 planning commission recording in progress actually planning commission and zoning board joint workshop session tonight filtered within the planning commission boundaries here before we roll forward I'd like to just request the planning commission approve an amendment to the minutes by striking item 4 which is approval of minutes from February 8th I'd like to move those to the next regular planning commission meeting motion or suggestion I guess since in the way we've been doing this I'll make that a motion I'll second it the motion to remove the play the minutes of February 8th for the planning commission members all those in favor hi hi hi hi okay and just for the record our alternate commissioner Paula is a voting member tonight it appears it was and where are we miss we're missing I don't see Daniel Daniel okay 60 60 who is he was supposed to be here so if he shows up if he shows up probably will in a voting situation you'll be backed up but this is a workshop so you'll be able to participate okay so motion carries we got seven seven seven three and four seven zero do we have Daniel no we have Trevor Josh good yeah all those in favor we did that already okay so item four is removed from the motion the minutes next item is public comment is anyone want to offer our comments of the planning commission or ZBA tonight since you're here for any item that's not on the agenda see no hands I'm not in the meeting tonight so I'm looking for you guys to my monitor the online because I didn't get to it no I'm not in the meeting electronic I normally watch for hands and stuff online at the same time okay hearing none like to move on and for this workshop which would be for the planning commission and the ZBA members to discuss our transition that's coming up like to ask Catherine to manage this workshop from start to finish right try to wrangle us in all right I thought it might be good to start out with introductions I don't know if we all know each other so I can start I'm I think everyone knows me but captain Sonic I'm a community development I'm Paula Duke I'm an alternate and on the point of commission I'm Georgia Levine and I'm fairly new to the planning commission and one feels new I'm John Schumacher everybody knows me as shoe and I'm on the planning mission I'm Dustin Burso I'm on the planning commission meant for ever ever I'm Nick Martin I'm with the ZBA I'm Huey Norton I've been on this I'm on the zoning board I've been here forever sharing Kelly's only administrator I kept Johnson the town planner and I haven't been on the planning commission very long but I've been attending the meetings for almost 10 years we have a few guys a couple guys online yep three actually Joshua Knox vice chair planning about guess 11 years now I'm John Mangan on the planning commission I believe five years I've kind of lost track and Trevor yes I'm on both the planning and zoning boards and for about for about a year yes Kate can you hear me so tonight is sort of a I'd say kickoff meeting to talk about the transitioning and no final landing point of having a DRB which is going to be happening by January 1st of 2025 and I've been doing some research just trying to figure out how how to make the transition what we kind of want our ending product to be a few weeks ago Dustin and Nick and Sharon and I met together just do some initial brainstorming with both boards and staff just to think about what we're gonna do and this is where that the idea came for having this joint meeting my just tell you or by hope the outcome of this meeting would be that we're you don't have to have you know everything ironed out but we have at least an idea of the direction we're headed and be able to present this to the select board sooner rather than later and the thought is just to make sure they're on the same page that we're we're all on so if we wait to do that say until July then we've done planning that they might not agree with then the different sense of like the earlier the better I think arch 18th is the best suckboard meeting to do that or been the suggested but hopefully we can have a super productive meeting tonight and have a good idea of where we're heading. Alright so there's there was some material that I provided for you all really without much explanation but the I did some research to look at what state statute says about what a planning commission is what a DRB is looked at did a survey of different towns and to see how many DRB members how many PC members and then how many meetings that they have per month and then with some particularly looking at that there's overlap between the two different boards you know kind of runs the the gamut in you know between once and month twice a month that kind of thing I would say for DRB members it's between five and seven with one or two alternates you see mostly seven but it also there's a high of nine for Danville and Heinsberg. Holchester has a youth member on both boards which is kind of interesting I don't think there's any statute that supports that but and they could be more of a sort of an advisory member like if we chose to do something like that and there does not seem to be a whole lot of overlap between the boards or you know having a member on both boards and my thought on that is that it's just a big time commitment to be on both boards more than that you know I didn't see anywhere where town said you can't be on both there might be towns that do have that but I didn't see that so also I included rules of procedure for Charlotte for both their DRB and their planning Commission and I thought those were well written and they're really based on some examples that VLCT has provided they they most well I guess Essex Junction most recently made the switch to a DRB and then Charlotte did in 2021 I believe so pretty recent for them I spoke both with staff in both of those towns just to get some idea from them if they had any advice any thoughts any words of wisdom and they did you know actually Sharon was with me when we spoke to Regina Mahoney here in the city and looks like Daniel is here now which is fine we're not doing any voting anyway so so I would say sort of their their words of wisdom mostly would be that they thought it was a really good idea to have some PC members beyond the DRB and it doesn't mean necessarily that the current PC member has to be on both boards but to at least be to carry over onto the DRB and have some zoning board members stay on the zoning board but you know they could they could go to the other board too but also I think in what do you mean stay re-eliminating the zoning board I'm sorry stay stay in there go to the DRB but like in their same sort of the same sort of DRB would do so I'm sorry that was wearing the same outfit they're just right continue their term well yeah so yeah I'll get to some suggestions like some recommendations of how to what I would say might be a good way to make our transition but in charlotte the planner there did say that he really liked having a member be on both boards so that one person could would be on the planning commission and the DRB thought it was really good for communication good for you know I'm you know even sharing expertise and things that they're they're doing and learning and so I know we have some differing opinions about that and just sharing what I've heard essentially currently we have treffer who's and we do we already have someone volunteered their time so thank you pepper good point one of the things in s6 junction they said is that there there are a lot of new members on the DRB and so they've and I think they've kind of had a little bit of a looser way that they do business in the past on the PC even so they thought it would be there they saw it important having us like a script of here's how we run our meetings making sure that everyone understands how the meetings are run both the DRB members but also the public also when I was in Jericho the DRB always had interested persons sort of scripts that the chair ran through at the beginning just to kind of lay out here's how the meeting runs here's who's it just who this is who an interested person is so but that that was something that worked well for Jericho also as extension yeah I think I think that was most of it so I have a little PowerPoint presentation that I thought would be hopefully helpful in helping us just kind of jump off and start quick question Catherine yeah in the in the VLCT document this you sent us there's a note that says DRBs are authorized to have alternates planning commissions are not right I did somebody get an alternate one of the one yeah I think Willis Stem has an alternate they should have an alternate just thought that was a little odd it's not the chart yeah so currently our planning commission can have an alternate because the it's a quasi-judicial function or part of what you do when you commission this quasi-judicial when that role goes away for the planning commission then the planning commission is not allowed to have an alter the DRB can have oh I'm sorry the planning the new planning commission okay okay yes because they're not making judgments there right planning right making recommendations right so here is well also adopting regulations and stuff too but they're not they're not acting well here's a little just a summary of how how it works or can work so we have our legislative body which is the select board and then we have an administrative side in particular where we're talking about here with administering zoning regulation is the zoning administrator so that would be Sharon in this case where she's doing zoning permits and answering questions of making decisions about statute allows a zoning administrator certain and level or staff really certain level of ability to make decisions but then we also have a legislative side which is the planning commission and that is really you know back to what I was just saying so you're the planning commission works on zoning amendments works on the town plan can work on the capital plan any sort of long-range or short-range plan then you have the quasi-judicial side better that time hopefully it's the last time I have to say that so you have two models and the current one that we have is on the right on the screen so that's the zoning board of adjustment and a planning commission so the planning commission currently does site plan and subdivision review beauty review and the zoning board of adjustment does conditional uses variances appeals unspecified use so what happens if you have a DRB is that the planning commission and the zoning board go away in this case the development review does all all of that developer review that was done by two boards and so that makes sense that's and so we cannot have a DRB and a zoning board at the same time either so when the development review the board DRB comes into being the zoning board disappears that's a requirement state statute okay so here are some of the issues or the issues that that we thought of that we need to to focus on so we need to determine the membership of the boards that's a question up front first of all the charter amendments have been all approved and so on we're good to go with that yes okay secondly in the charter was there mention about numbers of members for each board or not I don't I don't think so only I think it was only what other communities had that's a good question you be but I don't think I don't think it had numbers okay yes yeah that that would be we'd be locked in well yeah that gets that I was curious anyway yep yeah I'll look into that so we also need to think about wait a minute didn't this wasn't there something in there someone about option nine maybe maybe well that's that's that's we've got language with state statute says you can have this to this a range right so you know I had mentioned that my discussion with s-extinction and charlotte about this institutional knowledge and expertise and so especially at the beginning when you have a new board like the DRB being formed really recommended it was recommended to make sure that there's people on the DRB that have experience doing development review and then also experience understanding the zoning regulations so which would mean let's say having at least a planning commissioner make the switch over to the DRB at least one you know hopefully the ZBA having some members doing on either board and the regional planning commission had the suggestion of trying to have some overlap so not a large number having one one member maybe be on both boards you could have a DRB member who's an alternate be on the planning commission maybe so there either is overlap or full membership either way I see an issue of potentially just the time commitment of if you're going to be on both boards that's that's just more meetings for somebody might be too much we've got the same number of staff right and that's my next okay and I was just my point on having somebody sit on the board planning commission member it's easy to make rules but then when you have to apply them it's sometimes not what you expected when you created such a regulation that experience be able to bring that the DRB so number of meetings a month that is I think a big issue with staffing and that that is at some a thing I heard also from the other towns so you know right now the three of us are here at this planning commission meeting Sharon does the zoning board but the zoning board doesn't meet very no and so if we say we're to have two planning commission meetings a month like we currently do except really now one is planning and one is development review that's that's a lot of meetings for I would say especially Kent as he would he would be the main person doing the development review board application so given the volume that we currently are putting through I mean is there at least I'm I'm envisioning this is be a recommendation to the select board but it doesn't have to be the final recommendation it doesn't have to be the final vision it could be a phased approach yeah you know to minimize the disruption all the way around you know we could almost suggest one meeting for deep for planning one meeting for development review for month for month kind of the way it's working basically the way to I mean you guys aren't doing frequent meetings right now right now no and if you're gonna be looking at the same things if everybody's gonna be looking at the one point batch of stuff maybe for the initial rollout we don't change the cadence staff won't be affected realistically it won't be drastically affected your focus will be different but do are you yeah I'm just rambling she's she's running the meeting so um last my train of thought oh what about the planning committee the new planning commission do those in other towns tend to meet twice a month or did they tend to meet once a month yeah it varies per town if I may I'm sorry I was late in a long zoom had to take care of the child but some about monthly meetings and stuff if I understand it you know with it being with the planning commission being converted to a long-term process I would agree that probably once a month would be enough for that planning commission to make consistent progress and if more meetings are necessary that could be determined right but you know with the DRB I think the DRB ought to have ought to still have two a month and I know that's just pushing more meetings and more time but I also the month of the understanding that there's just a lot more work on the DRB at a consistent pace right and so if you keep it at two meetings a month maybe they're shorter meetings and folks that are trying to get development done can do so without waiting such such lengths in between might be a need to increase to two I've spoken a little bit with Greg about you know maybe there comes a point where we need another staff member where that person is just doing development review that's true in other town so like Williston South Burlington definitely Burlington Chester so something to think about I would hope that that the select board considers if anything rather than going to two immediately do a trial for one year just allow us or even six months or something yeah right but yeah six months is a blink of the eye yeah the statutory requirements of how it has to get the application in when you have to warn it when there's a lot of other things behind the scenes that is involved and I think right now if staff isn't changing I think one in one and I support your right it goes in spurts even though our applications have not been you know a lot a lot of them they've been complicated and they've taken a lot of time staff time so I fear that a six month period might be a bit too short because winter time it dies off completely summer time is when they get ramped up and we hit we have higher numbers about the kindness first if you always if you had more than you can handle in one meeting you can always continue the meeting to another day which would have a good time in place you'll have to have the staff reports and stuff ready for the meeting so you know what I'm saying is okay say you have five applications and and they're all warned to be at the same time same day you get through three of them you got two left okay so you continue the meeting to a time in place so all of the paperwork has been there okay so you just continue in the meeting to as is allowed a time in place so you know it might be the next day it might be a week away but so you could handle an overload that way and meetings could be a little bit longer for the year to be well that we see sometimes dusty you can attest I mean we've had meetings 10 30 11 30 midnight but I guess I'm still not following a little bit to be no I'm right on with them because when we get to a meeting the paperwork is done the time it shows up in the day what you're talking about is is what we have in it on an agenda it could be 10 it could be 10 applications if we get through five we can continue that meeting and set a schedule another meeting continue the public hearing continue the public hearing to the next day to the next week I think the point the point if I may that would that I suggested originally is that part of our recommendation to the select board to begin with is is manage is do a phase one phased approach to this and I like the idea of doing a year maintaining one per month with the understanding that if the workload ramps up we either do special meetings or we change the cadence but we've been managing one planning and one development review for more than a year and it's been pretty effective so I don't think that the other thing is that nothing's broken we're not trying to fix something that's broken so we're just trying to adapt to the new structure that is that we have to which is the the planning in DRB zoning is not broken planning is not broken planning review isn't broken we just have to change the way we're doing it there's so minimizing the disruption is not necessarily in my mind a bad approach initially until we get a better understanding of what this means because we don't know what we don't know yet I mean that literally comes out we don't know it yet don't quote him I wanted to follow up with QB's comment on so if we put starts with an R if we put six items on the agenda to come to a meeting that means we have to have the work done we might not get to it that night the board members might not get to it that night but staff has to have all those agenda items paired and that's what we're saying is and right now we kind of control that and it's been going towards our favor because they haven't been fast and furious but if somebody met a deadline and we have six huge six pine wood eyes for example we're not going to have time to put them all on the same agenda I don't think anybody but I don't think we're saying that I think we're all batting around the same and that's what I that's what I wanted to clarify with you because I thought that he was saying put them on and if you have to continue them but we can't put them on I think it also could depend on what the applications are to you know right if you've got like a real of simple right conditional use right or consent right then then it's easier to put more on right but I have a couple of questions I can have a bit who's that that's good staff I'll I'll sign in that that's the problem with these one question if we have a meeting with like six on the packet on the on the agenda and we only get through three and we continue the meeting how does that impact like quorum like do we hold the quorum through that entire period because if we're continuing the meeting does any communication outside of that meeting also fall within the rules of public disclosure you know so that's that's one question and kind of reflection yeah but when we don't often continue meetings right you know so it's I don't know I like yeah we have that like kind of what I has continued right now okay okay that also goes in spurts yeah yeah but we usually reschedule that to a regular when we have seen you it goes in so I mean don't we get caught in having to warn things yeah if it's continued it's already been warned even though the dates changing you continue it to another date date certain you don't close the public hearing once you close the public hearing you have to rewarn and reabot oh okay and we do notify the butters of the continued date anyhow but that's the difference all right daniel did you have more yeah I'm sorry I had a second question and it was more directed towards I'm sorry let me see if I can remember off the top of my head now it was oh when you have too much like I'm sorry I can't remember your name and it's hard to see on the screen Sharon yeah sorry Sharon uh when when you have too much work to do to put on to a single agenda as you are as you were talking about like what happens you just make some of the applicants wait until the next month is that the current process have meeting dates and deadlines where they have to get it in by a certain date in order to get on that meeting and if they get it in on that date but it's not complete they're missing items they may not get on that meeting it depends on how fast they can turn that around to get to us right now so hypothetically let's go with your example from earlier if we had 10 applications go through and all of them met the deadline and they had their stuff in order would you be obliged to put all 10 on the agenda um no I think that I think that we I don't currently we don't do that sometimes yeah we've had we put people off to the next meeting you can only do what unless you want us to work to like you know 10 o'clock we're going sideways on this a little bit though so let's let's look at a realistic number if we have from the planning commission perspective the most we ever have had in the last few years is five I don't think we've I don't think I've seen more than five applications and of those five some of them are pretty easy right like sketch can you imagine if that's the case then what's the concern about uh doing too much work on any given agenda if if we're wanting to load it up right like I was confused about that rebuttal that Sharon was providing earlier just didn't make sense if the work has to be done and you need to put it on the agenda why don't we just continue doing it the way we've been doing it and I think that we were that we were getting we're drifting away from is do we have enough staff and resources to do more than the two meetings the month that we're essentially doing now and moving it to three meetings a month or more because the the planning commission and the DRB are going to have separate schedules so the the suggestion I'd offered originally was just to to keep it at one planning and one DRB a month to see if that works and see what's needed because it we may not need more than that but we may in which case as you be said if we get to a meeting of a DRB review and the meeting is stacked and we can't get through anything we can schedule another session to finish it yeah and that's within the realm of we could do that today if we wanted to I mean we can do it every time we do it continue and if that situation persisted then you can go back and and readjust the schedule say hey I guess what maybe we need to have two DRBs a month you know well I don't think there's going to be any rule that says you can't add a meeting the way we do currently we can add a meeting so if we received a whole bunch of applications in we could you know yeah as long as we do our our warnings correctly you know do our warnings and we'd also have to you know ask the members are you going to be available on this date right um so I don't know it's it's worked pretty well but again it's it's just how much can can get done and Daniel I just wanted to tell you there's also a process when an application comes in the door we turf them off to police fire public works and recreation and oftentimes if it's a winter season we're not getting those comments back quickly enough to be able to complete our report and sometimes that holds things up as well so there's a whole bunch of different variables so I would just ask that you know for that type of consideration but this is really this is all part of a recommendation we want to package anyway so we can have a couple options in it you know it could be you know it could be an initial let's do this for 12 months and then let's reevaluate or let's do it for six months and reevaluate and maybe we do it maybe reevaluate every six months for two years or something um to get a larger subset of of meetings and to understand if they work or not and staff is also not just doing drb things they're doing the planning commission so there's meetings staff is operating on both sorry I think that you know keeping it very similar to how it's being done now just with the boards or commissions separated makes a lot of sense you know and if we wanted to provide an alternative option to the select board maybe we could have like a transition period like once both the drb and the planning commission are fully staffed you know then we can have a decision about you know how those schedules can be shift right you know so either we do like a solid like let's go 12 months with with it being exactly the same and then review or we could say let's transition gradually over the following year into an alternate schedule I don't know just just suggest whatever recommendation we do we should have I think we should have a an option to to alter the cadence whether it's ad hoc because it get into a planning season planning season and planning may want to have more regular meetings if in the middle of a big town plan update or something of that stature it may make sense to just have it be a regularly scheduled event but seems like that would be it's working I don't think this has been said yet but at least for me as a staff member having fewer meetings that might go longer is much more efficient so having a meeting that's an extra hour versus another meeting that lasts an hour is so much more efficient because you don't have the extra minutes all the extra prep all the extra sort of administrative stuff that goes into a meeting so for me as a staff person just fewer meetings even if they went longer would be a much more efficient use of my time than more meetings that might be shorter or for what for what it's worth but we certainly could start with fewer meetings and just always add on more every really easy to expand them contract with Catherine and Sharon do you agree with that or bigger blocked meetings more efficient I think absolutely it's all going to depend on what's coming in the door and is it small could we have five small things sure yeah and I'd say on the planning commission side it I don't know it might be better to have shorter like to say a two hour meeting limit and then you know have twice a month yeah I think that is my experience yeah other towns yeah before you start losing them yeah I mean I think there's only so much you can do on one topic for a period of time and if you stack it with five different things and hours I think that's too long for but but I don't anticipate that we would need to do that and the planning commission also will be able to continue their meeting if could add down extra meetings yeah I mean just yeah what are the the rules of engagement for the planning commission since they're no longer a quasi judicial do they have the same requirements for warnings and so forth so only if you're doing like a town plan update or zoning regulation updates discussions and so forth can happen you have more more options yeah you just meet 48 hours for an agenda if it's a special meeting it's 24 hours to put that together so you don't have to you know you're not notifying the butters or it doesn't have to go and it warned it's there's no requirement to warn it like in a new so oh oh you weren't pointing at me um is do you have records that you can look back at for the like the past three or four years to see if there were particular times of the year that um yeah probably Sharon might be our living record yeah person I do we are there are certain times of years where are certain time of year where it's this year or you know it's it's usually around christmas time is a little slower yeah um sometimes usually summer are slower but covid years and since it's been people have been coming in and all the honey do list because they're working from home and it's it's there's a lot so it ebbs and flows and it well and it hasn't really settled yet um less i don't know that it's going to because we now have climate refugees coming so um it just it it's i just didn't know if there's some i mean it logically it you know to me it would be you know in the spring would be when you'd be getting you know a lot more going on and then you know a sort of summer is usually lighter because people are taking their vacations right and things but as i said during you know and then you could go anywhere we were you know then it was you know early fall tends to get busy as people are trying to get something done before winter you just never it depends on what we're talking about for applications too so it's different for zoning permit than you would see for subdivision when somebody's trying to plan ahead for the construction yeah right so that you might see that in the fall more because it takes a long time to go through that and they have to do act 250 after that so it's um if it's a site plan they probably don't need it at the time and so maybe that is winter spring i mean it sounds like we're all bouncing around in getting maybe into into the into the weeds more than we need to yeah i i think i think what i'm hearing is pretty good yeah the horse is not getting up again once a month for each or it's kind of what i with with the expectation that the cadence will be evaluated yeah and adjusted as needed yeah and a reevaluation after one year but during the year i think as needed no i think there's two things i would say there's there if we need to add meetings during the year they get added but then say that let's reevaluate how that's working after a year i think the next point that he made early on you can't do it you can't you can't do it too quickly you've got to give it time to really see what you're going to see the ups and downs before you can adjust you can't you shouldn't shouldn't have a knee jerk reaction to one bad event or one challenging event until we see if they're all going to be on what side of the scale they're all on right okay i didn't say it exactly like that i know but back back to our issues here so let's move on to that we're good there so we're going to need to amend the zoning regulations and this does not have to be done by the time the drb is formed it should be done i'd say be in the process from when it's when it's happening but it doesn't have to be done development applications so daniel has his hand right we have a chance uh daniel go ahead yeah which zoning regulations would need to be amended is this specifically to determine the authorities of the drb is the planning commission yeah okay will there be a previous planning commission meeting we talked about maybe try new merge the zoning and the subdivision regulations into one document so that might be a project to do at the same time i think that would be great that would eliminate some language challenges and potentially having to address the same question multiple times and referencing one document as a whole lot of user then especially since there's a primarily to be one group looking at yeah one document does that answer your question yeah no thank you very much um i i think that i what i'm hoping is that we could you know i don't know if it will happen today but um have more of an opportunity to determine where the where the you know authorities and responsibilities are distributed if that makes sense pretty clear on that yeah yeah yeah i what i was asking is um you know so yes we need to amend the zoning regulations um those amendments will determine what the planning commission can do and what the drb can do yes the the planning commission's quasi judicial role to the drb right and the any place where it mentioned the zba it becomes the drb planning commission's role doesn't change and i don't think that's planning commission's really going to be mentioned much in the zoning anymore um because they're not administering zoning regulations or they won't be anymore well they would they would enact policy around what uh what regulations would be enforced though right i mean that's the that's the zoning regulations if that's what you mean yeah yep and town plan updates and any sort of long range or short term planning projects um but they're not they would not be administering the rules any longer they're making making the rules that's right yeah okay yeah just go through yeah so i don't think that's a heavy lift i think combining the regulations is a little heavier for a left than the changing names yeah there are places i think it's conditional uses isn't it where it says the planning commission has a has a has a shot at it you know it's kind of like in they give a nod yeah okay and then it comes to the the zoning board for approval so that kind of language would disappear yeah yep so one other interesting thing here is that um talking about development applications that are in midstream so there cannot be any projects out there that don't have an approval with them so for example uh if somebody submits to the zoning board a conditional use application in november you have to hear it in december and make a decision before january 1st if you don't then it has to be resubmitted in the zoning board or staff says you're gonna have to wait until january when the drb is gonna hear it if you have an application say like pinewood i that is a multi-step application uh right now they're in the middle of plenipard liminary if you don't issue a decision on preliminary by january 1st they have to start over at sketch so it'd be just that step in the process yeah right every not the whole approval okay they could come on january 1st for final if preliminary has been a decision is so that could mean at the end of the year both boards are a little busier than normal trying to finish things up that are in midstream yeah in this year we didn't have any meetings in december right so here's a thought one sideways if we have reviews like pinewood that come before us what would you guys feel be the feasibility of sitting with us on the at the table to hear the applications to start hearing that portion of the application that you haven't necessarily heard before well you're making an assumption that that some of the zony board members are going to be on the drb no i'm just well i'm making an assumption that everybody that's currently sitting is going to have an option to be in one of the other that's we haven't even talked about that yet that would be my proposal that anybody currently on the planning or zba would have the would have the option of of being on one or the other or both in some cases but yeah i am making an assumption that that potentially somebody on the existing zba will want to be on the drb and same thing with somebody in the planning will want to be on the drb um pinewood is a multi-phase application that i i don't foresee it getting a final before of january first of next year i'm just i let's not get into details well it's not what i meant i'm saying i don't anticipate that being done so i would anticipate then coming back for final after january first of this coming year meaning the drb would hear the final um and if people that are currently we're going to hear the preliminary prior to the end of this calendar year so it would be an opportunity for anybody other than trevor who's already sitting on both to at the very least sit at the table we've invited people in before to to be to ask questions and so forth we've had members of the village when they were still the village uh pc sit sit here as guests um and participated in the discussions to further the knowledge so the voting we would not be voting members we couldn't do that but it would be an adjunct visiting you know and it should be done as well you wouldn't have to be in person yeah that's that's or even watching the video being a quasi judicial body is it appropriate for members to do preliminary um investigation or hear information before making a determination when it's in in front of them in the meeting it's a public hearing so it would nothing would be done outside of the public hearing so we would there would be no ex parte discussion it'd be a member of the public that we invited to sit at the table with us yeah if a current zba member attended um uh just as a public member just as an audience member um a member of the public a member of the public thank you um and then later on in 2025 or potentially later we would hear that in the application finalized and then be in front of the drb is there any conflict there i think there is i i think there is because to me i would i would make the analogy this is like a court system okay so you've got a ruling from this level at the plan commission on site plan review and now so the next step whoop we now we're in a drb and i was going to drb that's that's like if you if you interpose both of them together that's like having two levels of judgment rule on the same thing so i agree and i think it's like not ideal i think it's like you you what you what you do january first you tear off the bandage okay and what's done is done all right so if something's gone through a site plan review and that's been approved fine now they're on to the next step it's a different body that's hearing it it's like it's a brand new thing well if you have an application though like say like pinewood that has gotten through preliminary and then they're ready to be heard in final in february it is what it is it has to be the new board that's hearing it yeah and maybe we'd say to them hurry up get your stuff in so it can be completed in december like that would be better in my mind the evidence is going to be there i mean you're going to have the evidence of the approval and so on i think the message though if if if the assumption that some of the sitting planning commission members are going to be on the db it shoots that you're concerned all the heck because you're still going to get continuity so i'm okay with not but it's a matter of if it's a review that a level review or type of review that you haven't done this it's an opportunity to see and be aware of number one it's a it's a public forum you're not making a judicial decision on it i have no problem with the someone from the public attending the planning commission meeting but to have someone from the zoning board sit in and participate i don't think that's appropriate i don't were you talking about participating or more just being there to be more i was considering it as we had done with the village planning commissioners when we invited them to the table to be participate as as basically community at that time commissioners with no like no voting there's no voting there's no there's no weight on the discussion it was really just to to have an opportunity to see how the the applications were reviewed the the the way that the staff reports were evaluated the discussions and so forth so the there was never any question about whether or not there was any voting rights or voting ability because they weren't on the board and there was that's not a at all a question but the zba are appointed members of the board in this town and they do have a status that is not just a general you know when you're in the room you're a zba member not a not a just a member of the public well you could be at a planning commission meeting and be a member of the public be on the zba and testify for a particular application as a member of the public and i'm looking for testimony though that that's fine we'll let it roll i'm not yeah being a zba member doesn't doesn't preclude you from being a member of the public vice versa as well yeah so that's i mean that's that's that's happened before as a matter of fact i saw it happen uh with the select board uh one of the select board members came before the the zoning board uh and one of his neighbors had an application and the select board member uh you know instead i'm a member of the select board i'm not speaking for the select board i'm speaking as a member of the public and that would be the same way if we wanted to attend a as a zba member to attend the planning commission meeting so that that's the way i see it i i don't but that's okay would it be okay if when when it came time to set up the packet when there was the new zoning board if part of the packet was the video of of the previous yeah and that's just available for everybody and so if you have you know new members they can go back and watch that as a way of yeah i think that'd be probably an encouragement for them to do that so like all our all our planning meetings when um community tv isn't here um they're all on the town youtube channel anyway so they're available at the link and their their videos are available on their website they're all there i think before that's how you've agreed to have to do yeah you'd have a good reason yeah that's a good point too with that that uh if we did happen to come to a planning commission meeting and heard some of the you want to use the pinewood as an example and then that continues on to the drb is that a conflict yeah would you have to recuse ourselves because we were we were involved in the previous part of the application or the previous application we're member two that we are in a unique situation is that we are preparing for the transition to the drb so framing the education in the basically mentoring of members who may or may not move on to the drb is still a task that we need to do we can we can hit the ground running on january one um but that is going to i mean opportunity opportunity or not it's it's it's an option in my mind it doesn't provide a conflict if we identify members as such you're not you wouldn't be able to comment as far as hey i don't like this and i'm finally against this it's that would be probably come back and bite you in the butt later on there's got to be a precedent or an example from one of the other towns that transition potentially they had a similar situation so we don't want to get in trouble as a community but we also do want to learn the process of what's appropriate and taking those steps so the two towns that i talked to didn't raise that as having been a problem um i think as extension said they just weren't very busy so i don't think they had anything else caring over so the problem is where you have an application that straddles the right so there aren't a lot of other towns who have done this recently either so like it's a pretty small pool for me to talk to for questions like this maybe the question is just for regional you know or is there any is any recommendations is the recommendation are we going to have if we have the opportunity hang on daniel you're next i guess we have the opportunity for domain knowledge sharing is it putting us at risk for conflict of interest if the members who are not active planning commissioners sit in in a in a town board member as a town zba member on a planning commission meeting sit in as an invited part invited discussion participant non-voting is that going to put us at risk later on for any capacity now i'm going to shut up doesn't happen often or for very long is that a confession yes it's an acknowledgement right here daniel you wanted to talk yeah thank you um i i see the challenge with the conflict of interest i think that's why we're moving to this type of model anyway right because uh and right now the that conflict is is incumbent upon the structure that we currently have you know and so like given that we are already doing that with our current structure in transition i think that there there needs to be a clear demarcation of when that transition take place and you know whoever gets appointed to the drb is appointed to uh that board after the demarcation line right you know after the after the point where the board is is actually functioning and active uh thereby you know there that creates that distinguishes between when folks were serving on the planning commission versus when they transitioned to drb i can understand that like there may be some folks that are on the planning commission now that switch into the drb um when it becomes active um but i don't think that you know that will be an issue unless they are actively engaged in like the zba right right um i think that's where you know even in even in other situations where like you know if i went and was like uh discuss discussing things with the select board as like a in the same way that you guys are talking about i think that that does exert too much um uh too much interference i would say in other in other parties responsibilities and with the drb being established i think that trying to keep those lines as clear as possible as we make the transition would make the most sense those are my thoughts on the subject i just end with kathryn it's it is what it is i mean this hopefully they can get so maybe the other option to to try to resurrect the horse is our recommendation is that the db drb planning commission be appointed by july 1 as designated uh incumbent incumbent no not what's the what's the voted what's what's the office the office appointed but it's appointed effective as of january 1 once they once they have a designation of a dr because that's that's this comes into effect january 1 2025 drb member and waiting whatever whatever it is i don't i don't know there's got to be a term for it when you've been when you've been appointed but your office doesn't take effect to january 1 elect okay i could i could check in to that i mean i would the point being that if if if they've been appointed then there should be no conflict of of being an active listener on the planning commission meetings as they determine as they wind down through the rest of the year so that they can be aware of any applications that that complete sketch or complete preliminary because anything that is is not everything that is not in final is apt to come back there could be a complicated zba application right it could be anything from one way to the other yeah true i mean we my my simple point is that if we have an opportunity for for knowledge if we get some of these if you hit pinewood i've listened to pinewood now for almost 20 years and if you come in completely out of the out of the blue and you hear pinewood for the very first time you lose a lot of context not that it's a bad thing but you don't have a lot of knowledge to get there whereas if we have some awareness of the applications in their earlier phases it will help the d drb be more effective when they start hit the ground when the band aid gets ripped off and they have to look at something there's some awareness of what was done before another easy solution or switch from we have we have our we put ours up on the youtube channel though that we're recording tonight right so we have like either way they're recorded too much time and not not with not with it for the recommendation for the select so let's get to the real stuff maybe we should have a new category called transitional members transcendental it looks like we've got a couple hands um and then daniel how do we go with daniel first yeah i think that's just saying we can't hear sharon very well he put something in the chat as well that youtube folks can't hear sharon very well but you can if there's more you have to say by all means keep your hand raised but uh i just want to devolve what was in the chat as well um i think uh no and i was wanting to i i like the idea of having uh folks appointed prior to january first i you know for the d rb and if some of those folks are in the planning commission i think um that would help to determine how many new staff members we need to fill the planning commission if there are members that are transitioning over to the d rb my question though would be like if someone on the planning commission is appointed to the d rb would they then have to recuse themselves or no longer participate fully as a voting member on the planning commission for the rest of the year i don't think i think it was the recommendation the appointed you're not won't be active in the petition and let them know take the appointment in july i hear that right i think july is too early i agree but is that what i heard earlier yeah i think i think that was the you'll know the intention is come january you are going to be at the idea it's four meetings really well i just i'm not sure we'll be at the point yet where we can do that that that's my thought not too early to be planning it i think um yeah there's a lots of little things like i think we need to get an idea from sitting planning commission members and dear and cba members of what your preference would be right you do you want to stand the planning commission is somebody who is on the zoning board want to be on the planning commission you know just just get an idea and if does somebody want to be on both like would trevor want to continue on both i do i think i can still start i'm not sure i do hi folks um if you remember i think a meeting a ago or one before that you i suggested a bit of a transition plan and and mr chairman dusty you asked me to set that in in writing which i did and i don't see it included in the packet now it does cover a lot of what you're discussing it seems pretty simple to me i don't understand why it sounds so complicated it really doesn't need to be um and i don't i don't think it is that complicated i think we're just throwing out a lot of ideas tonight and um it's the first time that we've all sit down to talk about it together so i well that graphic representation i think would be helpful maybe i misread what you said i i didn't agree that it would necessary all of that work um now you can't have an overlap of the zba and the drb at the same time so you can't have a new board hearing applications tell the old one is done for example well the pre drb drb would need to be you'll need to have those folks appointed before january first because they need to train they need to become ready so even though they may not be constituted as the drb they are as somebody suggested the drb in waiting i mean you're going to need to do that i think because they thought i the way i read what you wrote was impossible but what you're saying is not now so i'm sorry if i misinterpreted what i suggested i mean the the key is that the slick board needs to get moving and figure out who's going to be on which advertise a point and then on gli first the pre drb drb or the drb in waiting starts preparing training and you now have a cutoff date and prior to that july first cutoff you can't really be continuing on with other projects you need to the planning commission needs to wind down what they're working on obviously and then um on january first the new drb takes over um yeah i think that's what we're all saying don't just agree the problem is you can't if we have an application that is in midstream you can't cut them off um and if somebody submits an application in september it's not fair to say you have to wait until january so you know you we can't plan on what's coming in the door and how quickly it's moving so on july first the old planning commission would no longer take development review applications would be what i suggested you can't do that until the drb is actually formed that's going to present a problem right so i think we've identified an example that we would research behind the scenes a little bit for staff um and then get back to us i i agree yeah i think we're we're simple i'm catherine where did you get the idea that the drb and the planning commission can't exist at the same time they can't commission can but the planning commissions um until the drb is formed the planning commission still reviews the development applications so when the drb comes along planning commission no longer has that capacity and then also the zoning board goes away so then they said that the planning commission will just continue those applications that it has in the pipeline and no more new no no that that can happen that you'd say it switches all the authority switches to the um drb when the drb forms so then you really really have the drb listening and being ready to take on those applications that are in midstream early all right let's let's move on is that okay i feel like i feel like we're we all have we have some differing opinions here and not just not just you can i'm saying you know in in the room as well but that was the point of tonight really so that the zba and the planning commission can start bringing these our thoughts to light exactly all right so one more issue on this slide um so rusell procedure will need to be formed so both right now the zoning board and the pc have their own i imagine they'll change a bit so it's i think there should be some work done ahead of time and looking about looking at that probably more on the staff side um but you know if we have this like sort of the the drb in waiting maybe there can be some thought put into it um but i think you know i think that's probably mostly a staff issue but probably have those actual rules of procedure be adopted at the first meeting that those boards have i'm glad you went to these other towns like i'm a firm believer in not reinventing the wheel other boards have gone through this i did a little looking i looked at westfords 10 pages long their procedures and i think that might be because they've had they had a couple issues up there if you if you headed towards fair facts okay uh so but anyway it's interesting i mean holy mackerel they covered i oh just about everything i think so it can be very complicated it can be one or two pages too so sometimes you get make things too complicated it comes burdensome but anyway westford 10 pages holy mackerel did they they have 10 clauses what's that they have 10 clauses oh i don't know so the the two bodies will vote on those at their first meeting they can they can amend them at that time as well right just want to make that clear because coming commission will have existing yeah rules but a lot of them will be able to be dropped exactly right yeah say that again you won't need most of them because or you won't need some of them because they're referring to applications right but they're still you still will have some public hearings so you know that that would still you're right i think about the same token probably operating procedures for the zoning board would be expanded in order to include those kinds of things so let me just take the two documents and meld them and then see what throw it into that bar yeah there you go okay so just this is i think some of this i feel like we've kind of flushed out a little bit already um but staff we've talked about some things and these these would be our recommendations and again i said i think we've talked about some of this but so membership um i we thought it'd be a good idea to have some membership overlap again the regional planning commission thought that was a good idea don't know if there's interest in that so i'm one member on both boards could do more but i think one would be enough that doesn't mean though that it wouldn't be recommended that some planning commissioners just go to the drb so you don't wouldn't have to necessarily stay on the planning commission so so it's different between the overlap and then the expertise of the planning commission moving over to the drb so the planning commission um is not your role the planning commission's role is changing but the planning commission itself is not having to be reformed and so recommendation would be that those who want to stand the planning commission stay continue out your terms that you have there would be new planning commission members possibly that would be coming on if some are leaving so those would the new members would need to be appointed by the select board so that would be recommendation um and then so that anybody who would be on the drb would need to be appointed by the select board so even if you're an existing zba member there would everybody who's since it's a new board there would be new um recommendation would be the select board that please keep our board members that want to stay because we need that the institutional knowledge we need the expertise need the experience and if they're not in time so maybe they're letting finish their term they don't have a drb so they don't have a term on the board yeah so i mean what i would like to do and when we're talking to the select board is just try you know if if they're not inclined to think this way let's try to plead the case if if you're all on board with it too i don't want to force it my decision suggesting that there be five members on the uh the drb with two alternate members and then seven members as currently is in so why why why five that that was the recommendation of um the regional planning commission but you know if you look at the the chart that i had there's quite a range of members like i think one nine um i don't think anyone had less than five um some had seven um and then alternate can range in numbers i'm thinking back and you know over over the years times that we've actually had seven members present and few and far between there's been there's been a few meetings in a row but for the most part you know with seven we've all we it's very awkward when there's four people voting you have to have you have to have an absolute majority so if you get down hopefully we'd have alternates forward have to vote all forward have to vote but an alternate isn't isn't necessarily a guaranteed member i mean all is the exception because you've been coming anyways so you've been here right along but well that that was just a suggestion kind of looking at what i what was recommended but i i i'm not sure i see a negative and i i can see a benefit to having two alternates but um it also makes it confusing more so than having one or yeah i i think yeah okay well you know who's going to take what meeting what month and how do you know that ahead of time and um i mean it's just i mean it's it's sort of like the uh the issue of whether i need to be available or not i just assume that there's a possibility that i could be available and not know it until the meeting so right so i prepare for i prepare for all the meetings and i right and the other side too is what if that alternate moment yeah if we don't have and don't have the two um all right daniel you did i hear you have your hand up yeah thank you um i think five members on the drb makes a lot of sense um you know for the size of sx and for the the professional or capacity with expertise um uh it can be difficult to try and maintain staffing levels or you know the the board levels for all of that and so i i i don't i don't think trying to do like seven and seven again you know maybe we could we can fill all those spaces but to dusty's point um very rare do do we get full seven uh at the planning commission and so having five having less than five i think would be difficult because you know then you're just putting more control and authority into the hands of fewer people and so i i think five is is good uh i also just think that you know having the two alternates makes a lot of sense and i don't think that has to be confusing at all you know um just put more regulations around when uh planning commission members have to respond to whether or not they'll be available and then well yeah that does happen and then you know i think that if you are willing to sign up as an alternative as an alternate then you should be available whenever that commission or board is meeting you should that that the responsibility that you're signing up for right well i i'm not saying use because if you i'm saying like in the future so there shouldn't be an issue with uh with time and capacity right you know if if you're an alternate you should be always considering that you're going to need to be at the meeting when they're held yeah i'm not i'm not you know saying you've done anything different paula um what i'm saying is like that makes it really simple right because either the alternates are available or they're not and then we just push the meeting if everyone's not available and a very functional number we've been able to we've been able to very few very very few times if we've had a meeting with six members and come to a tie and we haven't been able to come to a decision um and i think that the more more view points to a point are better than fewer um and it's whether it's five or seven the alternate i'm not as i think having an alternate is been is a benefit um it'll keep might keep us from having to call a meeting uh postpone a meeting i would i would i would vote for seven just because it it provides a greater depth knowledge at the table than five that's all seven for the drb or the both you're seeing yeah the only five no i'm sorry no i just think the only benefit i can see of having the five and the two alternates is if there is still that ethical worry about having so many on both boards maybe that could be assuaged a bit by having the planning commission member who's also on the drb internet that might be less others i don't personally think it's an ethical concern but i know some people do and i can understand that i wonder if that might feel more comfortable that's the only benefit i can see that having the alternate i think the word the word alternate would i think what daniel said it needs to be under clarified if you're an alternate in a jury you don't go home and wait to be called in you have to sit in and listen all the time you have to be there all the time that's right so so alternate is not like sitting home and if nobody shows up then you get a call you got to be there how has now the zoning board has five members yeah we've never had alternates that i'm aware of and has five been an okay sometimes well if we have all five we're fine but when when we're short people we've been down to like three sometimes then you have you know you have to have a unanimous vote do you wish you would have more like do you think seven would be a better number i i i think five is not a bad number if you can keep me we're we're functional at five yeah if you keep it that we have yeah that if you have them all there if everybody shows up when you get it but if you have if you have two alternates and you're expecting them to stay current are we going to there's going to be a stipend for them or not i mean this is where it gets dicey you're asking somebody to do to potentially two more people two alternates to attend a meeting and to be stay current with the application that's one of the the benefits of the alternate is if they're current with the applications they understand what's going on the ui's point they're they're current maybe they're not in every meeting but they're watching every meeting or they're listening the alternate should be attend in attendance as often as they are able to be there just like any other member of the board or commission yeah the only difference the only difference is that you know when they are stepping in as an alternate they vote that doesn't you know but as as an alternate that you know if the full board is there and the alternates are also there they can listen in and participate but they can't vote on things that's the that's the primary difference right well to be in to be you know aware to be aware of what is going on with the drb with ongoing applications just as you said desi right we're using the same the same arguments to sort of come at it come at two different points i think if you're going to be attending you should be a board member be a regular boarding member and it gives you a seven members means you need to have four minimum to vote you have five members you have three minimum to vote majority of the of the seat seated commissioners so three people voting on an application i gotta tell you that can be pretty dicey because if you've got if you don't have you've only got three opinions instead of five or three things to seven and you don't have as broad a decision i think we're short circling ourselves a little bit undercutting ourselves by by narrowing the field that said an alternate i don't necessarily believe that an alternate has to attend every meeting but they need to say aware and current asking two people to do that without being having true participatory rights i think is rude i mean as simple as that you're going to put the time in but you're not going to get the you know you're not going to get the essentially the acknowledge that glory you sure the glory it's a way to it's a way to participate without getting blamed for everything and you know that's well there's that so i anyways i would be curious to see if anyone's interest in being an alternate well that's that's another point is the difficulty you had in filling out the zoning board my god you know how long do we run without a full board right trying to just fill the board would be you know if if we have a hard time filling five on the zoning board how are we going to fill seven regularly you know if we fill the five then we and you know the alternates could be like buffer zones that's a that's like a hedge right you know and i i hear you about it being kind of rude but if everyone's aware of like what your role is as an alternate when you sign up for the job then there's no rudeness there right because you're willingly accepting that responsibility as it's described hey change we don't even get alternate nobody applies to be an alternate that board change the number yeah yeah of of actual drb members and still have alternates are the possibility to will the alternate continue in the pc role as it is now no pc you can't have alternates right unless you're in wilson wilson okay so meetings suggest having semi-annual joint meetings with the pc and the drb if we have some membership on that's like one person on both boards that's going to be really helpful with communication but i think if if we don't and even if we do it's a good idea to regular check-ins make sure that the drb is involved in any sort of zoning updates even planning projects i mean i think it's good for the the planning commission to know what the drb is going to be working on or what they are working on or what they're struggling with but just good good communication um and plan the meetings so not just making sure like staff is communicating back and forth which we will but um really have those meetings include them in the operating procedures so there's so it's documented that there's a make it a requirement for those meetings i think and it was even mentioned in the in the uh one of the doctor who just sent us one of the one of the concerns is that they be the two boards become disconnected and you can't if you plan in a vacuum without seeing the end result which is one of the one of the functions that the planning commission certainly currently sees as they they they see the regulations and then they try to apply them to an application and there and there is one of the main reasons for having the drb established okay is because and i've always been always been like a conundrum in my mind is that you have a legislative body that that makes the rules and then they apply the rules where else in the government does that happen but we also see where the rules are broken so we also see where things are so oh yeah no but i'm saying i'm saying that you make the rules and then when you have make a quasi judicial judicial decision decision you're applying those rules where else in our government state or federal does that work that way it doesn't okay and that's why this one of the reasons for the drb i think there are two reasons that's one of them the other one is to take the load off the planning commission so the planning commission can play that was that was one of the main drivers but i think another one was to separate that legislative aspect from the judicial aspect i'll grant you your point thank you don't see it as much i don't see it quite like that because one of the things that you have from planning when you do the planning without having the direct understanding of the application you know you don't see the unintended consequences so so i think what what kathar was just mentioning though is a method to make those unintended consequences be visible to the planning body don't disagree with that at all i think this is a good idea that's why this having the pc and and the drb you know tied together that's fine and actually whether or not it should or shouldn't is irrelevant because it's already been decided for us right so it's going to be separated so if the piece that is missing is the conduit between the two bodies or knowledge sharing let's make it let's memorialize it from the beginning yeah i have no problem with that i mean i'm saying this is right this is town local government okay it's not like when the president gives the state of the union message and all those guys and gals in their big robes sit there and show no emotion because they don't want to show any partisanship okay you know that's like it's to me it's one of those clear examples of the separation of the judiciary from the executive and the legislative branch and and and what we have in this arrangement the current arrangement is not quite like that but we're small operation you know so we can have interaction and so on so i think we declare victory move on yes i agree that's good okay staff suggestion would be that me the community development director whoever else might be at someday and the town planner be part of the pc meetings where the town planner would do kind of continue as we do today do the site plan pd subdivisions and appeals which i guess is maybe i'm not sure who does it that usually you but it's usually appeal of the zoning administrator's decision so i think it'd be better to have somebody else do it and then the zoning administrator would do consent agenda variance of conditions currently so daniel again yeah yeah i i actually had my hand raised before the prior discussion point before we moved upon but um i was just going to say you know i in terms of having clear communication between the drb and the planning commission i think that can be achieved in a variety of ways one of which could be you know reports or we were already having bi-annual meetings so maybe as a part of the procedures for those meetings we would have a readout from the drb about complications that are arising in their hearings and submit those to the planning commission for consideration upon changing those those statutes or those regulations or whatever policies are having issues right that's how communication could take place between the board and the commission without having too much fraternization between the two right you know so i i think that there are many ways that we could do that without muddying the waters and having too much too much interplay because i strongly agree that there needs to be a a clear separation between them that's a valid point too for having a planning commissioner sit on the drb um you know they can see they participate in an application and see of your regulations that they've created what's working they can send commissioners a hiccup and remember staff is going to be doing both and aware of both i think we'll be in a okay spot but i still go back to saying i don't think we're broken now even with respect to your thinking you'll be that we should have a different separation i don't think we're broken you know this isn't a question of we're trying to fix something that's broken and wrong and it's not working i think we're just we're making a change no would i agree directly um whether you whether this is functioning right now or not i would agree with you that the town of essex is functioning but i think that without having that separation between the planning commission and the drb that is a broken system that's why it's changing no i'm not daniel i i've i've been at this for a while so i don't i i and i and maybe because i've been at this for a while i don't see it it's clearly or i don't see it from with your perspective but i don't think it's a broken system and that's that's not the issue right the issue is that we are changing it's it doesn't there's no there's no we're not trying to justify it we're not trying to say why it we are changing so how do we change most effectively and this is where all the different perspectives come into play the separation the the communication that's all part of what we're just trying to map out in a in a perspective that we want to send to the select board for them to consider so i mean we can all disagree on it but it's it's it really isn't it we're not making a choice to to do this or not well yes we can all disagree on it but what we're disagreeing on is how it's going to be formed not that it should be formed and the suggestions that continue to come up on how it's going to be formed is to muddy the waters and bring people in communication between the board and the commission which doesn't work for people that's why the drb is being created so that that can be a separate responsibility so that that could be a separate power given to people in a quasi judicial position right so like like to to say we're arguing about the wrong thing here is to kind of gaslight people dusty just a little bit i apologize if i'm being too frank here but i think you're the one that's pushing the side the point by trying to ignore the issues that several people have brought up already in this meeting fair enough what i'm trying not to do is have this be a confrontational event because it's not a question of whether or not we move forward so however this this group the groups want to move things forward we move them forward i don't agree with all the reasonings that people are bringing it up but that doesn't mean you can't move forward on them so Daniel i won't push back on your opinion on that and i will just say let's move it forward realistically at the end of the day it's the select board's decision anyway we're going to be recommending a few things that we prefer we don't prefer it will be 100 up to them agreed in the process i assume would be that they would advertise and say they're going to be x number of members for the pc x number of members for the drb after january 1st you can apply or whatever so it's going to be a like a clean slate restart another another question is currently on our zoning board we have a person who is a member who is a resident of the village excuse me the city of sx junction and we've had some discussion about that and i guess uh wondering uh where that might stand there if someone from because there was some discussion i think that doctor the lawyer didn't share in that that uh it was not uh it was not not permitted to have someone who was a not a resident to be on a board sure i think state statute permits it i think as long as it's not a majority of members perhaps yeah so when some towns have said you have to be a member there could be somebody waiting in the wings that just can't wait to get out and somebody else's probably not but you know anyway so it is a state statute then oh okay when we can be more restrictive though is a town and say that we don't want anyone from outside and we've had at least two people serve on the um planning commission who were from other towns one was here originally and then moved right but stayed on the state on um and the other one is resides in the village technically businesses in the town put us home is in the village all right sorry i think we talked about the rules of procedure this would need to be done i suggest you know do some work ahead of time but suggest that it be adopted at the first meeting at least mostly discussed and then adopts adopted um that there would be some sort of meeting interested persons script for the drb um and i think regular refreshers in the process for both boards i know we do an onboarding for newborn members but maybe an annual just a little refresher about i sent you a big long email should be yeah just a regular refresher of yeah of how things are done and they'd be too separate because drb and planning are will be very different so there'll be different topics you know it's general interested persons and conflict of interest you know that kind of stuff but yeah so just i think that was one of the recommendations from the charlotte planner that that he saw that as being really important and very helpful for his board zoning amendment need to happen on the sooner side i'd say no process should be at least happening by the summer um but if we don't amend them by by january 1st that's okay um it is a busy time for this left board around then with budget season so i don't know what their available availability would be for public hearings but it's a question for them as well if they feel like they could squeeze that in let's have it ready by january 1st but not change that dramatically it would be nice to start new process it would it would but if we can't it's it's okay as far as the procedure goes from like the attorneys so then development applications again need to be wrapped up whatever phase they're in which may mean extra meetings at the end of the year may need bumping applicants until january 1st so that's clear my understanding preliminary i mine would i if it gets through preliminary go to the drb final right yes thank you everybody for the discussion i know there's some differing opinions so i don't think we necessarily have everybody on the same page to go to the select board on the 18th so maybe maybe we need some more time to think about it or maybe we have just some what broader like here's what we agree on here's where we're still kind of trying to think about and see what the select board thinks i i know it would be nice to get a feeling from them if we can is how much how much of they're looking for you know as as i said they're making the decision they're looking for just some rough ideas are they looking for a more evolved plan yes in which case you know we've gotten granular yeah as much detail as we can give them that especially if if you if we feel like well i would say as current members you know how this works better than they do i i think it's really smart to go in with as much information as much direction as you can for my understanding talking with greg that's completely acceptable and they're not looking to recreate the wheel it doesn't mean they'll agree with you on everything they're wanting direction yeah they may they may have some ideas about how many members for each board yeah already you know that but if we come in and say we really think this is the number and here's why can i ask something really quick i like theater the youth member i think that's a neat idea the ancestor did that i wonder if it's possible i mean who knows if i want to but i do think planning tends to lean a little heavily on the people who've been here a long time and getting that input would be i don't know if i like that too i think the school board has a youth member right yeah are they voting members no great kathryn could we go could we go back through your your summary again and just look into it now that we're going to ask for the same thing now that we've gone back and forth over this maybe we can go through with the idea from all of us saying a little more consensus is there is right what can we live with or what what do we feel needs to be different from what kathryn's proposing maybe we're maybe we're there i don't know if there's a proposal right these were just discussion items uh as topics to be discussed upon right by us there's there's still some um squishy information i need to provide feedback to clarify we could ask josh and and john yeah about the members what people are at the overlap and then on the meetings and those are the three problems right well josh john trevor any where we get to go twice well i um um if i was asked i i'd you know do both boards but um i just want to clarification um if we're on the planning board now um the membership of the planning board is not going to change it's it's going to just carry over with people who have the and people will go through their terms is that right need in my mind that you would start fresh on a board that isn't really changing you know some of what the planning commission does is changing but the board itself shouldn't change so well i don't see a reason to start over yeah no that's something but but but the uh the zoning board the people on the zoning board um can they just sort of naturally flow into the the new board or they're going to have to apply i'm pretty sure the slack board would have everybody apply new for the db or the drb but just as a proceed because it's a new that that's what they have people do when there's an opening on a board essentially this will have five seven ever open spaces and then whatever happens from if you have the so depending on what happens with the planning commission if there are three members of the planning commission that wanted that applied for the drb then they wouldn't know about having to refill those positions until after the fact so there would be a a sequence of events here as far as the planning commission was concerned they would have to probably would be some new potential refill the board or whatever depending on what the final what their final decision was about who goes where whatever depending on applications and so on yeah i think our recommendation in this room would be that there be preference given to existing board members who want to go on the drb whether it's the zba or pc members that they would be considered over just any and at least for the rest of their terms i would say well we get we haven't talked about terms i think there'd be should never need to be stagger terms and right so it would be well that's what i'm saying so if forever stayed on that's a zba and he would be the only one who wanted to do it would be difficult because now you're hiring for the people all the same yeah we'd have i think it'd have to be stagger terms and also appointments generally happen in july 1st not january 1st so we've got that like half a year to consider sorry for you yeah no i was trying to jump in my bed um but no i was just saying it would i think it would have to be a new term entirely if you're on the zba that will no longer exist right absolutely when you go into the drb you're not finishing out your term or one where you would take on the new term on the drb for whatever time is stipulated my mind my mouth said drb zba but i was really planning commission planning commission okay so anybody anybody currently on the planning commission needs to apply to be on the drb yes if they want to go to this yes i would i'm sure that's how that will be i mean you if the you all have the different suggestion that you want to bring to the blackboard but i i don't think that they would say they wouldn't understand it's a new board they you know anytime there's a vacancy on a board they don't just assume someone who's already on the board is going to stay they everyone apply so they're we're going to do that okay so we were trying to listen to those online so trevor did you have anything else no uh uh thank you okay how about josh any anything i tend to agree with the recommendations the staff recommendations as listed with the sort of caveat alongside just you that i'd like a seven-member board but i'm sensitive to the fact that we can't fill seven people then five and two alternates is probably the way to go but yeah i i like the once a month for each meet for each uh board slash commission until we otherwise decide something else is needed so yeah just i'm in alignment with the staff recommendations is what i'd say thank you and john yeah i'd say i'm not you know i don't have any passion opinion either way it's been interesting conversation for sure to listen to but you know i have no objections to what staff is recommending okay so for the most part i think do you want me to pull up so instead of me just summarizing without you looking okay so first issue is membership i think the question on that is that five members with two alternate members we've heard maybe seven with two alternate maybe one alternate seven with two seems a lot like a lot of positions to fill you could do no alternates for the time being i would agree with that i'm not really in favor of alternates i don't i i think that's problematic so if you have seven would five make a quorum four make a quorum majority of the sitting majority of the oh okay all right so that would be more likely that you wouldn't need an alternate the reason we've had an alternate we asked for an alternate with you and in prior to you is that we had a number of situations where we were actually down and we were able to have continuity we were very close to to being under four not a lot but it was enough that we needed we felt we needed an alternate yeah that was the bigger that was that that was the real drivers that we had somebody who stepped away for a year and we had an alternate that could step in and fill their role for that year so there has been there has been advantage but in my my earlier point i think is if we're going to have if we think five and two is doable then why not just seven and then just know that we might be operating you know with fewer than seven on a regular basis i would i would agree that i would i would rather see seven and no alternates rather than five and two alternates we've on the zoning board the only time we've had problems is when we haven't had a full board you know i mean we've had vacancies and nobody's applying yeah but whenever we've had a full board we usually have pretty good attendance it's rare that that you know once in a while one person might not be there but generally we have good attendance that's why i don't you know and that may be different for the drb but i don't see the the necessity for an alternate necessarily i think it just complicates things i can understand from the how you had the particular situations with the planning commission you know maybe that was uh was a need and maybe that could be written into the operating procedures that if special circumstances present an alternate could be requested or or maybe you know some towns that looks like they haven't filled their alternate positions like they're they're maybe not actively pursuing it that doesn't mean that it's not available to them you just maybe don't have to fill your alternates so you could still say seven um and then an alternate i would agree that we just eliminate alternate it's either five or seven you're a member a great you're a member so you don't have to worry about attending when you're not expecting to attend you're just knowing to attend because i'm a full voting member you know and if we if we're doing or if we if we also recommend reviewing everything in a year there's an opportunity to come back and review it with the select board if we find that we would need an alternate at that point we could always go back and ask for one true i just wanted to be able to comment not as part of the public because dusty is to make me wait so long that i forget this is fault purely so you're doing it i think maybe it's dusty you mentioned before the problem it could be if you have just you know five members but then three people could be a quorum then you end up with three people trying to make a decision the pretty small group with five members and two alternates you could have both of alternates called in with just one member but now they're trying to make a decision with three only have five you can only have five seats yeah um but you're saying that the two if you had five members and you get two alternates you could have but if the alternates weren't available i'm just saying alternates were available well then you've got five members on the you've got five members on the seating seating i think what ken is saying is if one regular member is available the other four are not the two alternates could be called in to make a quorum of three members i just as opposed to having seven regular full kind of members you just need four people to show up you know there are four people who are always there it's it's cleaner seems like the easier and better yeah it does to me it could end up with a really awkward situation with five members i i i wouldn't support two alternates and i wouldn't necessarily i would agree with just going with seven and seven clean recommendation and then just if after a year we think there's a need to change that we change it and we could always address it if a special circumstance comes up yeah i that's a good thing to remember you know this is an it's not locked in it can be a changed just try to make it as easy as possible yeah but it's saying particularly all right with the curtain cats one year well we will reevaluate say that but may might not need to make any changes okay i think we're okay with the meetings um schedule having the joint meetings some annual joint meetings um meeting once a month for each of the boards at least for the time being but allowing flexibility if needed to add extra meetings and that would be something that could easily be captured in the operating procedures that are going to be written that each is if there's a need just very very clearly stating that you know extra meetings could be could be added on it could be added as needed i think there wasn't any concern about the staffing of the boards and then rules of procedure i think that seemed to make sense i haven't had a chance to i'm glad you got these from these various towns that i had a chance to look at them obviously but and i'm gonna i'll say it right now is uh i would like to see and i'm not sure exactly how the language would be how would be structured but this was a classic example of virtual meeting and bodies weren't there you know we did not see people okay uh it's i understand the reason for having the virtual option i think it's appropriate whoever is coming up coming coming out of covet sometimes i think it's an excuse you cannot easily replace personal attendance communication there's all kinds of studies on this and kind big numbers and so on much of communication is body language and when somebody is not even showing their face up there or they're sticking up a picture of themselves how do you know what's going how do you know it's even them for one thing on the zoning board we swear that people that testify have to swear an oath that to me that that's cumbersome when you're trying to okay we want somebody to swear an oath over the video uh first you know we've had him where it comes up and it says this is sue brown well it's bob that's on i'm bob brown well wait a minute says sue brown okay because he's using that her computer or whatever uh absolute identification is is a little bit different i'm not saying that that this happens all the time but to me uh the whole virtual process needs some work within the procedures uh and you know it's going to as a matter of fact the legislature they're they're uh and i believe in the judiciary branch in the judiciary uh committees you know they're talking about making uh virtual attendance mandatory for all municipalities uh that's that's a big problem for a lot of small towns because the need to have the equipment and so on and uh the uh lack of general communications particularly in rural areas for people to be able to actually get on a video and so on so but that's not an issue for us here i think that within the town you know we have reasonable communication coverage and so on and we have the equipment so on but the actual process for how someone is to participate in a quasi-judicial meeting okay where you're taking testimony you're having somebody uh swear that they're telling the truth and the whole truth wait a minute all i'm seeing is a picture or i'm seeing nothing i'm seeing somebody's name i don't know but i like your idea of that being able to be wrapped into the rules of procedure somehow and i'm not sure you know and i don't you know we're not the again not reinventing the wheel i'm sure other people as a matter of fact like say there's this this uh discussion is going on in the judiciary committee now at the state so there may be some some uh input that has been received there that uh you know could flesh out what some of the issues are and and how you can mitigate them i'm saying to get away with it to do away with it it just needs to be cleaned up a little bit and to your point why reinvent the wheel if it's already been somebody already has it yeah i'm i'm sure you know like i say you know there are few original thoughts in the world okay somebody's you know figured this out and maybe it's not perfect but uh it's gotta be better than hey i'm sorry with all due respect for those people that were just there i never i don't i wouldn't know mr nox from he could walk in the room now wouldn't even know it okay and and so anyway that just it's uh need some work quick question sharon because you've got the oldest institutional memory in here um there's always been a clause was a clause at least anyways in the in the meeting that members could phone in if they were remote how was that to your point how was how were they verified that it was you know select board member x and you know planning commissioner why it was did we ever do anything other than just verbally confirm that it was you know honestly i think he okay so we need positive identification yeah and as a matter of fact even you know with the video option it also says if you're unable to do it you can call in so that is an option okay but again you know and again reinventing the wheel the court the judicial system does this now whether you know they're having someone they're in prison and they're fear before the judge and so on you know they have some processes there that they feel there's validation for what's going on and i just think that we need to have that cleaned up a little bit better i've been a part of groups that have zoom meeting norms you know so it's now we're hybrid so we have in person and and the virtual but there there are norms about having your camera on not multitasking you know being muted at that kind of thing sort of the minimum record because of there's oftentimes there are bandwidth issues and so forth yeah well yeah very least understood the very least we could potentially say if you're speaking you're on camera and if you're not on camera you need to declare that you don't have a camera but being a judicious a quasi judicial board you're making a ruling that's affecting somebody's life somebody's process okay and if you're not getting the full input from everyone you're not seeing the body language of this person okay you're not hearing their moans and groans or whatever you know you're not getting the full picture and uh and there's another thing about uh you know having someone be present in front of their uh what do i want to say they're the person that is bringing judgment against them if somebody is testimony testifying against your proposal and they're a blank screen on the on the tv yeah how would you feel about that who's that i don't know you know he's or and he's given it to me and he's not i'm you know i should be able to face my accuser okay that's that's what courts are for and what and what's saying we're this purest judicial process but we are quasi judicial yeah right daniel did you have your hand up for you all set a lot of this i think we'll you know we'll be fleshed out later as we as we start to actually develop the new policies and procedures i'm sure okay there were two other things um i just took this down but i think we we talked about amending the zoning regulations and realizing that development applications are going to be potentially in midstream and who those applicants know currently and the ones that are coming in now that this is an issue no let's well maybe they do but we haven't talked about it so i think yeah that's a good idea from the staff then to make sure that that's you know right the only one really of concern right right but we don't know what else is going to be coming in right when they're coming right as we don't know well yeah i mean even just getting some kind of paper ready to hand people with an example we usually know most most of the time and emails and communications so we know something is going to be coming in right or they'll have a pre-application meeting with us right katha are you looking to have potentially if this if this was a draft that we all more or less agreed on without getting into the fine details of the operating procedures and and so forth is this the sort of thing that you were looking to potentially present the select board soon on the 18th of march is what greg was hoping soon so i i think if we miss that then then based on everything else that we've been talking about tonight we're going to run out of time very quickly following this with the next record i mean i would have hoped that maybe we could include in that some some um a notation that we would like to do a second draft of this for them if they agree with this basic one then we'd like to do a second draft with a deeper dive into some of the things like the operating procedures and yeah and so forth i think that's a great idea and then we move that way we're on their radar you can get them to commit to whether or not they support the directions that we're laying out um and we can fine tune the points that we did have just you know still need to discussion still have a need for discussion of i think that makes sense it's almost you know we spent a good amount of time talking about this tonight we're all pretty much you know we've got little differing opinions but generally on the same page i think that's what we need to present um if we spend a lot more time and select board like no it's almost a waste of time right at this point so i think let's go forward with what what we discussed tonight and go from there and we don't have time to wait so do you anything else from from the zba or the pc to support that no i i want a cheering section it will us to we can you want us to fill the room and yes that would be great do a little dance okay let's see it let's see the dance no i i think um you know i can be the one to present but if if you all want to come or provide any sort of support in any way that would be this is to the select board on 18 and this is this i think for all of us who have more thoughts about this this has got to this has got to be just a draft one yeah this is an outline of what we yeah it's recognized as we've said several times that you know things can change and things can be changed easily it's not you know you have numbers of meetings numbers of members you know all that stuff is is flexible yeah that's a great thing to remember and procedures i mean we're always tweaking our operating procedures a little bit so this life is a moving target how would you like to move forward catherine is uh a version 2.0 of the power point with some of those updates uh appropriate to send to members and we say okay this this looks good to us or do we want to schedule another meeting i i mean what i i we can't really be making decisions outside of the the meeting um but what i could send is an updated power point and this is what i think i heard and if i hear disagreement send it just to me though not to the group not require um and then so if i feel like that's the case then we can revisit if we need to in a meeting it also might be if you hear that there's differences on a point that might be valuable to include in the presentation to the sledboard that this is an example of where we still is still we need to keep drilling because we've got multiple opinions on this one point i think there'd be value for them to see that as well i think what four out of five the items were agreed upon and and look good for everybody that was here my understanding or that's what i absorbed anyway and so we can just highlight those as green all of the others highlight as red to be further discussed or more information forthcoming more thought required more thought great sounds good to me we had a good enough point to include yes workshop concluded workshop concluded so pc pc's back on pc members um we have no other business at this stage so i'm assuming i moved i know you're not you're not a voting member sorry pilot the balance shifted when daniel showed up okay workshop is done at this point we'll we'll figure out more how to do this going forward because we also have you have ken's comments that you can you can look at so there's a hand up so ken the workshop is done is it related to that no no for the future okay you have a zoning board bar and their participation their meeting which is what this is was not warned so just for the future just keep in mind was ken it was it was warned it it was it was warned as a combined zoning board zoning and pc meeting oh okay thank you thank you katherine ken thanks and and katherine motion we'll move to to adjourn the pc and then we never formally opened the zba meeting it was a meeting so it was nothing to motion to open move to adjourn by somebody i move we adjourn all those in favor on the for the pc all those in favor of adjourning motion carries seven zero right