 All right, let's call the meeting to order of the Rochester Planning Commission. Our first and only order of business this evening is a public hearing. And I will read the hearing notice on the draft Rochester Zoning By-law. Rochester Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on the draft Rochester Zoning By-law on Tuesday, October 24th, 6 p.m. at the Rochester Town Offices. Community members may attend remotely using the following access information on Zoom. I guess I'll go through the whole thing here, Cindy. That's part of the warning. The proposed draft by-law covers all the lands in the town of Rochester. The purpose of this hearing is to take comment from the public on the draft by-law so that the Planning Commission can consider these as it makes its final revision prior to sending this to the select board. Select board will hold its own hearing later. Proposed by-law will replace the current zoning regulations in their entirety. By-laws meant to further the purposes of the town plan and Act 24, Section 4302, copies of the draft can be filed in the town clerk's office during business hours or on the town website at the link provided in the hearing notice. Okay. Let's begin. I'm gonna provide some introductory remarks and go over briefly where we made some changes in the document. Some of them are organizational, some of them are pretty substantive and just to kind of pique your interest and open it up for questions from anyone in Zoomland or here visiting us. What I wanted to start with was just reading what the intent of our zoning is and this is in the by-law. The intent of this by-law is to promote the health, safety and general welfare of the inhabitants, to protect the value of existing property and ensure orderly growth in the town of Rochester by preventing the overcrowding of land by new development, promoting adequate sewage disposal, water supplies, transportation, schools and other necessary town services. It is not the intent of this by-law to supplant or replace any state or federal regulations. Any proposed development must also satisfy applicable state of Vermont regulations act 250, access management, et cetera. So we're here to take comments from the public so any questions you have? Maybe just as we're going, feel free since we're a small group, feel free to raise your hand and at the moment something pops into your mind and we'll get to your question. We started working on this revision back when we started revising the town plan which was adopted by the select board, revised and adopted by the select board in 2020. At that time we had a list of 12 or 13 things that we had seen in the town plan that we wanted to make sure synced with our zoning. And so we looked at that list and we started working on it ourselves. At the time COVID hit and we learned how to do Zoom for a little while and that wasn't the most effective but we really started working on it Ernest when we got into a contract with two rivers out of Quichy Regional Planning Commission and that's when we got the help of Sarah Wright who's with us tonight. You know, our intent was originally just to hit those 12 or 13 points but then working with Sarah we really saw that our almost 14 year old zoning bylaw was pretty out of date in a number of ways. And I'll talk about why we thought that. So we really wanna thank Sarah for her work on this. Really outstanding, outstanding really good at what she does extremely thorough and really coached us along the way as opposed to dictating anything that we needed to do. She let us know when we were not in line with the law which was we were grateful for but we couldn't have gotten through this as effectively as efficiently without Sarah. So thank you Sarah. And also wanna thank this volunteer board where the work they did on this month after month after month over the past few years to get us to this point where we have something to share with the community and then something to send over to the select board for their review and hopefully adoption. So we needed to revise our zoning. As I said, it was 14 years old and some things have happened in that 14 years. State statutes have been changed and clarified. There's been a housing shortage nationwide and in Vermont and in Rochester. We've seen a couple of floods in that time that we first had our town zoning. So that also weighs in. We found lots of people wanting to move to Vermont and move to Rochester making housing even more difficult. We're especially for young folks trying to get a start. And we saw opportunities and there's another group that Sandy is part of that's looking at housing and how zoning affects housing in a five town area that? Well, yes. So it was an opportunity to look at our zoning and see how it impacts opportunities for housing and increasing housing in our town. So let's change some organizational things the way it's going to lay down. It just flows a little bit better now than it used to. It's easier to find things. We've beefed up some sections and reduced some sections. One section we actually got rid of our telecommunication and towers section. There's everything in that. It's already covered by state statute and our town plan has direction on telecommunications which gives us an in participating in those state permit processes. So we eliminated that section of the zoning. We looked hard at our districts. We still have the same six districts that we had before. Business residential, the village and then commercial residential which is the valley floor north to Hancock and south to LCS. I always get that confused with the LCI like Champlain International fishing area. Then the ag residential is the valley floor going out route 73. And then every elevation above the valley floor is our conservation residential district. And then we've got our aquifer recharge recharge district around the town well south of town as well as our flood hazard overlay which allows us to participate in the National Flood Insurance Program. We made our districts a little more clear. We used to have a list of what's permitted a loose list of what could be done conditionally and in each district and we changed that because you couldn't possibly think of all the things that were potentially conditional use in a district. So we have our list of permitted activities, permitted uses, then we have a list of prohibited uses things that we didn't wanna happen in certain districts. And then everything else that comes to people's mind that can come to us for a conditional use permit. We just thought that was a better way of being open to different uses of the land. We couldn't possibly create a conditional use list of every imaginable, likely and possibly beneficial use for the community. Housing being a big part of it, we increased housing density to allow and encourage for more multifamily units in some districts. We changed the minimum lot size in the village or business residential district. It was one half acre. It's down to one fifth of an acre in the village. And then we've got a density gradient, if you will, from the village on out to the on the valley floor, an increase in the density of units that can be put on a lot. A lot sizes are the same. One acre in the commercial residential, which is the valley floor north to Hancock and then down to LCS. And then two acres out at 73 and then three acres up in the higher elevations. Those are the same unchanged. Also from LCS to Stockbridge. Oh, and LCS to Stockbridge is part of the... Agres. Agres, along with 73 quarter. Some other things we did in general standards. So there are general standards, there are conditional use standards, and then there are special standards for particular conditional use activities. The general standards, we added a few things. We said that you cannot create a lot that is accessed only by a town trail. Many of our town trails are former town roads and people might think of them as a road, but they are not by state statute, they are not roads by definition. And we require road frontage or a lot to be created. So it's really more a clarification of how town roads are treated in terms of creating lots. We added some standards about glare and lights and reflection that was something that was brought up to us and there was no harm in putting it in. We also added that you could have more than one principal building if you have a home industry on your lot. Typically you can only have one primary building, principal building and another building had to be smaller than that building. But if we want to encourage home industry where if someone could put a workshop, we wanted it to be able to be larger and be as big as a principal building. It could be a barn or a workshop or whatever you have. And home industry would be something that someone could do under conditional use. So they would come to us and say, we've got this building, we're gonna do our home industry with it. And there may be conditions on something like that. We added some language about abandonment and discontinuance for building structures, homes that have been abandoned and not kept up and maybe health hazard or public nuisance. It gives us an ability to approach those folks and say, let me clean this place up or if you need a little more time to fix it up, let us know, we can work with you. But it's something that gives us some teeth if there is an extended or a discontinuous or abandoned building. We also added a stream side buffer in the areas outside of our valley flood plains. We noticed, we know that erosion doesn't just happen in the flooded areas in the valley bottom that it happens on properties up in the hills, up in the mountains long stream side. So we've added a, I'm gonna say 25 foot buffer where you can't build closer than 25 feet from a stream to prevent loss from erosion, stream bank erosion. We did a few things in the conditional use standards. We listed all of that. We had a set of conditional use standards that we would measure each proposal by and they were a Rochester sort of list of standards. But we also added all the standards that were required under state statute. So we've now got a list of 14 standards. So when someone comes in for a conditional use permit, they know what they're getting into. They can review those and say, yeah, and they can address each of those in a conditional use hearing. Also in that conditional use standards, we expanded on clarified visual impacts and landscaping. We've always had the sort of the question of what is, we say, what's the terminology we use? Screening, visual screening, or a buffer or visual screen for some activity. And we didn't really explain what that needed to look like. Was that trees? Was it shrubs? Was it just grass in some cases? So we expanded and expounded on that piece. And then as I mentioned, we set a, we have a list of special standards and these are standards for particular land uses for home occupation and home industry, which we also defined clearly in our glossary. We clarified in the special standards, the differences between temporary shelters, alternative accessory dwelling units and cabins, redistinct things and clarified that. We added standards for mobile homes, including setbacks and minimum lot size and green space. We limited primary retail, defined primary retail and secondary retail. We limited primary retail, which is only allowed in the village, to 4,000 square feet of available space for customers to shop in. And we added campgrounds in our special standards. We've had more and more requests for folks wanting to put sort of shelters or campgrounds on their land and invite people for short term stays. And then we made quite a few changes in our definitions, clarifying some things and adding some definitions. And that's a recap of a few years of work. So hope that maybe shed some light on what we've been doing and maybe any clarifications or questions you have about any parts of that. Love to entertain. Yes, Martha. Yes, unfortunately I can't write as fast as people can talk sometimes. And some of what you, and some of, I got a lot of what you said, but I didn't get everything. Particularly in the beginning, do you have any of that in an e-mailable form or not? Not in an e-mailable form, but we can talk later and I can give you my notes or I can put a few things down for you. Yeah, thank you. I just wanna make sure that I don't miss anything. I think I've got most of everything, but I wanna make sure that the information I put in the paper and the article is correct, as you know, it's there as always. Yeah, I don't think it's being recorded. Yeah, and Martha, it's recorded, remember. So you can go in and listen to my tirade there. So who could I get that from? Julie or Kristen, call them first so that they make sure that it's been downloaded. But yes. Okay, the only thing is I had an issue with the, I can't do stairs and I had an issue with the lift. So I'm... The other possibility is Orca. Mr. Orca, when does your thing get posted? Probably about a week. Okay. At the latest. Okay, so if I have any questions, I'll check in with you, Dan, if you're going to be around for the next few days, probably. Yeah. And the new language is on our website, is on the town website, so you can read it. Or anybody, you know. Okay, check the town website, that's a good idea. Thank you, Sandy. And you can encourage people to read it. Thank you, Sandy, I appreciate you. Okay, I'll mute myself again, thank you. And Martha, you don't have to come into the office to get that recording. It should be posted somewhere on the town website for you to just pull it off. Oh, okay. I'm hoping. All right. I'll check that. Or they can mail it to you. Mail you up. Okay, thank you very much. Yes, Nancy. So you talked about visual screening and landscaping and a new standard. Is that something where so-called junk yards would come into play? Definitely, yeah. Well, it's a standard for conditional use. Right. So, she's asking if somebody has, if somebody has a messy, it's not something that we just sort of call up if somebody has a messy house, which is what I think she's asking. No, no. If someone came to us and said we want to start a salvage yard or have a, then we would have a conditional use hearing and we may put conditions on that use. And that's where it would come into play. Someone that has something currently in use. New regulations don't apply to something that's already in use, unfortunately. Okay. Yes. 25 foot buffer on streams, considering the floods. How do you define a stream? Because those innocent streams became rivers. Yeah. And I think we use the USGS map wherever there's a blue line on the US geological survey map would be a stream. Let me double check that while I have. If anybody know that. I'm going to check if it's 25 or 35. Yeah. And that was something we went around and around about because there are a lot of little streams and that's a lot of land that. You got it here on the screen. I got it. So USGS survey map streams a lot of minimum buildings set back at 50 feet horizontally from top of the bank. No ground disturbance within 35 feet measured horizontally from the top of the bank. Do you define the width of the stream? I can't see the top of the bank. It is measured from the top of the bank of the stream. That's when you start counting the distance. That's how old, how wide is the original stream before you start measuring back from the center of it? It's not the center, it's the edge of the bank. The edge of the bank, the edge of the bank. So wherever that is at that time that's where you start measuring from. Because yes, that can change over time but wherever it is at that point in time that's where you start measuring from. I'm thinking of all those little babbling works that suddenly became roaring rivers. Somebody would look at that and say that's not worth a 25 foot buffer. Well, it says also that if on existing loss of one acre or less the building set back and no ground disturbance zone are reduced to 25 feet from the top of the bank. So if you have lots of room, it's 35 feet. If it's an acre or less, it's 25 feet. The impetus for this is like other floodplain management is that when we have floods and there's damage that the community pays for part of the restoration of what I forget what the town portion of road repairs and things is after a flood. Do you have any? It probably depends. It depends how current we are with certain standards. Like 10 or 15% for, I mean for private homes, I think a lot of folks, I know private homes there's not that same cost share from the town. Martha. I forgot to ask before. Sarah Wright, what is her position? Is she from the state or? Two rivers. Two rivers. Excuse me? Two rivers. Two rivers, okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much, sorry. So in this, are you dealing at all with short-term housing? We have one deal with it in one way in the areas outside of the village and the valley bottom in conservation residential, it is a conditional use. So someone wants to do a short-term rental on their property. They come in and they propose it to us and we now look at all the conditions that we have for conditional use, noise, dust, parking, vibrations, they may not apply but they're all there. And we adopted the state definition of short-term rental which is more than 14 nights in a calendar year. So you could do short-term rental for 10 nights and it doesn't get triggered under state law. So we just piggyback state law on the definition. With respect to any kind of regulation, we have been advised that the sensible way to do that is by a select board ordinance and not in the zoning that has taken us whatever it is five years to fix. An ordinance can be tweaked on a much more timely basis and I think one of the things that we will be talking about when we finally, after we take a breath, is thinking about whether we want to make some recommendations to the select board. I will tell you from the conferences that I've been to, the minute that you step into regulation it starts to get really murky, really fast. The hardest thing is the registration. So the first thing you want to know is who's doing it? So you make people register. Well, who's going to manage that? Well, what towns do is they hire a company to do that. $35,000, thank you very much to manage your database. So how much money do we want to put into this and what do we want it to look like? So we decided that we would punt the regulation question to another day because it really does start to, is it, do you have to live there? How does the ski house work? One of the reasons that we did what we did with the uses is that we were trying to make it a little less appealing to buy a property in North Hollow for the purpose of renting it out as Airbnb. That was, if you already, we have a lot of properties already in town that do short-term rentals, but we wanted to not put a red flag on, put up a welcome flag that said, yes, buy every house in town, company from Colorado and rent them out. So we'll be encouraging the select board to take up that topic. To take it over. I hope with a lot of community input, it's a hot topic. Because that begins to spell the definition of community. But as someone pointed out the other night at the housing meeting, then there's all of the business that those people bring into town and what does that do for our economy overall? So there are trade-offs on both sides. The restaurants, the grocery store, though. Does this get involved with fees or is that a select board decision? Fees for different permits? For permit, we did not. There are no fees associated with zoning permits, just for building permits. And so we haven't touched that. You don't have language to hear about violation. Fees for violations, but it doesn't get specific. It's the amounts that are to be set by the town, but not necessarily in this sort of stuff. Is there a period of time if you've taken out a building permit, is there a period of time in which you have to have it completed? It's three years, I think. Yes, that's part of the discontinuous, discontinuous issue. Does it have to be completed in three years? Yeah. It's like the front door step. Yeah. Find that real quick. Sarah's working on it too? Three years. Three years. So I can try to read it for folks in the back. A permitted structure that is A, is not substantially complete more than three years after the issuance of its zoning permit. B is unoccupied and is either deemed unenhabitable by the health officer or deemed a fire hazard by the fire chief or estate fire marshal. C, due to disrepair, lacks any major structural element customary to the type of the building involves like a roof or windows or water supply. Or lastly, D is a conforming structure that lacks any major structural element due to damage and no repair work has been undertaken within one year of damage shall be considered abandoned for the purposes of this bylaw. And then abandoned structures that require new zoning permits and approvals as applicable under this bylaw. Does that clarify? One of the things we struggled with over several months was the idea of providing housing opportunity by putting two homes on one lot. Yeah, a number of people had come to us and said, we'd like to build a cabin or a small house for Aunt Betty or for my kids or... The way we interpreted our current zoning was that we couldn't allow them to do that unless it was attached to the house, attached to the existing structure. But new clarification from the state allows that accessory dwelling unit to be detached and separate from the home. So we're excited that we do now have an opportunity for folks to add another home smaller than the existing home onto their existing lot if the lot's big enough to allow for more housing. And usually it was folks that wanted to do something for family members, the request that we got. So you said if the lot is big enough? Well, an accessory dwelling unit within your home is protected under state law. So any property can have an accessory dwelling unit. But what he was talking about was that we had people who really wanted to have a cottage, let's say a cottage. And so we spent a lot of time looking at what that would look like. But that is also, if it meets the requirement, which I think we said is not more than 50% of the square footage of the dwelling, of the principal dwelling, or 1200 square feet, whichever is larger, and then you get to do it. And that's a building that falls under the accessory dwelling unit, but you've also allowed it for more than one principal building per lot in the cases of the home industry. So the accessory dwelling unit has very specific definitions that the town has laid out, which also fall under state statutes. We have to make sure that you're meeting if you're in the build on the same lot. But the state guarantees you up to 30% of the square footage and we increased it to 50%. So ours is a little more generous than the state. And the reduction in lot size in the village is also reflects recently enacted state law. Oh, we also thought, we thought it was a good idea, but this is where the services are. So this is where we want concentration to be. Could I ask a question? Yes. Unless I'm confused, the original accessory dwelling unit, would you count that as like an apartment that's in say the upstairs of your one home that someone lives downstairs and they have an apartment upstairs or whatever, or in the back of the house or whatever. But what you're going, what your new regulation for, if I understand correctly, is for a separate building on the same lot. Like you said that a lot of people looking for possibly someone for their family or whatever. Yeah. It's okay now because the state is allowing that so the town is also. Yes. But both of the things that you described are accessory dwelling units. The upstairs apartment, the garage apartment, the cottage, all of those are accessory dwelling units. But originally there wasn't, you weren't allowed to have a separate building on the same lot, right? Correct. But now you are. Okay. All right, thank you. Under our proposal. Yes, under our draft. Which is not in place at the moment. Okay, am I correct that is the town voting on this at all or what? No. Well, the select board. Yeah, the select board, not a town vote, but the select board. Okay. So the select board will vote up. The select board will have a hearing in November and then they'll vote to adopt it. They'll have their own, this is our warned hearing. When we made whatever changes we are inclined to make after comments tonight, we will get it to the select board and they will warn their own hearing at which point they can adopt it. We hope they will adopt it. Okay, thank you. That's it, do you have a question? Well, are there regulations about accessory, or accessory apartments in a multi-story building and access and egress? Are there requirements within the zoning for that? Like a fire escape, for instance. You decide to put an apartment in your three-story house. That's not, it's not in our zoning that we don't require anything like that in our zoning if you're gonna put in an apartment or an accessory dwelling unit. But I imagine if it's rented that there are regulations on anyone though. Yes. So if you're renting. Considered a public building, if you are renting, that's considered a public building. So you have to go through the state fire safety permitting process. But if it's a private building. It's still, if you are renting it. It's still considered a public building. Is considered a public building for the purposes of state fire safety permitting processes. Yep. Which doesn't get run through to town. That's a separate state process. So theoretically an Airbnb situation would trigger the fire and safety. Which a lot of folks don't realize. Yep. Julie or Sandy, you wanna add anything else to our discussion and our learning over the best? Others? Or do anything that the board feels that they wish they could have addressed and didn't get to include in this? There are no changes to the flood rules, floodplain rules, because we understand that BMET is about to change the ground rules yet again. I don't, they're pretty, what we have right now is pretty, pretty restrictive. So I'm not sad about that, but that is a part of the document that was not changed. Because we have to change it when FEMA knows correct, right? One of the challenges we face many towns is the development of our forests and farmlands. Trying to maintain a working landscape. It's, we found it difficult to work with that. You know, things like town trails. You know, they go up into the hills and if we allow the town trail to be accessed for a subdivision, then it could have opened up, it could open up a lot of land for forest land for development, for three acre lots. So it's a challenge to find out, find a way to do that. And many, many places of well-developed land trusts that can conserve important blocks of forest land for forest or agriculture. We don't have that resource, so we're challenged by that. And I slowly see, you know, that ag and forest land getting willed away, if you will. And we try and keep the development out of there by having larger lot sizes. But it's private land, folks can do what they want. But we'll, if we continue to see the pressures of folks moving to Vermont, it's gonna continue to be an issue. We're not really able to address it. But you did deal with something with trails. We did, we did. Our, as more of a clarification, our by-law says you must have road frontage, X amount of road frontage to create a lot. Or an easement to a town road. Or to a town road, right? And a town trail is not legally a town road. So we clarified that by saying you can't make a lot with only access by a town trail. Anything we didn't get to drill you that you? I think your synopsis was excellent, by the way. Oh, that's very well done. The town trail one was the Jerusalem fellow that started that whole conversation back, yeah. The one that bought all the huge tract of land there and had no way of getting onto it. Do you see the one logging right now, up there? I don't know. Yeah, it's putting in a road. Putting in a road. Okay, that's why I was wondering if he was putting in a road. Okay. Right straight down. From Jerusalem, right? Or from? From Bethelman. From Bethelman. So did he buy a right away from somebody? Yeah, or actually a small piece of land here, not just a right away. Yeah. Good work. So Lois, when you were talking about that creek, the streams, did you want it larger? I mean, this is a time to change that if you were really concerned about that. Well, I understand the distance from the bank. Right, the top of the bank. Yeah, the top of the bank. I understand that part. Right. But I wanna go, what actually defines a stream? How wide does this ribbon of water have to be before it's classified as a stream? Oh. As opposed to a spring runoff. That may become permanent, but it's basically just a spring runoff. That never drives up. That never drives up. Right. Yeah, and I think that is difficult to define. But the tool we have to go by is the maps that the US Geological Survey puts out. And if it's a blue line, then they consider it a map. Oh, it's a map. I mean, not a stream. So how old is the map? It's really a dear thing to do. It just says US Geological Survey mapped streams. Yeah, don't know. So I would say current, but the most current you can get your hands on. If you came to us with a 1900 map, we might question it. But what would you like to see? I guess that's the question that Julie was asking. Because I'm digging deeper. To really determine, all of a sudden, somebody has a stream of water going across their property and then somebody comes along and says, okay, you gotta have a 25 foot buffer on that stream. And then someone says, that stream wasn't there four years ago. Well, number one, keep in mind that everything that we're talking about here applies to the circumstances at the time that somebody applies for a permit. So, you build your house and the river is 50 feet away and the river moves towards your house. Nobody's gonna come to you and say you have to tear your house down. That's the concern, okay? But if you wanted to expand your house, put an extension on it, that might trigger because at that point you're asking for a new permit and then where's the river would be relevant. And if someone wants to build a house and the zoning administrator would look at a map and see where the house is and if there's a blue line on the USGS map. And if there's no blue line on the USGS map, then they're good. I could see it get a little bit tricky. The USGS maps have a solid blue line and then when the streams become intermittent, they only flow and it gets dotted line. And I don't know, I think we're probably talking about solid blue lines and not intermittent temporary streams. It doesn't say that, does it? Well, it just says map streams. I would argue that an intermittent line is not about stream, if that. I could argue that. Well, I went to a hydrologist. It's a stream in April. But you know, so there's two issues here. One is, when do you say no to a permit? And the other is, when do you say, hey guys, this isn't a very good idea, you might want to rethink it. And oftentimes when Dune is working with people, it's the second part of the conversation that you're having. This isn't going to work very well. So, because it gets wet in April in your basement. So that third line says no home gardens, no brown disturbance. So, if somebody wants to put in a water garden next to the stream, they can't do it. Would it be helpful if I read out the whole text? Would that be useful for people? I'm trying to. So, USGS map streams will have a minimum building setback measured 50 feet horizontally from top of bank and no ground disturbance within 35 feet measured horizontally from top of bank. For home gardens, the no ground disturbance zone is reduced to 25 feet measured horizontally from top of bank. Recreational motorized vehicles must not be parked within 30 feet from top of bank, regardless of lot size. On existing lots of one acre or less, the building setback and no ground disturbance zone are reduced to 25 feet from top of bank. So, I won't have water lilies close to the stream. Were we following state regulations when I turned into not made to this? No, we did look at some other towns. And the gist of this is that we want there to be ideally a forested buffer along the stream banks because that's what keeps the stream bank from eroding. So, I would say a little bit about campgrounds. Quite a bit of discussion around that. We've had requests for things like campgrounds with TPs and Yerts and tents and things like that. We looked at what the state regulations are and the state says anything with four or more camping sites is considered a campground and requires water and septic permits. So, we said smaller than that. Well, that size and even smaller than that is a conditional use in the town so it'll allow someone to have a couple of camp sites on their property, two, three campsites. Even four campsites, but when it gets larger we're requesting more space and more setbacks but they still have to go for a state permit for water or sewer or a larger campsite, campground. And is that a state law? It is, campgrounds, yeah. June, do you have any questions for your upcoming meeting with us? No. Sarah's waiting for a question. I meant to touch on the second home on a lot that is the same size or larger we settled on needing a subdivision, correct? Yeah, in effect, if someone wanted to put another. Versus a smaller accessory dwelling. Yes. Yeah, we debated that for quite a while and decided that that the accessory dwelling rules were good enough to take care of most of the inquiries that we had and that anything more ambitious than that probably should be, they should just subdivide the property. It was quite a debate. It was. It was, yes. Back and forth on that for a while. Is the state going to require a separate septic? So, those accessory dwellings? You have to have, you have to cover all your bedrooms, however you do it. So if you have a house that has four bedrooms and you carve out, you know, one of the bedrooms and put and have a kitchen with it, and that's, you already, you already, assuming you already have a system that was built for four bedrooms, you're covered. If you are, if you are going to keep your four bedroom house and add two more bedrooms and a cottage, then yes, you have to accommodate the two more bedrooms. Now, that's, and so that's one of the reasons we've been asking so many questions about the attempts, so septic, because there are certain parts of the village where we could easily expand. There are other parts where you can't, but some of us have a lot of grandfather bedrooms, so. We have to figure out, what's grandfathered. Yeah. Yeah. I was just looking at the names. I know, I thought, what is that? Thousands of years ago. No more questions from anyone? Doesn't appear to me, does it? No. Should we close the hearing? I think. I would suggest that. Anything else, Martha? Any questions? No, wait this minute, if at some point before I put this together for next week's paper, I could talk with you for a few minutes. That would be helpful. Just to make sure I've clarified things correctly. Sure, okay. But thank you very much for all your hard work, everybody. I appreciate it. Is this the entire committee, the three of you, and with advice by Sarah Wright? No, we're missing Greg Wright. This was Dave Curtis. And Christine. Christine Mayer. Christine Mayer. Okay. So, okay, thank you. We are short a member right now, so we're recruiting. If you want to help us recruit, we'd be grateful. The first criterion is that the person be under 50. Well, we might want to modify for that. We're gonna modify. We're gonna modify. Yeah. And Dune was part of our group, too, as our select board person. Yeah, Dune is. Forming this. Dune is execution. No, we're gonna modify that age requirement. Yes. Younger. No, under 40, that is still. We're trying to get some young people involved with the town, but... You need to. Sure. They're the ones that don't want to step up. That's why I'm here. Well, we need their energy and we need their perspective. Hey, I might have been 40 when I started this. Well, me, too, but... I was younger, you know. All right, if there are any more questions, we'll... Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thanks for joining us today. Yeah. With that, we'll close our hearing. Thank you very much. Thank you, Martha. Thanks, Martha. Thanks. Thank you all for coming. Yes. Thanks, Nancy. Thanks, Loss. We're here. We're here. We're here. We're here. We're here. No, you were here. So if I was... I'll just... I'll all over to the board. Okay. I just want to say that a select board meeting last night, and I've got another meeting tomorrow night, I am going to leave. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Can I have a good night, Martha? Yes. Well, will you be able to be at the select board's hearing to answer the questions? Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. I guess you should leave. Okay. I was hoping there'd be more than me about... That's the 27th? Well, we're hoping that... We decided when you should do it. That would be a good timeline to... After thanks, Stuart. Yeah. That would be difficult for me to be... So what we're doing, it has to be in the paper 15 days ahead, which is the really tricky piece. So we figured if we got it to you right now this week, that you could talk about it Monday night and then figure out, you know, schedule it. Monday night's the 13th. No, this Monday. That you could talk about it. This coming Monday. They don't have a meeting. They just had a meeting last night. Oh, you're done? Yeah. Oh, okay. Okay. Well, the 13th doesn't mean that we can't set the hearing because we have to set that at a public meeting. I don't... I have no... I don't think so. I don't think so. So, well, it just... It needs to get in the paper... It needs to get in the paper in time for it to be at least 15 days before you have your hearing. So we thought that would be the second meeting. So it's 1327 of November. And then we go into December. Yeah, we'd like... We'd like... The 11th of December. We'd really like you to do it in November. So here's the problem. Two rivers under whatever agreement they have with the state has to wrap this up this calendar year. And so that's... They don't want to have a special meeting. That's why... Well, but if you could do it at that November, whatever it is, 27... Why does it have to be that Friday? They've got to get the 15 days. Because it has to get in the paper. No, I know what why, but they put it in, like, right off. You could have a meeting there to warn a special meeting. To have it earlier. You don't even need to have a meeting to warn a special meeting. Right, that's a meaning. Why couldn't they? But we can... I'm not sure we have to have a meeting to set that this is basically... We'll be warning... We just set a warning, just like we want a meeting. Why do we have to have a meeting to warn a meeting? No, but my thought... Why does it have to be way up to the 27th? Well, because... If they don't need a meeting. 15 days. Because it has to be longer. It's very clear that they're... Yes, there's a 15-day warning period, but there's a mandatory 30-day waiting period between when the planning commission submits to the select board, and then you get to have your first hearing. So they could... If we gave it to them tomorrow, they could schedule their hearing 30 days from then. Correct. Right? Yes. But do you have to present it to us while we're meeting there? You don't have to have any sort of formal presentation. No. That could be a phone call from Sandy to you. So my preference... So we had... We made a few recommended changes that I got to you last month. I would like to see those incorporated. They were mostly... Mostly nits. I would need the full planning commission to concur on those... We did. We did. We already agreed on all of those. Awesome. Yeah. And so with those changes, I think... I mean, there were only a couple that were marginally substance, but they were mostly nits. Yeah. I don't know if anybody needs to reference that. So... If you could... If you could incorporate those, and I guess send that to Dan. They're meeting to 13 and 27. And then Dan can forward it to you. 13 and 23. Okay. So it's too soon to do the 13. Yeah. I probably won't be here for that one. Okay. So it has to be the 27. Okay. That's what it is because they... Well, in any way, she just said it has to be 30 days. 30 days. Okay. So... Yeah. So it's got to be this week. I'm sure it'll be... It's got to be by Friday. It'll be... Yeah. That'll happen, yeah. What I gave... What we gave Sarah to put in last month was... It was really little stone. Right. Yeah. So that will definitely happen by Friday. Sarah, do you give them the official... warning? I'm happy to prepare a warning notice that that would be helpful to the town. You guys have to get it to the paper. That would help Julie. You guys have to get it to the paper though. She doesn't do that. Because she doesn't want to pay the bill. That could be... We don't have it in the budget. No, no. I'm just... You could send it and say send the bills to Rochester. Okay. But that's okay. No. No, I think it makes more sense. No. So what... So I think what we do is you make the changes. You send it to Dan. And then Dan forwards it to Dune. By Friday. And then you can have the meeting on the 27th. Which is the 30 days. And Sarah's going to prepare the actual... The actual words. Right. Which she'll give to Julie. Yeah. And that does not have to be done by Friday. Right. Because we have a leeway. Right. Yeah. That doesn't mean 30 days. Friday. Okay. For you, Sarah. Do you document those changes? Yeah. The planning board has given the proposal to the select board. Is there anything... Like dated email in it to Julie to distribute to the select board? Would that do the job? Yeah, that's probably a good idea. So again, to document that the recommendations were submitted from the planning board to the select board 30 days before our hearing. So it would be just a formal email saying that here is our planning board. Here's the... Send it to Julie to distribute to the select board. That way it's in the records that we have that 30 days. With a CC to do. And then she takes care of all the postings, including in the papers. Yeah. Well, so the wording of the... The wording of the warning is tricky. So Sarah's going to draft that. And she and Julie will figure out who's doing what. I did actually end up putting them up around town because I understood that Julie was going to do that and then realized that had happened. I ran around and did that. And I got about 15 days, so that was... Thank you. But so it's important that Julie understands that they have to... That the three postings need to be 15 days out. It's not like a regular select board. But that's everything, right? It could be post... I mean, as soon as we get it, you know that we're going to have that. You can go out and just have to wait 15 longer than... Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here we go. Do you think you're going to take action on the 27th after you close the hearing, or will you need to push that out to another... It depends on who shows up and complains. It depends on who we have some interesting and compelling questions to hear. Right. It depends on who knows about it. Yeah, right. That's all we want to do it in November. I missed last week's hurl. Did the article get in? Yes, I haven't. And I copied it. I cut it up. Do you frame it? No, but I saved it with a date line. Oh, good. That's important. That's important. Yes. Yes, and that... But ideally, all that documentation needs to be kept by the town staff in the folder marked adoption process so that if you have any questions, you can go back in. So I have some documentation to you from our original submittals that I need to send over to... Okay. And then following adoption, assuming that this select board wants to adopt this document, the state has instituted a new requirement for a report that has to be prepared of post-adoption. We're still figuring out exactly what the state wants, but two of us is happy to write that report for your review after we get through that drill later on down the road. Okay. Does that have to be done by the end of the year also? No. Okay, oh. Okay. Okay. All right. Sounds like a plan, team. No. All right. Good night. Good night. Good night. Thank you, ladies. Does that mean we can adjourn? And does it mean we can cancel tomorrow? Just before we do. Oh, no. We can't. I just want to clarify. So I have it at its end so much. That's super helpful. All of this and things. Be a careful eye on everything. I just want to clarify. Contractor Yards, you would like them to be permitted in the commercial agricultural district, but conditional in the agricultural residential district. Does that sound correct to you? I'll say that again, too. Yeah. Permitted in the commercial agricultural district, but conditional in the agricultural residential district. I think that's right. If we permitted, I mean, there's no conditions. No conditions. Right. In commercial. Yeah. I'm not sure that's a good idea. Oh, I thought that's, well, that's what you said you wanted. So. Well, I was wrong. What you came in saying was it's not permitted. Anywhere. Right. That was your concern. Yeah. And so our compromise was to say, okay, then let's say it's okay in commercial. That was. That was. Why wouldn't it be conditional everywhere? We didn't want to do that. We didn't have a conditional anywhere. Oh. No. Somewhere. I mean in the village. No. It's conditional everywhere. It's prohibited. Oh, it was prohibited. Sorry. Okay. I'm just going to, I'm just going to read where we're at right now. So that we can all get on the same page. So it is. These are contractor yards. Yes. Contractor yards are prohibited in the business residential district. They are. Currently. Conditional in the commercial agricultural district. They are currently conditional in the agricultural residential district as well. Makes sense to have them. They are prohibited in the conservation residential district. So you've got. Two conditional uses. Two conditional uses. Correct. You had, you had looked at the grid, I think. I think the grid might be inaccurate. Oh, sorry. Okay. That's where that came from then. Yeah. Because he looked at the grid and he got concerned that we weren't allowing them anywhere. I think that's how. The grid actually says that they are, they are permitted in commercial agricultural and additional in ag res, which is not actually true currently as the language stands. It is conditional in both the commercial agricultural and ag residential districts. They are prohibited in business residential and conservation residential districts. So is that grid going to be corrected? Yes. Okay. But to whatever you want to be. So that's what I'm trying to clarify. Right. But what do we want? So we have conditional and. And commercial ag and commercial residential and ag residential. Yes. Okay. And prohibited. Elsewhere. Village and village and. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. I like that. I think a contractor yard is something that we might potentially need screening or noise. But I have some control. Some conditions. Yeah. Okay. So we're going to leave it as it is. Okay. And, and, oh. There was that big question about. Child care. And group homes. And what it meant for something to be permitted. And permitted means that it needs a permit. And I had a conversation with Sarah. And she said that we had been consistent in that. So even though it reads funny. And, and by the way, the reason that we had, that we have that funny language is because it tracks state statute. Okay. So, yeah, so you can thank, you can thank legislative doctors for that. So. I'm going to add those references to state studies. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So that was our, that was our, that was our, my say. Oh, the other one we had. Yeah. Was heavy industry. Yes. Yes. Prohibited everywhere. Oh, yeah. Delete from prohibited. I said in, in commercial egg. I put that on the list, didn't I? That's my note here. Yes. That you would like to be, I assume conditional. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So that came up for me this evening. Was the question about intermittent streams about riparian buffers applying to intermittent streams. Right. As you pointed out, Sandy or Dan, that, you know, right now the language just says USGS map streams. So we're not distinguishing. that a fair point was raised that you know during flood situations those streams those intermittent streams become quite dangerous and they're real streams in the spring I mean they're not little dots right and we still have a current one still this year because of all of which is usually dry right that's just I don't know where you go from there but so would we say then both permanent and intermittent well well it just it just says it just says it just says streams geological maps streams showing on a geological map so you know I would art you know we can argue it both ways but but they but they both show on the map right yeah I think I think our language is fine was there anything else that was raised this evening I didn't I didn't hear anything that Nancy willies about the apartment in a house that was just a clarification that was that was about that was about well so I didn't at the housing thing I was at the other night there were people who actually do apartments and and yes we have building codes in Vermont they are not enforced unless you're gonna rent and then you down will better follow building codes so that's and you do get you know you are you are what's called a public building public building doesn't mean it's owned by the public public means it's open to the public or yeah so who comes and does that type of well the fire marshal is one and and labor industry or whoever they are so there's real people there there are actually people yeah yeah they're not they're they're they're stretched pretty thin yes but in the event of it in the event of a complaint they show up right and you do have language in the bylaw that specifically calls that out to people's attention to say that you know a state building permit is required for public buildings which includes short rentals any space that's being rented to the public right and they need to coordinate with the State Department of Public Safety Division of Fire Safety specifically okay yeah I don't think they had any change requests have to wait 30 days I was just looking at the of the adoption is a long and actually seeing that adoption checklist that's what I was instructed verbally by 40 a 30 day dead zone between it's fine because they can't they can't warrant it any sooner anyway so it's not it's not an issue it's just interesting yeah okay so if they adopt that soon after that that will fit into the end of your year plans okay I mean they really they really need to do it by the end of December but I'm trying to I'm trying to I don't want us I don't want us to be having our hearing on Christmas you know that's crazy that everybody checks out after December 10th well yeah there's that but there's also you know it is possible that someone will come to a hearing with something that they want that they want to change right I mean we can't rule that out right yeah but it's simple to do that should be I think they have to send it back to us and we have you know what I'm saying so yeah right now so not so yeah anyway if there are substantial changes if there are substantial changes beyond like typos right the changes the meaning of the by-law then they don't have to send it back to planning commission to actually work on it it's just that the select board has to have another hearing with all the requisite warning time and they have to notify planning commission so they'll send you a copy but you don't have to actually like make any decisions at that point after you submit it to select board it's there it's there they have complete on it's theirs okay okay okay is there any kind of appeal period or rights for anyone so if the select board says we're going to adopt they adopt it is there a is that the end of it or is there I'm not aware of any appeals process you mean that but that's why she was saying we yet we have to have a good folder for showing what we did to yeah that we that it was properly so some of the community has no if they don't like something in it they have no recourse so sad because there were several opportunities yeah right yeah I mean even if they avail themselves to that opportunity say they go to the select board and say I don't want 50 foot buffer on streams and that's what they get anyway right yeah it's okay okay they can they can not elect us next time right mine's up in Merck I was curious anyway have you found a replacement you know why can't we do have that as a requirement if you want to get off the board you have to find your own replacement I like that requirement why not I remember John Allen did much to Greg sugar but anyway we're keeping Sarah so well we're gonna make sure Sarah's happy do you have what you need I'm just realizing that you made some decisions tonight but you don't have quorum no we did the only decision we made was to get was to keep what you have that we made one decision which was which was to override that one thing on the on the the only decision we decided that you in fact did not want to add a contract yes yes so that was a decision you made today you also said that contrary to your original instruction of deleting having the stream from prohibited you wanted it to be no sorry that's correct that confirmed that's the same thing so the only change it was making it conditional only the only change was to stay with which is the same language yes okay I see what you're saying yeah okay yep I'm with you we changed the no change all right now are we okay so so Sarah are you you don't need okay thank you we don't really need to meet tomorrow we do not okay what do you do with it warned you know was it warned well yeah I had I had to put up a warning I just put up a net this is camp meeting canceled okay right I don't see they had their opportunity the time and actually there's one down there I can write canceled there okay I took that oh no for tomorrow yeah yeah yeah yeah I might be able to write it all but anyway I will make a motion to adjourn then okay okay oh we don't have a quorum so we can't adjourn maybe we maybe