 All right, welcome everyone to those online and those here in the room. Before we get rolling, I wanna note amendments to the agenda. We have a planning session this evening to talk about the PC work plan projects and amendments to the regulations. Tonight, we're specifically looking at the ETC next design guide. We also have under other business we're gonna set the agenda for the 428 PC work session. And noting that commissioners or Josh, Tom, John and Shue are virtual this evening with Dave, Ned and myself being present in the room. So with that, I am gonna open up public comments. Anyone has any comments they would like to put to the planning commission? This is the time to either raise your hand virtually using the reactions button in the bottom of the Zoom screen or raise your hands here in the room and we'll recognize you and go forward. Yes. My name's Albert Clark. Actually, if you wanna come up to the chairs here then there's a microphone I'll be able to hear you well. Thanks. So as I said, my name's Albert Clark and I'm here with my wife, Sarah Clark. So over the last three days we've been trying to get everything we need for zoning and getting a permit for a business that we're trying to do for cannabis cultivation. We're not changing anything to the facility. It'll be less occupied, less noticeable than the previous tenants that were there. They were categorized as light manufacturing which we called around to 10 other towns and their zoning departments to see what they would consider it as which they all said light manufacturing. So I'm curious as to what we would need to do to move forward to get that permit. From my understanding we submitted everything we would need to but also I'm curious as other than the smell that's associated with that what we would really need to address if we had no intentions of changing the facility at all. Could you sign in? You know, the parking situation is gonna be one or two people which is less than the previous tenants. So like I said, we just spent the last like three days and just hours and hours of work and then I'm reading the public participation guide and I kind of felt like almost like I shouldn't even have to really come in here because it says in here, you know, if you're not really planning to change anything then there's no reason to have to come before the planning or the zoning committee. So I was just... Well, I think before we go to share and I think it's number one, this is a public comment section so it's not, you know, we're not looking at an application and any time a business comes in it goes to our zoning administrator and if the use isn't listed then it has to be looked at. Cannabis is right now we're on the forefront of everything. We don't have this worked out yet. Well, asking specifically what you need to do I would actually turn to our zoning administrator and say, do we have laws and regulations in place for cannabis in any form or fashion? And I think the answer is no. Can I ask what zone is the area you're considering? That's... Let me drive industrial. William Parkinson's... So it's industrial zone? Yeah. Okay. All right. And could you just talk a little bit about you had mentioned you have some money that you're gonna lose if you don't get a location? Can you explain that a little more? I didn't capture how that... So just the application, thank you for mentioning that. The application process starts April 1st. So with the application process it's first come, first serve and our intention is to apply on the first day. We've been working really hard. And right now the only thing that's really stopping us is this uncertainty in what to zone it as and all that. And in order for us to move forward we need to wrap this part up and get that permit so we can sign the lease on this place. If we don't get to lease this place we have to start the whole process over. We're a month into it now. Another month setback would just be pretty catastrophic for our business. So I guess, again, I'm gonna turn to our zoning administrator who would be looking at a use coming in if you're not changing the function. Again, we're not working from an application right now. So this is just a conversation. I understand. I wanted to have the application. So in my discussions with the couple excuse me, I told them that we need to have a discussion with the planning commission first to see how you guys want to move forward. We do have, our light manufacturing doesn't call out cannabis. It's new, it's a hot button. We, the town approved it as we all know. We do have what's called an unspecified use which requires them to go before both the planning commission and the zoning board usually on cases like that and might bring it to you and say, do you need to see it or not? My concern is still learning a little more about it. So he's ahead of me in what we've done. The concern that I have is if we decide that when we go through our zoning amendments and we're gonna add it to our use charts under light manufacturing as other towns have done, excuse me, some zoning districts require that as a conditional use, some zoning districts require it as a permitted use. I don't have an answer for him right now because we haven't gotten that far for a discussion with cannabis. So the question becomes, do I just issue it with the use permit? There's also some interpretation with both Darren and I that can we, does the state even allow that? That we are able to regulate it and part of the brain is no, but the other part is all these other towns are with under light manufacturing. If, excuse me, if you guys are so inclined to go forward with light manufacturing, we certainly can process it that way, which in this zone is a permitted use and we can catch up with our regulations the same as we're doing with accessory apartments and fix the regs when it comes to that, but I needed some guidance and discussion at the planning commission table to see what you've done. I mean, Dave, go ahead. I think we run the risk of falling into a hitfall if we focus on the fact that this is cannabis. So for me, when looking at this, I just take cannabis off the table. The state's been very clear about what it expects towns to do if they wanna have retail establishments, but I go to the definition of agriculture and aside from statutory definitions of what the secretary of ag says, there's a semicolon specifically says that the term shall include commercial greenhouses and riding staples, but it specifically excludes slaughtering of animals, blah, blah, blah. So I mean, I could easily put this in the commercial greenhouse space and put this as an ag use, which is allowed in the iDistrict and just call it Donny, for me. The state specifically is not calling it an ag use. Not for their definition of what they consider statutory ag, but our definitions have a semicolon and say that under ag, you're allowed to do a commercial greenhouse. This is a commercial greenhouse. In my opinion, you call it what you want, you call it a commercial greenhouse. I would agree with that. I see no difference from planting in the ground outside versus planting on tables or a greenhouse inside. We're growing saffron inside a building and processing that and selling it to restaurants. I would agree with that, but I felt that I needed to have this conversation with the Planning Commission. As Mr. said, it's a hot button. Yeah. And in general, our practice is going to be treated like any other similar use because the state was kind of funky about the ag definition. We wanted to make sure we had that discussion before we move forward. And the other thing that we wanted one of the Planning Commission to consider when we do bring this up and we have a memo ready, we just didn't get it in for this meeting is that the state will require certain things of indoor and outdoor cultivation, including fencing, lighting and security based on the level of the tier that they're using the amount of growing they're doing. So that could have a slightly different impact than other similar ag goals for uses, but we wanted to bring that tier attention before we try to do so. That would be reviewed by the state. Yeah, that'd be like a fire safety regs, applying this. I mean, quite frankly, this just feels like a ZBA question, not a PC question. So, whether it's unspecified use, whether it's ag that feels like it should fall under the purview of the ZBA to say yay or nay. That's my gut reaction right now. I also don't, we're in public comment. So we're not making policy. Right. So I thank you for your comments. We'll go back tomorrow and we'll chat. Right now I'm leaning towards the use permit and when the zoning board meets again, doesn't mean we can't massage that more and better define it. But for right now we have no definition and I would agree it falls best under the ag thing right now, but I appreciate your thoughts. Let's be aware that whatever we do might be writing the definition. And for the applicants or the, you know, I think there's reasonable assurance that this will be able to go into the location that they're looking at. We just don't know exactly how to process it yet because of how things have gone. So the only thing with that too is I need to check our records because this is in the William Parkinson's fort and there's only one building that has a site plan review there. It's, you know, we've had issues in this in the past and how cars are coming and where they're parking. And so I've got to just now meet with him now that I have some better direction as to how I think I want to go forward to make sure it doesn't need a site plan review to where the dedicated parking will be. So I can work with him on that. Forget the use, just the building use. So hopefully that helps. Yes, thank you. And I did just want to, one last comment. I had got a, luckily I got a phone call back from somebody at the board. Her name was Nelly. She gave me a little guide that I had sent towards Sharon and some other folks. So she said that that should be enough to clarify everything. But yeah, it's, she basically told me they're causing a whole uproar in the system. You know, CBD or hemp was agriculture, you know, and then there's the zoning that regulates, you know, indoor facilities and all that. And she said that they're kind of just jumping in between everything and they're regulating, you know, like as Darren said, you know, all the policies that they require are pretty much addressed in order for us to get a license, you know, whatever concerns you guys kind of have with security, all of that. So I just wanted to mention that if you guys had any questions, you could contact Nelly at the cannabis control board. She might be able to help further than that guide. I think at this point, Sharon is going to be your go-to on this process. We're good. I just needed this conversation. Thank you. Okay. I see Elizabeth Dunn has her hand up. Thank you for coming. Yes, thank you so much for acknowledging me. I am concerned that you're opening up the town plan. That's my understanding. Town plan? No, if she's talking about me, I'm looking at the subdivision and zoning regulations. Yeah. So we're looking at the town plan. And one of the things that's required in our town plan by Act 171 are maps around the connectivity of our courts and I'm showing how we're going to maintain and not drive them in force more than how we're using our wetlands. And that's state law as of 2016 and we don't have it yet in our town plan. And I'm wondering as we're opening this up, why don't we do that and get compliant? We're actually not opening the town plan up yet. Town plan is further along in our work plan. We have to do town plan update in 2024. So that would be when we would be wrapping any mapping and stuff like that into it. It's a good point to bring in and connectivity, habitat connectivity has been a pretty, pretty consistent topic and a want from the commission. So your topic is good, but we're actually gonna be focusing on different regulations and zoning and subdivision updates for the next year, essentially, with the town plan update following that. And make one clarification. There is in discussion about the ETC next project, a conversation around possibly amending the town plan to include a desire to apply for state designations, state planning designations. That would be an amendment to the town plan, the requirement to comply with all of the planning needs in a town plan doesn't kick in until you renew or re-adopt the town plan. You can amend a plan just for a specific purpose, like pulling out a town center without having to meet all the other requirements, not to say that we won't do that eventually when we have the capacity to and certainly when we're required to. And it's in the planning commission's work plan to do that before the next update. But that's the end. And I know that this is something we've talked about on the conservation and trails committee as well. I'm happy to provide more detail of the next meeting. Thank you. Okay. Thanks for the comments. Any other comments from anyone? Yes, sir. So Kevin Collins, you've received his letter on a previous meeting. He came to the last meeting I think. And you directed him to me and I told him that it's very difficult for us to know exactly when his issue will come up. And if he's concerned that he's gonna miss anything, just come to the meetings. So I don't believe, I did send him a copy of this agenda, PC work plan projects and amendments to regulations. So. So our focus tonight is gonna be on the ETC next design guide. So we're probably not gonna be touching on your stuff specifically tonight. Okay. Yeah. And we actually took some of the comments from you in the last time to try to put some specificity in their agenda so that the folks can look at this and have a little bit of an idea of what we're gonna be working on. So. You might still wanna stick around to see what else fit this guy which may be relevant to your property, but not specifically your request. So, question, when you're talking about, when you're talking about re-accepting the zoning, except I know that there's acronyms for certain domes and everything. Re-defining those lines and stuff. Doing that. What we're doing, what we're doing in the immediate future. And I said by immediate, it's at least a year. We're looking at the existing zoning and subdivision regulations. So it's not, we're not talking about redesigning any zones and the zones don't get redesigned easily or often. But any sort of overall layout maps and so forth of the town and the community would be done as part of the town plan update. Which again, is we have to do that for 2024. We have to do some regulations now and then we have to do the town plan. So you're doing the regulations now and then the lines of the different zones. Quite frankly, the lines probably won't be touched. Gotcha. You know, it's the overall town plan itself and that's the guiding, that would be the guiding step for the next go round. Yep. One clarification on the zoning districts, specifically within the UTC, the town center, Essex town center, the plan, the master plan that was put together, and sort of like a sub plan of the overall town plan does talk about changing some zoning districts in order to sort of consolidate a few and move into the vision that we want to achieve for that. So that actually could be considered with these particular zoning updates and, but that's already been established in the master planning process that we did. It's supported by the community. So long and short, we're not looking to change the maps. We're looking to change the regulations that are in place. Yeah. Is there a problem? Temporary stuff, no. I mean, we're not going to say you're going to have a temporary exclusion or temporary allowance, that doesn't fly. I think, again, Sharon would be the one to work with Sharon and Darren and if there's any way that they feel that there's something that could be brought to us, the us or the zoning board, they will do so. But getting a change in the regulation on the fly, I don't think so. I'm just being creative. Yep. Yep. We're actually working to do the regulation reviews and so forth on a more rapid isn't the right term, but more effective way this go around than we've done in the past. More frequently. So direct, I don't believe there's going to be a short route to get to where you want to be. Unless there's a way that the staff can figure out to present something to us or the ZBA that would make an allowance for whatever use you want, it's a process. Not only is it just to get it in front of us, it's the review, the workshops, the public reviews that we do, it's not that we have to do, it's we do public review of the work that we do. So there's public review, and then we make the changes and we put them up to the select board and there's additional public review. So planning as a process is a process. There's no way to sugarcoat that. And I love hanging out with y'all, but I should be going to the next class. I would just add that your property falls within the ETC next area, which is what we're working on. That's it, is your hand up again or is it up still? No, it's up again. I think he was talking, something else came up that I, in my brain that I'd already thought about. Have you considered, has planning commission considered having environmental impact studies done when someone is going to change the nature of their land when they're doing a building because it impacts the other homes? Right now, if someone, if they don't have to do that and they build and they tear down the building trees and then the people find their houses flooded, they have to go to do that, suing the person for that kind of problem. Whereas if we have them have to have an environmental impact study done to look at what is going to happen when they take down all these trees, it would have gotten mixed at that time or at least it would have had to possibly show how they're going to mitigate those problems for their neighbors when they do this. That's one question. The other question I had was, how do you feel about having a development removal? We're not going to touch question number two. Just flat out and I'm going to touch it. Question number one, I think, Darren, I'm looking over towards you because it feels like this has already accomplished based on the level of development. So Betsy, the term environmental impact study is used in some places to talk about a lot of what we do in planning and zoning and development review. So there are multiple levels and things that, you know, with the local state. There are many different criteria that we look at to try to get at what you're talking about, which is sounds like a stormwater issue and a tree removal issue. So sometimes, you know, based on the regulations that we have, a review of something would be triggered to say, okay, they do have to go do a study to see what the impact of this would be. Typically we've already done that work as a community in the planning process to say these types of development are allowed or with certain conditions in order to mitigate those impacts. Some things fall outside of our purview just like we were talking about cannabis, kind of, you know, falls within our normal review process. Forestry and agriculture tend to fall outside of our ability to regulate based on what the state says. So it's complicated, but generally we do have a way of addressing the impacts of development. And I would just add to that that if there is no development in the door, we don't regulate what people cut on their property. The forestry particularly is an exemption from zoning review and development review as well as just, you know, landscaping unless there's something on the books that we've regulated and required. Well, let me do the Act 171 rule and we're talking about maintaining our forests and how we're gonna do that. Would this fall under that kind of an area then for the conservation issue? It can. So when we look at Act 171, which is about forest block integrity and wildlife habitat, there may be regulations that come out of that that say, you know, here's what can and can be done. It may also be more of a planning and sort of incentive-based approach. That's something we haven't really doubled into yet, but Act 171 guidance suggests multiple options to achieve the goals that the state requires us to look at. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, we are looking to wrap up public comments soon. I see two hands up right now. Lorraine Zalum. Thank you, Chair. That brings up another question in mind. So you don't have any oversight really for what we do on a private property in terms of cutting down trees as it's under 40 acres, I believe it's the rule of law. But what about other quality of life impacts? Like when trees go down, now all of a sudden you can see light, you can hear sounds, you can get more pollution. Are there any considerations about existing structures when new structures go up in terms of quality of life impacts on neighbors? And is there a way to regulate that, or zone for that, or apply that to the different zones? Thank you. I think that's gonna be, we're not gonna be able to answer that clearly today. And that's a bigger topic. I think we can put that on as something to have as part of our ongoing discussions, quality of life potential and there's a design review. Yes. So I don't wanna get into, I appreciate the questions. I don't want to get into, I don't wanna get into something that we're not gonna be able to really resolve tonight. I think noting that it's a concern is good. And you do on your work plan have climate change or climate impact planning as well as performance standards, which get at that quality of life stuff. So it's in the chipper to look at those things. In the hopper to look at those things. Chipper's the wrong term here. Yeah, we're not in Fargo. Shu, you had your hand raised. It's gonna comment that a lot of this, kind of a lot of the forestry stuff and a lot of the impacts that happen on subdivisions for storm waters really regulate as states regulated pretty well. So I'm not particularly concerned about what Al might have to do on a broader scale. I guess that's sort of my comment. People own large tracts of land and they decided that they'd be in their forest plan or whatever they're doing. They're gonna log or do whatever they wanna do. That's what they do. Not much we can do about that. I don't think we'll ever be able to do much about that. That's just my comment. Okay. All right. Last chance, going, going, gone. Okay, now we're moving on to the next item on the agenda, which actually is gonna be our discussion on the ETC next design guide. I know you'd sent that out to us, Darren. And wanted to see if you wanna lead us in what you're looking to get into on this. Absolutely. Though actually I will draw your attention to start to the work plan brief that staff prepared regarding ETC next. I will share that on the screen just so folks know what I'm looking at and can maybe help read along. And before we get into that, I would like to remind or offer, remind whatever anybody who's online or in the room. If you have questions about what's on the agenda or you wanna see documentation, staff is always available to be reached out ahead of the meeting. We may not have workshop items available for electronic distribution ahead of the meeting other than to the planning commissioners, but staff can provide that to any member of the public who asks for it. I just wanna remind folks that information that is gonna be reviewed is available. It might have to be asked for, but it is available. So the memo that's in your packet and online outlines basically some of the work that needs to be done with ETC next talks about some of the items in the implementation table and starts to outline hopefully how to approach this work. So one of the first short term action items include amending the town plan to include the ETC next plan by reference which can either be done as an amendment between the statutory eight year period when town plans have to be updated or when we do the 2024 town plan that could include the maps as well. And then the other thing we wanted to talk about is finalizing the ETC next design guide which was originally maybe going to be considered along with the master plan itself but planning commission wanted to break it out to have a separate discussion so that the vision of the master plan stayed a little more focused which made a lot of sense. So those are sort of the overview of the big picture. The other thing that we wanna talk about is there's been a suggestion to consider this town plan amendment to incorporate ETC next by reference which would then and then specifically say that we wanna apply for state designations like village center possibly new town center possibly neighborhood development area. These are state planning designations that basically say, we've done a lot of work to say this is where we want these types of development to happen. And as a result of that, we would be eligible for benefits from the state including certain grants, priority for other grants and a few other things that actually help achieve the type of development that we're looking for. So the reason to maybe do that a little sooner is that there are ARPA state federal relief funds and COVID and the economic recovery that may be specifically targeted to state planning areas that are on a relatively short timeline. It's not clear how long, but the sooner we get in the more possibility we have to take advantage of those funds. The process for including that in the town plan would be to go through the amendment process. I've laid out a timeline for what that would look like if we wanted to do it as soon as possible which would be the November 2022 midterm elections. But going through all the sort of statutory requirements to get there means that we need to be wrapped up with all the planning and workshop stuff by the end of June essentially, both an ambitious timeline. But this is a decision point to ask, does the planning commission want to pursue that town plan amendment in the short term or maybe put it off until a little further? So that's one decision. The other thing is when we actually start talking about implementing regulations based on ETC next, that master plan and the design guide, we want to make sure that that design guide still holds true, that you're still on board with that, that all the stuff that's in there is stuff that you want to see in regulations. If not, we can modify that as we go forward. There's a few different approaches to actually changing the regulations. We can start with sort of a low level change of modifying the business design control overlay district, which covers most of the ETC next area. We could create new zoning districts with their own standards based on the proposed zoning districts. We could do a wholesale review of the zoning and subdivision regulations to sort of incorporate the principles of ETC next. And a version of that could be a form-based code, which is a style of zoning code that gets a little more administrative, perhaps, and a little more specific about design and really precise about building heights and window requirements and stuff like that. We've talked about this during the ETC review process. So those are the whole suite of options out there. One of the things we want the planning commission to consider is which one of those feels right based on the master plan and what you want to move forward with. And then the last sort of logistical question is how the planning commission wants to organize itself around this work. You could do work groups, you could do this as a full commission, perhaps engage a consultant to help with the actual bylaw drafting and maybe doing some public engagement around what that could look like because we do have some grant money that could be applied towards that or other ideas, broader input. These are just the whole suite of options. So with that, I will stop and see what you all think. June of 2022? So like three months ago now. I don't think that's even remotely. I don't think that's remotely conceivable. I mean, I think that even if we tried to go into by year and do a lot of extra, I think, I mean, I'm not seeing the ability to hit a June target. Quite frankly, if we can do something by the 1st of November, I think that's aggressive. We know how fast we move. When we know how fast, I mean, I heard this the other day pushing a rope uphill. I mean, it's not exactly what we're trying to do, but we need to fix a date to work towards, I agree. I'll turn to the rest of the commission on this. If folks feel that we can do this, great. We'll put heads down and go forward, but even the plan that we're anticipating of engaging other commissions means that we're not gonna be able to get this by June. We may not get them to even look at things by June. That's an idea that was thrown out there. I know, we have to have something to start with, right? We have something to look at. This is, and just another thought on that. There's another memo in your packet that we wanted to talk about in our other business that looks at the timeline for the 2024 town plan update that we have to do. It's the same timeline in terms of statutory requirements, but obviously it's a little further out in terms of when things have to be done. So we can talk about that later in terms of what that looks like too. Josh, you have your hand up. Yes, in terms of the proposed town plan amendments that we're talking about here. That is, that's the one with the June sort of work section and then November vote. That's simply to incorporate the e-project by reference. Is that right, Darren? Is that what I'm getting? Correct, so that actually would be a fairly... That could be quite a sentence of being incorporated by reference. Yeah, and we'd want to also mention specifically if we intend to apply for state planning area designations. So it could be fairly simple, but one thing that staff has thought about is because in Essex town plans have to be amended and approved by a public vote, you should do some amount of public outreach to get people on board with that and make sure that people know what it is they're voting on and have support for that before you set all that up, possibly have it fail. Not saying that it would, but people should know what they're voting on. So that's sort of the consideration for the timeline is can you get all of that community outreach done within the between now and November and the work of actually changing the town plan. I think if we know what it is that we're changing and it's simple updates to the language and adding in a few maps and a reference to ETCnext, that is possible by June, but like we need to start now. That's just the landscape that we're looking at. Darren, I'd like to clarify that it wasn't calling the entire town plan for operating. Correct. Tom? Darren, would the ballot say what the change was, say that we're incorporating referencing the ETCnext so that we can apply for grants? Notch. The language in the ballot would have to be something along the lines of do the voters approve the amendment in the 2020 or the Essex town plan, we can maybe throw in something in there about the intent of what is changing to incorporate ETCnext by reference, but we also would probably end up doing some sort of like Q and A about that. Right, we need the education. It's really to get money for the citizens. Didn't we go through that with getting it approved through the select board in the first place, wasn't it? I mean, wasn't that the process to get the... The town plan? The ETCnext plan reviewed and accepted as a target? Yeah, I don't believe it was voted on. Correct, it was only voted on by the select board. Okay. Ned, you had something I could tell you. No, I'm just, I think I'd like to do this this year. I think that, I don't think we can get deep into design until we know what the sewer capacity is for the area here, because that's critical, you're not as to how much and how deep you can design. I guess that's, can you get that readily available from public works, I assume? Yeah, so we have the sewer capacity map right now. They're going to be starting the process of redoing the sewer ordinance and the allocation maps. So that'll happen sort of over the next hopefully year in tandem with your work on this. Yeah, because I know they pretty much fixed the water service in that area up there with the new pump station. Yep, in process, yeah. And there was always some question of how they were going to upgrade the sewer capacity so it can handle it. So it's just something that we need to have in the mix so we know what we're doing. Shoe, what are your thoughts? Are they only? Go ahead and go with me, Sam. Nope, I'm just looking to you. I guess I'm thinking about that. I thought we were all we were doing here was making sure that we were good to go with the plan and by reference for the amendment. But not necessarily have all the form-based code and all the various piece parts done by November. So I just was still not completely clear on that. We would do the regulation that after we knew that the voters approved of it or disapproved, right? So you can work on the regulations in parallel with this town plan update. The current town plan says, we wanna look at the town center, we wanna fix the regulations, we wanna do this master plans, essentially. So that's already enabled and can keep moving on that. This is simply to say, okay, our 2016 town plan said, we wanna go do this, we did it, here's the result. And that means then that we can apply for, we've done the work, we're gonna apply for the designations and move forward with that. But you can do both in parallel. The question is whether you have the capacity to do that as a commission and as staff in the community, you wanna have both of those conversations going at the same time and what that looks like. Get more safe, Dave. I don't have a lot to say on this. Just out of curiosity, we're down one staff member. Do we have an update on, are we hiring? What are we doing? Yes, the community development director position has been advertised and I think it will close April 4th and then we'll start interviews. So we're anticipating that person being in place probably end of April-ish, May, early May. Depends on who we get. Depends on who we get when they can start. I mean, I think it's tough to, sounds, I don't know, I could see this going either way, but we're down to staff person, sounds a little aggressive. We have some grant money too. But I'm just not seeing us being able to necessarily engage with the public realistically when we're gonna be asked questions about what regulations we're gonna be doing and I don't see us being able to focus on presenting the plan publicly when we don't have the details of what we want to put in place to support the plan. I think we would be at risk and whoever asked it about what would be on the ballot I think is actually, is a very good point. What would we be asking people to vote on? A blank check, here's the plan that was reviewed. We don't have any of the regulations. We just want you to say the plan is good so we can go out and get money for it, which is valid, but I can't, Paula wouldn't do it. She wouldn't give us the go ahead without knowing more and I'm picking on you, but we would need to have the... We would need to have the details to support why we want this plan to go forward and we've got them. I mean, the plan is the plan, but... There's a lot of unanswered questions. I'm just thinking that we need to have the answers before we can present and justify for a town plan amendment. What you're looking at is you're looking at being able to give them a bigger, broader picture, deeper picture really before we go forward. I want to be able to answer the questions that they ask. Here's the plan. We've worked on it for six years. It looks wonderful. It's good. Is that the ETC next plan you've got? No, it's not. This is enabling better places. It's right here. But then we want to just say we want to incorporate. If we can present it in such a way that we want to have that be a plan that we then use to develop the zoning and present it as such and have it be recognized and have it as it need to be a town plan amendment in order to have it be recognized as a document that's part of our process. So the way the state designations work, they're pretty strict about it has to be in your town plan, whatever process you use to approve that. So in many towns, you don't actually have to go to the voters to approve a town plan. It's done by the legislative body, but in Essex, there was a voter petition to do that back in the 90s, I think. So that's how we do things here. So because of that, we're driving you guys out. Driver of the cell, but in your turnage. Oh, we don't know. Come back again. So. Tim, you get stuff on the floor. My beer, thanks. My beer money. Party on us. Was going to be a good night. So the state board that we use as the downtown board does want to see that it's in the town plan before they consider approving a state designation. It would probably be. Well, I won't go there. So just also to keep in perspective, the designations that we're looking at Village Center is fairly easy to get. You have a historic center. You have some design control regulations that say you want to keep it that way. And you have some sort of planning program to support civic spaces within that Village Center. That opens up village tax credits, planning grants, and a few other things. Another program or another designation, which is neighborhood development area is more focused on housing right outside those sort of village centers, downtown, et cetera. That one, we do need to have some zoning in place that allows for up to four units per acre, along with walkable streets and smart growth and stuff. Just having that in places, taking a seven, taking up a contention. And then the last one that we would look at that new town, new town center is sort of what we've been working towards with the ATCnext, but one of the requirements that we'd have to put in place is an official map, which is a regulatory document that says, here's where streets are gonna go. Here's where other public improvements are gonna go. And I don't think we've gotten that one. I think the more we talk about it, the farther out it's going. Yep. So all those things, again, could be in our future, but it sort of gets progressively more difficult to- Looking at your timeline. You've got work sessions is the top thing. We take work sessions off. And just wanted to do public outreach on the ATCnext plan as it presents in the binder. And have that be added to the town plan, that might be doable. But we wouldn't be able to answer questions. We wouldn't be able to go into what the sewer capacity wouldn't be able to do all that because the focus is still gonna be, has to be at this point on our agreed upon work plan and 2022 regulation updates that we wanna get to, which incorporate some of this, but there's no guarantee they're gonna be done in North... And even again, the whole point of doing that would be to go for those state designations to find itself is more work. So it would happen after November, between November and hopefully mid-March to April or something. But it is, again, just putting out there what the work is, what the work would be for you- I know you wanted before then, it might be better to check on this in a month to see where we're at with the work sessions that we're trying to work on, see how those feel and the status of the staff. This might be something we can continue to ask about. I'm not seeing it. And I can't see the guys online, but I'm... Josh, your hand's still up. Put it up again. I really liked the idea, but I do take the point that it would be better to wait a little than rush it and get on the wrong side of the town above what the two were able to do. Yeah, I like the state designations things a lot. Good for now on that, Darren. Yeah, I don't know that you got John Mangan's input. John, thank you. John Mangan. No, it's fine. Basically, I'm going to be adjusting the space to do it all. I don't need to reiterate it. OK. Great decision point, Ben. OK. There were more. Yeah, weren't you listening? So to bring us back to that memo, the next decision point, like you said, we can maybe bring that back up again in a month to see how we feel after we've talked about design stuff, that design stuff is the next question. How do we feel about the design guide? Are we ready to take everything in it and move forward into regulations? Or do you want to work through that a little bit and sort of walk through the principles again, make sure everything still feels good? OK. I think, yeah, I think we in formulating the plan, we we pretty beat the design stuff around. But I think I think everybody would be happy. We take one look. It doesn't have to be necessarily a deep look, but let's let's just remind everybody of what we kind of work through for the previous six years to see if we can, you know, move it, move this forward. Yeah. And be sure we know what we're doing. That's let's take that last piece off because we're never going to get. Sure enough to know to move forward. That's all you're looking for. Whatever, whatever. So I can't help it. Yeah, but you know me at all. I figure out we get it all done by June on the other. OK, the more we talk, the less. So I'll do a very quick breeze through the design guide. Does that sound OK? Let me apologize. You ever did you want to add a comment? No. One of the reasons people have been upset typically this kind of thing will be so upset about what has happened in the past before over the past 20 years now. I think it's really important and she progressed with one of the one of the issues was that Howard Howard. Oh, I see. Thank you. Thank you. Our targeting system is focused on the chair. Better to hear you. That's my dream. What's happened in the New Town Center over the last 20 years, it's important to. Well, it's important to have more public buy-in. And what I started to say is that one of the issues that I kept hearing over and over and over and over and over again as I got involved in the process is that the problem with our current. Regulations is that they don't have any teeth in them. There was no way to impose those design. Standards, standards. And so making the making the design. Elements that people are looking for. Have some teeth that allow you to impose them on. Developers is is important. And so I think it's really important to have more public input in. As we go along into the design, because that was the that was the thing that people were objecting to. Well, some of that's going to include your spacing, your parking, your setbacks, your green spaces. You know, that that really has to be in the pack as we present next time to the public so they can they can better visualize what it's what it's going to look like. And I think I think all of us have trouble sometimes visualizing things, buildings that we approve even now as to what they really turn out to be. And well, and but and part of that is is the lack of specificity in in good design elements and trying to create interest in ways that really don't accomplish that. And they they ignore eons of accepted design elements that do accomplish what people want to accomplish. So incorporating those things, I think is important. So let me let me just. I'm going to start playing Mr. Prevent scope creep routinely during meetings. And I want to bring back ETC next design guide. I understand there's value in doing all sorts of discussions and so forth. But tonight, easy design guide that's in front of us. I want to focus on that. Are we good to accept it as is? What do we want to change in it? And, you know, what's good, what's bad? And let's move it. I want to get through that tonight. The overriding need for this is understood. But we're going to start knocking things off in our planning nights. We're going to be we're going to try to be able to put a check mark on things. So do we have a list of what they are that you again? That's the design guide that that we're working from. So whatever is in the ETC next design, the design guide is what we're looking at. Yeah, we don't have questions yet because this is what this is for. Paula, it's a separate document. So it was in one of the earlier versions of the document, but it got trimmed down. We still have it. I can get you a paper copy if you want to redo it. That would be good. Do you have one in your hand? That's the master plan. That's a master plan. I have I have I have that one. OK, so we need to we need to what? Sorry. Yeah, I would jump. So let's let's let's let's put it up on the screen and and we'll bring focus to the points that people want to discuss and change or whatever. Commissioners, don't be shy about chiming in if something if you don't like the wording in something, let's let's bring it out tonight. This is this is a we should be able to do this tonight. All right, so here we are. It's a little it's mostly an electronic document, but we will as long as things feel good to the Planning Commission, we could even go and print some of this out if you want to do that. You like me to remove myself now? No, you're going to comment again. No, I'm serious. You're you're going to unless you want the exercise, you're going to. I'm expecting you to chime in again. So. So just as a refresher, here are the as the study area we're looking at. We've got the historic center neighborhood, which would be sort of the village center designation idea that we're going for, where as the center started, where a lot of the historic buildings are a lot of the civic buildings, we actually might drop the conservation recreation neighborhood a little bit out of this because it's mostly going to be what's not developed there. We've got this. No worries. We've got the neighborhood commercial, which you can't quite see on this view. It's this brownish highlighted stuff around the price chopper lot. And that is sort of a mixed use transition from the historic center area where the buildings are generally smaller in scale, more residential in scale, but could be used for commercial purposes. We're starting to get to slightly bigger buildings. Mix missing middle housing, you know, duplexes, triplexes, etc. As well as some limited commercial uses. We've got this residential neighborhood village, old stage and shoot, I can't remember the name of the other hours. Is it? No, this is off of old stage road means field. Mansfield. Yep. Oh, OK. And that's an existing residential neighborhood not touching that too much yet. We have the mixed use north for lack of a better term. The area north of route 15 between 289 and old stage road. This is largely vacant. So we're looking for this to be the secondary build out area. And then there's the mixed use south, which is really the core area for new development, more density, a lot more commercial, definitely mixed use and really sort of the heart of the downtown feel. So the design guide itself is laid out. I'm going to zoom in here so folks can maybe have a chance of reading that a little better. Oh, good luck. So it's laid out into several sections and these design parameters go through each of the neighborhoods and look at these themes. So we've got use, lots, density, sort of the building blocks of planning and development, connectivity and walkability, as Josh would say, better connected, more cohesive, trying to make sure that you can get from one place to another easily. We've got architectural form and character. So looking at the real design elements of what a building looks like and what the how it feels from the street, including height, facades, roof lines, all that good stuff. Some of the more meat and potatoes, parking, loading service, you know, how do you deal with some of these logistical questions on site? Streetscape and public realm being the last one, which is the how all this fits together in a community feel. So that's sort of the framework that's used to go through each of these neighborhoods and I won't read all of the details here. Skipping a couple of pages and helpful general terms. I won't go into detail now because we're taking the broad view. So starting with mixed use north. When we look at use, lots and density, we're looking for again. Before we keep going further, commissioners, are there are there questions that we want to make sure we hit? Anybody have any any concerns about what they've looked at in the design guide at this point? We may be able to save you some breath. Sure. I'll go down the list. OK, any and no. No questions, concerns. So like if we do, we even need to go through it. I have questions that we go just not yet. OK. Fair enough. Isn't this the the district where there's there is a question about the sewer capacity and the water? Yes. So this one is where Debbie should be. Yes. So we can talk about that. It's online. If it's not, is it design guide related or is it buildable? Is it the reality related? So there's a little bit of interplay with those. The master plan talks a lot more about the capacity issues and the you know, what is possible here. The design guide is going to get into more of level of detail of assuming this is possible because we've laid out a plan to do it. Then let's keep that focus for tonight. Yeah, we will just mention that there's consideration for modifying the sewer core boundary to fit the zoning districts and the the lots that are there. There's also plans to run the new water main eight inch water main along this to increase water flow, not necessarily pressure when we come to the plane related. That's plan related. So just two cents. I want to write, yeah, Josh, you had your hand up. Design guide that would get off of the original plan, right? Like, no, no, the wording is. We have not touched this since we took it out of the master plan. Yep. And I liked it down. Awesome. OK. Well, thank God, because we accepted the 19 the UTC plan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or great. So I'll stop here again, like Dusty said, do you want me to go through page by page? Do you want me to talk in more general terms about each of these districts and neighborhoods and some of the themes that we want to see in each of them? Do you want to just ask the questions that you've got and trying to balance here using our time? Well, also giving the public who hasn't seen this maybe for a little bit, a bit of a review and making sure we don't miss something. I will tell you that my my only real concern with the design guide was our resurgence of the term form-based code that we struggled with to keep out of our documentation. And it seems to be popping itself back up again. So if we avoid that term, yeah, I I think we went through this. I personally don't have any concerns at this stage myself with with the design guide. You know, I think the design guide is pretty pretty comprehensive. Hey, I haven't I haven't really gone through it looking at exceptions yet. Now, we. We spent so much time with this in the beginning. I mean, to your point, we just peeled this out of the other document. Yeah, we haven't touched it since. Yeah, I kind of feel like we did just a few questions. Then John, jump in. I didn't get that. So it sounds like everybody is pretty good with it. And I am to look at this, look at it all again. That brought up more questions. But can you go to page seven? So down on the four, the fourth bullet, the bottom left part of the group of technicals, that's going to be pretty hard to do, especially for the panel. So this is screening, you know, setting back from basically the roof line so that you don't quite see all that stuff from the ground level. It might. Yeah, it might be possible, depending on what it is. Solar panels on a flat roof, you're not going to see, regardless, on an angled roof, that's more difficult. Antenna, like the ones on the top of, I want to say, eight or 10 Carmichael Street, I can't remember. No, seven Carmichael Street. You might see it. It might not look like much. But and then the other question on four or two or four Carmichael, there's some mechanical equipment on the side of the building that is back a house. So maybe that's OK. But those are some questions to think about. You don't necessarily have to have a one size fits all standard. But like we have now in the business design control regulations, you can say, hey, those should be, you know, limited from public view, if possible, if you can't keep it out of public view screen it. So I think. So I just think requires a strong word here. It's almost making it sound like you could don't do this. OK, the other thing, the bottom right of the same page. Franchise colors, blue, I don't know if that seems up. Franchise color can be anything. White, black, brown, it can actually match the color of the building. Yeah. So I think it has mentioned several places, but if colors match the three bullets above that, then you're probably going to be pretty good regardless of whether or not the franchise colors work. OK, I just think that's not what seems to be a lot. Yeah. So I'm going to, John, I'm going to push back on that a little bit. And we've had specific times with franchise colors, the one that comes to mind to CVS. And we pushed back on the CVS. So I think franchise colors, in my mind, as a discreet entity, we should be able to push against. It makes the colors fit the design guide for the area, period. So here's. Yeah, but I think. Oh, sorry. No, go ahead, John. CVS matches the three bullets above that. Or, you know, then there were the five. The CVS, why? Oh, right. Right. Right. Right. But if, for example, that, you know, that doesn't have a color that. Warm and compliment building. We're going to talk about that. I just think the term franchise color is very odd. As soon as we get into. Compliment and enhance that becomes very subjective. Yeah, it does. So I would like to find a way. I personally would like to keep some reference to franchise colors or say that franchises must be subject to the same. Same regulations, but calling them out. So I think it's a very good question. It's a matter, you know, it's really about how you do that, because I think everyone can agree that you don't want clashing colors. That'll just feel really what weird. You know, the limiting trim or accent colors outside of your established palette could be a way to sort of bridge that gap and make sure you can do your franchise colors, you know, that you bring in from whatever, you know, branding you have, but you can only do up to 10 or 15% unless it matches the palette that you've got. There's also a question of, do you want to look again at the palette for the, the town center, the sort of color palette and say, is it time to freshen that up or stick with it? And how much do you care about how close it is to that and how precise do you want to get with how close it needs to be to that? And then also, how do you, you know, right now we have it so that the planning commission has approved this palette. The zoning administrator pretty much is able to work with that administratively with a little bit of oversight. So is that working? Do you want to revisit that? That works. But what comes to mind for me is the, is the Duncan Donuts we had Ned come out. The Duncan Donuts orange. And we, we make, we let them, you ended up allowing them to do it, but it went a flat color, not like that shiny or brighter glossy. It's faded up pretty well too. You don't notice it. I guess I'm thinking more about it. I guess the only thing with colors is we need to either come up with a general range, right? You know, I don't want to have, have us or whoever, our successors may be sitting argue every time we get something new over the colors, you know, I, you know, I'd like to have something that as long as they fall within those parameters. I've had no problem because he's going to, he's going to see one color and like it and I'm not. Yeah, but that's objective. So, so maybe with this is to acknowledge the call out. You establish a power. It says avoid franchise colors on building the side. So it's given a particular spot, but it may be just eliminate the void franchise colors that are not, that don't match. That are inconsistent with the, the schemes are already, you know, the rest of it. So I think to John's point, everything should be caught in the first bullets, but I think it's still worth calling out so that a franchise coming in some of this is so people know coming in the door what they can expect in the franchise comes in and knows that their color pattern has to match what we have, not what they have. That sets an expectation. They might not want to come in, but it will save a lot of fighting. Yeah. And as you said, if this, this particular bullet is specific to building facades and limiting it on logos, signage, canopies and awnings, that doesn't mean they couldn't have some trim that's fully within their color palette if you're okay with that because 10 to 15% of the overall side. Yeah. How far do we want to go with exterior materials? Right. Is there other questions? Anything go or, you know, brick, color. Go ahead, John. Reminds me more what it's like if you have a strip of business at this pre level and they all, you know, they all have their, their names of their stores on that forefront, channeling on Carmichael Street or even a color palette. Potentially by saying we're not allowing franchise colors, everybody could have black and white on the building, but if someone did in their franchise color with black and white, we're essentially saying you can't do whatever you else can. You know what I mean? It's a weird scenario I know. Like, the way it's worded, it's like. So we get, when we get to the point of writing the regulations for us, let's call that out and let's tweak that up. This is a, this is design guide. So we don't have a regulation to back it up yet. So we can, I would think John, we can capture this. Just say unless, unless consistent with the. Yeah. I think we can capture this in a, in a regulation and make it work all the way around. The part of this design again was to set so that somebody coming in knows what they can do. And it doesn't have to go to the table for a deep discussion. And if they know that we're not going to embrace, you know, whether it's a percentage of amount of, you know. That, that basically kind of puts us into the, you know, sort of the hybrid form-based direction, which is fine. I think that's where we might want to be really, but you know, take a bunch of stuff off the table. I think you should look at your color palette if you're going to start with it. Okay. So color is something we got to work out. But this, this as a guide, I would think would be fine. At this stage. Yeah. A guide for how you do your regulations, not necessarily what's in those regulations. So if you got a parking lot going where you're parking these items so that we know them. Yep. Write them down. Yeah. Good call out, John. You had, you had more. Yeah. Let me go to page 21. This is an item that. I just don't recall where I think. Was, um, so like, you know, where we give examples of like lighting and furniture and signage. Just having a hard time. It doesn't say like what is that. That is where we say, and this is the only type. Yeah. So I think. Yeah. I don't think that the consultants or staff spent a lot of time working on these. It was more to. Show examples of what might work and honestly, it would be great to have this side by side and all the different districts to look at. Or, you know, neighborhoods to see what the differences are between them and they might be pretty subtle if anything. Um, but I think for instance, you know, if you look at this neighborhood commercial streetlight and I'm going to jump to the historic center. Um, now that's actually. I chose a bad example. Let's look at signage. Um, but you can see the theme here is a little more, I'm going to call it old fashioned for lack of a better term. Um, but a little more traditional. Yes. Traditional. Thank you. And compared to, I'm going to go up to seven. Now we're back in mixed use north. And I get to their examples. These I'd say are a little more modern, a little more contemporary. That's the word. Thank you. So, um, I think if we were to look at these side by side, we'd see some of those differences, but these are again, we're more of a guide for visions of what these neighborhoods could look like to give more of a feel, distinctive feel to each of them, as opposed to being regulatory of it should look like this and nothing else. So as you described, I've made a lot of sense. We don't do that. We don't define it like that. Yeah. I mean, like, like you're just saying, like the older, the older styles looking. I think that's great. Yeah. So yeah, there's, there could be some text that goes into that, that you come up with, um, as you work on regs. You can just say it's, it needs the, the lighting needs to be consistent with the style of the area. Yeah. And the one issue with the consistent of the style, with the style of the area that we've run into is the style of the area is going to change. So it's this moving target and for staff to say, what fits the area is really difficult because it's very subjective. So it would be helpful if you do want to regulate any of these elements, lighting, signage, et cetera. What was that? Yeah. So that's part of what these, maybe you're intended to do. We don't have to stick with these images in particular, but if you had like, you know, for instance, in our standard specifications for construction, we even have a standard design for street light. Um, and if it looks like that, then we can reasonably say, yeah, that fits or it doesn't. Um, and if we have some specific parameters as to what that means and what we're looking for and what can be flexible and what isn't. Yeah. I'm going to something else after this, but I think a signage, I think we're looking for consistency. We don't want one set of sides here. Another one here. You know, we want the same at least by neighborhood in the same thing. I think in the lighting, exterior lighting, we need a comp. We need to settle on account. A single comprehensive design and these are the lights. And, you know, we talked recently about, you know, the lights we get. Look, we look at all the commercial stuff around here. Now we're getting the same old stuff every time. And the lighting science has changed so much in the last, you know, five, six years that you're getting the same light out of, you know, much better fixtures. And so we want to make sure it's covered in our, in our design. I think we had a lesson that we learned with lows is that we've got to be able to be flexible for the new technology. So instead of the lighting fixture that we want, we need to have the elements of the fixture. What do we want it to do versus what do we, you know, what's the outcome? Yeah, because we got, we were, we were stuck trying to get LED lighting because we, we didn't have any, we had regulations that required something else. So, and I think we're talking some pretty fine details here. I think it's something I would encourage you to look at, but I'd also encourage you to think, focus on the big picture more. And if we are okay with like all the rest of the design guide and the fundamentals of lot sizes, densities and heights, like great, we can start working on that. And you guys can talk about where you want the rest of this minor detail to go. But I would also, I would also suggest I think on that point and correct me if I'm wrong, but the design guide isn't, again, like the town plan, it's not the regulation. Correct. So this is, this is guiding us. So John's point about having, you know, in the regulations should be, they'll be specific for, you know, these elements. This is representative of elements, not necessarily the elements, but it is representative. So I would like us to get to the point tonight of accepting this as a design guide, knowing that we now have to make regulations to back this up. But somebody coming in the door to pick this up and have a pretty good idea of what we're looking for. Well, and I would defer to that point. That's a great point. I would say that you got to make this a fluid process. We start writing the regs and we find ourselves in a conflictual situation where the design guide is either too vague or too specific. Right. We can tweak the design guide, finalize the reg and do those things in tandem because that's when we'll be really into the meat of it. Looking at the design guide, we'll be writing a reg. We can say, whoa, we didn't really intend that. Let's Chris Pop. Peter. Sorry. Let's Chris. He was in the office yesterday. Let's Chris pop that language and the design guide and we could change those together. That's good. Can I bring up a question? Yes. Oh, wait a minute. Hold up if you can. Tom, Tom has had his hands up for a while. I saw it earlier. Yeah. No, go ahead. Tom. Yeah. I'm going to ask about stormwater. I noticed that some of the density is pretty high. We're going to address stormwater here. So stormwater is turning into its own, you know, world of regulation. I would say there's a tricky balance to find between, you know, saying, okay, you could go up to 80, 90% lock coverage as long as you got your stormwater figured out, which then might encourage someone to think, oh, great. I'm going to have to leave 10% green space. And then, you know, not even going to worry about stormwater and then suddenly get to a point where they need to redesign. So we should try and get as close as possible. But I'd say if for something like that pushed the envelope of being permissive a little further than maybe where you think it should be just so that you don't run into a situation where we say, you know, 70% lock coverage, but someone can design something that meets all the stormwater requirements that happens to be 80% lock coverage. Okay. And just, I'm up here with the franchise color language. Hang on a second. John, did you have any more points? We drifted away from you. Yes, please. Paula, you want to. This is sort of an aside, but some of the question that's been haunting me for quite some time. When McDonald's initially went in, they were required to have a pitch roof on the building and make it look a little bit more traditionally New England in style. It's right on the main dread. When they did the renovations, they weren't required to maintain that. I would have to look into. I don't know if it came before the board or not. Yeah. I think we had colored and stuff like color and lighting. But let's, let's, let's leave it. I think that's a design point and that's something we can, we can wrap in, but. It's a design point and a process question, which is something else we should talk about when we started going into regs is how much can you define up front and say, here are the rules, follow them and you get to permit versus needing to come back to the board, the planning commission to have that design review. And I don't think it's going to be the same for every parameter. And when we looked at the, you know, some of those specifics a couple of years ago in your design survey, I was just looking back at that. And some things were pretty clear. We can say exactly what we want. Some things you really want to have at the table. There are lots of places where the McDonald's look great. Very traditional. Well, McDonald's been around long enough that. Right. They can argue that they're traditional. Okay. So let's refocus on the design guide as it sits. I've been, we've brought up some specific questions. I've also heard and I'm sort of echoing that we went through this and we've sort of gone back to it and. I want to, I want to hazard that, I guess that the commission in general feels that we're more or less good with this to go. Is that a fair assessment? We're going around the room. Josh. Tom. Yes. John. Mangan. Yes. Yep. Chu. Love the design guide. Good answer. A plus plus. David. I'm just about at love with you. Yeah. Dead. Okay. So I think for tonight, our purpose is to look at this. We've looked at it. We're going to use this to go into regulations. And ask one more clarifying content question on the design guide. Yep. Six minutes on the design guide. I can do it. So there's a whole section B on building forms. And I just want to confirm that's included in your love of this design guide and that we can use that as a basis to talk about design and talk about, you know, from a regulatory perspective, what we're looking for and how we go about regulating things. So do we want to talk in specifics about building types? And I'm going to share this again because I've stopped sharing so we can see the room. Here we go. This will pretty much capture. Building forms. How much time did we, I think the bigger concern for me would be their applicability in each of the four areas. So I can't remember how much time we spent talking about that. Yeah. That's something I think we still need to flesh out. We have again, some draft regulations that never came fully before you that started to slot those into districts. But I think that there's some tweaks that need to happen from what the initial draft we got was. But and also just in terms of, you know, sort of what these are defined as, you know, mixed use small mixed use large multifamily small multifamily large. Those feel comfortable at this point. We can always revisit, but. I think to Dave's point earlier is that as we start going into the regulations, if we find that we, that any of these don't fit and aren't what we want from, from design and structure and so forth, then we can go back and tweak this as well. Yeah. I think we, I feel we put quite a bit of time in, even though we didn't get resolution to the granular level, we will embrace the concept. Yep. And again, a format. Right. Yeah. The format is what we're looking for as this is a good point. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. Are we in agreement on that? Say nay, if you're not. Easier way to do that. Okay. So. We're good with that. And that concludes the, that, that bit of review. I want to get into the minutes and the other business because there are some things to talk about. Yes. Before we move on from that, do you want to talk about organizing yourself around regulations? Do we want to save that for the next meeting perhaps? That's going to be in the other business. Great. We're going to, we're going to close buttons off as we go. We're creating the organization as we go. But this is where I've been told I've been too abrupt at sometimes in meetings because I don't like to let the things drift. You're good. Isn't it. So actually efficient. Actually at this point, I want to go to, I want to get a motion for the minutes from March 10th. And then we'll get into the other business, which is agenda items for the next work session. And a discussion on the joint commission work that we've still moved. On minutes. That's you. Okay. So we have the minutes that title web and DFT dot. I think that's the one that you most recently sent. Corrections. Yeah. So that's the one we're looking at. Does anyone want to offer any amendments to the minutes that were sent to us that includes Sharon's highlights. Hearing none. All those in favor of the minutes as presented signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed. Minutes cat past seven zero. Okay. So quick up other business. A quick update on the engagement with the other commissions. Josh and I had the first meeting with Sharon and Darren and Jeff Benjamin. And we'll dodge and we'll dodge. So we had two of the commissions join us to talk about engaging with us and moving forward. Josh, do you want to give a quick update on that? I don't know if you've seen Duffy, but we've already gotten his emails back from Will Dodd outlining how it went with his group and they sound very interesting. And so what we're proposing to do basically, and just to be correct if I have wrong, but I'll essentially be overall one person, various other commissions that he is to have a planning commitment on or to their group on a specific action item to talk about in our work plan. And I would sort of coordinate where necessary. Okay. But as we report back to the perspective group, eventually everything will come to this. Say we have a one person. They come up with something on the energy. Great. We basically have a thing before. And then the next step for us, again, that I interpret is that we would keep to get buy-in from commissioners, planning commissioners. That is absolutely saying commissioners will be interested in our list. We're saying, okay, we've got time for the energy. Energy committee. Who's interested in that? Who's interested in working? That's right on spot on. And I think, and just to, to emphasize that, you know, the work that we're looking to have work groups happen and Dave, you brought this up more and more frequently that the work groups to go out and not necessarily to solve all the problems of the world, but to provide some recommendations back to the commission and say, do the work and bring it back. We will have those reports, recommendations or whatever. Well, that's what we will bring into public review in the planning commission process. So they will have be fully vetted in front of, in front of the public on camera and so forth. So that there is opportunity for engagement and review of what these recommendations are. So I think this is a very solid approach. We're, we're looking to leverage. We're looking to leverage the resources that exist in the community. You know, the focused commissions that are out there, their job. I think this is going to work well. And it, and it is, I did ask Josh to sort of be the point person because it makes a lot more sense to have a single thread and something like this than to have, you know, all sorts of emails flying back and forth. And I really didn't want staff to have to be the ones that are filtering or fielding these calls and questions. So I think this is, this is a really solid approach so far. We have another session set up scheduled for next. Thursday. Yeah, Thursday. And we may have to reach out to do an evening session with one of the other missions if they need us to do that. But I think the big ask is for, for all of us to step up and be a liaison for all of the other commissions so that we have somebody who can work with energy and have an idea of what we're doing and be able to bring questions back and so forth if there's things going on. So that's what we want you to sort of be looking at, you know, don't have to answer it today. If you do have interest specifically, I would reach out and let Josh know that, hey, I'm looking interested to be on, you know, work with energy. I'm looking to work with housing. I'm more, you know, I don't want to work with anybody. And go from there. I see you. But that's, that's where, where, where we want to head with us is to get involvement, the other commissions and involvement of the PC with them so that we can bring this back and get some of these work moving independently of stuff that we're doing at the table. Thoughts, questions, commissioners. There's somebody up there. I saw Betsy Dunn, but I'm asking the commissioners right now. No, PC commission, PC members. You guys all on board with us at this point, or is anybody have any concerns about this approach? That's good. And to be fair in, in Frank, we are sort of working out this structure. This is, this is, we've never done this before. Not, not reaching outside the commission as actively and as thoroughly as, as we are trying to do this time. So we're, we're breaking new ground. But it's, it, I think it's, it's, it's probably going to bear a lot more fruit than, than, than we've seen before. Betsy. Yes. Thank you so much. I would like for the conservation sales committee, conservation. He would like to be involved in this as well. I think you were on the, you, you, your, your chairs. I'm not sure who they are at this point. Alan and Mike, the chair and vice chair were invited to connect with planning commission. Hasn't happened yet. Betsy, but it will. And then there will be an update at the April meeting. Yep. We, we sent out an invitation. Josh and I sent an invitation to every single chair and vice chair and all the commissions to work on this engagement. So you can, you can let them know they got to get, they got to get on the stick. I'm going to tell you right now we're going to be on the stick. All right. Thank you. So one of the things we want to do is make sure we set our agenda for the next. Is there another hand up? Nope. Okay. We want to set our agenda for the next work session, which is the, the, the second meeting in April. Yes. So do we have things, I know Ned, you had talked about, about trying to draft up some things. And I mean, do we want to, what do we want to look at? What can we look at the next time? So we can have something on the agenda a little more focused. You hit a list of, I think that you've thought of things. I think one of the next thing that came in is to review all the, the use categories and all our zones. Is that something that. I don't think we were going to, we were looking to have the ZBA take that on. Did you want to work with the ZBA on that? Josh taking notes. Yeah. Worked with the ZBA. I'll work with housing, but I don't, you know. So anyways, what we talked about on our list, Darren, can you bring the spreadsheet back up? Yes. Because that's what I want to keep. I want to circle back to our list each time we are on here. And that's what we're setting our tables. What are the other things that's been out there is, and we've touched on it for meetings before, but we'll talk about some of the stuff we're going to be looking at. This is up. They need to review into PUD. Okay, so let's go back to our work list. We've got, we've got our work list up here. We did. One of the top things was the zoning and design standards. We looked at the design guide tonight. We have allowable conditional uses. And we're actually looking to have the ZBA, confirmation on that but yeah and economic development as well I think wanted to be involved in that particularly so you know we've got we've got you know things on here performance standards we you know what of our do we want to get into the regulation changes for the ETC next that's a question do you want to continue on this track do you want to switch gears to something else I did throw a couple more memos into your packet about Act 171 as well as prepping for the 2024 town plan so you've got basically the first oops I don't know how many of these are I'm getting through most of these the rezoning is I think should kind of be wrapped into the well Seneca over rezoning should be part of the 2024 town plan ailer lands can be part of ETC but should all be considered and I'm working on a energy related memo for your next meeting just as sort of get things started so yeah those are questions that are out there one thing I would like to get some clarity on tonight is what you want to do with the bylaw modernization grant so we've got that 16 just over $16,000 to work on updating the bylaws that can be specific to ETC next we can do it more broadly for the whole town could have some overlap with PUDs and our review process we also had thought of maybe using that to do a build out study of the entire sewer core area to see okay if we increase the zoning density would that you know what would that look like so we might want to check with public words to see if they've done something similar right I think they have to some extent but we're talking about changing their under their baseline changing the underlying assumptions of how dense things could be in zoning so anyway it would be great for us to know sooner rather than later so we can either put out an RFP for that or know that we're gonna talk to the state to get the funds shifted into something else so we have I'm looking at no no no sorry into a different project within Essex okay I'm looking at that and the way we've got a title there's a lot of stuff in there and to nudge point PUD you know improvements to the DRV process and so forth that that's we just talked about the design standards are we I would almost like to take a pass at the draft zoning regulations that we had I mean we just talked about design it's kind of fresh yeah that seems to me we had we had draft zoning changes ready to yep we're talking about for ETC ETC next okay that seems to be I'd like to get that on a roll and then if we're talking about wanting to go back to the the process the town plan amendment process that you were talking about we might be in a position to do that or more know more about whether or not we could hear thoughts David yeah I mean I think that makes them because we're still what we're also starting just in the beginning phases of getting the other commissions engaged so we really don't have a clear guidelines yet of what they're gonna what they can take on and it fully engage on so well we can work on the ETC next and I think Sharon has a thought I just saw a light bulb or something no well I agree I also agree with that a little bit in that if we're still waiting for all those pieces with these other committees to come together do you want to start working on something else like the PUD PUDs have been very difficult and in my mind they're right up there with everything else we have so many right up there's so we want to be able to warn we have to warn you know and on our agendas soon for the next for next meetings and I just get a little concern that we might end up putting something else on that isn't as transparent to say okay because it's last minute or it doesn't get out on at all and you amend it on the fly at the meeting and the highest point the highest item we had on here was ETC next right no I and I feel like we're doing it but we're also at a little bit of a lull getting all these workshops together so so how about this for us let's let's look at the the proposed zoning changes the draft zoning changes that we started out for ETC next yes that's our work item secondary to that is let's get a report on the bylaw modernization grant what can we do what is I mean that there's a lot in there you asked us what do we want to do with it I don't know enough about it to know what we should be doing with it okay we've got a lot of things in here is that that might be the the second bullet item yep all right sounds good so we can have two main discussions as opposed to that being sort of a secondary other business like we're talking about yeah I know I think two bullet items under the planning session great I think those will actually work well together as we start looking at ETC regs there's going to be some overlap with process and then you know design that we are trying to get with PUDs but it just isn't working so I think that will actually work pretty well I have a question on the the regs when we start to try to formulate those we're not are we not using the word that we shouldn't use so it will things will I guess put this I will things come to the planning commission table for your review not the way that other word allows us to do it I don't think we're I mean we're hybrid no matter how you want to look at it we're creating our own pattern in our own yeah that's fine in our regulations if we want to say if it if it matches ABC and D you're done okay and it can be approved by staff I don't know if we want to do that or not but let's that let's deal with that as we get into this that's fine and the regs that were drafted were done with that in mind that hybrid approach at some point and probably ETC or whatever we're gonna need some graphic help okay and is that a use for this grant money you have because I don't think anyway you know that I don't know I'm not a you know maybe you're a kid Jackie but you know that's what we need really so I think we ought to go to the elementary school and have this be you know grade school kid project student grant yeah that's all right yeah the question I have to use that money by a certain day so yeah but no it's a good point that I think that could help and especially again if we start seeing examples where it's stuff we're doing with ETC and X can translate to the rest of town that could be really usefully use a useful way to spend that month well I'm just you know thinking that you know we're gonna gonna be outselling this and you know maybe you know some fancy you know a couple of fancy pictures or maps or something so we'll help us let's let's let's wrap that in I want to I would like us to have the focus primary focus of the next planning meeting being the draft regs yep with a with the secondary bullet nada nada if we get to it but the secondary bullet being you know how we could use how we leverage the bylaw modernization grant yeah we can pin the question on money for a little bit longer we have until the end of 2023 to spend that money so you know I'd like to think it would be best to get a consultant sort of if we're gonna hire someone to do anything whether it's a build-up model or you know regs or graphics we should have that in mind by like later this year so that we can put it out get the project done before we have to report on the grant so that's the timeline we're thinking so and if we are gonna use that for a build-up model summer would be a great time to start we can again push it off if we need to but okay so as some of the comments you've made earlier Ned if any commissioner has thoughts on what certain things should say even if we're not working on them the next meet write them up draft us a report that we can have on file so we can get back to it so if you've got thoughts on the PUD draft it out and but but let's do these as concise you know ideas and thoughts even if you want to put in draft language and that's anybody I'll give you this whole I have been thinking about my file cabinets over that blue one the white one anyways but so so if you've got if you want to do some work on it that's great now the other thing is as we get going if you've got a pet project that you want if you want to peel off on grab another commissioner set up a work group do a subgroup we don't have to set them up at this table if you want to do a subgroup let us know that hey I'm gonna form a subgroup with David or with John Schumacher and we're gonna do this and bring it back to the Commission I think that's let's everybody has the latitude to do something like that but but let us know that you're doing it and just be clear what's delivered back is a is a report whether you go through staff or come to the bring it to the table one other question on more questions I've got other suggestion on how you want to approach things we have that list of housekeeping amendments that we put together and follow last year that's like we could set that in motion get that started no controversy on those do you want to get that in motion or wait until we've seen a few more things that we can add in one of them might be cannabis well we can submit a memo for your next meeting not the second meeting in the month but your very next meeting to talk about that if you want do we have a do we have a full agenda for the next for the first meeting April we have one application it's should be relatively straightforward there might be a few questions it's main 35 Thompson Drive it's a autumn hardware house so what about and it would everybody be entertained looking at some of the background about that yeah some of the background lists that we've got cannabis me yeah yeah but I mean it those are ones that are should just be a review and agree or something like that so if you only got one application let's use maybe use some of that time put it you know as a line item for follow-up on how we want to frame it yeah and if you're ready to let those move forward we can start the hearing process of you know getting it to various places the getting the reports to various places they need to go getting the things warned and all that after you make decisions that mean I think in that was sort of my my vision was how to use the extra time that we might have in the first meeting was to do the things that that you know we're either well documented or easy to do or something like that but keep the second meeting to be focused on you know larger ticket items yeah so in speaking of the second meeting we did agree that maybe consent agendas would be thrown on the second meeting so I'm gonna hold you to that however the question is we did have another application that came in or that's good yeah that just came in but what was this oh yeah it's gone by that seems to be a cookie cutter shouldn't take you any time at all it's a warehouse building on famous last word honestly I'd like to if it's not consent I don't want I would rather not see it on the second meeting how do you feel about pushing on a consent application pushing the envelope on a consent application how well has that worked recently think about it I think we have our answer Sharon roll some dice are you feeling lucky I mean okay so you're saying well you know why is this here let's take it out yeah well we thought we thought that before too and look what happened not too long ago I think let's well I was actually trying to pitch this for you oh I'm hearing but I'm hearing this too go for it Sharon yeah if you didn't make it happen yeah all right only need the only need four out of exactly okay you have other business or was that yeah no I have other business there's nothing else in our folders to know because it just came in 22 old stage road has an existing accessory apartment and they are looking to come to the zoning board to convert to an Airbnb you ask that I bring those things to your attention it will be the standard non-conditions that that we do every month so if you want it to come formally I mean your decision was just tell you about them so are you guys still good with that you really want to open that can or okay so I take it that you're good that's fine the next one was attorney Ellis did send an email to report that the 87 Pinecrest Drive judge Walsh dismissed the appeal without prejudice and without appellants waving any issues that could be raised with respect to sketch plan approval meaning they didn't they still hold right they didn't lose it right they're waiting to see what preliminary brains and that's all I have okay so we're gonna I'm trying to hold to scope yeah and we're coming up it's be out of here before 8 30 does anybody have any any thoughts concerns I want to make sure that we're we're good with this because we're gonna need everybody's engagement on making this work with the other commission's function I've asked staff not to be the middlemen that's you know Josh is gonna be the primary but you know questions come in we're gonna have to field them which could really get creative but are we all okay with this approach if there's concerns either reach out to me directly or Josh or keep them to yourself I mean that that was that's a that's an option to like we're getting punchy I've been started out punchy no so I think this is gonna be a really interesting process I think we have the the potential of making this really really good getting a different level of engagement we hope then we've had before I think it'll be more solid because of more people involved okay with that take a motion or not 821 I'll second Tom and shoe Tom and shoe all those in favor I opposed we're good thank you all