 All right, everyone. Good evening. All this. It's November 7. Wow. Meeting of the DRB to order. I'm Rob Goodwin, the chair. Introduce the members starting in my right here. Don't forget. Kevin O'Connell board member. Meredith Crandall staff. Captain Burgess board member. And we wait board member. On our zoom platform, we have. Michael was orchid. Yeah, Michael was orchid. Thank you. Joe, you here. Joe Kiernan. President. No, it's, it should be on speaker view. Let me check the middle. It should be popping up. He's showing up as Stephanie. Yeah. I'm going to get right in your space. You speaker view. Maybe I need to exit full screen. That'll help. We asked to talk again. Hey Joe, can you just do a sound check again? Yeah. I'm still here. Now can you hear me? I see my little microphone going green. Yeah, you're good now. All right. Thanks Joe. It was also just making sure that our settings were right here. So you pop up on the big screen when you talk. Great. Okay. Do we have a approval of a agenda for this evening? Can do that first. Move to approve the agenda for this evening. Second. Motion by Sharon second by Kevin. All those in favor say aye. Hi. Hi. We have an agenda. So Mary's can take a couple of minutes to review the remote meeting procedures. And to take it away. My thing. You have a lot of people on remotely this evening. All right. So for everybody on remotely, I'm going to be sharing my screen here. Most of the stuff on the screen. Is for. Those who might be watching this meeting. I'm going to be sharing my screen here. I'm going to be sharing my screen here. I'm going to be sharing my screen here. I'm going to be sharing my screen here remotely over Orca media, over the streaming so that they'll know how to access the meeting tonight, but there will be some points that I'm making that you'll want to keep track of as well. So. For anyone viewing this meeting via Orca media, you can participate in tonight's development review board meeting by either. You can see what's going on and participate can ask questions. We'll be able to tell when you raise your hand. Your other option is to call this phone number here. And when prompted plug in this meeting ID, you won't have a share screen ability because you won't be on your computer, but you can still participate in the meeting here. Everything that's being said over the phone. And let us know when you have questions or comments. If someone is trying to access the meeting and you're having problems, please email me here at mcrandle. At Montpelier. I will be monitoring my email throughout tonight's meeting. For those attending via zoom, turning your video on is optional. We do ask that you keep your microphone on mute when you're not speaking. This reduces background noise and potential conflicts. I don't have anybody on logged in via phone yet. We do ask that you reserve the zoom chat function for troubleshooting or logistics questions. Any substantive questions or comments. We ask that you raise your hand and when called upon. You can provide those questions or comments at that point. We have several, a few of us in here monitoring the full. Zoom platform. We do ask that you reserve the zoom chat function for troubleshooting or logistics questions. Any substantive questions or comments. We do ask that you reserve the zoom chat function for troubleshooting or logistics questions. We do ask that you reserve the zoom platform so that we will be able to see when you have hands raised. We do also have several people here in person in council chambers. I will let the chair. Talk about that, about how we're going to manage that, that dual. Dual set of comments. And when you're on via zoom, you have the option. You have the option. You have the option. You have the option. You have the option. You have the option button. That you should feel free to use and we'll keep our eyes open for both of those. I think, you know, once the chair has recognized someone to participate, please make sure to provide your full name and address. We don't have an official record for tonight because it's not an official hearing. But it's still helpful to have that information. And we'll help for the minute taker. So I think we'll be able to access this meeting. And I'll find out about that via email. We'll probably need to continue it to a time and place certain. It's sketch plan. So it's a little, little more fuzzy, but we like to make sure that everybody who wants to participate in a public meeting can. All right, I am now going to hand this meeting back over to the chair. Right. Thank you, Meredith. Thank you. So I have some minutes to approve for October 17. Anyone have any comments or revisions? I make a motion to approve the minutes as submitted. Second. Motion by Kevin second by Sharon. All those in favor of improving the minutes say aye. Aye. Thank you very much. Wonderful. Thanks for your hands for these motions. So yeah, it's just few comments this evening. Want to reiterate or a comfort reiterate a couple of things that Meredith said I want us to sketch plan. It's not on the record. We're not swearing anybody in. There's no real. Big decisions that the board is making tonight other than providing guidance to the applicant of our review of the application thus far and hearing thoughts from those in the community that have also reviewed the application to. With with hopes of improving the application in the process and whatnot. So just keep that in mind. We do have some folks on the zoom platform and some folks in the room. We're going to do our best to manage that. We'll probably be taking, you know, comments and recognizing folks in the room chunk of them and then going to the platform to try and keep things a little bit more organized. Once again, I use the raised hand function. Can't figure it out like chat somebody or email Meredith. Or whatnot. At some point in the meeting, we'll check in for all these requests and make sure that everyone that has attempted to, you know, provide comments this evening was able to. So with that being said, move on to our major order of business. And Eric, you want to introduce yourself. My name is Eric Stoffer and I'm along with Sean folks, my partner, the owner of 12 North College street. I'm going to move the microphone closer to you. I don't know how long the cord. That's funny. Yeah. Can you hear me? Well, Eric, you want to give just like the brief, like 30 second summary of this and then we'll give it over to Meredith to sort of like go for the SAP report summary. And then we can give it back to you to sort of go more in depth on some of the, you know, issues you'd like to everyone to hear about. Sure. So 12 North college street is a. It was built in 1887. It was the original Murray barn that kind of goes, they gave Murray Hill neighborhood its name. It was turned in 19 in the mid 1970s into a single family residence. It was jacked up, put on a new foundation. Part of the interior was insulated. They lived there through the mid 90s. It changed hands at that point and kind of went on a downhill trend from there. And over the last couple of years, has been left abandoned. There's a lot of pipes that broke inside, et cetera. And we bought it out of foreclosure this summer. Since then we've been cleaning up the interior. Meeting the neighbors both informally, informally and started to make plans for kind of what we want to do with it for the future. We are proposing to make it a multifamily dwelling. And have applied. First, sketch plan review for that. And we are utilizing what's the infill PUD section of the zoning code to do so or zoning regulations to do so. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Meredith, you want to give a little summary of the key points in the staff report. Yeah. So what I'm going to do is do just a quick little reiteration of the procedural status here first. This is sketch plan review. And that's something that applies under our current regulations only to subdivisions and planned unit developments. But they're both subject to the same. Procedural standards. They have very different. Substantive standards. So there's a lot of things that are considered when you're doing the subdivision. That if you're doing a planned unit development, like proposed here that doesn't involve actually dividing the land up. You don't need to, to worry about. And both of these go through both a sketch plan and a final review. Right now we're in the sketch plan or some else, you know, a preliminary review where this is all about making sure that the applicant. Has the information they need to put together a more complex, more detailed. Final application that will be. The application that actually has a decision about whether or not a permit can be granted. For this particular sketch plan application, the staff report has a lot of items in it in red. A lot of those are notes to help guide the applicant in. Pieces of information that they want to make sure they have when they come to final application. There are, however, a couple of points where the development review board. I feel should really be giving. The applicant giving Eric some guidance. So that in the final application. He knows what standard he's actually trying to meet. The main one of those has to do with the infill PUD density bonus. So that analysis in the staff report starts on page four. And it's a, you know, we really need the board to confirm that. How that density bonus is calculated. Is assured. Right. Because if, if the calculation, there's often instead of getting five units, it would be four units or three units. And that, that makes a big difference in how you're. Planning for this proposal. The other item that I've liked in here where it would be helpful if the board gave some guidance. Is on the parking and locations for parking. For this project. Given the. That the requirement that parking be behind the frontline of a dwelling. Doesn't really mesh with allowing parking inside any residential driveway. But in this instance, we're also having a situation where parking is being sort of, there's parking, clear parking spaces off to the side of the driveway. So giving, giving a little guidance there on what you would like to see. And the final application would be helpful. And the staff report on that. Section starts on page nine. I do have. If there are people in the audience who have not seen the staff report that was included in the agenda, I'm going to put a copy up on the table because I have one extra. And I can hand this back to Eric. Yeah. I just wanted to make sure that this was the type of that I thought it was Meredith on page six of 13. It says on 800 square feet. I presume that's 8,000. It's on. Yeah. That was supposed to be an extra zero. All right. That's where the trauma. Okay. All right. There is. I am not. Did you get a copy of the staff report? I do have her in front of you. All right. So if I had a chance to look at it. So we'll let you kind of go through and give a little presentation of what. Sorry. I do just as. Because I know we all know, but as a reminder that. If you want me to read. The emails into the record that we got. After the packets. Okay. I think that these are kind of in the category of like, you know, public comments. It's not. Like additional information from the cat applicant. If that were so, I'd go first, but. Yeah. Yeah. Flag something later. When people want it. I'm happy to read any of that. And if needed. All right. Well, please ask questions. Yeah. Yeah. I think that these are kind of in the category of like, you know, public comments. It's not. Like additional information from the cat applicant. If that were so, I'd go first, but. Yeah. All right. All right. Well, please ask questions as I go and guidance. And let me know what specifically what you are looking for. Most people behind me and online. So as I said, we are putting in a proposal. We've applied for a, for five dwelling units. In this property. All the dwelling units will be in the current footprint of the existing. The residential area. No. Are we talking about building any new structures there at this time. In order to. The zoning it's in a residential 9,000. Res 9,000 zoning area. We have about 30, I don't have numbers right in front of me. I'm sure it's here. 31,000 and change square feet on a point. Point 72 acres. 31,363. Square foot lot. And we've also applied for the infill PUD was to be able to put more units in there to create more housing for the city. As we know that, as we all know that as a need, that is one of our goals in the project. And to make it financially viable to create housing, right? So those two things, one doesn't happen without the other. In the infill PUD. There are density bonuses as you well know, you can get by meeting, I think there's six or seven possible. Categories if you meet two of them, you can get a 25% density bonus. If you can meet three of them, you get a 50% density bonus. And so we are looking at meeting three of those requirements and those requirements are on the additional units that you receive. So if we normally would be able to have, if it was straight zoning or straight application without the infill PUD, it would be for three units would fit on that size lot. So in seeking the other two, we are looking for to meet three of those, three of those requirements, 50% density. We would calculate that density bonuses based on the lot area. And then applying the 50% to the lot area, bringing us to just over just over 5.5 22 units. So that's where the number comes from. So. There's a, there's a confusing part of that or maybe not confusing because I was confused the first time I read this section of the regulations. I saw a, you know, affordable house, essentially affordable housing infill PUD and go the affordable housing route. And I was like, Oh, so like you have affordable housing PUD. It's like five units, you know, affordable housing. And it's like, no, that's not how it worked. But you get the existing units that were allowed and then it's, it is very much the essence of the word bonus. So that's where we're going to go. So that's where we're going to go. And so that's where we're going to go. So that's where we're going to go. Yeah. Extra units are the ones that have to meet that, you know, criteria. And so sure someone else out there. Maybe the first for the first time read it the same way. And I think the board of another sketch plan. We did have that discussion or it wasn't a sketch plan. It was just, you know, something on the record and kind of established that. So I didn't know if board members also. Saw it that way or wanted to discuss that. It's one of our decisions this evening. I am definitely interested in knowing which three categories you want to go with. I have a, I have not narrowed it down to three, but I've narrowed it down to four part of it. So if nobody's done, you know, this is the first time someone's in my understanding. It's the first time someone he's done an infill PUD. Set of zoning regulations. Some of the stuff when I asked initial questions of the city of Meredith trying to find out what some of these things mean, what is the definition of workable definition of affordable housing? What is a hers rating score and how does one go about getting it? And so trying to find out what some of these definitions were. So that I have it in front of me to find that section. So that I don't mess it up. We are looking at the ones that I know that we're looking at are the, for once again, for the two units, the two bonus units. Would be 1200 square feet or under. And we are looking at the hers rating score, depending on what that means. We're looking at the private or semi private outdoor space. For each of those two bonus, bonus units. And there's another one in there too. For one, if anybody has that page. Was it being accessible or visit? With the accessible or visible. So the two that we're not really looking at are affordable or senior house. So I'm sorry. So the setting private outside space. The less than 1200. Yep. And the hers rating and visitable or accessible. Oh, visitable or accessible. Yeah. And the, the hers rating, I think is, I mean, we're going to have to work with the building inspector. And it's not something that's in here. So you and I are both going to have to do some research on what that means in the efficiency. You know, energy efficiency world right now. And this was written in 2018. So. Some of the definitions. And the definition section of these regulations sometimes no longer correspond with what they were originally based on. So we'll need to, we'll work on that. Okay. Yeah. And just for anyone doesn't hers rating score of 50 as it is a. Test of energy usage in the building or, or. In some sense or another. And it's mostly based on a model is my understanding from the people that I've talked to. I'm sorry, based on a model more so than like a coming out to site. I'm not positive about that. Okay. I just, while we're, while we're on topic, I just want to make sure that one of the big things we want to put a good guide, clear guidance on is that. And to be bonus calculation. Just whether report from board members of what they think that, you know, what was presented is, is reasonable or. We need any more information at the final application or. Yeah, thumbs up or thumbs down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's the total square footage for the. Well, for the dwelling itself. For the building proper for the barn. It's 42 by 60. Three floors of 42 by 60. Yeah, it depends how you want to divvy it up. It's two main floors. The basement is walk out on two sides plus glass on another. And then see, you could squeeze. If you had a square feet, if you were really trying to use every square inch of it, with a, with a attic, you know, finished attic style space. I guess just, just feedback on how the density calculation was done. And then the average floor here that the first principle, which is what the applicant used as well. Seem to be clearer to me and you're more intuitive. Like, okay, this makes sense. I like that better than the second option. So I just want to put that out there. Nope. That's the second is my going all the way down to the base. And they both come up with the same thing at the end. My head started spinning when we doubled the size of the law. Yeah, I was like, 50% increase in a lot. Wait, wait, what? Yeah, that made sense to me as well. To use the first calculation. Yes. The one that the applicant used, yeah. Same here. I also flip that. All right. We don't mean to mess up your, I don't really have a flow. So that's great. So I think parking parking was the next major issue that kind of touch on. So currently we're proposing is five units in there. Parking requirements are one parking place per unit with no more than two parking places for unit. So we're looking between five and 10 parking spaces. If I understand, I think what we have currently proposed is eight or nine. And as you approach the building from North college street approach the lot from North college street. As you pull up the building is ahead on your right. And there's currently a large parking area that already exists from the past uses at the building. So on the west side of the building, kind of an extension or a widening of the driveway out there to the left of the building, to the left of the building. Yeah, thanks. As you guys are west, I was like, sorry, as you come up from North college to be on your left of the building. Yeah. And our proposal is to just improve that lot. So with taking what's already there, there's already gravel over most of it expanding it and making it, you know, more friendly. We're proposing a gravel drive gravel parking. And all the parking that's currently proposed is, is along that side. As you're looking at the parking, the hillside starts to rise up further to the west off. Look at that. Oh, my gosh, that helpful. So there's the parking just to the left of the hand there. There's a swale, a drainage swale and a hillside that's, that's off to the left, which is kind of that blank area. Correct. So that's the, the parking as we currently have it. And so previous uses the property that utilize that parking. What, what was that or my assumption? Well, I think when that single family home there and my assumption was that they used it. I'm not sure officially what it was designated at by the city. In more recent years, but I think there was a number of cars that were up in that area. Sure. So whether it was single family or multifamily or boarding house or what it was listed as. Yeah. It's, it was always listed as single family because we don't get into rentals or number of. Like. Um, roommate type situation that doesn't come up unless it's something that's hits a specific trigger under the building code. Um, and so my understanding is this was a situation where it was a single family home, but there were multiple. Bless the user tenants in different rooms. Um, so there were, there were a variety of vehicles there. And that's one reason that we've got this bigger. So yeah, that's that general parking area that you see there. Um, and so we would be staying entirely to the, as we're looking at that picture entirely to the right or east of that swale. There may be minor swale improvements, but we're not talking about moving it. We're not cutting into the hillside on the other side of it. In any way, shape, form all the parking would be basically. Um, You know, a small expansion, a lot that you're looking at right there. Um, I believe the building, the front of the building or the, is the road facing would be the south side of the building. And so Meredith brought up the idea that right now, if you go back to this, to my sketch there. Right now, I do extend. I do show those parking places extending beyond. The front line of that building. So those last two and a quarter spaces or whatever the number is right there. So that'd be something to. What makes an official parking place versus a widened road. I think it's something you brought up. And then there's also the possibility of creating two spots with a diagonal fence is shown there in the. Upper corner of the building of turning that into an L shaped fence. Running more in line with the front of the building. Yeah, exactly. To create the possibility of a couple more parking and possibly accessible parking spaces there depending on. Code requirements for visibility. Visitability or accessibility. So, so we do have a specific parking requirement for the PUD. I think it's specific to PUD, but it says no parking shall be required in front yards except within an approved driveway. So we would have to determine for this where the front yard is, which. It's defined in the regulations. So yeah, that's the. So yard front means the yard that is located between the street and the nearest line of the principal building on the parcel and extends across the full width of the parcel. So it's kind of a dead end public streets. No, no, it's, I mean. Yeah, but this is a public street. It's I mean. Yeah, but this is the front and the street. Right of way actually curves. At the end and Jots over to the side. I mean, this is, this is the front. This is the street. Could you have. I mean, you have to have a front yard for all of your setbacks. Yeah. Well, I mean, I just think on the. Being the right way ending like that at the property line, something that the survey would probably have to figure out. I just want to make sure that there's that public right away. It doesn't somehow just like go all the way through the center. It's right here. I mean, the one before here, this is a survey. Yeah. Your surveyors should figure it out. So turn on the flat, like, you know, that the end of the public street, because it's your boundary. I mean, like that's part of the part of this part of the process. So, like, yeah, I mean, Meredith's got a sketch here of like something that's, you know, that's maybe it may or may not be, you know, the case. That's, that's an official survey of the property. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this is a segment of it. So as you can see the whole thing. Cause he won't have to actually be surveyed because he's not dividing the property lines. We won't have a final plat for this. Yeah. It's a planned unit development without dividing up the property itself. Right. So it's subject to the same procedural requirements of sketch and final. But there is no subdivision of the land. So there won't be a flat final plat. It's just chapter three 40. Perfect. And when we get to the final, he'll also have to go through site plan. Perfect. Let's catch that. Keep going. I think the other, the, those are the two major things that you guys were looking for some to, to discuss at the board level. Things I really want to say is like, this is a prime opportunity to create housing in my pillar. We've just been talking about it for a long time. We're excited to have the opportunity to be a part of something like that. We're talking about the ability to create five new housing units without having to build any new structures where we use, we're utilizing a historic structure that's already there. We're not talking about larger footprint. We're not talking about developing new land. And so we just think it's a prime opportunity. To do so. So we're happy to be part of that. I just want to make sure I mentioned that. I mean, I don't know, I don't know if that's part of the regulations, but I was just interested in what size do you imagine them to be? I imagine them all to be in the ballpark of 1200 square feet plus or minus. There might be some small variation between them, but that's the, the target size that we're looking at. I have a question. Are you suggesting any grading or changes to the, the driveway itself or the swale? Not in any real, no, no major changes to grading of the area. We're not talking about a lot of fill. If we end up putting two of the parking places on that north side of the building with an L shape fence, there'll be a small amount of fill that we'll have to go in there to level that out enough, but nothing major. No, I can't imagine that a retaining wall will be necessary or anything along those lines. As far as the swale is concerned, it's mildly overgrown right now. So I think if we're going through the trouble to improve that parking lot and make it a nice place for someone who's going to live there, we'll be able to improve that by scraping it out, but we're not talking about moving it or anything in that sense. So no major grade grading that. Yeah. So it sounds like just disturbance. The land will be very minimal. It'll be very minimal. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Yeah. The other four members of questions. I have more questions, but if you want to keep going to that sign, I don't have a whole lot more that I'm looking to present. What you're doing in terms of screening and neighborhood and where things, which ways are, which is a little, I haven't been up there. So I don't, didn't exactly know what it looks like from the rest of the neighborhood. Or can you see it from main street? You can see the, the part of the roof and building from main street. Yes. Not a ton. Okay. But you can see it from main street. It's behind what used to be the old Murray farmhouse. So as you're looking from as you're driving north on main, as soon as you pass town Hill road on your right, if you start to look to your left, you can see it through the. Right. And then you're talking about putting a fence in the back to. One of the. To in that. The picture that was up before. Yeah, we're talking about a privacy fence back there for lights. And for. Just to provide some definition at that back corner of the building. Near the neighbors. I can also pull up a Google maps view. If you give me just a second. You can see where the neighbors houses are. So. There's the barn. Right. And so there's neighbors houses up in here. So he's, you're talking about a. Yep. Fence up in here to help, you know, as cars are coming in here and trying to park. Or any sort of entrance light here that'll help cause create a traffic on the road. And then we're going to start to look at the. N flattening field. For these near buildings. Interested in curiosity. Where the next neighbors that you come down that street. The street. You mean. Yeah. Yeah. Those, right? All right. Correct. The last two houses on North. Yeah. College. About how far away are those. Yeah. The kids. Um, Yeah. Like 200 feet, maybe 150 to. 50 to 200 feet between here and here because the scales right here of 100 feet. So in addition to the fence, is there additional screening or, or landscaping that you're thinking about? I haven't been thinking about it. I don't have a formal landscaping plan or a proposal of screening at this point. Part of it, I do want to talk to the city because that little indent of land, the turnaround or right away. There's actually several trees that are on there. I know that the city, when we had our technical review TRC, technical review committee meeting, there was some concern. I guess they used to push the snow all the way up into this property. And so now they're going to have to find out where the city is going to find up for to push their snow. And so some concern about whether or not they're planning on taking down some of the trees that are in that area and that would influence my landscaping plan. But I'm, you know, I'm have taken the opportunity to meet many of the neighbors and I also intended attended informal meeting requested by their city council person as to express some of their concerns about the project and some of that wasn't screening. I want to make sure to try and be as good of a neighbor as I can be in this process. And so I'm open very much to developing landscaping and screening plans to help within reason as much as we can. My decisions and that's a requirement in the site plan standards that will apply for the final application. Yeah, I had related question. I'm realizing you're not quite at the design stage yet. Could you talk us through a little bit what you're thinking about for the common open space and also just help us understand the orientation like would all of the units be coming in and that it's all going from the parking to a single entrance into the building or would there be multiple entrances? I think, you know, that can make a difference with the circulation in the parking location. I'm sure. So the current plan is to have with five units. We would have four entrances on that West side where the right where the hand is. Yep, along there each unit having their own individual entrance to the building. A fifth unit will be accessed through that walking path and entrance and that'd be the lower level. The bank is cut away and looking for a barn and so that will be going into the what is the basement in term that walk out on two sides and glass on a third. So that's the where those where the access would be. Yeah. And as far as design we haven't gotten in too much detail yet but the plan is kind of currently the current plan without any commitment to it is to divide the building into quadrants basically. And so that each each unit would be a townhouse style upstairs downstairs. Know we living above you unless you're in the basement unit and each person would then have light on two sides. You'd occupy a corner of the building. That makes sense and the open space in open space not inside the building. There will be no common areas inside the building but then open space that will be shared by the folks who would be living there will be on the south side. So the front yard. Well, that's the up so the front yard of the building there is a very flat open area. Actually a really pleasant spot and then the hillside where Meredith had the hand a moment ago on the west side that is all currently open and is will be the other open shared community space. And are you considering any storage on site? I'm considering storage on site. So in once again in the basement there's more than enough walkout access to the basement that even with the 1200 square foot unit on the east side on the picture right as it was up on the screen. There would still be enough space to allow everybody to have access and storage in the bulk of it too for tires, canoes, bikes, stuff all that. Yes. There'd be ample room for that which I'm excited about. That is most of the key issues we can circle back to some stuff but at this point I think makes sense to open it up to some public comment here. We'll start with the folks in the room. See that we do have one now written comment here and Jack McCullough I think you forwarded this on like just maybe summarize what Jim Cheney had said. Oh, that wasn't just him. That was like that was Jack summary of the meeting. Community meeting. Yes, got it. Sure. Sorry. Good evening. I'm Jack McCullough. I'm the district to the city council member although I'm not I also live in the neighborhood. I'm as the crow flies. I'm probably the farthest property from from this property down at the end of town street and when talk started going around the neighborhood about this proposed development. I organized a meeting of residents and Mr. Stopper on the site and and we had a good turnout. We we didn't take attendance but I would say that the majority of the lots majority of the properties in the neighborhood were represented by at least one of the one of the owners and and my purpose was to and you and you have the email which I would ask to be included in the record is just a summary of or my recollection of all all the observations the concerns that members of the neighborhood raised make. I make no attempt to claim that how many people support each one of the concerns I don't really know but I just wanted to provide as much information to the to the board as possible about what feelings members of the neighborhood were were raising. And so I think that there are people here in the room who probably want to speak to specific points that that are in the memo but that's it and I should be clear you know being in the neighborhood I could could be said to have a personal interest in the development. I'm not here to take any position or make any record recommendation about what you do tonight and certainly the City Council has not taken and would not I would not expect the council to be taking it taking any position on the proposed development. Thank you. Thanks. So we also have an email from Dana McCarthy which brings the comments which make sure that that gets entered and she's on remotely as well. Yes, yes. Yeah. Hi. Yeah, my I think you've answered my concerns but one had to do with the snow plowing because I do know that it's a dead end and they've got to put that snow somewhere they aren't going to drag it back down so that I was curious about because otherwise it impacts the two closest residents. Auburn and Fran and you know are there Jart entrance egress in and out will that be clogged now because the snow will be piled up there. The other thing was storage that hadn't been mentioned when we all got together so I was just curious as to what would happen if people have boats or even you know like a pull behind trailer of some kind is that going to take up the parking space but just just curious about how those things are going to be handled those are my concerns. Thank you. They know I guess that concludes our written comments here. Anyone else in the room would like to come up to microphone and show any comments. Oh, yeah, you don't have to have anything written. It's just whatever you want to present at the microphone. And sorry, I don't know if we can make that go any taller. You want to just tell us you hard make sure if you signed in on when you came on the door and yeah. Hi, I'm Chris Killian. And my wife Stephanie Hurley who's on the on the video and I own the original Murray family farmhouse which abuts the property just to the north and our address is 280 Main Street. Has been a three unit our house has been a three unit. So I understand multi unit use it in our neighborhood. It is now a two unit. We're good. Well, we haven't had our final certificate of occupancy walkthrough but we converted the farmhouse back into what it was historically for our family and then we have one unit in the back. But not surprisingly as part of the original farmstead this building which is an amazing building in many many ways looms large in our experience of our property. And we're trying to figure out what we think about this whole thing. I'm not here to you know take any positions but we do have some concerns that we've talked with Eric about and and that are we hope relevant to the to the committee. I guess first I would say just in terms of intensity of use. What is being proposed is a dramatic change for the neighborhood and for for us. The barns been there for well over 100 years. It's a big building it's been that size ever since it has been a single we've we've owned our property for 12 years I think and during that time it's been a single family home the barn. It has had it had a separate apartment in the basement so I don't know how that figures in in terms of what the city considered it to be but if there were two dwelling units there throughout most of the time that that we've owned that owned the property. And that's the time during which as Eric referred to it to the use has been very spotty and strange and I don't want to dwell on that too much because you know it was what it was and before that you know a lot of folks talked about the folks that live there and who turned it into a single family home back in 1977 and apparently it was a well maintained single family home. Perhaps with an apartment. I'm. Never I think before has there been this intensity of use proposed residential use for that building I mean we did some historical work looking at the farm and what it was and the found some really interesting stuff in our house as we've done the renovation. And I'm sure there were a number of cows in there at one point also way back in the day that the property was used as a sort of a livery for hauling granite and shale from different quarries around so there were you know uses there but there haven't there hasn't been this intensity of residential use and attendant traffic and and and just presence of people. And I think that's important in the context of the rags including the p u d rag because everything in the zoning rags cues back to the character of the neighborhood and the definition of the neighborhood. And so these questions of intensity of use and infill have to be considered including under the p u d it's the third specified purpose in the p u d rag that the character of the neighborhood has to be maintained. So the greatest degree I can't I could read the language Meredith knows it better than I do. So there there's that but how that really plays out for us is traffic and we have very our experience has been periodically there wasn't a lot of traffic intensity there in terms of parked vehicles during the time that we've lived there. There was a period when there were a lot of cars coming and going which seemed to be more associated with drug related activity at the house that we went through a whole process with Jack in the police department with. But we haven't had the experience of lots and lots of cars parked there or coming in and out lots and lots is maybe an exaggeration of what might be proposed with five units. But we just want to make sure that there's appropriate screening and design and there's you know consideration I rec was just referring to sort of the width of the building being maybe a bit of a defining factor we would rather have parking formalized out of our view. We look directly across our yard. There's now discussion of potentially adding additional parking spaces by doing grading. There on that northern portion that would all be in our direct view granted there's a fence proposed. This is a concern for us. We just don't want cars pulling in and wheeling in with lights coming from behind. Fencing if it's not adequately screened and and appropriately managed and I think there probably is a way to do that. But we had thought perhaps starting the parking sort of behind the building and extending down toward toward the end of Town Street more as opposed to having it pushed up to that north side into our art space and into the view shadow of the back of our house. And then the other the other piece is you know I brought some pictures during the entire time that we have lived there. There was a fair amount of vegetation screening the building including some mature trees on the east end of the building. I think I identified them as potentially compromising the foundation and they were they were all cut back. And so we went from a building that at least three seasons of the year was pretty well screened. Even though it's enormous and very tall to basically just a wide open building with virtually no screening remaining. And I understand the rationale behind taking the trees down but our experience of it is that we went from having even the tall gable end of the building being blocked by a tall box elder tree that is not the best tree in the world but basically blocked the end of the building fairly effectively even in the winter it broke up the visual sense of the building to basically just looking directly off our porch at this very large structure. And so we're concerned about screening around the building generally on our side and I think that that's hopefully a mutual interest because I think it's going to be a heck of a lot more marketable to people if they're not just watching us all day long every day of the year and what we're doing. And the other thing I would note along those lines and it's just a change and we're trying to grapple with what it means is window placement on the north and east ends. Those areas of the building have throughout our entire experience and I think that means in terms of looking at the building structure itself probably through most of the building's history been cold space without many windows are only a couple of windows on the north side and they were associated with a garage that was rarely used and was mostly storage and if that is all now 2 to 3 story living space we're going to have lots and lots and lots and lots of windows looking out on the east and north side again if there's a way to screen and provide some visual break up that could be a solution even with this intensity of use but it is a concern to us that if we're looking at you know 12 or 14 or however many windows and they're looking at us you know lights at night and people forgetting to turn lights off or keeping lights on and then just like the privacy component is is a bit of a concern for us. So I know we're at the very beginning of the process and I can contact Meredith or someone else to understand a little bit better about how the process fits together. But you know based on my read of the zoning more than a certain number of uses and units in this neighborhood is a conditional use and would require a conditional use review even though it's P. U. D. Now the P. U. D. supersedes. Yeah, where do the eggs actually say that. So that's section three four zero three E. Use standards and the first sentence is any residential uses shall be permitted within the infill housing development whether or not they are even allowed within the applicable district and I couldn't even there myself so permitted is a term of art so permitted versus conditional. So all the residential uses if you qualify under this infill P. U. D. All residential uses are considered permitted uses not conditional uses. So the conditional use review doesn't apply to this application. So permitted doesn't mean issuance of a permit. It means authorized by the regulation. It means that right. So if if if this were a situation where I'm trying to figure out how to it means so if you look in the use table. There are permitted uses and there are conditional uses and then there's a dash which means a use isn't allowed at all right and so permitted by number of units and by number of units if you're over three anything over three is marked with a C right but this use standard clause here overrides that and converts all those C's and if it's a residential use even a dash to a P. So it's a permitted use so conditional use standards no longer apply. So you don't bring in the heightened scrutiny of character of the area that's in conditional use. You don't bring in the heightened scrutiny for traffic that's in conditional use. Those don't come in and that's a decision that the planning commission and the city council made in adopting this infill beauty because it applies only to certain residential districts and because it applies only two parcels of two acres or less. It therefore by by that alone it has limited the number of units that are being allowed right and then to get those extra units you have to meet the special criteria of either affordable or accessible types of housing that the planning commission and the city council decided they really wanted to see more of in these particular neighborhoods where this type of beauty is allowed. So they've already that's that's the balancing act that they have made when they drafted this. And that's all reflected in in some form of regulatory industry. If you wanted to go back to that from 2016-17 and 8 p.m. up till it was adopted in January 2018. Yes, just to take a big step back. I mean the PUD is a widely used zoning you know form. I'm well aware of right. Sure. And so you know I think that you know this is you think of it the regs like attracts like choose the PUD and it's like stringent. There's a whole another set of regs. It's almost like we're going through a zoning process for this specific parcel as if the planning commission make decisions for the entire city we're going through and we're rewriting the rules for this specific parcel in exchange for you know certain things that have been determined by the regulations to benefit the public. So I know just for everyone else like that's sort of the large concept here. And so I just want to in that context at least go back to the opening paragraph of the PUD provision which clearly refers to the character of the neighborhood and and sets that as a core purpose and you know I've I know that there's an interpretation and I just want to underscore that from my perspective. That should be taken into consideration at this stage and it's it shouldn't be interpreted that this regulation that clearly refers to that Trump's all aspects of other aspects of the zoning. So I just put that comment comment out there and we want to work with Iraq. We want to figure this out. I'm I feel that you know there should be a way through. I'm not sure that looking at you know more than 14 or so windows directly over our property on a building of the scale and the change in the in the character of the neighborhood that that would bring without some sort of screening plan really cuts it from our perspective. So just a note. So thank you. The staff report today is just looking at the PUD standards. The site plan standards which include landscaping and screening right come into play when we hit final application. It's just one of those things that you can't even measure right here without a much more detailed plan. So that has they were very detailed didn't tell you this is perfect. I'm just letting you know that that we can work something out then then you know maybe I won't show up any but don't you just let you know that that the whole landscaping piece does come into play. The landscaping and screening does come into play. I'm just just making sure you are aware of that. I understand the interpretation of the PUD and I'd be very interested in that history because at least from where I sit and work that I do in my daily life. I'm not absolutely convinced that this doesn't require like that conditional use permit. So that's just my view. Thanks. Thank you. Hi my name is Heather Crawlick. I live at 6 North College Street and if you haven't been to North College you know many people don't even know our three little streets exist up there. Where is North College? Where is Town Street? Where is Sunset? You should take a drive up there and what you're going to see on North College is you're going to see a short dead end street with five houses. There are children. There are animals. What you'll also notice going to North College is to get on to Town Street. It's a very precarious turn. It's at the it's directly opposite Town Hill Row and so it's a sharp turn. It's a steep hill. That's why many people don't know about this area. I think this development of five units which potentially could bring many cars. It would potentially could double the current neighborhood use of that street as well as increasing traffic problems. So I see not only changing the character of our neighborhood but also safety issues. We have even on Town Street there's even a problem with speeding and by doubling the character of residents in that neighborhood. I think is not the not the neighborhood that I bought into. It's not as though I'm against development in some way. I guess I personally feel five would be excessive. It seems to me that in this current market since we're not going for the affordability units that even three units could would be enough revenue to cover the development costs. Is there anything else I want to say? Yes, I'm concerned about lights, traffic, safety. I'm concerned about it's wedged up very close to Auburn's home. I think it's like 50 feet really. It's it's not far. So I would just you know to have a really informed decision as we go through this process is to have a drive up there and and you can really get a sense of what all of us are talking about. Thank you. Thank you, Heather. Anyone else? Yeah. So I would next door. Just make sure the microphone. My name's Fran Kuski. I live at 8 North College. So I'm right next door. When the property at 12 was occupied, there were never more than maybe two or three vehicles parked in the lot. There's never been on a regular basis eight or nine. So there was usually one car that wasn't working. So it never left property. There is a garage in in that space isn't there a garage door? There's a garage door. Yeah, correct. So I don't I don't think that was ever used at least recently. I've been in the neighborhood 10 years and I purchased my home in a residential neighborhood and it's clear to me that this will be a change that will have lights and will have traffic. We will we have six cars on the street right now. So it will be double that or more probably more. So it is upsetting to think that it will change to that extent and that we will have so much traffic going by. I don't know where people will park who visit the property. They'll probably park in front of my house. I don't know where the snow will go. It used to get pushed into that property. It's also pushed in front of my mailbox and I can't imagine that that it's not going to be pushed in front of my property somewhere. So it's it will be a change and the city took out a lot of the trees and now more of the trees have been taken out. So we have more view of the barn and with the windows we're going to have more light coming from the property without any barrier right now. We have no and there's no plans to that I've heard of putting trees or landscaping. So we're talking about light people traffic and you know as much as we do all feel like we know something is going to happen with the property that people are going to live there and that's a good thing. That would be a great thing for all of us. It's a number of people that might be there 5 units seems like a lot and that it's not going to be affordable housing. That one of the numbers kind of talked about was 350,000 each. That's not affordable. So and when I was in the barn and I looked down at my property. I actually could see that my property would be better as a development. I have ample green space. I have enough of a lot that you could make a parking lot and have 4 units and I do wonder if once this change is made what would keep other people from doing that in the neighborhood at David's House David Abbott's House. He's got a huge house. It could be 4 units. He has 6 acres of land. He's already zoned for 2 other houses. So I think it would definitely change and could create the beginning of a change for the whole neighborhood because we are all dead end streets. You go to the end of town dead end sunset. North College 5 houses on each and I don't even know how many are in town, but it's probably 6 how many on town street. It might be 6 so it's very small and now we're going to add an apartment building or condominium building. So it will change the character of the neighborhood. Which from what I thought I understood about zoning that was the purpose of so was to preserve the character. And I see shaking your head. It was I can go to that if you want, but I don't need to right now. It's kind of up to what people want. Yeah, I mean, I think I can just come on general that it's like, yeah, there's many purposes zoning and you know, I think in the most recent right of the regulations, there was a lot of talk about infill housing and increase in density, you know, some different different changes going on. And so it's all about looking at all the information and weighing, you know, what makes sense based on, you know, specific proposals based on the tools we have in the book. But you know, just one thing to keep in mind is that, you know, there's been a push in the regulations and you pull the regulations to, you know, increase density based on like years ago, there was a push to, you know, reduce density and life's nice big yards. And so they're there. Maybe there's a change in the neighborhood. There's changes that are happening because there's changes in the regulations that how we see things today versus how we did in 19, you know, 1950, but and I understand that piece of it, but it's where we go from three to four to five. It's it's the amount of units that, you know, if it was three, which is sounds like that's guaranteed, but I don't know how we get from three to four to five. And I don't know, I'm not hearing anything that says to me there's a there's any opportunity for it to be less than five now. Now that it's we're talking about five, it seems like five is the number I haven't I'm not hearing that it's going to be less than five. Well, there's a I mean, there's a process we've got to see if that's an analysis about the traffic, which part of our, you know, maybe if we go through that test, you know, but you know, analysis about the screen, you know, the screening and, you know, we look at the proposal and the application as it's been engineered and we look at the comments and apply them to the regulations. So it's hard for us to say without seeing the whole picture of it. Right. And I'm just trying to understand the process and hear what's being said. Can I? Yep. Pipe in for something real quick. Yep. So the five right now. That is the maximum under this infill PUD. Right. That's what the board came up with with talking about that calculation about how to get that density bonus. So the maximum if each of the two, two units number four and number five can meet to at least three of the density bonus criteria, then the board has the authority to approve up to five units. Still has to meet the screening requirements. Still has to meet any outdoor lighting requirements. Still has to meet parking requirements. Right. It still has to meet all the other standards to get that final approval. But five is the maximum. That's that's what the board's discussion here about that was. And that's what Eric needed to know. Okay. Now how can I invest money to get the more information they need to do to be able to put together a final application that has any engineering in it. Right. To figure out how to actually fit up to five units in that building. Whether it can actually be done and still meet all the building code. He has to be able to get this information right now tonight to move forward so that he knows what's the highest level he can aim for, which may not be what gets in that application. This is a sort of a fact finding mission before he then goes out and gets all the documentation, which is a lot more than was in this application for me to say, yes, that's a complete application. You can go forward to the next step and come back here again where everybody will get notices and we'll put that notice in the paper again. So this is step one and then there's a step two and then a final decision. Right. So at step if if Eric gets to the point where he feels confident that he has the information, has everything he needs to try and get the board's blessing for an actual permit, he'll come back for what we call the final application. And that's when any decision, the yay or nay decision on a permit will happen at the board level. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome, Fred. Yes, I may just that brought up a question about my comfortability moving forward is that the board's interpretation of the number of units that will be allowed with an infill PUD is that currently at standing at five? In this specific case, I'm going to say that as long as you can meet the criteria, but as long as I meet the criteria, but as far as how it's looked at, that's that's not in question at this point. That calculation seems accurate. Yeah, and I'm not seeing any. Nobody's I'm not getting any red flags from the two board members and that shouldn't change. I should have the comfortability that that is not going to change moving forward from this point. No. No. Thank you. Yeah. And Auburn, I do know that you're you have your hand raised. So if you have a time limit or something, you can send me that in the chat if you have a time limit because you have to get off soon. Just send me in that in the chat. Otherwise, I do know you have your hand raised and we'll get to you. Yeah, I don't have a time limit. Okay, great. Thanks, Auburn. I'm Rebecca Copans. I live on Clipp Street. So I'm on the other side of the up and down side of town. I think there's a lot of similarities between the neighborhood that we're talking about and my neighborhood. I grew up in Montpelier. I've been here since we moved here at the big city of Montpelier from Middlesex when I was 10. I've lived here most of my adult life. I left her a few years went to college came back. I've lived on Cliff Street since well Liberty Street and then Cliff Street since the early 2000s. So I have a deeper familiar familiarity and a deep love of this town. One thing I know is change happens. You know, Main Street used to be dirt. There used to be the park which I live on. There was no trees. Trees come, they go, they grow, they fall down, they're cut. It doesn't mean that it's a worse place to live because you know, trees come and go. I think so I recently joined the housing committee. I'm not speaking for the housing committee for sure. I'm speaking for myself, but I recently joined the housing committee because I feel like we have a moral imperative to think positively about our town and dense development is the only way that we can be responsible about climate change, about smart growth, about keeping cars, you know, in our downtown area instead of like, you know, I see where my parents live now, you know, there's a lot of people driving a lot and they're building houses in wild life corridors, which is, you know, I've had conversations with a lot of the people in the show and I know they feel very passionately about those issues. So I think a lot about growing responsible housing in Montpelier, I think about the character of the neighborhood as was discussed. So my neighborhood, my tiny, you know, tiny neighborhood, it's a dead end. It's very, very similar to this one. We have a traffic problem, you can say, but people drive slowly. We had, you know, the original neighborhood, the original farmhouse in our neighborhood was a single family home, so similar to the barn. It is now a five unit building and there is, that change happened and we are better off for it. We have wonderful neighbors. We really look out for each other. We care about each other. We are very much a neighborhood in the truest sense of the word and as I expect this neighborhood as well. So the character of the neighborhood, that's really important because growing is part of that character of the neighborhood. And then the last thing I want to say is this barn's been here as long as my house has been here and houses grow up around it. People move to the neighborhood in the last decade. This barn has been there for 100 years and to think, you know, to criticize the barn for being this big barn and not thinking about the potential is a real detriment. You know, I think if we can responsibly build more housing in a footprint that is already existing, that is our greatest opportunity for bringing in new neighbors. I joined the housing committee because for two reasons. One, my daughter is in the seventh grade. One of her very best friends had to leave my pillar because they could not find housing. They, their house was sold out from underneath them. There was no housing available to them. They were looking for eight months and they eventually the summer just before the seventh grade, which is like crushing for a middle school kid. They just moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Another reason I joined the housing committee is I am intensely involved with the new Afghan community that's here. We need more housing for them. We need more housing for these wonderful new neighbors that we have and I understand people that live here in town really have a great privilege to live here and we have a responsibility to ensure that everyone has that same privilege. So thank you. Thank you. Okay, we'll go to. It's got their hand. Auburn Auburn. Yes. Hi, can you hear me? Okay. Yes. Okay. Great. I'm not going to turn on my video because I keep getting this symbol that says my internet might be unstable so hopefully you can hear me through this whole thing if I keep that off. So I am the house that's a budding 12 North College. I live at nine North College. My full name is Auburn Water Song. I have lived here for nine years and own the house for eight. I'm a single mom of two kids who are now in their early twenties in college age and they were raised here and went to Montpelier High School. We moved here from an apartment building complex looking because I was looking for basically looking for a yard for my kids that I could afford. I could afford this house as a rental when I first moved in because I was friends with the folks who rented it to me and then they decided to sell. And because I couldn't afford it, I went through the down street shared equity program. And so this is a down street shared equity home at nine North College Street. So I am somebody who believes wholeheartedly in affordable housing. I'm sort of a living example of trying to keep housing affordable in Montpelier. So in that way, I do agree with the previous speaker. I would also say that I agree with the idea of of a neighborhood and the responsibilities we have to other neighbors. The last two years while since since COVID began in 2020, this has been a really difficult place to live. And you probably all have heard some smatterings of what what has happened at 12 North College in the recent years. So with with drugs and and violence and gun violence, domestic violence, untreated mental illness and on and on and it amounted to a point where my my my family and I, we tried to reach out and be neighborly and then realize that we might be risking our own safety. So community safety is a really important piece of this puzzle for me. I know that I'm going to be coming back while we go through this process just to keep that on everybody's radar. I want to know that the police department will have the capacity to to actually help us manage that. I felt like we were definitely because of COVID too, but I felt like we were sort of overwrought with all that was going on there in the past and and that was only I think at the max. There were probably eight adults in there. And I can see that this is going to be especially if we have 10 10 parking spaces and five units, we could double the amount of people and more than double the amount of traffic on the on the street. So there's there's that safety. The lighting issues that I'm concerned about aren't just from so you should know that my north side of my building has two windows, two bedrooms facing the south side of the barn where Eric has mentioned that there'll be an entryway which which will have lighting over the entryway. But then there's also all sorts of weirdly oddly shaped windows there now. And when those lights have been left on in the past, it's from the inside. Those lights have been left on. It just is so there's a lot of light pollution. So I would just want to know, you know, how that will be managed or or how that's going to be designed and proposed. The inside lighting, not just the outside lighting and then the snow removal. What often happens with snow removal is it gets pushed on to my property or pushed on to France property or pushed up into that driveway now that they won't be able to push it up into the driveway, you know that every every spring we have to like reseed our lawns because of all the salt that gets pushed on to our driveways because there's no place to put it. So snow removal will be will definitely be an issue. And and again, the I do want to just echo Chris. Chris is concerned about the the windows and the landscaping because a lot of landscaping was taken down. So it is very there's a lot more visibility. I have three maples on my property line or right before the property line on my property facing, you know, between my north side and the south side of the barn. And and those are lovely and and fine. They're tall, but they don't block all the light. So that's a that's a question for me. I also feel like five. I just I will just agree with everyone. I feel like five is a lot and especially if we're not doing affordable housing, which I I really believe in. I I don't I don't understand the math about why three, you know, doesn't you can't make as much money with three as you can with five. But anyway, I just want to say I think it's it's five is too much for this little street and at the same time. I want, you know, I want to make it known that I understand I I understand totally that things change. Things get developed. I'm I support affordable housing and I know that it's hard to find housing in Montpelier because I had trouble myself as a single mom. So I get all those issues, but I just thought it would be good for me to sort of express my concerns about how this will change our neighborhood. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you, Auburn. Rosa. Mara. Yes, I'm here. Can you hear me? Yep. Okay, good. Thank you. I just wanted to we live at one town street, which is the first house you come to when you go up on the town street and we've lived here for about four years now. And I also understand the issue of the housing. It took us over a year to find a house and that was before the pandemic. So we're happy that something's happening up at the bar and we trust it'll be a much better situation was better in the past. I say we agree with some of the concerns that Heather and Fran and Auburn have mentioned already. For us, the big one would be traffic and I want to make sure that that gets taken into consideration because we do have a small street and the entrance to our street when you turn off of Maine is a blind hill and a blind curve with no sightline of anybody coming at you from the neighborhood and right at the crest of that is our driveway. And so, of course, this is our house. It's just we bought it here. We live, but we always take that into consideration because, you know, we walk out, we have to stop fully before we even drive out of our driveway to make sure nobody's coming up the hill. And when we come back to the neighborhood to make a turn into our driveway, we have to turn all the way to the left hand side of the street just to make the turn into our driveway. And so my point is that the neighborhood isn't really designed for heavy traffic. And I think Chris Killian maybe put it best by sort of discussing that the intensity of use might be where the concern is. So, you know, the character of the neighborhood is a consideration and I think that's already been addressed for us. It would be mostly the traffic coming in and out of the neighborhood and not just the people who live there, but all the FedEx trucks that go up there, all the UPS trucks, everyone's Amazon Prime stuff, you know, and those deliveries do not respect our speed limits as we all know. And then something that Fran mentioned that I also wanted to mention has to do with precedent and I'm just bringing it up because it is mentioned in the staff report. It was on page nine and I don't remember. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but it does say something about that this will set precedent for future applications. And so I don't know if that means refers to your process, but I would like to, you know, bring up that this sets a precedent in the neighborhood for future development. You know, what does this mean if three becomes five? What does this mean for every other property owner who might decide to go that route suddenly? Three becomes five and several properties. Then we're not talking about four extra cars. We're talking about 10 extra cars, et cetera. So I just hope that the review board will take all of these into consideration. Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Mark. Thank you, Mark. I have Meg, Allison, Powden who has her hand up. On remote and back. You can unmute yourself, Meg. Thank you. I'm another neighbor on North College Street. I live at 7 North North College just south of Auburn. I concur with Heather and Fran and Auburn about their concerns and Mark. I do agree with Mr. Stoffer that I like the fact that the barn is being renovated and there's going to be housing provided in an existing structure. I did not quite catch earlier when he referenced affordable housing. I'm not sure if he said why he wasn't looking at affordable housing units. I think, you know, we know Montpelier needs housing, but we need housing for people who can afford the housing. So I think a mixed housing would be the optimum for the barn. And so I just would like the board to address that. It sounded like the board's comfortable with five units. And so I would like the board to inform us why there isn't more of a request for affordable housing units. I didn't catch that earlier. I agree. It's a wonderful neighborhood and I worry about the character of the neighborhood being changed. And I'm not against changed. I'm just wanting it to be thoughtfully done and being inclusive of all. I think one of the things Montpelier, we've experienced. We've lived in North College for 10 years. We moved here primarily for our daughter to have an improved educational experience. And it was a very mixed experience for her. And one of the reasons I will say that is because we discovered an elitist element within Montpelier. And so that's one of the reasons I'm a proponent for mixed housing and I'd like the board to really delve into that more if that's your role. Thank you. Thank you very much. So yeah, I think we could question about the affordable housing. I can maybe answer some context here. I think the board probably believes that, you know, he's got some options of how he can proceed. And at this point in the process, we'd like to, you know, the board would maybe agree to provide some flexibility going forward as to what options to get that bonus. He actually chooses. Maybe that's something that we, you know, discuss whether we would require that to be decided right now. I don't think we can. Yeah. I think that the regulation pretty much states that there are five things and then he has to hit three of them. Yeah. And it doesn't say which story. So, you know, so that we can't say, you have to do this piece of it. Yep. That's my meeting of the regulations. I would agree. I could go with that as well. Great. You know, in our role. In our role as members of the DRB. Exactly. What we feel as individuals is not really the same. Right. It's adherence to the zoning regulations. Yeah. And I'll say that to you. Our role is to interpret the regulations, the zoning. There was also a question around the purpose of zoning. You know, then zoning governs the form and build environment. So, you know, zoning can be exclusionary. You know, there are different things that zoning can do. But what big picture, what it does is govern what's built. So where our role is to interpret the regulations here. Everyone for weighing in on that. Yeah. Thanks from Meg. Yep. Meg. Thank you. I just have a follow up question. Then if it's not part of your role, what are the steps to ensure that we have affordable housing options for people who want to move into our community? Who does oversee that? Or who does encourage that or make sure it happens? I think that's an excellent question. I think we're all trying to figure that out. Yeah, there's a lot of different entities. I think if you're talking about the rules for permits, there are incentives in these regulations. Just like here to get that density bonus to be able to put in more units, one of the options is to make sure that those extra units, those two extra units meet this affordability if that's what somebody chooses. So there's a role for the zoning regulations to change the zoning regulations. It's a process through the Planning Commission and City Council, and City Council has other opportunities to do that. There's, if you reach out to our Planning Department and particularly our Economic Development Specialist, he and our Planning Director, Mike Miller, are sort of the Planning Department people who help make suggestions for potential policy changes or grant programs, things like that. Go ahead Sharon. Just to, I think that what we have to sort of work with is the regulations here. If you wanted to see the regulations be different or to be more enforcing affordable housing, you would need to go to the Planning Commission to change the regulations so that we could do something different here. That being said, there are a lot of stakeholders in affordable housing here. There's a newly formed housing task force. There's homeless task force. There's a bunch of people who are very interested in it. So that, and I think all of those people come to City Council and, you know, just our, everybody knows that the affordable housing crisis is pretty dire around here. I think we can all really be there. No question. And I'll add too, and I think the existence of an infill PUD is a tool, you know, which can be intended to increase affordability by increasing housing supply and also decreasing reliance on cars. You live having, you know, a higher number of units in closer proximity to downtown, but it's like one tool out of the many tools that can be used. So, and the, you know, finance is a key thing that we're not even talking about here. Yeah. And the entry of the complexity of affordable housing development to with tax credits and that's a, yeah, it's a whole, it's a different story. So, yeah. A further word Catherine just said, affordable housing is, you know, housing is still a capitalist venture in this country and that's obviously not changing anytime soon. And right now, Montpelier is just experiencing extreme amount of demand. People want to live here and supply is limited. So, you're talking about adding housing that in theory, the more housing you add, the more affordable the rest of it gets as you increase supply. I don't know if we'll ever reach that point where supply and demand become equal because it's, you know, difficult to develop in this town and there's only so much space and, but that needs to be kept in mind that if you don't build any new houses, they're, you know, the remaining houses just continue to go up in value as you increase supply. That's when demand and prices start to come down. So just wanted to mention that. Thank you, Joe. What else in the room here? I'm Sam Tormey. I live at Five Sunset Avenue. My wife, Tori and I bought it two years ago, moved into the neighborhood. And yeah, I just wanted to reiterate here that we do really enjoy our neighborhood neighborhood. And we heard a lot from a lot of neighbors tonight and a lot of really good and important concerns and things for the board to consider as they assess the proposal from Irak. But yeah, just getting back to, I mean, it is a neighborhood that's close to town that would expand housing that's close to town. There's been a lot of discussion about traffic and cars, but it is close to town. E-bikes are getting a bit more popular. It's tough to get up that hill on a regular bike, but you know, there's the character of the neighborhood as it has been and then there's the potential, you know, character and future for the city. And I think that with all of the concerns and you know, our situation, we live farther away from that traffic. So it's not as big a issue as it is for some of our neighbors. I fully understand that, but I also would just like to say that we appreciate the openness that Irak has shown to the neighborhood to have that meeting with Jack set up and you know, we have seen the barn every day and since we've moved in and you know, a thoughtful and considerate proposal for what it could be is something that I think we should consider. And if it's, if three units is not financially viable, I think we'd be staring down another potentially less amenable solution for that area. So I think we just want to, you know, stay involved with this process and hope that it can work out well for everyone involved. Thank you. I'll sell me a zoom platform way in. I don't see right there. It looks like Chris has a minute. Chris, can I just you gotta go to the mic so that we can get it on the minutes. I just wanted to, this is Chris killing again. I just wanted to clarify that I'm well clarified that I'm confused about the front of the building and what is the front yard because I've heard the front referred to as where the cars are. And that, that's the front entrance to the building. And then I just heard tonight that the front yard is, is this what I would call the side yard, which is along the Eve side of the roof. So let me share the screen so that everybody can see. So the front yard for purposes of determining where cars are allowed to be parked and for the setbacks, right? How, how far from property boundaries new buildings or structures need to be is between the street, which here is down here, right? Here's the street right of way is actually down. Here's the road that's driven on, but the street right of way actually extends over here is between the frontline of the building and the street and the frontline of the building for this purpose is the part that's closest to the street, right? No matter which, no matter where your front door is, where you enter the building for purposes of zoning, it's going to be the side that faces the street. That's true solely because of that weird little jag. There's no other, there's no other streets here. Otherwise we have absolutely no front. We have to pick a front, whichever, whichever side of a parcel is attached to a street is the front yard for these purposes of deciding where you park cars or how you measure where your structures need to be. So if it's a corner parcel, you actually have two fronts, right? If you have two streets, if your parcel is bordered by two streets, you have two fronts. Here there's one front for that purpose. Now the main entrance is going to be on the side facing the driveway and the parking area, right? So that's going to come into play when we talk about pedestrian access to the building. Because this is a funky parcel and the way it's surrounded by other parcels and everything, I'm going to sort of go out on a limb and say that when Irak and I are looking at the pre put together plan, because I do some review of those things before they make it to the board, depending on how he arranges his parking, it might be a situation where I suggest he ask for maybe a waiver of a variance on some of those parking spaces. If we're talking about it competing with a need for screening from neighbors, things like that. All those things come into play when we get to the next stage, right? It gets more complicated because you start looking at everything else that comes into play. And at that point there's a weighing of needs and the particular situation of a particular parcel. But in general, the requirement under these regulations is that all the parking be pushed behind the front line of the building as determined by what's considered basically the front property line. Is that help? Sort of. We can set up a meeting and you can come into the office too. Yeah. If we want to talk about how this all meshes together. And so I, when I was looking at the regulations earlier this week in between other meetings, there's also a reference to PUDs being considered through the same process as subdivision. For process. Not for substantive standards, but for process. There's a procedural chapter. Yeah. Further back that talks about having to go through sketch plan and final review. That's the, that's the same process. As a subdivision as a subdivision. It doesn't mean that chapter three 50 for subdivisions comes into play. Right. Okay. I see no hands online. Questions from board members comments. You feel like you have sufficient guidance to. Come up with something. I think knowing that five units is. What is approved or that's how the board and approved is the wrong word. I understand how the board is interpreting the regulations that five units. That is very comforting to know and allows me really to move forward. I just, I just was going to throw one caveat out there and I'm not completely concerned and we've never, you know, address this. But, you know, it's provided that you have the amount of square footage that we calculated. Survey or to be done. And that would be different. And, you know, I'm just, I mean, I'm just saying this because it's like, you know, it's like, we are deciding like what criteria is used in order to get the square footage for the calculation for, you know, for, for density in a process that we've never, you know, gone, you know, gone through. Now I think we could make a judgment that the buffer here is fine. And then, you know, you've got 5.22 dwelling units was 5.01 maybe different, but I'm just wanting to bring it up here because. Okay, there is a survey. This is an image of a subset of it. I know what, I know, I know your background. The PUD requirement doesn't, I get what you're saying, where you say if it was right, if we're talking a few feet difference, you'd want to see an updated survey is what you're saying. I'm saying is that in the final application, it can provide the survey and say like this is where I got my acreage as an exhibit, you know, I think that's a part of the application where, you know, they make the argument of the information they had, but we just, you know, we're being asked about a specific, you know, acreage in number of units based on a square footage. And I'm just throwing out there that it's like, not like we're determining today that yes, that is based on the information provided. You're determining how it's calculated. You're confirming how it's calculated. Not with the ultimate calculation is. That's correct. Yes. Okay. Got that. I understood. So if I have a stamped survey, which I do, right? Am I correct? Then the process of questioning that survey, which is what we're talking about right now would be what? I mean, I'm not saying that I'm going to question, you know, question that survey. I'm just, I'm just throwing out that, you know, where the information is coming up and what it's meeting is and, you know, I'm not saying that there's a right or wrong way to do it. I'm just. Bring that up for, for conversation. But I was interpreting that we did have that right information. And I. Did we not. We have, we have a snippet of a survey that doesn't know the date on it. We're going to have some sort of, you know, responsibility to say that, you know, when we prove the application, we're saying that like, our zoning regulations say that we need a certain amount of square footage. What information do we feel is sufficient in order to say that we have that amount of square footage. And I'm not saying that there's a right or a wrong way to do it. But I'm not saying that there's a right or wrong way to do it. We're just saying that. I know. We don't know the date on it. We don't know who did it. If you don't, if you don't know Rob's background, Rob works as a survey. I understand that. Okay. I'm just, yeah, I think that it's, it's, I'm having it bring this conversation because this is the first time we're doing that, you know, we're going through this process. And if we just go through and say you never need a survey for a few D, you can just use what the tax map says. Then we have a problem for the next, you know, 10 years when someone tries to do five points, standard for what's required for the application in the future that there needs to be a survey so that we can confirm the square footage since the board is giving this density bonus. So that also sets a standard for a zoning administrator as to what includes complies with a complete application. Okay. And just to be clear in this case, I'm not being argumentative, but there actually is a survey that is on file with the city that is named and on file. So it is not a snippet of something that's not unnamed. So there is actually is a document in this case. Absolutely. I just wanted to make that clear. There's not a document here. It's elsewhere. It's a piece of that. The one that's in here is a piece of it. It's a snapshot of the one being held. That is on file. Oh, we did get a leach attendee to say when we get back. Becca Hohn. Becca, did you have anything to add to the conversation? Hi, Becca. Yeah, there you go. Not at the moment. Thank you. Okay. We're kind of at the tail end. So if you had comments or concerns about the application, you'll want to be able to say them fairly soon. I think we're getting near the end. Yeah. I just for me, the thing that I wanted to make sure that you understood is that just what you'll need to get that bonus density that it will need to absolutely need three of those standards completely. That is very clear to me. And then willing documentation and all that. Understood. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. And I think working with Merida to come up with, you know, we've never gone through the energy efficiency portion of that. I think that there's some statewide standards that probably be helpful, you know, guidance on that. But also the accessibility or, you know, I'm not up to speed on that, you know, as much as it should be in terms of what is visible or accessible and what that's going to mean. Yeah. There's state definitions for those and state statute. And so we would be working to parcel those out. And there's also, you know, we've already had some conversations reflected just a little bit in this packet with the Department of Public Works about how do you get accessible parking spaces, things like that. Okay. That was my concern. Yeah. That's all that I have. One last call going once. Twice. And then Becca. Becca. Did you have any concerns you wanted to raise? Just making sure before we close this out, the meeting itself, there'll be a recording available on the city website so that you can hear everything that was said. Okay. That should be on the city website tomorrow. You can also just email me, Meredith Crandall with the city, the zoning administrator, and I can send you a link to that when it's on the Orca Media's YouTube site too. They usually get it up first and then we have to trim it a little bit. Okay. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all for your time. Thank you. Thank you everyone for coming. Thank you everybody for attending online as well. So our next meeting will be November 21st and we do have applications. Well, this is, we weren't wanted to make sure in case we got completely overwhelmed with people and needed to continue the sketch plan. So we actually do not have any applications for November 21st. So you all get that off and our next meeting will be Monday, December 5th. December? How did that happen? Hey, hey, we're already working on the schedule for next. All those in favor of adjournment say aye. Aye. Thank you, Joe. Thank you, Michael.