 545 I think we can get started, see Steve's joining us. Are we waiting on any, we're not waiting on anyone else, right? No, we're all set. Okay, we'll go ahead and start the select board meeting for March 1st, 545. And first motion is to approve the agenda unless there's any changes. I make a motion to approve the agenda as written. All right, is there a second? Second. All right, Jen has been motioned and seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. All right, consent to Jen items minutes from February 22nd and 23rd meetings and the liquor license for Vitality Mart and Zen Barn. Can someone remind me what Vitality Mart is? Nope. Vitality Mart I think is the gas station on South Main Street, 150 South Main Street. There's an elbow there across from me. I believe so, yes. I make a motion, we approve those. Okay, I'll take a motion. Second. Okay, Mike. Is there a second? All right, motion's been made second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. All right, next is public. Anyone from the public, I see Michael, you're joining us if you'd like to speak. Yeah, I got started. I do have one comment. Yep, Laura George. Okay, thanks. My name is Michael Roche and I own from Mont Arborist and I know what your agenda is tonight and so I just wanna do a quick aside so that what I'm really hoping is is that after the slide forward and even more so the planning commission gets done with their downtown work, that they quickly move to the Route 100 corridor. And I'm hoping one of two things preferably both could happen and what is dramatically restricting a lot of your small businesses that are in the trades, that are tradesmen, whether it's an excavating company or a tree service like mine or a plumber or a landscaper. We essentially cannot move along the Route 100 corridor. I'm there and I'm kind of left alone and say walker construction is there and we're sort of in this late industrial area. But what we can't do is have outdoor storage because that's, and if you do have some, we've been, this town has been kind enough to leave us alone. And so for me that would be say log piles for an excavating company, it might be sand pile or stone pile, whatever a landscaper might have tools or landscape supplies outside. So what I'm hoping is one of two things is that you either allow light industrial to have outdoor, outdoor supplies, outdoor, what is it? I wrote it down, or storage. It's really outdoor storage. So allow light industrial have outdoor storage or allow contractors on Route 100. Believe it or not, the zoning doesn't allow contractors on Route 100. You have to go down either by Ben and Jerry's or by the Pilgrim Park, which if you think about it makes no sense for one thing by Ben and Jerry's, there's no place at all. And then down by Pilgrim Park, then you're just trying to fight your way out of waterbury traffic anytime you go to pick up supplies or you go out. So along Route 100 is the ideal spot for a lot of people that are contractors, a lot of people are in the trades. And if you allow contractors on Route 100 and you allow people that are in light industrial to give them outdoor storage as part of the designation of light industrial, that would really help a lot. Mike, this is Bill. So am I gathering from your request that contractors as currently defined allows for outdoor storage? It's just that contractors can't be on Route 100. They're already allowed to have outdoor storage if they're in the right place, right? I believe that's the way the zoning is, yes. Yeah, I mean, as you or Steve Lott's speech could correct me on that, but as far as I could tell, as I'm looking along the zoning on Route 100, you're not allowed to be a contractor on Route 100. And, but you are in small, in some small areas, you're allowed to be a light industrial, but light industrial does not allow for outdoor storage. Okay. Michael, you're correct. And we've had some discussions about this. So, yeah, I think this is a great topic for the planning commission to take up when they start looking at, you know, in their next phase of the zoning. Right. And one of the things that you and I had discussions with was that it was a year to a year and a half out. Well, to me, it's not that complicated. Maybe people will say this is a big deal and it is complicated. I don't personally think so. And so what I'm hoping is that by just stating this case, that the select board would make a case to the planning commission that, all right, this is something that could be changed rather easily, that you have contractors and you're allowed to go on Route 100. You're allowed to own a piece of land and establish your business there. At present, that's not allowed. And I would like to see that changed. Is the definition in closed storage or indoor storage and is screening include enclosed? As far as I can tell, screening does not make it enclosed. But that to me, Mark, would actually solve the problem. If you want me to hide a pile of logs or a pile of stone behind a bunch of evergreens, I'll do that. That's okay. And most people would say, all right, yeah, sure. And so it's a bit of a pain in the neck. It's a bit of an expense. But if that's what it takes to allow me to establish my business here, then that's what that's part of zoning. And it's what people do when they're building a new building that they have to have screening very often. I'm wondering if the fact that it's been established as a green mountain byway that that may have some may have some relevance as to why it hasn't allowed it that type of construction industry to place themselves along route 100 simply from a aesthetics standpoint. That's a valid point. I'm pretty sure the town of Waterbury zoning regulations predate the route 100 byway. So it's been that way already. So even if you do these things I'm requesting and the state says, forget you, well then, yeah, then I've hit my next wall. I don't think the byway designation has mandate anything to do with this. It could be that the planning commission says, hey, this is the green mountain byway. We're concerned about the aesthetics of route 100. I know years ago, the last time the plan was updated, there was a lot of concern expressed about route 100 and view sheds and the ability to keep it kind of pastoral looking and the current use table came out of that. But there's nothing in the green mountain byway designation as far as I know that mandates anything like this. So it might inform the planning commission's decision, Mike, but it's not mandatory. It's nothing from the state. Yeah, okay. Bill, Chris and Mike, I was chair of the conservation commission when the byway got approved and that specifically was not something we wanted to do. We did not wanna be prescriptive to outlaw any kind of economic development activities. So whether the planning commission has changed because the byway that we have to have some aesthetics, that's not part of the way the byway was approved. So that's a lot of things. Well, if you think about the term green mountain byway, that kind of lends itself towards theme Vermont. So I didn't know if there was some attachment, but you answered my question. Now the byway was really almost for economic development. It was to bring good industry to the community because it was such an important resource to us. It didn't say, I'm not saying there's gonna be like a coal mine right along route 100, but it didn't prescribe anything from being put there. So curiously, like when everybody is squawking about like runoff from buildings and runoff from parking lots, you could develop on the green mountain byway in office building or a multi-story office building with a large paid parking lot and all the pollutants that go with that. But me as a tree service with perhaps a pile of logs can't do that with a gravel road. I'm not allowed, okay? That's the way it is. And I tried to buy a piece of land and the zoning administrator said, he wants to have outdoor storage. He wants to have logs there and she said no. So I didn't even approach the owner while I approached the owner, but we never even got into negotiations because why bother if it's dead in the water right now that I cannot have my business down at this other piece of land. I can't sectional, it's a large piece of land. I could section off and sell another parcel to a friend of mine that owns a landscaping business. These are not like high impact defensive looking businesses and we're working a very traditional way for the same Vermont. And we can't go there because the zoning administrator said, you can't have any outdoor storage. Well, so let's be clear by your business, your business could go on the piece of land that you're talking about buying because it's in the same district that your business is in right now. When you applied for your business a number of years ago in its current location, you got a permit and it just so happened that at the time you didn't have any outdoor storage. That's correct. At the top of this, you said at the top of the meeting that the town hasn't come after you for the outdoor storage. And your business is off of Route 100 right now. You can't see the log pile unless you go off of Route 100. But the reality is it's not your business that's prohibited on the piece of land on Route 100. It's your business with outdoor storage that is prohibited. That's correct. No, no, I tried to be clear on that. I'll make sure that it's not that you can't go there. It's just you can't go there and pile logs outside. That's right, that's right. And it just seems like that's something that, well, you can say that's the sort of thing we don't want to look at. And if that's what the town decides that it's not something that is appropriate, well, then that's that. I will yield, I have to yield on that. Well, no, I'm just trying to clarify. I'm just trying to clarify in the reality is even though you consider yourself a contractor, you're not defined as a contractor right now. That's right. If you were defined as a contractor, you couldn't be even where you are now. No, that's right. They were kind of, yeah, they were kind enough to designate me as late industrial. Right. And I'm not supposed to have outdoor storage. And yeah, and the logs move out quickly. I think we get it. Okay, I'll leave it at that because I know you got a lot of other things and I appreciate everyone's time. Thank you, Michael. All right, I'm going to leave the meeting. All right, bye. Good night, Mike. Good night, good night. Is there any other public that would like to speak before we enter into our only item on the night? Well, that's a pretty good segue, I think into the next section, which is the review of current zoning bylaws proposed in terms of zoning bylaws for the downtown. You know, I think Michael is hitting, I mean, I know a couple of members on the select board have been in the DRB's position, but I think as we define things, we have to really think about what impacts they have and the direction for the planning commission and ultimately what we try to move forward, how these definitions are used in the real world. And I was going to ask him, I didn't want to go too into detail, but what defines outdoor storage versus enclosed storage or is screening or a roof structure? And does it have to, and all that, it has a cost to it and an implied cost, not just to build it, but then you have your taxed on it. And I'm assuming to store logs, there isn't a business model that says you can build a structure, put it indoors, and I think that's part of this conversation is as we regulate, how do we create a rule book that's still a usable rule book and allows someone to do business in Waterbury? So I think that's, it's an interesting challenge and I look forward to this conversation, but I think this is- I think if he built a building and put his logs inside the building, he would be fine. It's not outdoor storage, but now it's another building that he has to build and maintain. And as we said- And he's taxed on it and yeah. So anyway, yeah, but I see Mary Collins here from the planning commission to listen in as well. And I assume obviously Mary can have something to say, but- So do we, Steve, do you wanna try to help lead this or what are your feelings on where are you from here? Yeah, I'd like to, I guess initiate the conversation. The Slack board really made a decision towards the end of your meeting on last Monday at the tail end of the public hearing on the draft interim bylaws for the downtown zoning district to have a conversation with me. So that's good. And we do have a planning commission meeting this evening that I think the planning commission wants to chart their way forward to see how they would be able to meet the, your request or the, I guess the agreement that it was arrived at to try to have a draft of these bylaws specific to the downtown zoning district by May 1st. So one question that I have, and this is a somewhat personal question having invested a lot of time in the interim bylaws at your request is, are these bylaws going in the direction that you support? The question came up at the, right near the end of the public hearing, I think Ken Belivow and Mary, maybe you chimed in on that as well. And that is what direction does the, does the Slack board support in developing these bylaws? I think the planning commission doesn't wanna go down a road of more work trying to, in their minds, finish these bylaws without knowing that there's some level of support. So I think that's the first question. I think the other question and Bill and I have had some conversation about this this afternoon is, I'd like to talk a bit about the process and some of the challenges of the process of trying to expedite the development and if you will, or the drafting and then the review and adoption of zoning bylaws. So I think those are really the two areas that I would like some clarity. And other than that, I'm really here as a resource and Bill's briefed on this as well and has been quite involved in this process. So Bill, of course, chime in if you have some additional comments or suggestions. Yeah, so Mark, if I might just add a few comments, okay. And knowing that Mary is here, I'll trust her to keep me straight. So when Steve and I talked this afternoon, throughout the process of the interim bylaws being developed, which were done in full view, if you will, of the planning commission. I think Steve had a couple of planning commission meetings reported to them. I think probably even let them see these bylaws. The word that kind of got back to me from Steve was that I'm trying to develop these interim bylaws in keeping with what we've talked about what we the planning commission and I have talked about with the consultant and trying to move in the direction that we were already going in anyway. So that was kind of the groundwork that had been laid for me. I was a little bit surprised with some of the comments from the planning commissioners last week when they seemed to indicate that they were blindsided by this. The process has been moving forward in this fashion since early in January. So they've known about the process. And I'm not suggesting that just because they knew about it that means they need to like it. But I asked Steve today, I said some of the comments that were made and Martha Staskus in particular toward the end of the meeting kind of said, well, if you look at the existing bylaws and these bylaws, they don't really kind of mesh. They don't speak the same language. They look very different. And Steve clarified with me at least from his point of view and he can correct me if I'm wrong that he believed on a technical standpoint the direction where these bylaws were going were in keeping with what the planning commission had already done. He said, again, he believed that maybe the planning commission felt that the process was unfinished, that there were some things that maybe the planning commission would have liked to weigh in on. And he talked about the square footage requirements. So there were some things that initially he had written 2000 square feet for certain things that would be permitted and above that would be either not permitted or conditional people like Mike Bard and Jason Wolff had commented to Steve prior to the meeting that maybe this 2000 square feet is a little bit too small. So the question really becomes and I think Steve correct me if I'm wrong but that's really kind of what you were wondering about is are the things that are allowed that we talked about last week are they okay with the select board? And if they are okay with the select board are you all right with the planning commission kind of fine tuning some of these issues? And then I think it's really about process and how long it takes to do these things. And certainly no one wants to ram anything down once wrote, but as I said was pointed out by Michael a few minutes ago the process has been kind of going on for a long time. And I think that there's a sense in the community anyway that we've got to get kind of over the huff to get something approved so some economic development can happen. So first I'll ask Steve did I kind of summarize what you and I talked about this afternoon? Okay, and then after you talk then Mary wants to talk about it. Sure, sure. Well, I don't want to speak for the planning commission because that Mary you can speak much better than I can. So, but I think that was the message that I heard was that they felt that this draft was unfinished. It certainly from my perspective it's based on their work. And I think the concept is that this is the first phase of implementing the unified development bylaws that other phases will come the area of the entire former village of Waterbury the root 100 quarter that Michael spoke about those are two areas that the planning commission I think feels our priorities it's certainly priorities for me as well. The conservation commission is very interested in the ridgeline hillside steep slope overlay and natural resource protection. And they've made a proposal to the planning commission for some amendments to those bylaws. So the conservation commission has their mission if you will, and you're familiar with the chutesville wildlife quarter and aspects of that. So I think we have a number of things going on but that I think clearly that this is a first phase and we want to make sure I think I'd like to make sure that we're headed in the right direction and that I have the support and hopefully the planning commission has your support as well as we move through this. It doesn't mean we're going to agree on every detail but at least in concept that we're heading in the right direction. So Mary, I didn't know if you wanted to- You're in a way. I have been thinking and sort of talking about this all day and since last week, worrying about the process. So I don't know if it's really helpful to go back and say this happened there, this happened there. I mean, I will say, Steve did tell the planning commission at our December 28th meeting that Bill had directed him to prepare interim bylaws or something that that effect. And we looked at our January calendar. We had Jacob Hemmerich who had been planned for since sometime in November, I think Steve probably October, November to come speak with us. We had been trying to get him for quite a while and his primarily to talk about some of the recommendations that he and other folks at the state are supporting communities in being able to move forward in infill development. We're looking at residential as well as commercial. And it was to help us have some background for both the downtown zoning, the mixed youth zoning and as we go outward mostly in the denser areas. And it's kind of follow up on our work for from the density studies in terms of residential development. I will say, again, it's a... So we only had basically one meeting to try to finish up some things that we have been working towards for quite some time. That was the blindsidedness that it has to be done in this timeframe. Neither Ken nor I left the December meeting that we attended with the idea that it was going to be a drone zoning. It was like get something done, which we agree. I would like to not take time now, but Mike, you've said many times that this has gone on a long time in the sense in the community as it's taken too long. And I can justify every single sideways turn and wrong way turn that we have taken to do other work that's before us just like it's before the select board. So I just really think as a community and a group of people who really care about this community and how viable economically and residentially and every other conservation wise and every other way that we want the best for the town. So moving forward, and I don't, I can't speak for the planning commission because it's on our agenda to discuss what we need to do in order to meet perhaps a made deadline which someone threw out. I don't remember who for us to, if it's not if we're not going to support interim bylaws then how quickly can you get the permanent bylaws together? One of the different, what you brought up Bill and that Martha spoke to is the draft unified development bylaws are a totally different document than the current zoning regulations. And part of my personally and I think other members of the board have expressed the concern about the interim bylaws are that there could be some unintended consequences because we haven't done due diligence for all of the specifics that are being proposed. We haven't had, we've come up to and have not have been distracted or people felt like we needed more information or and I say distracted in terms of we get out we were working on the use and dimensional table and the hardest decision was the square footage and other dimensional standards. And then the historic standards came along and a couple of other things that we had to attend to around that time. So when I say sidetracked it was work that was expected of us. The zoning administrator's contract came up around that time. There were a lot of things that we've been asked to do during this time that we've had to consider the draft of the bylaws which we gave some general direction to the consultant. Steve gave some general direction to the consultant but the details of what are in there are not somewhat a template from other towns. So we've come up our very first meeting that we had the community members came and started right off with some of the things that they had noticed that their little lens we in every part of town Steve outlined some of it but every part of town has an interest group that cares about that part of town and a specific aspect for that part of town. And we've got to look at the whole town and we've got to address all the various zoning districts that we have. And we have some goals that have been shared with you I believe and we have really tried to work towards that. Where we are now is the desire on the part of the town as represented by the town manager and the select board is to move along some new regulations for the downtown district. So I'm really, I feel some anxiety about whether we can actually complete the even in the Maytime frame the work and it sounds like May's a long way off but we have to hold a public hearing maybe two depending on what input we get before we can transmit the recommended bylaws to the select board. So while we don't support we don't want these interim bylaws to go forward with the idea that we think they're ready to go we are, I don't know if that's not the best idea and that the select board had a public hearing and they make a decision about that. I think more direction is better than less direction from the select board. But I feel like we're in a vice grip right now and the best way out is to maybe make some kind of decision that's going to let the water flow a little more easily and get some communication back in the right direction. That's my input as a member of the planning commission not representing the entire five member board. Thanks, Mary. Mark. Yep, glad Chris. So Mary, in a sense it sounds like what you're trying to say is you're worried about telling the story before you write the book. Yeah, I take or write or having let's say to take your metaphor to have a deadline for the publisher has to receive the book but not be in full control of all of the time that takes to go into that completing and meeting the deadline. I mean, I looked through the imprims finally I got a chance to do that. Other than, I see that they're fairly descriptive, quite a broad array of businesses that I think can come into the district without too much conflict. Everything seems to be fairly defined. You know, I had, I wrote down some questions I printed off a copy and I wrote down some questions wherever I came to a question. And it seems like any business that applies for or anybody that applies for a permit in that district area there seems to be one way, one avenue or another to get to where they wanna go the most part. So outside of just a few minor adjustments and some clarification, you know, and to your point, Mary of not wanting to tell the story before you write the book. I mean, that's a case where I think the town in the select board want to continue to see economic growth and prosperity in the town because that is the driving force for community development, community sustainability you know, financial, that's what you wanna call it. And so I think the reason, the requests of these intrams were to try to help us cross some hurdles that seem to have come about through some business ventures into Jason's point. You know, the last time these regs were reviews of back in the 90s, I guess. Is that correct Steve? So perhaps they're a little overdue. And I think to take a burden off from your shoulders, you know, to have the select board adopt these intrams, burden then becomes kind of on the select board. If the select board feels comfortable with the intrams and that's specifically what they are, intram, knowing that there'll be a final draft at some point, hopefully, and that these are just kind of our way of saying for now these things or what we should get by with and that we're gonna be willing to take responsibility because I don't think the evolution of any town can wait for zoning regs to ever get to the point where they need to be because the times don't, you know, economic development continues to move on, but yet zoning regs take a long period of time. So there's a disconnect between requirement of both of them or how they both, you know, share their evolution in the community. So I think that that's just natural that the planning and zoning reg process, you know, may inherently lag behind as kind of a rule of thumb. That's just the nature of the beast. So I'll stop there. Mark, can I say something? Yep, go ahead Bill. All right, and you know, I appreciate what Mary talked about a minute ago and Steve and Mary had a meeting at seven o'clock so I wanna be cognizant of the fact that we're gonna use both of them by seven. I understand what Mary talked about that, you know, the planning commission and the consultant who's given them some things to consider and they've got to go through a process and it's not by its nature, it's not a fast process because you've got in our case five planning commission members who all have to build consensus and that takes a little while. And then when they build consensus, then they have to, you know, there's people attending planning commission meetings all the time even when they haven't called public hearings. So they do get public input. I know Alyssa Johnson when she was the economic development director for revitalizing the library would be had a lot of planning commission meetings and I'm sure she made comments about how we can help the business community. So this takes a long time to get through a process and then once you kind of are to the point where you wanna really start the public process you draft the bylaws and then you have all the public hearing and that's the planning commission's public hearing and at that public hearing they might hear from more members of the public and they may decide, well, we're gonna take that back and we're gonna rework things and call another public hearing. And then ultimately when they finally transmit something to the select board for consideration now the select board has to take that and they have to hold a public hearing. All of these public hearings are 15 day warning periods. So let's say the select board holds a public hearing they have to close the hearing and then even if they adopt it the regulations take some time I don't know if it's 30 days or 60 days but it takes some time to go into effect. So the planning commission process even if they were ready with a regulation for this district today they would have to warn a 15 day notice for a public hearing that have to take that information at the very earliest after that public hearing they could take an action send something to the select board the select board has to warn a public hearing and so there's another 15 days. So that process there, the very least is a month that's really more like 40 days by the time you have a meeting and make the decisions to hold a hearing. So now you're 40 days out and then even if the select board approves something it's gonna be 30 days, is it 30 or 60 days? A 21 days bill is from adoption to a 21 day final. So at the best if the planning commission approaches this through its normal process it's gonna be 60 to 70 days before these permanent regulations can be in place. And that's if everyone is happy along the way and oh by the way, it's 70 days from today and right now the planning commission doesn't have a draft way to go. So for this regular process I think it's safe to say we're well into June or July before permanent bylaws can be in effect. Now to back up, to go to the point why we went forward with interim regulations. I think you all remember, but to refresh your memory and for people who are on the meeting tonight that don't know about it. Jason Wolfe and Alan Flink, the owners of the property made application to put this particular use into that building. They turned in the application with the application fee and Dina reviewed it. Dina determined that the use that they were asking for is not permitted in the district under the current zoning bylaws. Not permitted, it's not a conditional use. It's not a permitted use, it's not permitted. It's not in the use table and Dina said I don't have any option other than to say this is a not permitted use, denied the permit. The applicant could have taken that information and reworked their application and submitted something different. The applicants decided to appeal the zoning administrator's decision to the DRB. Went to the DRB. The DRB reviewed it against the bylaws as they should. The DRB came to the conclusion that Dina made the right decision. They said this is not permitted under the current bylaws. They upheld Dina's decision. At that point, that's when we had the meeting where we started to talk with the planning commissioners about how do we get from where we are now to where we wanna be. After that meeting, so Ken and Mary. Bill, can I stop you for a second? It was more of just an update on where we were with the zoning regulation rewrite. It wasn't even, as far as I approached it and I felt like we approached it, we were just looking for an update on where we were on the regulation rewrite. It was presented at that meeting at that point that maybe we could split it up into smaller portions. And so it wasn't even that initial meeting was not, we need you to do this right now. It was, it was an update. And we didn't have the background that you have. I understand that, but Mary and Ken were at a meeting and we just asked for an update. Where are we? And that's when the question was asked, can we split this up? And I think Mary and Ken said yes and they thought that was a reasonable thing to consider. Now, move forward into January. I don't think it was December that we directed, that I directed Steve to write the interim bylaws. Maybe it was, but I don't have that right off the top of my head here. But ultimately, after the meeting that we just described when Mary and Ken came to the select board meeting just to kind of get an update, after that meeting, that's when the applicants appealed the decision of the DRB to superior court. When that happened, I came to the select board and they authorized me to have Stitzel Page and Flesher put an appearance in. They became the town's attorney in that legal process. Now, I have to be careful here and I won't go into great detail, but at that point when I talked with the lawyer after the select board authorized Stitzel Page and Flesher to be our attorney, I talked with the lawyer and told him that where it seemed that we were going, what Steve and I had talked about was interim bylaws and that I was gonna suggest to the select board and maybe already had by this point, maybe had already told the select board that interim bylaws was an option. The lawyer told me on that phone conversation, he said, the state statute empowers the select board to settle lawsuits, the select board is now representing the town, the town has to respond to this. If the town select board wants to negotiate a settlement with the applicant that allows them to go forward in their business in some form or another, you can do that. I told him, well, I think, and I was just speaking for myself, I said, I think that is really kind of the last place that I wanna go because to me, that sounds like spot zoning, that we're gonna take a particular piece of property and a particular use and we are gonna make a decision on that one property alone and that's spot zoning. So I said, I think it's better if we ask the planner to involve the planning commission and to resolve this by moving forward with interim zoning. So I came back to the select board, we talked about it and the select board and I thought it was in January at some point, decided that it was best to pursue this through the interim zoning method. And my rationale for that was that Steve is the planner, he works with the planning commission. While I understood the planning commission had a lot on its plate, it would be better, I thought, to have the planning commission inform some of the discussion about these interim bylaws so we could adopt something that, A, solved the issue right in front of us, this particular piece of property, but did it in a manner that wasn't just spot zoning, that it would apply to anybody else in the district. Because if you just settle the lawsuit by saying, okay, Jason and Aaron, go do what you wanna do, we'll sign up on it. If the guy who owns the next door property came in and applied for that same thing, Nina would have to say no. So I thought interim bylaws is a much better approach than just settling with the people that are suing us. So that's where we got to last week. Now moving forward, and I know that Ken and Mary are gonna talk to the rest of the planning commission and Steve tonight, and one of the things they're gonna talk about is, okay, how do we get here from there? So I think there's basically two options right now available to us as a community. One is the planning commission says, we're gonna do this and we're gonna do this as if it were gonna be a permanent bylaw and it's gonna take a couple of weeks for us to get it in order or a month however long it takes. And then we're gonna warn a public hearing. We're gonna see what the public says and then we're gonna maybe have to warn another public hearing and then the select board get it as permanent bylaw and then the select board has to warn their hearing and it goes on and then once you adopt it, it takes 21 days to become effective and it's July 15th or whatever it is. I think personally, I think a better way to do it is allow the planning commission to go through the process as if they were writing the permanent bylaw but once they transmit it to the select board, the select board can then approach it as an interim bylaw. You can, so the interim bylaw that was presented to the select board last week was really Steve's authorship with the planning commission understanding that he was doing it, not necessarily liking it. If we let the planning commission do what they have to do and hopefully it only takes one public hearing for them to be satisfied that the public is okay with what they do, but if they take three weeks or a month and then they warn a public hearing 15 days after that and after that public hearing, if they say, yeah, this is pretty good shape, we're pretty comfortable with it, they can transmit it to the select board as if it were a permanent bylaw. The select board can then warn a public hearing to adopt it as an interim bylaw. When that public hearing ends, the select board can put it into effect and it goes into effect on adoption. And then right after that, if you want, the select board could warn a public hearing to make it a permanent bylaw. But what I'm suggesting is I think there's still a way to get what the planning commission is happy with, understanding that the public gets one meeting with the select board at their public hearing. So I think it can still happen. It might not be fully done by May 1st, but if the planning commission can get it to the point that they're happy with it and hold their public hearing and then hope that the public is okay with it, they can transmit it to the select board as if it were their process, this is what we're doing for permanent, but the select board at that point can call it an interim bylaw just for the expedient sake of having a 15 day warning period and then it can go into effect. Bill, why wouldn't you want the select board at this point to adopt what's been presented for interim bylaws? Because I thought the planning commission didn't like what they have right now. We said it wasn't finished. To Chris's point, it covers a lot of bases and it's a step forward from where we are now. I don't, you know. If that's the planning commission's opinion, Mary. No, that's my opinion right now. I understand that. The planning commission presented last week was a statement that we all agreed to, which basically said it's your job to do what you want. We feel it's incomplete. Back to the task before us at seven o'clock is some discussion about whether we can achieve a fully vetted, if you will, document for this particular zoning district and look at all of the connected pieces like parking, like, you know, historic overlay district and how that affects the, you know, reconsidering the boundaries that were brought up, looking specifically at all the dimensional standards in three meetings, I think it's the... Mary, again, and not to belabor the point, but it's a little frustrating to me now at this point because Steve was pretty clear at last week's meeting that adopting interim bylaws, even though they're good for two years, does not preclude permanent bylaws to be adopted sooner than the two-year process. Correct. So if the planning, and I know you're speaking just for yourself now, but if the planning commission is going to now say, well, what you did gets us over the hump, you know, it would have been nice if that had been said last week because... I don't think the planning commission is going to say that. I'm saying that to put this timeframe came up for a specific reason that the town needs to deal with. The planning commission is not the body to resolve that issue. And to put this all on the planning commission in terms of the timeframe for a more immediate need, you know, similar to immediate needs where things were done differently after Irene, some of this is affected, you know, is a real reality because the effects of COVID. All I'm saying is to put this, for me personally, to put this back on the planning commission, I don't think solves the issue. We're going to work as fast as we can, as well as we can, as expeditiously as we can, as we always have. Well, again, I'm not speaking for the board, but just myself, if the planning commission, and when you speak with them at seven o'clock, if the planning commission would just, at this point, and I hope you understand, I know you, I sent you and Ken a memo a couple of months ago to- January 29th, you sent it to us January 29th. Right. So, and- So 28 days ago. Okay, so a month ago. I sent you that memo just so you would understand that there's a lawsuit and that, you know, the select board is obligated to address that lawsuit. And my hope was that doing so in a manner that allowed the planning commission to have some input would be better than not. Which we did, which we worked until, I think it was 1030 on the one meeting we had from the time that you sent that memo to the February 22nd public hearing. We had one meeting, we had the public there. We had comments that had to be given time and we worked until well after 10 o'clock. So we did do as much as we could, as best as we could. We just thought it was important for the select board to know that we were not the ones transmitting this document. We didn't say it shouldn't be interim. Yes, there's been some discussion and I think everyone involved has learned a lot about communication. And I don't think it serves anyone well to keep going over that. But I think we can all vow to do better going forward. But putting this back on the planning commission with the kind of timeframe that needs to be considered for the issue to be resolved is not the way I would recommend you go. Okay, so what I was gonna say then is when the planning commission meets tonight in 20 minutes, maybe there should be a discussion about this because I believe the select board last week, they didn't move forward with the interim bylaws because they got a lot of information from the planning commission. And it was pretty clear that the planning commission did not really support not only the interim bylaws written, but my sense was the planning commission doesn't really support interim bylaws really as a means to solve things. And certainly they're not meant to be that way for a long time. But- You heard that from one member of the planning commission. Okay, but if the planning commission tonight wants to have a conversation and say, given everything that we know now, what the memo that I sent said, what we talked about last week at the hearing, what you've heard here tonight, if the planning commission wants to say, you know, the best way to resolve this right now is through the adoption of these interim bylaws and then let's adopt them and have the planning commission move forward towards whatever is going to replace the interim bylaws as, you know, expeditiously as possible, but without any hurry. So it's either, we've got to respond to the lawsuit at some point. So I'd like to know how we're going to do that. Are we going to just deal with the one particular issue? And I'm talking to the select board now. We're going to talk about the one particular property and settle that understanding that that only applies to that one property. Or we're going to adopt these interim bylaws that seeing not as egregious as maybe we thought they were last week. I'm going to jump to Dana because he's had his hand up for a bit and then I have a comment on them. All right. Hey, thanks, Mark. I appreciate that. I've been following this a little bit. And I guess the question that I have for the select board and it's just one of process, I guess, because it seems like tonight's meeting was specifically convened to talk about this one issue. And the select board is here and it's obviously the select board meeting, but there's only one member of the planning commission present. And I guess I'd now understand they have a meeting at seven with Steve, but it seems like part of the issue that is occurring here is that the select board or the planning commission isn't present as a commission. So it's hard to get this information back and forth. And I just don't know, like, is it a normal thing for the planning commission to not come to these meetings, these select board meetings on mass? I don't know. I mean, I'm just asking the question and just trying to understand the process for myself, I guess. So thank you. Yeah, Dana. I think I didn't go into this meeting again thinking we were going to talk about a specific issue. And I think that's probably similar to the rest of the select board. I think we are going to follow up with the comments that were made last Monday of hoping that the select board could give direction to the planning commission on the feedback we received last week and, you know, taking what we are learning about the interim bylaws where the planning commission and I appreciate that Mary joined us tonight, but it wasn't a joint meeting tonight. It was a select board meeting. And part of what I was hoping to discuss tonight was process communication, how we can, and I see Harry's here as well, how the planning commission, DRB and select board can work better together to communicate issues with DRBCs. And then we learn about it and planning commission can plan or change. The interim bylaws, I think I approach it as this is a bandaid fix on a much larger conversation. And the more I kind of thought about last week was I don't think we want to think too big about say the 2000 square foot example. All the 2000 square foot trigger on a lot of these is that you have to go in one more step. But if they're interim bylaws, maybe it makes sense to be a little more conservative on interim bylaws and have the larger conversation as we look for permanent regulation on what that proper size is. So, you know, to me, that's more of what I was hoping to talk about tonight. I don't, and then I would look to Bill or whoever can answer the question of, I don't know even if we can talk detail. I mean, I'm surprised with maybe how much we've talked tonight about the issue on Stow Street, but I'm happy to take on that conversation if that's where we want to go. But I also know that there's a meeting in 14 minutes and the planning commission isn't going to have much so far from this conversation. I don't know, maybe they do. But that's my concern right now is we're meeting tonight to try to give the planning commission some direction. Maybe we're learning through Mary's comments that, I think my big concern here is that interim regs maybe should have just been based on our previous zoning and not rock the boat in terms of format. If this isn't the format where the planning commission wants to go on the future regs, I think that's a problem maybe because these are very detailed as Chris mentioned, but if this isn't going to be the chart or rule book that they're planning on using down the road, then yeah, maybe that's an issue and we should be going off of our current regulation use tables because these are interim regs based on our current regs, not where the future is. And I understand Steve's approach and as I was presented with it, it was going to be a lot of what the work that was already being completed. This was the direction it was going, but if I'm hearing from- No, it is, it is. I don't mean to suggest that it's not, it's just incomplete. Those were the words that- And then in terms of conversation, I don't, yes, parking is an issue in a conversation and with the village disbanding, years ago it was, if you were a commercial non-residential applicant, you would go, you would be told in the DRB that you needed 20 parking spaces, then you go to the village of trustees and as I was told, they never denied a permit based on parking. So if you were a commercial non-residential, if you needed a residential, you had to find parking for basically the off season plowing hours. I actually like that this doesn't necessarily take on the large issue of talking about how we address parking, how we address historic structure. I think we leave what we have in place until we can figure out exactly how to deal with it, but I don't necessarily think we should be taking that on here. I do have a concern about scale. I do think we should have a maximum building size or the footprint, maybe, because we can go up 60 feet. So you got to more think about like 2D looking down. Could you buy six lots in a row, knock everything down and build a 50,000 square foot building? If we don't want that, we should make sure that this won't allow for it. I have big concerns. So I think we got lucky with the Bell's Block building in terms of how it looks and how it actually fits within the historic downtown. I think if you look at the regs, you could have easily built something that's not that attractive and was a little bit more of a cost cutting building. So I think there's, I like form. I like thinking about the front facade. And I think there is a limitation on size. I'd love the idea of looking at more density. Obviously I've been a proponent of affordability and needing more units and meeting that vacancy rate problem in both residential single family and also in rental. So to me, trying to stop the sprawl by concentrating in the downtown where all the utilities already are makes sense. And is this potentially, I mean, some of those projects are years down the road. So getting this in place now is potentially grand list growth way down the road. But if we don't do this now, I think we're gonna see what we continually have, which is we don't have regs that are really enticing anyone to do any of these like big residential projects anywhere near the downtown. And we have the flood regs that did throw a wrench in how you can invest in the downtown and build that kind of stuff. So I think there's been some challenges. I appreciate the increased height. I think that's a big deal. But yeah, I think that's my quick and dirty on Dana's comment. Before I have to leave, could I just make a comment? I've got to host the planning commission meeting in a few minutes here and I don't want to be late. Is that okay, Mark? Okay, so I would really hope that the Slack board would support the direction we're going. I think the current bylaws, the basic structure is very out of date. The design review bylaws were created in 2006. That's really the most recent major piece that was done for the downtown. Except for the flood hazard. Well, yeah, we did revise. You're right, Mary. There have been other things that have been modified. You're right, but that was 2016. So I guess I would really hope that the Slack board would be progressive here. And maybe I took a big leap by putting these interim bylaws together based on the unified development bylaw. But I think that's the way to go. And I think we really need to set the tone and provide other opportunities for other projects in the downtown and not stymie them as the planning commission. I like the idea of getting these in place. And the planning commission and I will have some more conversation about that tonight. But I guess that's the reason I asked you support the concept. I'm a little troubled to think, well, we're just gonna go back to what we have now and try to make a tweak to correct it. I don't know how I would do that, to be honest, Mark. I feel like this was my best effort to be progressive, work off of the planning commission's work and the consultant's work so far and come up with something that really is workable for the downtown and then build on it as we take on the rest of the village and the root 100 quarter. Yeah, I think I'm just going back to the feedback of last week it sounded like we were way off on where, and I think that was a little bit of me learning the process that Steve, this wasn't necessarily a full planning commission build of the right or the interim rights. You were doing the work, I get that now. I didn't fully understand that until last week's meeting. I know we only have eight minutes left and there's some board members that haven't got a chance to speak. And I would like them to have an opportunity while Mary and Steve are in here. So any of the other board members wanna speak before you go ahead, Mike? Just a couple of comments real briefly. One, I'm very supportive of Mike Roche's comments. I do think a lot of zoning is needed but this is the first stab and I do think the downtown area is critical. It's not that we're not looking at root 100 but I think the downtown is something that's right before us. As to approving tonight, I'm a little skeptical of approving the interim bylaws. The reason being, I don't like the fact that there has not been good communication between the select board and the planning commission. I think that's a travesty. I think there's been, I came to them with some comments to try to make things better. It's kind of, it went nowhere. And I just wanna see something. I think with some minor tweaks, I hear what all you're saying is we need to put something together but I think it needs just a little more time to get some clarity. Maybe one of the big issues I think is that 2005,000 square foot issue. I think that's the real concern that I may have. There are some other little tweaks but I think we could get away with those until there's more complete zoning than there is now. But I think, I'm right now, I don't think we're at the point that we're ready to approve interim bylaws. I wanna go ahead, but I think if we did a little more work we would get a better product even if it is just interim bylaws. Yeah, I don't think we're talking about approving the bylaws tonight. I think, Mike, real quick on your comment on the 2005,000, is your concern of just creating an extra step to do business or that potential business couldn't happen? Because I think someone mentioned to me that these match the current regulations in terms of size before it becomes conditional use that requires that the extra step, is that correct? Yeah, in some cases, that's where it came from. Yeah, the 2000 from the current bylaw. I could see some businesses where 2000 square feet would be very difficult to work with. And that's where, I don't think we should go up to maybe, I think there was a suggestion just to have everything at 5,000. I don't think that's the right way to go, but I think 2000 is a little too conservative. Do you think it's too conservative for the interim or for the permanent bylaws? I'm just wondering, because they're gonna go with this feedback tonight. I think both. I think we could see something where there's a little bit, where we could have something a little higher, even just now for the interim, because I wanna see something happen for the whole set of bylaws that we have a whole complete set of bylaws. But I think even, we're gonna be, hopefully coming out of a pandemic, we're gonna see some economic growth. And I just see that 2000 may be a limiting factor. That's my thoughts. Nat, I see you're unmuted. Are you up? Yeah, I mean, I'd like to say that the, there's been some frustration tonight. I've heard it in Steve's voice. I've heard it in Mary's voice. We heard it in Ken's voice last week. And I've had that frustration in my voice when I was on the DRV. And the source of all this frustration is the zoning bylaws. It's not any of us. It's the zoning bylaws. It's the incompleteness. It's the outdatedness. It's the feeling like they don't really pertain to what's here and what's happening right now. And the problem that I see is that's created a discourse, between our different departments, between all of these people who are giving all of their time and whether they're a paid staff member or whether they're on a board or commission, they're all just trying to make things better. And what it's really shown me is that we do need to go back, like Mike said. And we need to get this line of communication working and we need to figure out how to talk to each other and how to get everybody's concerns met. But at the very end of the day, I'm for any evolution of the zoning bylaws. If we can get anything up to par and up to where it needs to be to be modern day in a lot of these places, I would be in support of these zoning interim regs knowing that it's a stepping stone. It's a stepping stone to get to where we wanna be. Thanks, Nat. Katie. I would just agree with what Nat just said. Going back to when Bill was talking, I don't wanna go forward with this thinking that it's spot zoning. I want to, if we go forward with bylaws, I want it to be able to have all the projects downtown included in not just about this one of poverty. Going forward, thinking about last week in the prior meeting that Mike and I attended, it was my understanding that the planning commission did not recommend these at all, didn't want us to go forward with them. And that made me uncomfortable because I wanna support them and support our downtown at the same time. So I'm just trying to find what a middle ground is going forward. And again, agreeing with Nat, if we can go forward in any type of way that would meet in the middle is what I would want. And if they can tweak what they would like to tweak and take our notes back with them and come to some sort of agreement and recommendation with the bylaws and we put those forward ASAP, I'm okay with that. And then they can tweak the final zoning regulations until they think it's good enough to publish, then I think that is the right direction to go in, if that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, I think I'll comment on this spot zoning conversation. I think we have to be very careful that this project could be defined as spot zoning. I think ultimately it comes down to that we don't have this use well defined in our regs. And we're looking at these interim regs that would allow this use. So I think right now, I mean, I'm in the business so I understand it and I see Harry's on here and I know he gets involved with the breweries and Stowe. Bottling production facilities, I think in the 90s, this project that ended up on Stowe, or was trying to go on Stowe Street is not a bottling facility by my definition. And I think you could look at it as an extension of a restaurant's kitchen. And in a lot of ways is just a smaller format bar and a larger, if they were making chili and they wanted to package it and sell it out the front, sell it out the back door and also have a bar, we could do it because we don't know what to call it. So we just call it a restaurant because they're cooking chili, they're not cooking beer, but it's ultimately just a cooking process. So I think, we have to be a little careful of just saying, because we do have to answer this lawsuit at some point I assume and Bill maybe can speak to that a little bit more. I don't like the idea of necessarily just doing it that way. I think I was, as this timeline was coming across, it seemed like there might be a solution to it. But now hearing that, and I agree, I want, if the planning commission wants the time to spend it on this, I think I'm in support of that. And I want to support them. And I heard very much last week that they felt unsupported and felt rushed, fine. But if we make a decision on this Stowe Street project, I want everyone to understand that my personal opinion is that we screwed up at the desk. We didn't have a great definition and we didn't let it get to the DRV for discussion around the use and what they wanted to do in a space that ultimately is what, 2,500 square feet. I think that was a disservice through our process. So I think, how they filled out the form, which I believe Dina helped them with is that to me was a problem and something that we have to figure out. We have to figure out how to get someone who wants to do business in our town that ultimately I think if we approved the regs tonight, they would be able to do it. And Prohibition Pig's already doing this, basically the same use right around the corner. So I don't really, I think this just got caught up in a decision that was made at a desk. And I get it that they're having to follow regs that were drawn up in the 90s and the micro brewery revolution wasn't really a thing that people were thinking about as they built these regs. So I don't know what to do here but I also wanna make sure that we agreed last week that the planning commission could at least have the opportunity to present something and I wanna give them that opportunity unless they come back to us after their meeting tonight and say, we rethought it, we understand the steps that were taken. I mean, I felt terrible last week and I missed Steve's email with their discussion and their statement. So I was totally blind to that understanding but I want to make sure that they know that we support their work. We can do a better job at helping set direction. And yes, to Dana's point, we probably do need to do more joint meetings to just understand where we are in every process and deliverables, timelines, all that stuff. And then also with the DRB understand their struggles. So we make sure that the, and I know that a couple of you have been on the DRB but that's also a whole nother communication line that we have to make sure being addressed as we rewrite these regs. But I don't know what to do from here. Well, I started out tonight thinking that we were gonna give them some guidance here with the interim regs, but we got sidetracked. It never came to that point. We can still do that though, you know, right now it's now with the select board they're, I see Mary's still in here and maybe I see your mics unmuted. So maybe if you wanna make a comment, but we could still, I think it's still important to talk about any feedback. Chris, you said you went through the regs more on, I think we should talk about some details and get it to them, even if it's after their meeting has started. Yeah, most of my questions were just questions and comments were just questions of clarification and, you know, the square footage is a big hangup. You know, I got to that point and I said, you know, what prompted the 2000 square foot proposal? And, you know, and it seems like as I read on the avenue to create more square footage for said business is just by going through the conditional use process. Now, I might be wrong. I don't know if you can shed some light on that, but it sounds to me like it's just another step in the permitting stage. I don't know how long that step takes, that extra additional step takes, but I also, you know, I had a question and it might've been a stupid question to myself. I said, is there a way of putting something in there that says you can start out with 2000 square feet? And then after a year through some form of assessment process to look at, obviously a lot of this has to do with scaling up a business and the success of a business, if you're restricted to 2000 square feet, you're not gonna make it financially. It's going to that 3,500 square foot point that makes that business successful. Is there a way of after a year of scaling up just through a simple permit process of review that, you know, everything's going good. We're not creating any do hardship, any undue hardship. And is it a simple strike of a pen to get an additional 1500 square feet without, or is it just as easy to go through the conditional use process? So I had some questions that I was gonna propose to the planning commission to see if that, and you, the board members, to see if that maybe simplified this interim process to get us to a point where we can say, yes, we're happy with it. We're gonna move it on and have the planning commission satisfied with it as well. So I think Michael mentioned his feeling, and Mike, you were on the DRB, correct? Yes, I was. And Nat, you were on the DRB as well, right? Putting your quick feelings and feedback on Chris's comment, and I think Mike, we're to get yours, but is it, in terms of those tiers, do you feel like those are low? And I know Harry's on the call too, and I don't know if he wants to speak to that as well. But if that's something that we think we wanna give feedback to, I'm in support of that. I don't see the extra step, and we could increase those numbers, but maybe there's a reason why we wouldn't. So I would be interested to hear, especially Harry, since he's currently on the DRB, if he's got some feedback on that. But Nat, since you also did it, I see Harry, why don't you go first since you just came onto the, yeah. I think I would agree with Chris that it is just another step in the process. And if there's flexibility built into the conditional use permitting process that also comes with looking at impacts, that's primarily what comes out of the conditional uses is looking at impacts. And if an application could be looked at with conditional use and allowed for variances and square footages or whatever, where you can kind of specifically look at the impacts of what's being proposed, I think that would work fine. Terry, Nat? Yeah, I mean impacts, we have to be careful about impacts, especially in food service or anything that's producing a product like this, because businesses like this have gone through quite a few hurdles in our town in the past. There's a track record there. But I also know a lot of these businesses that are trying to either produce a product, whether it's served indoors or out, there's a certain economy of scale, you know, where it just doesn't work if you're doing it on such a small scale. You need to serve so many plates a night to make it worth the waitstaff. You need to serve so many you know, portions of whatever you're producing to cover your bills. So we have to be sensitive to that as well. We want to allow certain types of businesses to come in, but we need to make it not so restrictive that they can't even get started. If that makes any sense. And yeah, I mean, I do think like the 2,000 square foot, that's way too low. Does everything need to be up to 5,000 square feet? Probably not, but I don't know if that. So I get, maybe Bill could answer this question. You know, I don't think, I mean, there's quite a few spots in this in term zoning regs that talk about sizes where it's permitted versus conditional. If we wanted to go through this and suggest, you know, the planning commission is going to go off with this and I think they've heard already some of our maybe interest in increasing or changing these numbers. If they say they were to just leave them as is and present them, we could potentially make those changes when they presented to us because these are interim regs, right? These aren't, how, what do we need to do? So the interim regs that were presented to you last week by Steve, whatever the square footages are and everything else, the select board could have rejected the interim bylaws after the public hearing was closed. They could have approved the interim bylaws just as they were, or they could have amended them. So, you know, I don't have it right in front of me, but if there was something that said, you know, 2,000 square feet is permitted and above that is conditional, the select board could have said on its own pollution, we're gonna make 5,000 square feet just a permitted use and anything above 5,000 square feet, we're gonna say it's not permittable. You could do anything that you want. So you can, you could change the interim bylaw based on your information feedback from that public hearing. And go ahead, Mike. I don't think, I hear Bill, but I just don't think we're ready at this point. I want some positive feedback from the planning commission. I wanna give them a little bit of time to try to give us some information because again, I wanna create that collaborative atmosphere that we could make in an informed decision. And I'm also not even sure that that 5,000 limit is absolute. You know, there may be some real smart businesses that may need a little bit more than 5,000. I don't know if that 5,000 number is correct. I do think, I definitely think that the 2,000 is too conservative. Whether it be 3,000, 3,500 or what, I'm not exactly sure. I was just telling you what the process is, Mike. I understand. So you have the flexibility to do what you want after that. All right, Chris. Well, I'm just curious in this whole process, if somebody comes in with a business and they've got a business plan in mind, they should have a predicted square footage for possible growth. I mean, you don't just come in and say, I'm gonna start a beer store and sell two, six packs for the next 20 years and I'm gonna be a millionaire. You gotta have some projected insight as to where your business is going. And that also plays into how you locate the property that you're gonna either buy or rent and move into ultimately and hopefully acquire a property such that it allows you for that growth. So I'm wondering in the future, if part of the requirement of a business plan is projected growth and options as to, if you buy this building or create this building, you're gonna have enough growth area for that or ultimately, I mean, and now that one, I guess that's difficult to plan on because if your business takes off, like the Alchemist is, they just basically grew out of Waterbury because we didn't have available space and they ended up going to stealth. But the other, so I think that the 2000 square foot limit should be discussed. I think that's part of what we need to convey to the Planning Commission. And there's some other questions. I'll jump on to one other one here that concerns the hell out of me. And maybe somebody can explain to me what's happened with it is the parking regulations. Have we basically decided that in the town of Waterbury, parking is no longer gonna be considered an issue and it's one of these deals where a business comes into town to establish a business and it's either they survive or it's cut instead of a cuts by a thousand, death by a thousand cuts, it's death by lack of parking. Is it, are we under the mentality now that it's let the strongest survive and take your chances as a business coming in because we really don't have any established parking to accommodate growth as we move forward? I'd like to know what people's feelings are about the parking issue because it is such a limited problem. Chris, that was already happening. When I was on the DRB, when we still had a village government, you would see the village would allocate parking spaces. And I'll be totally honest, they were phantom parking spaces. They would reissue spaces 20 times over, maybe that's an exaggeration, but they would do multiple allocations of parking. And I always had when I was on the DRB a real concern because there is a parking problem in Waterbury. And we were allocating, so I don't know, you probably need to look as a business what the parking situation is in Waterbury to see if you could do. I don't know if we could allocate certain parking spaces. Mike, I mean, you're exactly right and the description that was made earlier by Mark about going to the village trustees. But in a sense, I think the village trustees were ahead of their time when it came to parking because most communities now in their downtowns are saying, you know, there's parking is a finite number. We cannot ask businesses nor can we as a municipality provide every single space that the zoning regulations suggest that it needs. So a lot of communities have done away with parking requirements for businesses in the downtown community. And it's not that businesses don't come in, it's just an issue that they don't have to address directly and they end up having to look their customer in the face and say, yeah, I don't have any off-street parking of my own. I'm glad you found a place to parking. You're in my business today. I mean, that's really what it is. And I don't think at the moment, especially with 51 South Main Street and the configuration that it's in, I don't think that we have a real big parking issue in downtown Waterbury except for perhaps perception that, well, it's a reality that we don't enforce the parking regulations when it comes to time parking on the street. And, you know, maybe at some point we've talked about that, not this budget process, but a couple of years past, I suggested that maybe we hire a parking officer, if you will. And several of you said, no, we don't have the money to do that and we're not gonna hire a parking officer. But I think that not dealing with parking through zoning regulations in downtown is more how most places are going now. Don't disagree, Bill. I think, but don't have some fan, you know, that's what I always objected to, had this crazy phantom thing. And I think if we move away, I think businesses will decide if there's enough parking. Plus people are actually, I hate to say lazy because they can't walk. They can't walk two blocks. Right, but I mean, the phantom, what happened with the trustees was that we had a planning commission, along with the select board and along with the trustees at the time who adopted regulations, frankly, that were not, they weren't realistic. There was not realistic expectations. So, yes, it shouldn't have been in the bylaw before. The trustees maybe look foolish every time saying, oh yeah, you can just use on-street spaces and they allocated them over and over again. But maybe the planning commission should have gotten the message a long time ago to change the parking regulation. You're right, Bill. So to try to get to my point, if parking is part of this interim discussion, and we all decide here that it's a non-issue, then let's take that off their shoulders. You know, we're not gonna worry about that as part of this interim. I don't think it's any one-time bylaw. It's not in there. I've went over that interim zoning three times over and there's no mention of parking in the zoning. Yeah, but I meant through cross avenues of other permitting processes to get to the permits complete. Yeah, you'd still be required to follow the parking rags of the current plan. This would still require you to meet those requirements which would ultimately lead us down the road we're talking about. Yeah, I mean, I've been involved in this conversation for probably 12 years. I have my business in the downtown. You know, I mean, I go to Burlington and I park three blocks away or six blocks away. I think part of it is just growth and frustration there. I definitely think, you know, some of it comes down to that two-hour timeframe daytime parking. I know there's retailers that have complained about cars parked all day past the two hours and they need in and out, you know, parking spaces available. You know, I can count on maybe one hand any review I've had for business right downtown about parking and difficulty parking for customers. I think we're lucked out with some private parking lots turned into paid parking. And all of a sudden kind of fixes some of that issue but who knows if that's permanent. If that could get developed tomorrow and then all of a sudden we lose the TD Bank parking lot for example, you know, so I think we're lucky right now to have some use of some private properties but also with that found, you know, some people that think that they might be able to make a buck to charge people for parking. So I mean, if that continues maybe that fixes some of that parking concern whether that's a long-term fix, I don't know but I think it's bad to have in the regulations that you're required out parking. And what happens is if you have the land we make you build a parking lot. If you don't have the land, we let you go if it's not residential. So I think I don't like that. You know, I heard the gentleman, the Dr. Murray, you know complain about having to build this parking lot in the behind of building that was expensive that, you know, their upkeep because of the permitting requirements yet if you have a building that goes line to line, you're not required to do that. So I think that's part of the tough thing is like how can we incentivize building parking as things are developed, but maybe not. I don't know how to create an incentive but I think I love the idea that, you know take Bell's block, they built I think 33 parking spaces behind there and I know they're not gonna monitor it like, you know, they're not gonna have somebody standing there and you know, I'm sure that there's a certain amount of use, public use that's gonna happen because of that parking lot whether it's for their building or maybe a business next door that's up to them to control it. But you know, there's a scale back to the economy of scale. You're not gonna have somebody sitting out there monitoring it if there's no income stream to it. So it's a challenge, but I love the idea of having this conversation around parking and trying to create incentives to build it as you build projects. I think we talked about with 51 because it was on public the idea with that one project that a certain amount of it becomes public parking in the evening hours to start to fix some of that parking conversation but I don't know how you build that into regulation. Yeah, I think future growth kind of from a survival standpoint of the business that's coming in, only smart thing to do is make sure that they've got ample parking to support their business. And then if they have to regulate it based on pay parking or restricted parking that's their gig. I think it's, you know, moving forward it's definitely the responsibility of the select board in the future years to come to grab any opportunity that we can to enhance parking where possible without, you know, without and our nose off despite our face and losing valuable property to what might otherwise be a taxable asset. But yet I think there's a fine balance there. I mean, 51 South Maine is still on my mind a lot about be nice at the town could acquire that because I think it's a strategically important piece of property when it comes to supporting the businesses in that downtown area. And then my question is if we don't have any parking restrictions or guidelines in town, how do we support, you know, ticketing people for parking? I mean, can you still do that without having any guidelines for, you know businesses in the allocation of parking spaces? Yeah, I believe that would be two separate things. One is you want to do a business is there a parking requirement? Maybe residential has a parking requirement because you have to be off the street in the evening and hours in the winter. But in terms of the parking regulation I think we can set the rule book on what the two hour parking, whatever the rule book is and then it's a question of do we have anyone who can actually police it? And if we don't, then what's the point? But, you know, I'd love to see us get to the point where when we have rules, we can police those rules and whatever it is, whether zoning regs and, you know and I think it gets back to, if we decide that these rules are in there we do have to have some teeth to them and have the ability to manage the rule book. You know, the conversation brought up about the logs on a hundred and this conversation about, you know he's been doing business, how long has he been on a hundred, 10 years or something? And no neighbor has complained as far as I know to the town about his pile of logs but he's technically breaking the rule book. And if we're aware of those rules being broken at some point what happens, you know there was a bill brought up an example of the gas station there on Main Street that had a sign that's for 20 years has been four feet over the regulation when they wanted to change the insert we told them they couldn't do it because the sign's too high. And so we said, no but it's been there for 20 years and no one said anything. So it's like, how do we get around ourselves a little bit and say how do we deal with those scenarios of whatever the, I don't know is it a grandfathering of, you know and I think we saw last week that we warned these regs did anyone come to the meeting and scream that you got this wrong other than the planning commission? So to me, we're not far off from where we need to go. I think if we missed the boat on these there would have been a lot more people in that meeting complaining that they're fear about their property value what might happen to the downtown? You know, I have some concerns that maybe we do need to talk about limiting scale the only limitation in this right now back to your point Chris is that industrial could only grow to 5,000 square feet in the downtown all the other ones say over a certain amount of square footage you have to go for conditional use but there's no limitation on size so that answers a little bit of your question on you know, your opportunity and ability to grow it actually does a lot of for anything but I think industrial but I do have a concern that maybe we do need to set a footprint size before they limited 15 units per building and there was an issue with the definition of units you could have had 15 five bedroom units so like I think that's kind of a problem but you know to me I was thinking about this of like I think we need to set a footprint maximum per building to just set some scale because potentially what you could have is someone buys four or five houses on Main Street and knocks them down and builds you know, a building that you know you start to go into like I don't know if anyone's been in Winooski recently but there's these massive kind of buildings and I think we do need to talk about that I wanna encourage growth but I wanna be careful on scale so my quick fall was 15,000 square feet which is the size of the foundry building as far as I could tell but I don't know if that's something the rest of the board has interest in but that's one comment I have. You got a little bit of a contradiction there I guess if you depend on how far out you're gonna look into the future this district area outside of you know if you're trying to keep it confined to smaller and smaller areas gonna be limited at some point the only direction you're gonna be able to go is up so that's a huge consideration I think moving forward I, you know, the fact that they bumped up the 60 foot maximum was probably good but ultimately is that gonna be enough you know, as time moves on I did have kind of pertaining to your knocking down five buildings there I did have one question there that when they talked about the setbacks oh, is it? Yeah, it's basically zero basically zero setbacks I think that's the current regs as well and I said to myself with zero setbacks I mean, I guess what immediately comes to mind is fire hazard, you know Chris, I had that same comment in my question to you know, I had a bunch of comments to the planning commission and one, you know, I had the question about setback I know they basically their comment was well, all the things right on, you know Stowe Street have, you know, like a zero setback I said, well, that's not the whole downtown area I think just for streetscape there should be some sort of, you know because everything that's there on Stowe Street if it's pre-existing, I think you would be able to you know, I think we need to use some common sense of logic and that's the problem with a lot of these things there's no function to use some common sense of logic yes, if you're off of Stowe Street and some of the other areas I think just to have a good streetscape you should have some setback, you know at least 10 feet or something like that beyond the right of way but that was my comment and you know, I had a bunch of comments and you know, to the planning commission and I don't know, it's, you know I wasn't throwing stones, I said this is my concern and I raised that not as a select board member but as a private citizen, you know I just think, you know we need to collaboratively come about and try to figure out some of these things yes, I know we are a little bit of a ways away from permanent zoning but even for interim zoning let's talk together and meet have a meeting of the minds to get someplace that's reasonable that's where my thoughts well, I guess my question to finish up here on the flier hazard on the setback was, is it their assumption that nobody's going to go to the zero maximum or minimum, whatever you want to call it I mean, you got to have working space between buildings in order to construct them well, Stowe Street is the one that's you know, everything on Stowe Street has a zero setback most of me three down does as well I'm not sure that, you know I mean, obviously this is an issue but I don't know if having small setbacks how much fire protection is 10 feet going to give me if the building next to what he is burning I mean, with new construction you build it with fireproof walls and you deal with it for a streetscape I think there was one of the things that Steve even pointed out was that in the downtown district not making you have a 10 or 20 foot setback is more consistent with having a streetscape that you want because okay, what are we going to do then if we make you have a 20 foot setback or we're going to make you have a lawn that's manicured like, you know Augusta National or we're going to make you have bushes and trees if you have no setback and that becomes your streetscape is just the facades of the building that's okay it doesn't mean that people have to build on the whole footprint of the lot or that they don't have to have a setback but if you're going to require it I'm not sure, you know the small setbacks that we're talking about in the downtown to make it workable to allow for the density that you need is really conducive to having lots of open space. Well, for this purpose tonight which I thought was to try to give them suggested to go some suggestions to go with these intrams what other, does anybody else have any concerns that we could convey to the planning commission or do we entertain one of their meetings here real soon and convey them to them ourselves? I mean, I was pretty happy with pretty much everything just other than a few odds and ends that maybe I just ought to convey to Steve himself and if anybody else has any of the same type things to do the same and put them together and see what's redundant whatever is, you know, consolidated I know Mary wasn't speaking for the rest of the planning commission but in the end she basically said why don't you just adopt what you did last week? I mean, that's what that's what it works for. I know which originally threw me off but going forward to answer you Chris I would say those comments about what we talked about tonight I'm also curious to hear the meeting minutes and the audio from their meeting tonight and then maybe at our next meeting talk about the possible adoption of them if things are tweaked. Yeah, I think we're gonna learn a lot from their meeting tonight and I don't know if it makes sense for any of us to jump into that meeting or let them talk it through. Yeah, I mean, we've had zero setbacks in the regs and maybe Harry if you know but I think that's been zero setbacks for the whole time I know the regs have been in place. You know, I think my biggest thing is just knowing I would like to know if there's a maximum building footprint I think that's the one thing that I would like to see but other than that, I agree with Chris. I've read these still I feel like they're well thought out and well organized and I understand the rule book a lot more than maybe the current regs do and I think it does agree. I mean, it does address some of the use issues and it also, you know hopefully will help fix this density problem that will hopefully entice some people to build some housing, which we desperately need. Where do we go from here then? Wait till I see what the planning commission comes back with. Yeah, I mean, I'm assuming Mary is gonna go into that meeting and say the same thing she said to us. So I don't know if we wanna lead them too much unless we have some major, I think she's gonna take, I'm assuming Steve's going to them that, you know we did talk about the 2005,000 and see if they move those needles. If they don't, we can address it. I don't know what else, you know I am interested in seeing if they do anything with the map. It seemed like there was some interest in moving up towards the railroad. I think that makes sense. It's out of the flood plain. If we're gonna change the map to include the area to the rail bridge up on that north side of Main Street, it just seems like there's some opportunity there. There's a big deep lots and you're bound by the railroad and the park. So I don't know, it just seems to me that we should be including that in the area. To me, it doesn't change that area of downtown feels very much like down Bank Hill on the rest of Main Street and it's out of the flood plain. So why would we not encourage the potential development outside of the flood plain where you're not dealing with flood rags personally? I mean, I guess some of that area is actually in the flood plain still, but I don't know. Let me ask you an important question that just came to mind with you saying that. And this is a business question. As you move forward in the future properties come up for sale. What would you perceive to be more lucrative to a businessman housing or business development of some sort? I guess my point being those are mostly residential down that way right now, residential housing as time goes on, what are the potential of those turning into some form of a commercial space or late industrial or whatever and eventually pushing the housing out that you're saying is more important. So how do we protect against that moving forward? I think the market's gonna protect that. I think housing, as you see what the projects that have gone up on Blush Hill and a lot of the other development has been based on housing because that is where the demand is. And I wanted to maybe talk tonight about vacancy rates and what maybe we as a town try to say what our goals are for healthy vacancy rates but I believe it's three and 5% and we're sub one on both single family and apartment which drives prices up. I think that with COVID especially I think you're starting to see that demand for office and second floor anything commercial is probably gonna go down quite a bit and we already have quite a bit of that in town. So I think maybe that's naturally happening anyways whether or not that's a long-term I have no clue but to me the changes in density and the air rights of 60 feet which I think we might already I can't remember if it's 50 or 60 right now currently but I think the density is gonna actually entice I mean, the problem with that is gonna be parking so you can't just go and build a bunch of residential without a parking garage either underneath or on the property somewhere. So there's gonna be a challenge there from a development standpoint on how you make it work on a parking lot but as you saw from what was presented at 51 sans the issues that it had somebody was able to kind of start to understand how it could work. I think the flood, flood regs at least any development down in that area are gonna probably lift the buildings and put the parking underneath them anyway. So I don't know, you see a lot of it in like Wanooski they built they kind of hid the parking around a front facade of commercial I imagine that a mixed use developer will see opportunity to build first floor commercial and residential up top and build some of the demand for the first floor in the building from who's above it. I think that's what you see in a lot of areas including what's going up in Burlington I think that's the opportunities to continue to meet demands on both commercial and residential. There's gonna be, I think even Mary kind of said that people who live in the downtown who wanna live in downtown there's a strong feeling that there's a push out because eventually you're gonna see especially if you don't own your own property or even if you do own your own property there's gonna be a financial incentive to sell. And some people don't wanna but again, if you're throwing a bunch of money you're gonna sell and look to relocate then you look at the rental market you're gonna look at a lot of people who are in rental units if they wind up if the landlord of the building has a better use unfortunately that's what he's probably gonna do. And I think that's the real concern about that northern part up to the railroad bridge is a concern that we do have some residential development that probably you're gonna, if you change that zoning kind of to more of a downtown zoning you're probably gonna lose a lot of the residential development that's already there. Just a thought. I think the other thing that we should talk is the select board is surrounding historical and what I think there seem to be some conversation around the bells block building and what was there previously. And I think Jane was previously on the board didn't like how the building was taken down but I think we do have to have that conversation. It seemed like Mary was hoping for that in these regs somehow which as far as we confirmed these interim regs would leave whatever is currently in place, which is perfect. But if those regs aren't perfect what do we wanna see out of them? I haven't reviewed them in a while to really understand how we approach a building that a developer or somebody wants to take down how the rule book is and what we as a select board agree should be the rule book to maintain our historic nature but also allow for infill and potential. You know, like that's a big conversation with that I'm not sure how to fully navigate. Mark, that's a whole scary kind of area historic protection because I know I was a lot involved with especially being a federal lender. You know, we had to always do for our projects at section 106 reviews. And our state historic preservation office is very conservative in terms of what's gonna happen there. We do have a historic district and you know, probably people are concerned with what's gonna happen if some of these, you know, a good responsible developer he's gonna put something in as an infill that does match the historic district. You know, some they're not as common you're gonna get a little bit more sketchy development. So, you know, yeah, the historic thing is, you know, a real question is what we're gonna do longterm and you know, do we wanna do that in some form of zoning? You know, that's really a big question. That's probably something that really needs to be dealt with in permanent zoning. I mean, I could see somebody taking the TD bank parking lot in the bargain boutique building and building a pretty big building right there that, you know, and does anyone gonna be upset if the bargain boutique building comes down? I'm sure it's an old structure and you know, how do you approach that conversation? The real question is anything 50 years or older is considered historic so that 1950s ranches considered an historic structure. You know, we all chuckle about that, but it's true. Well, I mean, Mike, you remember when we were talking about that when we were on the DRB and we were talking about that building that they took down before Aaron was involved in that project back when it was Ed Steele who was it? It was Ed Steele that wanted to put a parking lot in there. Yeah, Ed Steele. For Patty. And we had the historic preservation folks there and they said that that building, yes, it was on the records, but it had been messed with so much that there wasn't anything historical left to it. The problem with the state preservation offices, they wanna see all this historic restoration but there's no funds. They have zero funds that they will attach to things and that's, I think that's a real problem that they don't put their money where their mouth is. Well, I can tell you what Aaron Flint and Jason did there was above and beyond probably what was required and I'm sure it was quite costly to incorporate those types of details in buildings today is not cheap and kudos to them for doing it. And I think from a business standpoint, they may have struggled a little bit but decided to go that route just because to do the right thing. And somehow try to keep the character of that type of construction and the types of buildings that we got down. I don't know that it's impossible to draft some form of regs that basically lays that out and says this is what is acceptable and this is not. Well, that's the form-based stuff that Mark is talking about. Pretty much let, worry about what the building looks like how it fits into the neighborhood and basically let whatever people wanna do inside go off. That's really the form-based zoning at its simplest. Look at the VFW right next door. That's not very consistent with the old downtown historic district. We do have something, right? There's some kind of design committee, right? For that zoning district. And who is that the DRB or is that a separate group? I think it's the DRB. I think that they implemented the design of the building and the design of the building that they implemented design review overlay stuff. Harry, do you have any comment on where you feel like those regs are and how they could be improved? Honestly, Mark, I still feel like I'm trying to come up to speed and hearing the discussion this evening makes me realize how much more effort I need to put into it. So no, the answer is no. But I would, I think offer in closing because I gotta leave at least that I love that the discussion you guys are having and I think most importantly, the recognition that better communications to try to move the ball is important because I will share, I've only been on your DRB now for our DRB for like six months and there are a lot of frustrations in those zoning regs and they feel very antiquated. And I only hear about challenges associated with moving the process from planning up through you guys and I could see how complicated it is. But as an example for a new DRB member, it kind of blew me away that there's this parking arrangement in the village where apparently the old village trustees used to just allocate parking over and over again and it didn't relate at all to the regulations. And I can understand where the regulations are maybe not achievable, but I would hope in this process, something that is more achievable that just doesn't make, neglect it that comes out of this process. And I wholeheartedly agree with what was done with the design of that building on Stow Street. I think it's a compliment to the downtown and I agree that if we could somehow through this process kind of use that as an example of what we're looking for for aesthetics and detail that that too would be a welcome addition and if it wasn't subjective and it was kind of clear in the regulations, that would be the best. And I appreciate what you folks are tangling with and with that I've got to check out. Thank you very much for your feedback and thanks for joining us today. Thanks for your comments, Harry. All right, I mean, I think at this point maybe we just go off individually if we do have feedback. I think it would be important. I guess we can't really email back and forth that has to be in meeting or it can be on a one-on-one basis but we should maybe collect any comments but I would like to know if a specific board member gives Steve feedback. I feel like we've been at the problem where sometimes that could potentially just change it without maybe the other board members knowing about that change. So I don't know how we can organize that. And I would love to, if Chris has a comment and I'm in support of it, I'd love to be able to like give the check mark to it but maybe that means we needed just the next select board meaning come with our comments and get everyone to say feedback on our comments and then we can hand that off. But there's work being done currently while we speak in another meeting that maybe address some of that as well and maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves as well. So I don't know, go ahead. For future, I think you hit it Mark. For future efforts, I think it's important that we get into a pinch like this where there's, you know, miscommunication or whatever. If we were to meet as a board and go through these interim regs, like I said, any questions that each one of us have put onto the table, figure out what's already been redundant or what's already been talked about and consolidate those questions to boil down to a simple small list of here's what the select board came up with with your interim regs. Maybe you've already addressed these, maybe you haven't. If not, here they are. And I think, you know, moving forward, if that were somehow incorporated with board meetings in the future that we might have to do all this, you know? Hi, Katie. Be a shortcut. Could we possibly do something where we put all of our questions in a Google doc and then either, if we wanna get this done ASAP attach them to the meeting minutes when they're submitted or next time all of us come prepared with them and then we write them in a shared Google document on a shared screen to the public can see it and then share it with the playing commission just so it's out in the open and we're transparent. Is that something we can do or wanna do? Yeah, I don't know enough about. Yeah, Bill, if we had an online area that was completely transparent to the public that we could put our comments on and be a working whatever, say it's this specific thing and it was linked on the Waterbury website that we could each put in our comments and allow the other board members to see and there could be kind of work happening outside of meetings that's completely transparent because that is a way that a lot of people are doing business now. Could we consider something like that or does it need to work in a different manner and is the regulations surrounding what we're allowed to do outside of these meetings or non-quorum based? Does it allow for that? Yeah, so my, I think my guess is it would not get you in serious trouble as long as what was being posted was being posted where the public could see it that it's not, it's different than Mark sending an email to five select board and that's the only people who see it and may respond. So if somebody knows how to do it, that's the challenge, at least for me, is technically how do we do that? I've had a lot of problems, RW just had a process with their hiring and new executive director and there was a lot of stuff on Google Doc and our system here doesn't work all that well with it and I'm the least technically a depth person around. So if somebody wants to try it, you can, but I'm not sure what the capacity that we have to do it and make it work. All right, Chris, and then Mike. Wow, to Bill's point here, I think you're talking about an old timer like me and a young whippersnapper like Katie growing up in a computer era. You know, I think we could do what I suggested at the meetings, those are public. I mean, how much more public do you put it on, on the computer out there so everybody can review it? I don't know that they're gonna pay any more attention to that than they are the select board meetings. But, you know, it's just adding an extra step, I think to some of us that probably aren't as versed in computer technology as for the other younger group. But certainly you all can make comments and email them to me and then I can put them into a document and be able to screen share that document at the next meeting. And I could even send it out to all of us select board members even before the next meeting, as long as you don't email to each other about it. So that's, you know, to Chris's point, there are some people on the select board that probably just don't have the skill set or want to take the time to learn how to do all this stuff with Google box. And how much do we want? Sorry, Mike, go ahead, you're up next. Call me a rebel, but maybe that's my 60s background protesting the war. I sometimes look, I get frustrated at information sharing. You know, we kind of have, I feel almost muzzled. And the way I made my, I had like a page and a half comments and I wound up making it through Steve and then it went to the Planning Commission. And, you know, that's what I thought were reasonable comments. And it's almost like they didn't want to respond to them. And I don't know, I just feel I'm somewhere in between. I'm not a technological wizard, but I'm far from, you know, technologically, you know, I have some technological background. I'd be really glad to be able to share information because I think there has to be some open way where we could share information together outside of meetings. I think it's a problem where we have these two, three hour meetings and everything has to go through these meetings or, you know, I need to call Chris or call Mark or something like that. It's not true. That's not true. You can email any select board member. One or one or another. As long as you do it one at a time. So could I send five different, four different emails to each one of the select board with the same information? Is that, how is that any different than sending all to all four? I just think that's, I don't know. Because all four, if you send it to all four and you all respond, then you're having a meeting. And if you send one email to Chris and you send the same email to Mark and they just respond back and forth to you, it's not a meeting. You can talk to Mark on the street. You can talk to Chris on the street. You can pick up the phone and talk to any one member. You can't have a conference call. And that's just the law. So you might find it, you know, slows things down, but it's meant to be that way because the public doesn't want you folks conducting business without them not being able to see it. So live with the law. I understand, Bill. Go ahead, Chris. I just, it seems like it would make it a bit cumbersome to go this route. And, you know, quite frankly, to put that type of information out to the public when it's not, hasn't been decided by the board. I think you're just asking for longer drawn out issues. If you have the board, like I said, at a meeting, take this set of regs, go through it. Any questions that each one of us has, put it down on paper, make a list. You can consolidate it throughout the meeting. And at the end of the meeting, say, we all agree with what we've got here. Yes. Then it goes to the planning commission. And at the public, at the public meeting, that's when it comes out to the public. That gives them their chance to deal with it. And we don't get beat up through the process and add a lot of additional time to what's already a cumbersome process. I agree with what you just said. And what I said a minute ago was that to expedite it, you can all individually send the comments to me. I can put them on one document and then send them to each of you. And that way you all have them before the meeting. You haven't talked to each other about it, but at least you'll have it. So we don't have to spend three quarters of the meeting just reading everybody's comments. You'll all have a chance to see them before the meeting starts and can get right into it. Do we want to leave tonight's meet? Seems like, and I'd like to see if the board agrees, we all believe that there should be increased square footage where it's permitted to condition on pretty much all the use table. So, but do we, do we just say increased and let them come to us with a number that they vetted and decided on? Or do we want to say a number? So, you know, to me it's that, I would like an answer on maximum footprint. If everyone, does everyone agree that that's something that should be in these regs? But maybe we don't tell them how much and we just let them come back with us with a size unless we want to say a number. You know, is it that kind of leading that we want to consider at this point? And I think we tell them to not address parking, not address historic structure in the interim regs, but we do want to see a solution in the full rewrite of the regs and be involved in that conversation and process. I agree with what you just said, Mark. I said those are the two, the two of my biggest comments is the 2005,000 limits. I don't think those were come to in a really thoughtful way. And I think they need to vet that out and come back to us with something that makes sense. And, you know, I want to hear their input on that. They're gonna read these minutes. They're gonna, I'm sure they're gonna have conversations with Bill, we should at least have something to give them tonight. And then what's our homework? I think our homework should be, and a lot of you have already done it, you know, going back through the regs, any feedback, send it off to Bill and he can help compile it and get it back to us to just see if there's any other things that we need to talk about to help the planning commission with their work. And hopefully when they come back, we feel, you know, that they've heard us, they've addressed any concerns that we had and we can move this forward. I think that's the most important thing that can happen. I mean, so I was thinking about the 2000 square foot in dimensional sizes. So 2000 square foot would be a 40 by 50 building. That's pretty good size building. So my building, the brick portion, each level of that is 1,750 square feet. The sister building that Blackbacks and it's the exact same square footage. So to give you an idea of what, close to 2000 square foot, each level of that is 2000 square feet, a little longer. I don't think that 2000 square foot, no, reg is way off. I mean, I'm not saying you can't do it. It's just requiring one more step to talk about the scale. So the DRB can talk about any other concerns on impact. So to me, 2000 might be the right thing, at least for now, especially for interim regs, just get you to take one extra step to have a conversation. Maybe we jump into three, I don't know, but all it is saying you gotta take another step. Well, that's why I was looking at alternatives as to how you could get that increase without being dragged through the mud, you know? The other thing that I think is a real big concern and I raised that in my comments was in the home occupation, where they had 35% to 900 square foot standards. I think if someone has a large Victorian house, you may need to exceed that, especially, you know, I don't think sometimes they really see what necessarily kind of businesses may come into these places. And I think you're gonna see with things like this pandemic, more people are gonna go toward some sort of various home occupations and they may need some more space than what they're looking at permitting. I think the same thing could be said with, I know they're looking at, they don't wanna see drive up McDonald's style windows, but I think this pandemic's gonna get more businesses are gonna have some sort of carry out where they're gonna need some sort of space to pick up, you know, whether it be pharmaceutical stuff or a restaurant that has more of a carry out that it's not gonna be like a McDonald's drive through, but it's something like kind of, you know, where we have now seek curbside service. And I think that is gonna be a trend that we may see in the future, but just my thoughts. Yeah, so back to your square footage here. I was kind of looking at the 2,500 foot I used to start with. And does it seem like the accessory process, the conditional use process for like additional accessory was, it's too cumbersome, Mark? I don't know. I mean, I understand trying to control ADU. I think you've heard my comments last meeting of my concern of that some of it has to do if you've been owner occupied and what happens when you leave and I don't like not allowing someone to hold ownership of their building because they've decided to move out of the main structure. But I think all that happens then is they, we have to know that there's a path to a mall, basically becomes a multi unit property instead of ADU. I don't think it changes how you're taxed as far as I understand it shouldn't change value, I wouldn't think. So I don't fully understand that process and I wanna make sure there's a clear path because the last thing you want is again, people to land in non-compliance and then hoping that a zoning administrator or whoever is somehow policing that transition. I just don't think that that's the right thing to do either. I definitely agree with Mike. I think 900 square feet, you could easily have 1,000 square foot over a garage. What's a two-car garage square footage? 24 by 24. Oh, maybe 900s are right. I don't know, it just seems like there's a potential. There are some properties that are pretty deep in the downtown and could have a pretty large accessory building in the back. You know, like take for example, what's a race stock? You know, I don't know how big that is but I could see someone, especially with these deep lots you live in the front, you build a pretty big at-home business in the back. You know, 900 square feet could quickly be undersized for someone trying to do a decent business on their property. I don't know, I could see that number coming up maybe like 1,500 square feet or something. I don't see the harm in it other than maybe building a structure that potentially has a bigger grand list value and more tax revenue. So I don't, I understand impact and scale for neighbors but to me, you know, these are the same properties that could go lot line to lot line and build an apartment complex. So like, you know, are you really, you know what's more impactful, your neighbor building a 15 heart square foot accessory use or an apartment building that goes lot line to lot line. So I don't know, I think we have to encourage that as well. Totally agreed Mark. Becoming more apparent in that, you know financial survival in this state relies on more than just a lot of cases of 40 hour a week paycheck. Sometimes somehow you gotta have some kind of a passive income in accessory buildings and either sideline part time businesses or, you know, some type of a home business occupation outside of your regular occupation is what it's taken to be able to afford to live here. Home occupations are the wave of the future. I'm not sure, I think at this point, it's already eight o'clock, unless anyone else has anything pressing tonight I think we go back, make any comments we have get them over to Bill, thank Nat for his service. And see, you know, we also have to think that there's gonna be some new board members or at least one new board member and that could change the conversation too and we have to, you know, be conscious of that. So, and it would be great if we look organized on this. So. Yeah, so Nat, I was gonna tell you there we're firing you as of tonight. We're sick of seeing you. So this is your last day on the job buddy. That's it, I can't come anymore. You can still make comments. Oh yeah. You can come at every meeting and we'll call on you every time you're here. You can scream even louder from where you're standing after today. Here's my imaginary beer to give you a toast. All right. Is there any other business that anyone would like that there is a, I think there's a line out of it says any other business, but I don't know if any unless Bill's got something. Dinner time for me. All right, well, I will take a meeting to adjourn and thank everyone for their time. And I think this was an important meeting. So thank you. Go 20 below weather tomorrow. I moved to adjourn. All right. A second. There you go. All right. Thank you all. Thanks everyone. Good night all. Good night. See you Nat. Good luck Nat.