control over their own property. Right. And there are some situations where we have nonprofits in Burlington. That match up the elderly and young people to live together. And those nonprofits can manage that situation. So if there is a conflict, they can help resolve that conflict and not have it go to court. What do you say to that? Do you want to answer? I'll start. I'm trying not to just jump onto the microphone. I'm trying to share with Andy. And then you could. Correct what I say. You know, a lot of what you're talking about actually, I think goes to the. To the, to the housing codes. To the way that it's not the. The zoning is really the infrastructure. The infrastructure. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the zoning is really the infrastructure. It's, it's what allows different kinds of structures, different kinds of uses, different kinds of things to be, but the behaviors that. That I think you're talking about are things that, that are done like through the housing codes, through different city ordinances. And so. While they're certainly. Interrelated. The zoning doesn't really get to that other things get to that. And that's more of the city council purview than it is. Like on the planning. The zoning side of it. And even the voters purview, I know that this issue that you're talking about. With something that was on a ballot recently at, at a town meeting day. So. I think one of the really important things to note, and just to reiterate from what Andy said, is that when we're talking about the rules for what can be built, we're really talking about, you know, we're building the rules for what can be built. And that's what we're talking about. And the zoning doesn't regulate if it has to be an owner that lives there or a renter and doesn't regulate the dynamics of the relationship between a. Person who owns a property and a person that they might invite to live with them. Those are really other parts of the city code. So one of the things that we actually talked about at our first meeting with the joint committee last night was that there are a lot of related issues to the work that we're trying to do with the new home. So we're trying to make a list of those topics. And hope that we'll be able to work through this process. Not necessarily to answer or to address all those problems directly in the zoning. Not just the kind of issues that you brought up, but like, how do you actually put the money together to build a new home? You know, that's very expensive. Things like how do you navigate the landscape of all the building codes and fire codes to figure out like how you actually make a new home available. And how do you address all those problems directly in the zoning, but to try to make some more information available to people about what it would mean if they were to pursue something that comes out of it. Go ahead. Introduce yourself please. Yes. My name is Stay Baker. I live with Bob. I didn't assume that. Is the Airbnb option part of this at all? We're in zoning at all. Or where are the rules governing Airbnb? You mean short term rental? Yeah. I'm sorry. She worked with us on this. We made sure to correct yourself all the time. The rules about short term rentals are actually in a part of the city's code of ordinances that are that regulate housing. As Andy had mentioned, before, so they're not directly within our zoning laws. They're within the part of the code that deals with rental permits. Yeah. Well, anybody else. I would like to address PJ because when you put up. The pages. I saw all these beautiful designs of buildings, but no trees. Right. She thinking about PJ and Scott, would you be willing to like flip backwards a little bit? In my slides to. Yeah. The evidence is right there. No trees. No, no. The first part. Keep going just a little bit. Concept is the size. This is exactly what I was going to get. I thought this question might come up. Based on the fact that PJ talked to us about trees. If you would go up just a little bit more, one more, maybe two more. The point is that one of the things that we're looking at as we think about proposing changes to things like how big does a lot need to be in order for you to put a home on it, or how much of your lot can be covered by buildings and other features. We are done with that. We're going to be proposing some changes to what can be built. We're certainly not envisioning that in neighborhoods like this, kind of low density zoning areas of the city, that the changes would be so dramatic that you wouldn't have lots left. You know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, if you were to imagine that you wouldn't have lots left yards left. They could be smaller. But certainly still. You know, the right amount of space to help you. Help DJ with his free canopy goals. So. I have a question for you. So in two parts, one. Who's going to put the bill for building this one, is it going to be the owner of the property, or is the city going to chime in a little bit. to be alleviating the cost of living citywide, having these new properties built in the same lot. Because if you look at it, even if that is built, it would be up to the owner of the house to rent whoever they want to rent to, but the same cause they're renting it to the existing units they already have. Would that make any difference? Good question, both are really good questions. So to the first question, yes, it'll be up to the property owners who would decide if they're going to build new homes using these new rules. And yeah, they would foot the bill for that. We do know though that in order to, in some cases just make it feasible for people to build new homes, given the cost of construction, which is really high right now, or to make homes affordable, like permanently affordable, that there are lots of resources needed, financial resources that are needed to help support the cost that individual property owners would undertake. So there are programs that are new, that have been developed at the state level through an organization called the Vermont Housing Finance Agency that are really geared towards helping provide some money to people who are creating new homes so that they can be affordable. We have definitely been talking about whether there's a role for the city to explore applying for grants or other programs where we might be able to help kind of build on the work that they're doing, because we know it's a really big challenge. And then in terms of your question about, will this help with cost of living? That's a kind of bigger picture issue that we think that this yes will help us with. I think one of the basic reasons why housing costs a lot in Burlington is because we do not have enough of it. And so there's a lot of people competing for the little that's available, which drives up the prices. So between this work and other zoning work that we've been doing to try to help people create more homes, we know that having more homes available will help to start to mitigate some of the cost. That does not mean that every brand new home that's built will be inexpensive, but it will start to help kind of across the whole city to help level out those prices. Well, I would like to thank everybody that came here today, specifically our two presenters. Well, we had actually three. So thank you very much. And I would like to say a specific thank you to Champlain College and Nick Anderson, who put this all together. I've been to several of these meetings and none of them was as compact as this one. And so effective because everybody was able to speak and even people online had the opportunity to look at us. So I really would like to thank you again, Nick. And we will stay here. Actually, before I use everyone, if I could just add to your agenda. This is Charlie. So this is a new room for us. So how did everyone find the room and how did parking work? The door over here is locked. We couldn't get in. Okay, it's in that place, don't it? Mm-hmm. We got the tour. Okay, I was referring to you, Nick. So let's take some of it away. Okay. Get the light fix in the back. Oh, gosh. Any other items that we notice on the building that we might have to point out for the next meeting? But I'm just thrilled. It is a wonderful place. Thank you again, Nick. So everyone, parking is okay. Walking here was okay and everything, everything was okay. Fantastic. Thank you again. Thank you very much. And we have this wonderful young person interested in this. I wish I could have had you.