 Let's go ahead and call the meeting to order first up to approve the agenda so everyone can take a look and I'll take a motion to approve. Look good. We have a motion to approve. Some move. Okay. Motion from Brian. Do we have a second? Second. Second from Gabe. Any discussion? Okay. Those in favor of approving the agenda say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. So agenda approved. We can proceed. Comments from the chair. I don't really have anything that comes to mind. You know, we have a lot of balls in the air, I guess, but no new developments or anything for me. Does anyone else have anything of interest? Okay. Yeah. Then the next agenda is general business. I don't see any members of the public here to discuss anything that's on the agenda. So we'll breeze past that and jump into. So Mike, we have like a review of the revised webpage templates. So, yeah, so yeah, we took a look last time. There was just three of us. But everything, you know, seemed improved. Did you want us to pull it up and look at it, Mike, or were we waiting for SC group or, or what? I remember I talked to them last week and I wasn't sure if they were going to be able to make it. I know Julia was definitely not going to be able to make it. So I sent, I sent them invites, but I wasn't sure if they were going to make it. Okay. That's okay. We can, we can pull it up. Everyone. There's a, there's a link. In the agenda. You want to pull it up and share it from your end. I can do that. Okay. So, assuming things are the same as last time. Last time that we looked at this, the last meeting. Actually, I don't think it is the same. So this is historic resources page. There's an intro bullet points. I think they were trying to make this shift to making it more forward looking at the start. Okay. I didn't, I wasn't able to watch the previous meeting. I knew it was pretty short. So. Yeah, I didn't just just brought us through it and we checked for the things that we've given feedback about and it was there. But yeah, it looks like maybe someone was spent since then. It didn't, it didn't sound like they were going to have a lot of time to work on stuff because they're under, they have a couple of the contracts that are closing up so they were going to be out. So here's, here's the new maps. Not sure if people have seen that. But I think that they, they've drawn out different features on the maps with the text over here. So you can see that this is highlighted and it lets you know that what you're looking at is the designated downtown. They also have words over here to the side of the map. I found these changes. We made it all a lot easier to understand. I think last time we kind of told them that we didn't know what all the different colors were. So I think it's really well laid out now. Yeah, they've added these buttons. That was something from last time. I think that the maps are more like what we've said. It's the synergies with other plan chapters. I thought the synergies was pretty good before I don't think they had too many changes to make in that one. No, they changed under the implementation summary. There used to be a description and they just removed that we had talked about different options for. For that. So now it just runs through the goals. And then who yeah who's involved got put to the bottom. Yep. So, so we talked about that. Anybody have any. Response. To the current state. Because maps are awesome. I think mostly what they are looking at are, you know, big picture thematically. I mean, people may go through and want to make war changes or picture changes or map changes or make some adjustments, but it's kind of how they've approached this chapter is how they'll start to tackle the other areas of economic development and energy and housing are all going to kind of follow introduction is going to be short it's going to be forward looking it's then going to go into plain context where it's going to explain some things using maps and graphics and then it's going to go to the synergies. Where it has some infographics and some other pieces and then moves on to play an implementation and so it'll all have a similar look and I'll have a similar feel but that's kind of the template is what they need to prove so that way they can move forward and start filling in the other templates, and then we can start having discussions maybe we do have changes we have to make here because there's a word or a picture or something that we'd like to go and phrase a little differently. And certainly I expect when historic preservation goes through this, you know, when we do our public hearings HPC will go through it and they'll probably have some input on things they would like to, you know, we should be emphasizing this a little bit more and we shouldn't be talking about it as much. Well that's perfectly fine we can make word changes. You know, all the way. So yeah so my only ongoing worry is about polishing the words the writing because it's, it's changed you know it's been changed around every time we've looked at it, and I've kind of lost track of the things that I like and don't like about the way they've chosen to, to lay out the words in the chapter. So I understand we're going to the plan is to go over it at the end. Yeah, we kind of have a plan right for the for for the language that's going to go into the to the future chapters they're going to give us a chance to just review it and make suggestions for those right. Yeah we're going to build them out as word docs. They're going to go over to you. So they're not going to build out web pages anymore like you what like you see now, because that's kind of work intensive but now that they have the template. They're going to go and build out the word pieces. They're going to try to take as much as they can out of the chapters that we had developed we developed the chapters without knowing how to write a story board. So we're going to kind of go in and grab the pieces we want, or we think that are most appropriate to meet the template. And then we're going to build these things out and then go and provide you the word docs that say, these are the words that are going to go into the introduction. These are the words that are going to go into the plain context. These are the words we're going to use for synergy and then you guys can go through and review those. So final blessing we're hoping it's this isn't a big process because we're going to be trying as we said, taking from all of the chapters you guys have already reviewed and already approved. So the hope is that there's a little bit less that this isn't a heavy lift for us to quickly be able to go through a number of these chapters to say yeah I think I think energy. But I think historic resources looks pretty good but I changed these little pieces here so we're hoping it's relatively quick, and that we're not trying to spend, you know an hour and a half on each word doc. And maybe Kirby you and I you usually have a larger editorial presence on these so maybe we work with you to kind of go through before it goes to the planning commission just to go through and say all right I'm going to take a first shot at this and then we'll go to planning commission and hopefully it'll be pretty close. Yeah, that's fine. That's totally fine. And like you said before, we've, we've already gone through and try to polish up the chapters. So if they're the more that they're pulling directly from from that stuff, the better. Yeah, that's the thing I'm nervous about because you know, you put all this work in and if we, I don't want to, you know, fumble on the one yard line so to speak about the content. Anybody else have any other reactions or. We are we good with just passing on to see group that to go with it to follow this approach on the other pages. Yeah. Yeah, these are good changes I think they're been helpful. I support. I'm using this sort of template going forward. Okay. Okay yeah I think it's good I think we've made a lot of progress. So sounds like sounds like everyone's good with it like so you can let them know. Yeah and I'll be in touch curvy about what word chapters for the next for the next meeting, we'll get a couple queued up I'll get them to use to take a look at. Yeah, and so the plan with those is what we will, you know, we'll follow what we've done with the other chapter reviews which is. Distributed or I'll put on the on the share page, some edited language for everyone just have access to. And sometimes, because I have other stuff going on that they only go up like a day or two notice unfortunately but I'll try to get them up. They're just to get people a few days to read them for the meeting. So if people come in and we're able to review them at a time then. You know, we don't spend a lot of meantime. And so yeah, so we'll just assume that. Okay, anything more on this for move on. Alrighty. Well, speaking of language. Public safety chapter language that worked on a while back. And we reviewed it at the last meeting. So hopefully everyone's had a chance to look at it. I will share that also though. But it seemed like we were in pretty good shape with it. Last meeting, by the way, didn't have a quorum. There was just three of us. So those of us who were there. We're good about it. Yeah, sorry about that. It was vacation week. I mean, you know, kind of to be expected. Okay, so I'm just going to assume that folks have had a chance to review it. So I'll just ask. If anyone has any. Changes or feedback. This is a different kind of chapter. Because each agency kind of has its own mini chapter. Within the chapter. And it looked to me like some of these things were written by the agencies themselves. Because I don't know if there was a style difference between some of the paragraphs. Agency agency. As far as, as far as editing, the, I remember wanting to make make sure we didn't have factual like, like, like opinion type statements that is facts. Just kind of rephrase some stuff like in this case. Yeah. MC JC thinks that there's a long history of success. As opposed to. That's just like the city claim claiming the city has success kind of thing. But the rest of it was pretty straightforward. I think. So anybody have anything. About the chapter language for public safety. So we do need to, we need to vote it out. And then it'll be passed on to a secret to do their thing. So people are ready. We can take a motion to. Approve or approve an amend. However you want to do it. Well, I move to approve the corrections and edits is. In the document here. Okay. So we have a motion from Gabe. We have a second. Second from Aaron. Any discussion. Before we vote. Does anyone have anything? Okay. Well, those in favor of approving the public safety agency plan chapter language. With the edits before us here. Say, I. I. Any post. Okay. Chapter language proved Mike. Move that along. And what we have left on the agenda. Is. Review of zoning. So. Go ahead, Mike. Take it away. Yeah. So I've been working over the past. Two weeks on putting together the strike out version, which is what we need to start warning the zoning update. And we won't probably do our warnings for another couple more weeks. Because we're going to still wait until after we get the country club road decision, but we can start reviewing those strike out versions among the planning commission and be ready for public hearings. But there were a couple of places where we need to make some decisions. And by we, I mean, you need to make some decisions on what we want to try to do. And we've had these conversations before. So I think for Maria and Brian, this will be new or maybe you were here for some of some of these, but one of the ongoing questions we've had is about density. And what do we want to do to every year? We've made some proposals and we've lost many of those. But we're back with another zoning amendment. And did we want to put in a proposal this time? Where we got to last time was there's always been a conversation of eliminating density. It was a conversation that was a part of the AARP, Congress for New Urbanism proposal that went through. There was a proposal that said, you know, density is not a good measure to use for regulation. Because it doesn't really get at what's important. So we've always supported the removal of density altogether. The only catch is, do we have good enough density, good enough design requirements that somebody can't just go through. And this has been the concern of the public and folks that somebody might be able to just go through and start knocking down some of these buildings and putting in big ugly buildings in their place. Because they don't have to meet density requirements anymore. So where you have a, you know, a neighborhood, you might be able to just go through and bulldoze a bunch of buildings and put in a lot more units. And that's been the concern. So we've always had a proposal. Maybe we just eliminate density altogether and go more with design standards. And so I think that was the last time the planning commission discussed, there was generally acceptance that we certainly could be able to eliminate the density in the design review overlay district. There is certainly enough regulation in that area to eliminate the density. There was maybe a proposal to just go through and say, let's try to eliminate density in a couple of districts. But I think that's the last one. Already there already is no density requirement in urban center one, two or three. So that's most of our downtown doesn't have a density limit. You can have as many dwelling units as you want in that area. I don't know if it went through and res 1500. There was a conversation of eliminating it in that district. I don't know if that one ever went through. But that would be another idea. Residential 1500 or a couple of these high density residential districts. So that was the second option or the third option, all districts design review overlay. Just some districts. Maybe that's the push. And then I had made a suggestion of maybe we just double. Double the density. Kind of as a way of. Keeping to release the pressure on things. You know, eventually making density. You know, it doesn't come into effect very often because. You know, it. Because it's not really what people actually do. And so let me use it as an example. We did already go through and say. If your property is conforming. That. That. If you're done, if your property is conforming that you can have a. A duplex on any lot that has a single family. So effectively that's doubled the density. So if you're in a res, 6,000 district, you need 6,000 square feet to have a house. But if you have square, a 6,000 square feet, you can actually have a duplex. But that doubling of density only applies at that lowest level. So if you're in res, 6,000 and you have 12,000 square feet, you're still only allowed to have a duplex. And if you have 17,000 square feet, you're still only allowed to have a duplex. So if you're in res, 6,000 square feet that you can have the triplex. So if we doubled the density, then you'd get a dwelling unit for every 3,000. As you move up. So it would effectively allow a lot more units. But still. You know, everybody on the screen today. If you have a single family home. Is allowed to have a duplex, but nobody, none of you has probably run out to put in a duplex. And it's the same as going to be true if we, you know, double the density and somebody had an apartment just because somebody has an apartment with a triplex, doesn't mean they're going to run out and add extra units. Maybe they will. And that would be a good thing in some cases, but I don't think it's going to happen to the extent that people are going to be tearing down and bulldozing houses because they could add an extra unit. And I think that was just where I was thinking, if we just doubled the density, it would open things up a lot more. So I think that would be a good thing. I think that would be a good thing to do. Without maybe. Bringing out the pitch forks and the torches. So those were the four that we had, but. Do we want to, big question. Do we want to attack density again? And if we do, what do we want to propose? So I can put it in the strikeout version. Okay. So last time we discussed this. And anybody feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought there was basically consensus that. We wanted to remove density in the. Design review district. And then also to supplement that. To make. A loud use for four units. Everywhere else. Like that, that was the plan we talked about before. The double the density idea. That sounds like, and. That sounds like a good idea. I don't know if that's a good idea. I don't know if that's a good idea. And folks jump in, but that sounds like something that could be. Doable if city council. Decides. That. That they're scared. For lack of better word. To actually completely do away with density. It can be a. An option. If that's. Put it more diplomatically. If the, if the climate's better for that. But it seems like this seems like a plan B thing, because, because partly because we, we want to get away from density. Cause we want to get people. We want to get away from people thinking about density. As a way to regulate how our communities look. Cause that's, that's not the point of it. So like that, that's one reason to do away with it. And also it just lets us focus. Our discussions on more important. Things as long as we have. Density requirements, there will be discussions about density requirements. We kind of want to just. Move on and have a higher level of conversation. So that's the gist of what I remember about the conversation. Does anybody else have. Anything. Hey, Mike, I'm just curious. I think we talked about this a little bit before, but I just can't remember. And do you have a sense of. You know, You know, Kind of historically what. Kind of the level of public pushback on this issue has been and also. The city council's reaction to it in the past. I'm not saying it should necessarily guide us, but I think it's someone destructive. In the past, it's been a heavy lift to get these. Density changes through. The city council's response to. The city council's response to it. And then it was finally to the duplex. Proposal. We had, we had kind of planned. I think only John and maybe Kirby were there when we did that. That was in the 2018 zoning. And we kind of thought that was going to be a big deal. And that was going to get a bunch of pushback and it kind of went through without. Even a squeak. So we were always very happy about that. And we were very happy about that. And we were very happy about that. And I think on that council has been really reluctant. And I think sometimes it just came down to some. Really hard. Pushback from the neighbors. Now I will add. One other proposal we are looking at in, in my office. Is from. The historic preservation commission who is looking at new demolition of the city. I think it's a significant change to rules. There's a lot of. Playing around with, you know, straw man arguments and trying to, you know, make, make rules that work. Across a broad spectrum of applications. And that's what we're kind of getting bogged down, trying to figure out exactly how to make this work. You know, we kind of see how things work at the extremes, but we're trying to see how things work in the middle. And we're trying to figure out exactly how things work. And we're trying to figure out exactly how things work in the middle. And if we had. Also, if we were attaching to this. Zoning revision about density. Additional rules to clarify how we handle demolition. It kind of helps to take that. Argument off the table of. Well, people are just going to come in. Buy these buildings, bulldoze them and build something bigger. Well, you can't do that. Because of the new demolition rules. So it's. You know, we're hopeful that might be a little bit more helpful in, in making the case, but we're not a hundred percent sure we're going to get there right now. We're working with the HPC and with the. Meredith, who's the zoning administrator to try to try to hammer out those rules. So I think that will help. But yeah, it hasn't, it has not been an easy lift. I think last time. We pushed for just the riverfront district. So that was the only district we were going to change. Maybe we could get density removed from riverfront, which was the next highest after urban center. One, two, three riverfront would have been the most logical next one. And city council didn't go for it. So I think it's a good question to ask. I mean, I would say we have a different city council. Time is, you know, has changed, right? We've got the Vermont legislature very actively debating this. And I think it's a good question to ask the country. We've got state legislatures really looking hard at all these same things, these same exact things that we're talking about or being talked about all over the country. And I, you know, the day will come where, you know, coming in. Not in my backyard style. It's going to be like being an Archie Bunker kind of person. Like it's just people are going to understand that this is, it's really, we're excluding people that need places to live. And I think the, I Kirby, you summarized exactly our last conversation. I think going in, we're basically following up on the guidelines that were congress and newer urbanism and AARP. I mean, they were the ones who flagged this. And I think we should test the waters. I mean, I think it's important. You know, two, two units to four units. I mean, that's huge. The design review district. And that opens up a lot of things. I know we've talked a little bit near about single room, I think there's a lot of, it may be really expensive to try to figure out how to convert some of these homes into duplexes and triplexes and quads, but there's a lot of buildings in that space that could be single room occupancy. That would be great places for people to live and cohabitate. Right. So anyway, I think we should test the waters. I kind of agree with gave and Kirby to here. It seems, I mean, 2018 is. It seems to be a very different Montpelier than 2023. And I think the issues that are being discussed are just. So different nowadays. And I'm wondering how many. Of the same city council or even. Still around that. Looked at this five years ago. Oh, the ones who are here from five years ago, I think are only two. Yeah. So I think it's worth. Yeah. And the face of the, well, it's not all about politics. And gave that was Aaron's question. I'll take credit for asking it. I'll take credit for asking a really good question, but. But. Take your lead on the design review district and the. To the quad. Even for my short time in town, it seems to me that there's opportunities there. And I do think politically, right? You. The face of the council has changed. Even in the most recent election, I mean, really. Not only a times change, but I think. That council has changed. And you're right. I think it's what S 100. That bill that's going through the legislature. A lot of the stuff you, we've talked about tracks. Tracks that you're right game. And I do have other proposals for the use table. These were just the big ones. Cause we did, I did have some suggestions about splitting. Like multifamily. And then we had to cut into. Two different groups from, you know, five to 14 is one. Set of uses, which would be. More per, per midded or more permissible. And then. Using the existing table really just to apply for. Those that are 14, 15 units or more. And that really just pegs multifamily to. What is needed in order to trigger a conditional use review. And that was really why, because you need to have at least 15 units before you're going to start to trigger traffic. And so we really should just make an assumption that if it's less than that it's permitted use so that's one of the changes that's in the use table. That's excellent. Yeah, so that's one. The other one is it goes a little bit to the to the SRO question. I sorrows are dwelling units in a lot of cases but also the congregate living. There's a thought about how to break up the congregate living as well and we had some discussions about maybe that. The congregate living is all one line. And so regardless of whether you're a congregate living you could have a congregate living. I'll give an example when I was in Barry city, we approved one and it's kind of one of these believe it or not there are two units above gustos in in Barry. So there were but they were congregate they were actually room rooming and boarding, because they had rooms but they shared. They were rooms with kitchens but they shared a bathroom so congregate living by definition is you don't have all five of your requirements you share at least one of them. In that case, two apartments each had a kitchen but they shared a bathroom. And so that was a rooming and boarding facility. So it can be as small as just two units could be a congregate living. And that can go up to a dormitory of 80, but it's one line in our zoning so I thought maybe we would break congregate living into, you know, some kind of like smaller medium and larger so that way small congregate living would be easy to approve. You know they'd be mostly permitted uses because they're going to have low impact on the on the neighbors low impact on community. So I'll go through and make that change I hadn't made that change I just highlighted that on my list is something to bring to you guys to go through and say, would you want me to kind of break this out in the same way that we have, you know, under dwelling units we have one to four units is one of our classes. We have a small multifamily and large multifamily that's how dwelling units are broken up and I was thinking we could do congregate living in the same way, kind of a one to four congregate living and then a four five to 14 congregate living and a 15 and more congregate living. And that way we're, we aren't also then I mean in all, you know, taking a step back and looking at it from kind of that 50,000 foot. We're also not being discriminatory we're not discriminating against congregate living we're not treating congregate living any worse than we do a dwelling unit let's be fair. And, you know, we're not saying one is better or one is worse than the other. We're just going to go through and treat them the same and so that was my thought and Meredith agreed so I'll make those break that into three lines. Okay, another quick question and I'm sorry if this is a silly one I densities is a very fuzzy subject for me I conceptually have kind of a difficult time with it but this has been a really helpful discussion I was curious. I mean, when we were talking about the ARP, you know, recommendations and the discussion that's done from it, I think, primarily focused on what we're talking about here which is you know duplexes you know, but we're making the proposed changes that we're contemplating have any impact on other kinds of infill development like accessory dwelling units, etc. Or is that something separate in the park, and if they do have an impact like what is that So accessory dwelling units basically that was why we did the duplex was to kind of take the accessory dwelling unit out because legally it's only allowed to be applied to a single family home. So once you have a duplex you can't add an accessory apartment to one of your duplex units that would make it a triplex. So it kind of. That was a little bit of why we broke it up but now in this case if we said, if you have a conforming lot so if you're in res 6000 and you have 6000 and one feet. Then you could have a quadplex if you want to according to what the planning commission is proposing right now now if you have 5800. You can only have a single family home with an accessory apartment. Because that's everybody in the state is allowed to and we've put these rules in place to say and that's our rules we put in place that says we're talking about conforming lots and 90% of all the properties in every zoning district are conforming. So for the most part we're talking about most properties would be allowed to have between one and four units. And I think that would probably increase the amount of infill potential that we can see. That would be my, my thought on that where might make less of a difference is when people are coming in for larger projects so we haven't increased the density for multifamily. So if you were coming in to do, you know, a 20 unit building there's they're still going to be restricted by the density of the of the district so you'd have to have that many square feet so that those larger projects don't benefit as much as smaller projects would with your proposal, except for the in no density requirement in the design review overlay district so obviously if you're in the design review overlay district. You're going to have unlimited unit potential but you're also in the design review overlay district where it's hardest to demolish buildings and hardest to, you know, you're going to have a lot of burden in putting something new in. How does the project over at the Elks Club impact because I don't we'd have to do some zoning changes to make all that possible as well when we. Yeah, and some of that will have the conversation because that proposal will go through at the same time it's this amendment that we're putting together is so the only reason I raise that is because I think at least some of the conceptual drawings there are, you know larger different multi family structures over there right so that would even though we're talking about this design review district for the one area there there could be other areas that we say hey an apartment building might be in a good over in this other space. Yeah well so we're talking preliminarily about the lower area in the country club so those you're not familiar the lower part of country club road near where the existing. Country club building was or is and where the flat area is around it that area were estimating we would probably make mixed use residential or riverfront kind of something like that probably mixed use residential. And that's got one unit per 1500 or 27 units an acre so that might be enough to get all the density that they're talking about. But certainly, it would, you know, we could have that conversation. And, you know, if, if we were able to add some of these on as I said I talked about doubling the density if we had to double the density, then we'd have more than enough for the multifamily so if it's, if we ended up adding some of these on up to four units on a conforming flat, and then we double the density for multifamily, then we've really increased the potential and density really doesn't become an issue on the lower part in the upper part. Currently, as you see in like option a and option B are about residential 6000 residential 6000 is the same zoning district as college street so we kind of feel that has the right feel to it. It stays as townhouses and is built as single parcels kind of as a condo, you'd probably be limited to those, say, 25 or 28 units. If it got subdivided into smaller parcels and then sold, then you could get double that because or now four times that so there's a there's becomes a much bigger difference between the two between how much units could get built because if you subdivide it into, you know, 10 single family lots to put two plexus triplexes and quad plexus on. Then you could get a lot more units, then you could as a condo pot project, but we can certainly go through and have those conversations as as it goes forward the other option is just to go through and say well call it residential 3000 we got plenty enough. I mean, not anything wrong with that either. Like you'll have a you'll have a list of zoning changes along these lines, like, in the near future for everything or for country club road. Just, yeah, just everything I guess I mean if. Yeah, I'm going to be. I've gotten through. I've gotten all the way through to the start of the definitions I got a handful of definitions I have to do. I had a couple of places that were highlighted, and I had to find out what you guys wanted, and we need to wait on country club road so I won't have a country club road. But I can make these other these other additions up to four units on a conforming lot. I'm not sure how to do the design overlay district because an overlay district but I'll have to just, I'll think creatively about how to. Okay, how to do that one. So that was the density. And if anyone else have questions on density before I go to the next one. All right, so the next one. And I don't know if Maria and Brian were here for this conversation, but I know everyone else was solar access. Do we want to go back and charge the windmill on solar access with our new with our new ones here. One that I might do is to get a legal opinion on that one because now that we know that it actually may not be legal for us to do this. I might get a legal opinion from David Rue that might give us a little bit more to go through and say but if you guys said now we don't want to ruffle that one again. So, so the context last time, so like last spring when we had some zoning changes and yeah, the things that didn't get passed by city council were. A removal of density requirements in the river. Riverside neighborhood. And which was that was going to be like a tester thing. I mean, we were throwing it out there and then we didn't do anything to try to get any kind of support and there were. It turned out to be, you know, it turned to be one of the things that that people who were unhappy about a lot of the zoning proposals that they spoke about. So anyways, it didn't have a lot of support. I want to say a few things though, and then solar shading was the other one the thing that we're talking about now those were the two things that were approved last time. Both of those things. My read of the city council and based on their emails to me to was we there were supporters. And, and when they voted against it, there was an invitation by. I don't, this is embarrassing that I'm blanking on his name, but the person who's now our mayor. Jack McCullough, McCullough. You know, Jack was acting as the head of city council in that meeting also because and was recused for other purposes, other reasons. But anyways, Jack himself back then said, please. You know, do more work on this and come back for both of these issues. So, so I took it that the support was there from the city council just. We just didn't get the votes because there wasn't a perception of public support is basically so I think that yeah, they they've invited us to come back. So I think that maybe we should with the shading and. Part of the what we need to do with the shading issue. I'm going to stop and catch you guys up in case you don't know what I'm talking about in our zoning. And correct me if I'm wrong, Mike, in our zoning. Right now. If you were going to construct something new. There's the zoning cares about the shading that you create and what you're building on your neighbors ability to put up solar panels. It's not just about blocking current solar panels the way it's written right now is if it might block future perspective solar panels. Then you may not get approval. And we try to simplify that and we tried to make it less strict because it's it's really really quite strict as it is. We, at the time, when we realized the city council was not a was skeptical of the proposal. John Adams, who as you all know is great with maps, did some mapping and discovered that 97% of the shading in Montpelier is from trees. And then we really don't have a buildings causing shading problem. And he also John also pointed out that the whole thing might be counterproductive anyways because if you build up a new roof say, you can put solar panels on top of it. So whatever, whatever shading is being created space for solar is also being created. So why stop the building, you know. So anyway, that's that's where that was and Mike you can you can supplement the explanation as well. But the gist of it was yeah that they they were interested in us coming back. And it was really. I would say wanting to wanting to not be perceived as doing something that's counter renewable energy would be the main reason why. The city council kind of backed away from it. Yeah, so the zoning rules are extremely broad they actually say you can't shade walls, roofs and yards. So really you can't even shade somebody's grass. So it was really the way the zoning is written it's it's extremely broad and so we proposed to just eliminate it but we also accept for protection of existing and proposed solar facilities. So you couldn't shade an existing or proposed solar panels or something to that effect. If they just limited to roofs, then I think that's less of an impact, but really where this comes down to is, and it was actually pointed out in 2018 but it was in the middle of a giant something, a lawyer had come in in opposition to the zoning and in a list of his many many complaints against the zoning one of them was actually that this was a violation of the theory of ancient lights. And I was like, yeah, whatever. And I let it go. And I thought it actually there actually is this theory of ancient lights, which says that, you know, no, no, there's no state in the United States that allows you to that that grants you as a right as a property owner. The light that appears on your property so, and this really comes down to if you think about like building in New York City a 50 story building. If there wasn't this theory of ancient lights then everybody who gets shaded by that new 80 story building would be able to basically come in and oppose the project because you're casting a shadow on my house. There is no no state in the country allows you to say that you own the light that crosses and and so therefore shading requirements would break that that theory of ancient lights and we would be one of the only places in the country that regulates it. So, turns out they were that that complaint that long list of complaints about the zoning actually had one that was right so and I know this because we then had this set of rules appealed to court last year and the person who appealed that lost but they lost under other, other extraneous stuff. So, but it did bring up those points and so we could certainly go and bring it up to go through and say hey you know not only does it really really strictly inhibit inhibit and prohibit our ability to do infill projects because when you do a development you build something and you have to make sure it doesn't cast a shadow on the shortest day of the year so when you're casting the longest shadow you can't shade any of these other places and so it's really absurd. That's some of the background that we really, we really shouldn't from a constitutional standpoint, but you know my question for you guys today is, do we bring this up again, and if we do. How far do we want to go do we want to try to go through and say hey ancient lights, we should get rid of the whole thing, or are we going to make a more of a political play and say, let's try to restrict this just to something. We're not going to apply it to roofs or we're only going to apply it to this so that way it's not taking such a big bite. You know when I, when we, this first came up I went and I was just looking at, you know, like the most progressive states and you know California is like number one leading and solar energy, and their case law is basically what you would propose is the solution like if you have, if you've got nothing else, right you have to have an existing or you know you've got a permit to put one up right if you're creating a problem for a project that's been approved well you can't do that but otherwise, you know, you same same sort of thing I don't remember that was in there the ancient lights idea but I think between that having a legal opinion. It's just not legal and then having john's analysis which is like what the city couldn't exist. Like we'd have to demolish the city to be in compliant with these rules right if we find them retroactively so. And remit was this part of the 2018 is this part of the recent that rule put in place in 2018 is that what. Yeah it was first put in place in 2018 and then we tried to amend it and remove it, at least, at least once and maybe twice. Why was it put in the, the, it was, it was suggested by our consultant and and it was because we had a very pro. You know we're going to be net zero and we want everybody to do energy efficiency and we want to do all this. The rules kind of went in without a lot of. And again, when we redid the zoning it was everything so there was a lot of stuff that didn't get as much careful review as other things. One, I didn't like a lot, but I kind of managed to wiggle it over to a place where it wouldn't get used very much. So it's only in major site plans, which we don't get very many major site plans, but one place you that is a major site plan is new construction so if you're constructing on a vacant lot that's going to. be larger than a single or two family, then it's got to go through major site plan and that's where you get tripped into this, this rule so if you do a triplex or quadplex. And I think one of john's suggestions in the past was, well let's take site plan and make one to four unit projects exempt from site plan that would then get most of these out of it, but again it would still exist so there are a couple of ways of, I guess minimizing the pain. It's still there but we minimize the number of times it's going to show up but at the same time. It's probably may not be constitutional and it's generally I think a bad idea. And I thought so at the time but you pick your battles. I like the idea of limiting it to, you know, casting shade on solar panels or I think they like you said that someone has like a permit to get a solar panel so it's not just like this like amorphous someday maybe I would want to get a solar panel in my backyard and how dare you. So yeah I think to me that's a good kind of limiting feature as opposed to just getting rid of the entire thing. Yeah, and that's probably where I would go it's where we ended up last time, two years ago was the proposal was really to or maybe it was last year to just go with existing and proposed. And we can define proposed however we want. Because I think that makes sense. If you've, if you've invested in a solar panel. Especially most of these should be rooftop solars anyway so in its. Yeah, I I've got something I can put together for that and that would be able to fill in that line there. Let me jump in real quick just this this time, you know we're trying to try to be smarter. This time we'll just make sure that in our proposal that we include john's research. I think by the way I think you were asking if we thought illegal opinion was a good idea and it sounds like we do based on what I heard. So, if we can put in john's research and with our proposal and we can, and we can include any legal opinion we receive. I would say that asked for the legal opinion I wouldn't ask for just any, like for that one theory that I would ask for just generally. What's the legality of this provision. It was our attorney when we went to court this year so he he's already somewhat familiar with it so won't be an out of the blue thing. I mean it's it's a set of provisions he's already looked at because we were sued under that, or an appeal was made under that provision. Is this still being navigated. Nope. It was, it was a strange. It's just, it was a, it was a strange appeal in its foundation so it was really more of what you call it. They like they weren't in the design review district they thought they should be in the design equal protections. That they said there's a violation of the equal protections clause under the US Constitution, because I'm not in design review and I should be protected in the same way that properties are in the design review district so Okay, it was kind of a real it was kind of a reach and there was, but it also drew in the in under that same argument there was an equal protections that said, I'm not protected by this the solar access but I should be and so there's an equal protections clause, I should be protected under these rules. Okay. And so, you know our attorney did look at it from, but not from the standpoint of what we would be hoping it would be looked at. You know we want to see, we were kind of hoping like oh this would be good we can get a get a look at this from a from an attorney but that part of the question never came up. Yeah, yeah, I remember you telling us about that now. Okay. So yeah, I just think I think that, you know, for this and for the density thing we'll just want to, we're just going to make sure that we put in our memo or explanation to city council, you know, our full reasoning and make sure we do a good job with that. In addition to the other things we talked about to the other recommendation we may do because you know we've all gotten. You know, comments from Peter Kalman and from other folks that that we don't do enough outreach at the start so what we may do is get our proposals put together even and even before we hear from country club road. We may have some time as a planning commission to just go through and have a public input session where we say, Hey, this is not the public hearing there's going to be a public hearing but we want to invite people to come in and talk to us and we're going to put information out maybe we can get an article in the bridge maybe get to go and say this is the proposal that we're going to be making and we'd love to get your input before we warn our public hearing. And these are some of the big things that we're going to be looking at we're going to make a this recommendation about the density and this recommendation about the density and this recommendation about solar access and whatever else we want to put in that list so we can have a meeting with the public before we have our hearings so that way people can't say, you never asked us our opinions will. That would be a recommendation to you guys to maybe think about, and we, I can organize that with the staff here and do that when we're ready to go. So the last one I wanted to run by you. I've heard, you know, from from Gabe on this one. You know, a couple months ago now is regarding what we call the campus PUD. It's a planned unit development so planned unit developments or subdivisions that kind of fall under special rules. It lets you make them, you know, smaller lots think of a classic planned unit development would be a clustered subdivision where you know maybe you have 10 acres of beautiful farmland. You're allowed to have five houses. And each one has to have two acres so you subdivide the whole farm field and it's all gone, but what somebody else decides is hey if I can put all these down I could put my five houses each on half an acre. If the rest of the land open. That's better for everybody. I've still got the same number of houses and I've conserved it and you do that it's a planned unit development it lets you kind of bend the rules it lets you look at the whole parcel to calculate your required dimensional requirements as opposed to each individual one needing two acres you're like well each one is going to have a smaller frontage in a smaller lot size. But overall the densities are the same so that's, you know, one way you do a PUD. And that's kind of a classic one. And another one we have in our zoning is called a campus PUD and it was designed actually very specifically to look at how we're going to handle VCFA. One of the special provisions in there because you can have special rules that break the zoning basically is is how it works but usually it just allows for dimensional what lets you break the rules with dimensional stuff. In this case, it also allows you to break the rules on uses. And this is where a lot of people in the neighborhood on College Street and and other places that really had concerns about should we in our campus PUD does go and say anything that is a permitted or a conditional use becomes a permitted use in the campus PUD. You no longer have to go through the conditional use review, it's just becomes the administrative permit. And the campus PUD can request from the DRB other exemption so other uses that are not allowed in the district can be added into the district as well. And so that has kind of gotten a lot of people scratching their heads and saying I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that. It really kind of sounds like it's the Wild West. You know the Planning Commission writes the zoning to allow things based on densities and districts and everything else and suddenly everything goes out the window. If the DRB decides to give broad things and these carry forward forever. It really becomes very difficult to claw these back in the future, as opposed to what happens with a lot of people is, hey, I think this use should be allowed in the district and then everybody gets the right to do that use. So we did hear I did hear from a number of folks as the campus PUD was going through and eventually it failed the VCFA did not do the campus PUD. How the campus PUD rules came about was really through. I was working directly with Tom Green and the folks at VCFA when we were writing the campus PUD rules and we kind of had two approaches going one was in the past so before 2018. That was medium density residential district so it's a residential district colleges are not allowed where VCFA was nothing was allowed up there you weren't allowed to have colleges you weren't allowed to have all these uses so really was a problem to for them to do any, you know, adaptive use of their buildings they weren't using a lot of their buildings they wanted to, you know, lease it to the state for office use well you can't do that it's not allowed. It's a residential neighborhood. So there are a lot of those types of issues so we had two approaches one was to come up with a campus PUD a new set of plan unit development rules which would give you more of the flexibility that you need you approve your, your master plan, and then we'll let you get some uses that you're not allowed to have. At the same time we were talking on the other side, maybe we would just rezone this area, stop calling it medium density residential, what what we could rezone it something that would give it more uses. And we did eventually do that. We made it and you are mixed use residential so a lot of new uses are now allowed in that area. And they got the campus beauty. So they got both. And the question now as well because you've got most of what you wanted here in the mixed use residential, maybe you don't need, you still need the campus beauty because the campus beauty allows you to do other things you get to have uniform signage. You get to have a shared parking agreement so you can do, you can sell off all those buildings and everybody has to meet uniform design standards and sign standards and you know the density requirements are shared throughout so you can, you know, the green, the development potential of the green is used in some of the other buildings that type of stuff. And you've got the shared parking agreement because one person's going to have the parking lot and everybody else needs that parking lot so there's a shared agreement. Eventually, they decided a different route to get it done but at the same time the campus beauty still rules still exist. But it would be a good time, especially now that nobody's applying for a campus beauty. It might be a good time to go back and revisit that question of, should we allow the DRB to adjust the use table, or should people who are in those campus beauty, you know, you're going to get a whole lot of other benefits from other things, one of them is not being allowed to do uses that you're not allowed to do that other people don't have the right to do. And I hope that makes some sense. In all my rambling. I think that makes sense. What you said makes sense. Well, we created a new neighborhood mixed use residential, but there's still things that go on on the campus that are not permitted uses in the neighborhood that we kind of custom made for that location. Well, mixed use residential exists at the college. It exists on Elm Street, north of spring street so as you go up spring street until you get. I don't know to where that little parking area is for people to go fishing. It's on Northfield Street Northfield Street's another section from the intersection up to and including the economy lodge. All of that is all mixed use residential so they didn't get any special zoning they got the same zoning as these other places. But they do have a lot of uses you could be you could put a hotel up there because we have a hotel in the economy lodge, you could put office uses so there are a number of things and we've talked a little bit about tweaking a few things. You know, maybe a few of these should be adjusted. Use wise on the use table, because I think you can have personal and professional services but you can't have an office. So I think one of the proposals is will put off allow offices in there doesn't make sense that you can't have a law office on Northfield Street, or Elm Street, or up up on. Okay. So we'll add an office in but other than that we kind of thought most of the stuff that's going on is is well covered. It's well covered by mixed use residential and what's allowed. Yeah. Yeah, we could take a look at it. Oh is the proposal basically that anything that's currently allowed a mixed use residential but isn't in the campus, PUD that we move it into the campus beauty is that what you're saying like. No, what I was going to remove actually it's removing language from the campus PUD. That gives the campus PUD applicants and the DRB the right to approve adjusting the use table for uses within that approved PUD so you know there be a there a list of uses and somebody can come in and apply to add stuff to it that isn't allowed. And usually just come down to a fairness issue. And usually when you create a district the idea is everybody within that district is treated fairly you, you know, you know, I can operate a garage or I can't operate a garage and my neighbor if they're in the same zoning district. You know we have the same rights and limitations. This kind of change tips the scale to campus PUD to go through and say, well, they're going to be allowed to do things that nobody else in the district is allowed to do. Or be able to get them to be permitted uses where everybody else are there conditional uses so you would have a hearing. If you want to I think a hotel is a good example I think a hotel might be just use as an example maybe it is maybe it isn't put a hotel might be a conditional use. And if they got approved to make it a permitted use they could just come in and do it as an administrative permit. And there's no public notice to neighbors and it just goes through much quicker. But there was a reason we said it's that hotels should have a conditional use review because of their impact on the neighbors. So, a couple things come to mind for me one of them is that the campus up there is unique. And I don't think it's fair of us to say to say that. It should be compared to some of these other places in town that. Are different. You know, like the street strip that you mentioned is I live right next to it. And I get how that makes a lot of sense for mixed use residential. But it is very different than the college green. So, you know, that's 1 thing that comes to mind for me is maybe they should not be the same neighborhood. Maybe we should treat the campus as a unique thing because it. That's just the reality. The other thing that comes to mind and this is like kind of a minor issue, but. I've got to say ever since I've been on the bank mission back in 2018 when we talked about PUDs back then or 19 or whenever we. You know, I've always thought that. The PUDs we offer don't really offer much to people. I've always thought, like, if I were developer, I probably would say, well, what am I going to get if I go through all these extra PUD rules? Like a little bit more density, you know, like, like a lot of the cases that. So that's just like a footnote thing just to say that, like. It would be nice to have a discussion or when these things come up for us to keep in mind. Like. What are we trying to get out of PUDs? What are we trying to entice people with? And is it going to be useful on both sides? Because I don't know. But my general opinion is that. That the developers don't get a lot out of the PUDs. Or at least a lot of the options we have, but this was a case where it sounds like there was a PUD that did actually offer something. Of some convenience. No, and I agree with you, Kirby, and I've, I haven't. You know, it kind of goes back a little bit to, there were two, two groups as we went through 2014 to 2017. One group went and said, let's make the densities really low. So, you know, low density. And then have these PUDs, which have higher standards. So if you want low, if you, if you don't want to do these high, you know, these really nice standards, then, then you only get low density and we'll kind of. Use a little bit of extortion to kind of get people to do this. And then the other group that came in and said, just make rules, if, if, if we want people to develop, then we want them to make, make it easy for people to do what you want them to do, and make it hard for them to do what you don't want them to do So we want people to build more housing units and have more density. And what we're doing with, you know, option a was actually making it harder to do high density development because you've got to meet all these, you know, sometimes conflicting and ridiculous rules. So really what ended up happening is we ended up with, again, both groups got what they wanted. So we ended up with high density. So 90% of everything is allowed. Everybody's allowed to have duplexes all these rules came into effect to allow high density development and we had all of these other PUD rules. But most developers don't need the PUD rules because we basically have zoned things appropriately, I guess I would say so. I agree with you Kirby that I don't think ultimately the PUD rules are offering developers much but I also honestly don't think we should be. I don't think we should necessarily be pushing in that direction. I would rather see us if we want things done, find some good rules, apply the good rules objectively as much as we can, and not make developers jump through extra hoops. I agree with you. I mean, I've always thought PUDs, it just seems like a gimmicky thing. It's just, it seems like, I don't know, when I started environmental policy they're like all the rage was like using the market to make people do the environmental correct thing let's create a market for this pro environment thing it's like what, or we could just regulate it normally and take care of it. We could do that too, and not have gimmicks. There are times like like our general PUD and our footprint PUD both make a lot of sense. We've got people who look at both of those and the conservation PUD makes a lot of sense and that was the one I told you about of you know protecting the farm land. We don't protect the farm land, but you will see conservation PUDs come up a lot when somebody has a lot of steep slopes, or a lot of wetlands, and it just makes sense to go through and say, I, you know, our zoning says you can't build up there, but you own 10 acres of this land that you're not allowed to build on. Great, we're not taking away your development rights. Pull that development down to a place where you can develop and just put more of the density at the bottom and we're fine with that because we get the protected steep slopes or wetlands, or whatever it is. And you the property owner developer didn't lose any of your development rights, you know you still had them you just had to put them in a higher density in a lower spot and so you will see those three occasionally play out from time to time. But really all these, you know, more exotic ones that we have in there about the infill PUDs and the new neighborhood PUDs, most developers probably wouldn't do. And, you know, I won't, you know, Gabe took a hard look and he probably could say more about the cottage cluster PUD because he actually looked at it in a project so. But again, even that I don't know how valuable it ultimately would have been it's a it's a good, it's a good design but sometimes you can do these designs without the PUD rules as well. So to me like the, the campus PUD idea was, they wanted to use that to stray from having just purely residential zoning is that on the way I understood it. Yeah, in the past so before prior to 2018, it was mixed use residential and they had a college PUD at the time or something like that. Yeah, it was, oh, it was an AI PUD and academic institution plan unit development was the special PUD that used to exist that that they had taken advantage of. And that was how the college could make some changes up there, but it really was very difficult to use. And so when we were redoing the zoning they wanted something new. And so we worked out new AI PUD rules that we call the campus PUD. And then eventually at the same time we recommended these other zoning changes, put it in the new zoning district and most of its issues went away. Because that new zoning district had enough density to meet most and most of the uses so it kind of fell into place that, you know, even now they're selling the buildings and they said, well, we really don't need to do the campus PUD. We'll just sell the buildings without the campus PUD and be done with it. And that's what they're going to do. Yeah, I guess we don't, we don't, this is kind of a premature discussion because, you know, Mike's going to bring us something later for us to consider. But if the sense is you want me to remove it I can remove you guys can always put the, you know, put it back in it was just, I'm trying to feel out a couple of places where I just wanted to kind of get your sense of what you're where your minds are at if you're like no just leave it in there we we like the PUDs and I would, I'll leave it in there but if, unless, you know, this is the only part of town. Well, yeah, I guess, I guess there's other places where. Well, anybody that we generally, we wrote the we wrote the campus PUD generally, and we did that intentional because we didn't really want to just allow this PUD just for that college. So, anybody could come in with a campus PUD anywhere else in the city as well. There's nothing that limits it just to that area so somebody could be down on route 302. They could be they could be up with country club and decide that's what they're going to apply as a campus PUD. So, the rules would still exist to allow the flexibility and changing uses. So, I can always make that proposal to remove it and if you guys decide to leave it then it's easier to just put back in. Yeah, just just to make sure everyone's on the same page. So, Mike's talking about for the campus PUD to remove the benefits of having an automatic approval for conditional uses. And, you know, the conditional uses would be for the neighborhood that that campus happens to be located in so they would vary depending on where it's located. And in the case of the college green, it's mixed use residential. And yeah, I mean if we're talking specifically about the college green and maybe this is the can of worms it probably is. I would think that maybe the best policy would be to make that its own unique neighborhood. That's that doesn't have to necessarily follow what exactly mixed use residential is. It sounds like that's a hot topic recently because of the sale of the school. So if somebody buys the building currently Mike right and they they bought it under the idea that they're in this campus PUD that provides all these benefits, and then we change or reason or any of that. There are repercussions for the people who bought the building, assuming that there was going to be a certain type of process and procedure allowed or VCFA withdrew their campus PUD application. So now there's no they're just selling it without the, the PUD, or whoever buys it they're just buying mixed use residential, they're buying mixed use residential. So the questions started to come up with all right now we've got a blank site once we got into it, and had the public hearings to try to go and do the campus PUD that topic that allowable that that chance to allow the college to do things that aren't allowed, plus making conditional uses permitted uses was probably the number one complaint that that and the number one concern that we heard from neighbors. But now that we're in a, in a, in a state where nobody's applying for it. Nobody has one nobody ever got one. Maybe now is a good time for us to kind of revisit that with a, you know, because we were not actually deciding any cases. We might as well take a look at it and decide do we want to keep that allowance in there because that was the number one thing we heard. It's not be a good idea as you know as a professional planner. I'm not sure it's a good idea to allow that I think if somebody wants that. That should come through a larger process if you want to allow if you want something is not allowed in the zoning. You should have to come back to the planning commission and we can revisit in same way that we have for Pioneer Street and a couple of other applications for people are like hey I want to do this. We're not allowed and we said well we'll move you from this zoning district to the next zoning district next door that's what we did on Pioneer Street. So I, I would say I, I agree with Kirby that we probably and it's probably not for this round of initiatives I think, you know, since it's, it's a good time to talk about it since it's, you know, not, we're not being pressed on it but maybe it's the next round where it probably it is a unique space and it probably should have its own rules, but we should have it in a format where we can get lots of feedback from the public and have a good decision making process. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah sounds like Mike you can write it up the way that you said, you know, taking taking one of the perks out of the campus PUD. And if we, if we need your reason is good. Your reasoning is good I mean there's a reason why, you know, conditional uses happen approval process so ditching it arbitrarily is could could lead to unintended consequences so. But we cannot look at this discussion because we're going to have to go through all these zoning things when Mike puts them before us to vote. So we'll have another chance to consider this. Yeah, and I appreciate that because just like I said if any of these came back to know don't bother doing it then I'm not going to spend a couple hours putting something together and that was just why I want to kind of float a couple of these by that are like, I know we've talked about these in the past what do we want to, you know what do we want to do because I can go forward and make the strike out copies and get stuff ready to go and bring these up to you guys and we can start going through a lot of stuff. For Brian and Maria for for you guys. Most of these end up coming through as just typos and line outs and punctuation you know you're probably going to be. I think my list has 65 changes on it right now. But most of those are typos and change this and move this section and we'll have a handful of maybe 10 of them that are actually substantive changes. And one up with a one or two zoning changes so I don't think this is going to be a big. There's not going to be a big hearing, except as it comes down to probably most of the things we just talked about. And country club rezoning. That'll probably be, you know, 54 changes and all the comments are going to be on five things. Yeah, that sounds good. This sounds good. And our folks okay with what Mike said about engaging with the public and kind of doing a meeting before the official hearing. Yeah. Okay, so we can plan for that too. Anything else Mike. Nope that is it for the zoning. So on to the minutes I guess. I'll just have to consider the minutes and then we can. Long along. So minutes from April 10. Folks can review that. From the email. With the agenda. And I'll take a motion. Or any edits. Before that. And you're ready. I like that the minutes. Didn't say that Kirby was really mean. So. That was nice. It's on page two. Oh, there's a page two. No, I'm just kidding. You really mean. You wasn't. I got kind of grumpy. That's the group. Just because we were sick. We were seeing the same things over and over again and that without, I don't know. I didn't feel like there was sufficient improvement. So I got a little grumpy. But I still feel guilty about it. So I, so I'm now marrying that public. Again, well. My property. This was a public too. So. Everybody see the two minutes. Any, any edits? Okay. Do we have a motion to approve? I move to approve the nuts. Okay. Motion from Gabe. Do we have a second? I'll second. Second from Brian. Those are favor approving the minutes. Say aye. Hi. You post. Okay. Anybody have anything else before we adjourn? Okay. Well, have a super evening is still lovely out. And see everyone in two weeks.