 Okay. Let's call the order of this January 10th meeting of the molecular planning commission. First thing you should do is approve the agenda. So if someone has a motion to do that. So moved. The motion from John. We have a second. Second. Second from Marcella. Those in favor of approving agenda. Say aye. Aye. Opposed. Okay. Next is the comments from the chair. It's been a while, hasn't it? It's felt like ages. So first and foremost, Mike, welcome back. We're glad that you. Survived your ordeal. Thank you. Glad you're getting around. I had the same thing happen a year ago. So I kind of feel you there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's been three weeks now. So. Just have some limitations of stuff I can do it. Can't do at home, but pretty much everything at work is fair game. Nice. Nice. How did that work out? Just kidding. Get out of doing a couple of chores with the barn. Okay. All right. No water buckets. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, it's been a while since we met. We had two hearings on what we're going to talk about tonight, which is proposed changes to the zoning bylaws. We've heard lots and lots of info, lots of comments. So lots of sort through. Before we get started, can we get a link to the. These changes so that we can all follow along that as we proceed. Yeah, I'm working on that. And we'll just, we'll just go from there. Some of these are going to have quite a bit of discussion. We could deliberate tonight. Or we could vote tonight, rather, is what I mean to say. We'll just have to see how it goes. I know there's a lot. So I don't have any set of expectation about. I mean, that voting tonight. We're supposed to approve the minutes at the end if we have time. I'd love to see how it goes. If anyone else has the document pulled up, you can throw it in the chat there. Yeah, you don't have to wait for me. I'm just working on it. Okay. I mean, I have, I have all of the other documents pulled up because there's the, there's the PUD. Language. Which I don't know if that's been updated and we'll get to that, but get to it. I don't know if that's been updated or not. I don't know if that's been updated or not. But I don't know if that's been updated or not. I don't have any time on the list. There's also the, the November five memo, which is the official think statutory memo. That's a summary of the changes. Are we gonna have to redo that, Mike, once we vote on this? No, that's only a requirement for the planning commission public hearing. I will update the. Memo. Okay. The November. The November five memo. I'm going to actually go ahead and throw that in the chat. Hopefully that link works for you guys. That's my name in it. The reason why I'm linking that for people to have access to is. Mike, when he prepared that flagged the parts of the city plan that were relevant to each thing. That was really useful. Because. The sections relating to. You know, like section 4.5 goal C to B is relevant to a lot of what we're talking about. We have the planning commission is supposed to undertake a comprehensive review of all city regulations. And eliminate unnecessary regulatory obstacles. And then we have the city planning commission. So the plan D should develop, which reinforce existing neighborhoods and increase diversity and use. Revise zoning ordinance to make it less cumbersome for homeowners to add rental units. Improve efficient use of buildings and land where growth is concentrated. So this is, it's just sort of a good. Good point. I think that's a good point. And how this stuff intersects with that. There's plenty of material there to add housing. To, to improve the regulations. So just in general, I feel like we're on firm ground to make the changes we want to make with this. And it looks like Mike. Yeah. Yeah, I wasn't able to cut and paste the, the direct link. But I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. Which goes to. The city website, which has all the information. The first thing on that list. If you go to the city website. Is the fall 20, 21 zoning request. That's the memo that we're talking about. Okay. With that, let's jump into it then. I have it pulled up. Number one is. I don't know if the properties from res six to res three. How do people feel about that? Positive about it. And it didn't seem like from the public, there was much comment on this one. I mean, I guess I would note that from, from my notes and keeping track of things that I didn't, although I had a lot of comments and questions offline. Before the hearings. And most of them were questions. I don't know. I don't know. You know, they, they kind of asking some questions of concern, but when we actually got to the hearing, we didn't get any. Negatives on this proposal. Everyone spoke in support of making the change. The only note I have is. So someone mentioned, why not, why not more? Why not opening it up more? And what do you think about that, Mike? Expansion and lightning things up here. I, I don't think so. Not directly. I think if there was a request, it would be a separate request because those other requests, right? Why not? Loomis or Liberty. And those really aren't contiguous to, you know, the Harrison change is Harrison, Whittier and three properties on Loomis street. So I think that would be a separate proposal. And I think you accurately answered that. Suggestion when you said that we, in 2018 had a number of proposals that, you know, I think that would be a separate request to change Loomis or a separate request to change. Excuse me, Liberty. I think was the request. And so I think that would be a separate proposal. And I think you accurately answered that. Yeah. And I think you answered the number of proposals that kind of got ratcheted back based on public comment. And I think you are very accurate in saying that this. You know, to keep making changes to Liberty street is a distinctly different request that's going to have different comments and probably is going to have significant opposition. So I would have steered clear of certainly combining those two. I think it's one. If we wanted to, we, we would do, analysis of Liberty Street to go through and give you the same analysis that we had for Harrison of its 19 parcels. Four of them are non conforming. Here's, you know, here's what we know about what's going on on the street. Here's how it relates to the other things. I, you know, we have don't have that analysis. And I think we would need that analysis to do an accurate assessment of Liberty Street. Okay. So for the neighborhoods that we're looking at changing here, are there going to be any parcels in the neighborhood that are non conforming now? I believe they'll all be conforming after this. Okay. There may be some non conforming structures, but the underlying parcel size will be all okay. Okay. Anybody else have anything to say? Can I ask a quick question? I'm just now realizing on that there's a parcel on Whittier Street that also faces North Street, Main Street, sorry. But I'm looking at the map, it looks like the house is kind of on oriented toward Whittier Street rather than Main Street, but is that one not included because it's E911 is to Main. Do you see which one I'm talking about? It's the parcel with the O over it first. Yep. Yeah. And I think, I don't remember exactly why that one was left out except that it was a significantly larger parcel. And so making the change, the density change on that property was going to have, you know, a significantly greater impact on what was possible. And I think that was why I kind of hesitated to put that one in as well. But certainly is an option. I mean, it's, it strikes me as a little strange to leave it out given that the house is oriented toward Whittier Street. I understand that it's a bigger parcel. I also feel like it might be too late because we would have needed to bring in the folks on the other side or they would have been need to have been notified since it's kind of a strange but, you know, too, too neighborhood sort of. So anyway, that's, that's fine. I don't feel that strongly. Do you think there would be a notice issue if we changed it, Mike? I don't think there's a notice issue. I mean, I can include a specific notice to them when this, if you vote to do this, I could always send them a specific notice that goes through and says we're making this change and planning commission voted to include, to add you in when it goes to the city council hearing and they can, you know, give comment of whether or not they want to be in or not in that time for that particular one. I'd be in favor of if you want to change it, Marcella, what do other people think about seems tidy and also I just, it just seems appropriate for the area to, to allow more around there to me. And it's certainly, I mean, I don't want to like, not a developer, so, you know, it's certainly a strange parcel access issue. I mean, the house takes up the whole wittier frontage, right? And so you have some weird potential access issues off of Maine or I don't know what, but you know, that could be, could be strange if people were to put more houses on it, but, and the houses directly behind are definitely a bit different than that wittier frontage and Harrison Ave frontage. What do we want? Do you want to, do you want to, do you want to change it? I guess I don't feel that strongly. No, if no one else is saying they feel strongly to add it, then I don't, I don't need to be there. We don't have to do that. Do you want to think line to edit? Okay. I mean, I'm okay. I don't want to make things more complicated. Yeah. Okay. Okay. We can, we can leave that for now. If you guys think about it further in the meeting and go back, I mean, I'd be, I'd be open to the change you're talking about. If you want to propose that change. Okay. Let's, let's move on to number two, then, if we don't have anything else there, which is the Heaton Woods, Washington County mental health, making that change. We heard a lot of feedback. I think there was a lot of concerns about what might happen. I think there was just a lot of opportunity for learning on that one. I think we've got a lot of clarity about what's actually going to happen or what's playing, what's, what, well, I shouldn't say actually for any of this, what could happen on that parcel. How do people feel about that after the hearings? I think I agree that the, I felt like the tenor of the comments were generally around like maybe there was an opportunity for better communication around the project itself or it was, it was much less oriented toward the actual change of zoning than more about the specific projects. So I'm not super concerned about moving forward with that zoning change. You know, and I would just say like my blanket comment is that most of the feedback was sort of along those lines altogether. Right. The people had comments that they wanted to, they wanted to be in a DRB meeting and argue about the, you know, the value of the project or whether met some kind of guidance as opposed to whether the zoning actually made sense for the area. So I'll just say generally I'm in favor of everything. Yeah, I think it's generally disappointing just the Washington County Mental Health, the information they gave me kind of made, you know, my memo looked deceptive even though it's basically exactly what they had talked about. And even I think when Keith talked, it wasn't very clear that I think, I think in the end, what the proposal is that they're planning to do 19 units in the existing building, but they can't do these additional four units in the parking lot for single family, single homes. And the ones inside the building will be for clients, Washington County, County Mental Health clients and the ones outside in the parking lot may or may not be clients. They may just be family housing. I think that is the accurate description and I think it would have been much, it would have clarified a lot of the conversation. We got caught up in, as you said, the project discussion, but really we need to have, if they want to do this larger project, you know, they would not be able to do the full 19 units in the building because they don't have enough capacity. So they'd have less units in the building and they wouldn't be able to have the units outside. So with the 3,000, they could do these. You know, and I kind of wish we had a clearer set of public input on the specifics of that, which again, we're not really approving the project. We're really just going through and saying, what should the zoning be for these two parcels? Is it appropriate to have them zone residential 6,000 when they're clearly not of residential 6,000 character? Should they be rezoned something different? Yeah, I think the surrounding neighborhoods have a, you know, a character that has a lot more denser development. I think like looking at College Street and Liberty and just everything around it seems to match a, you know, a lot of the, you know, higher number of units type category for this area. So is everybody fine with it? With with it as is, as Mike wrote it up. No, no tinkering here. I think so. I think, I think we could do a better job of making this information more accessible and easier to understand what's happening and what's being proposed. You know, I tried just right now going to the city of my peers website and saying like, okay, what if I knew nothing, would I be able to figure out like what's happening? And it was, it's not very, it's not very easy. And then when I do find it, it's because I sort of know what I'm looking for. So I think, I think that's an area or something we can do forward to help make it clearer and easier to explain what's happening and realize, you know, those people received a letter that explained a lot of this, but a lot of that was, or all of those people were the property owners. And I think there was also a comment around renters not receiving notice of this. And, you know, that's, that's Vermont state law and maybe a shortcoming of not say a lot. There's not a way for us to easily communicate with renters. There's no, you know, we have no idea who they are. And I'm not proposing that we can solve that, but with some things that we can do is make things easier to find on our website and maybe in a more digestible format. So I think that's, that's a really good point, John. And I think that it's not too late for this one. I think that if we, if we vote tonight or, or next time, whatever we approve, maybe we could do a clearer or more thorough ride up from this and then put it right on the like main planning page, something like that. Is that what you're thinking? Yeah. You're in the city website and, and. Just said earlier. Yeah. You think we could do that, Mike? Yeah, I can talk to the IT folks about seeing if we could get it up into the upper banner more with the, with our revised memo and with our, when it moves forward just to go through and make sure it's, it's clear up in the next section. We have tried to go and put it in the weekly memos. We've tried to get it out in a couple other venues, but yeah, it's, there's certainly a lot of shortcomings and trying to, to be able to work. There's money in the budget to update the website in the next fiscal year. So I think that'll help. This has been a challenging website to work with. And our IT person who used to run this is no longer working for the city. So we went with a third party IT group. So we've kind of cut ourselves off the knees for making larger changes to this platform. So I think that's, that's the city's big picture is to kind of move in that direction to make a better website and move it to a better platform. But certainly before we get to the city council hearing, we can go through and do a bit more of a media blast and get it on our Facebook and front porch forum and and make sure we hit as many of these as we can help, help get the word out. Yeah, I think it'll help that, you know, once, once we vote, we can have a, yeah, an updated memo that's more informative. And then, yeah, put it, put it a higher profile. I think that's, that's a good point, John. Sounds like, sounds like we're good on number two. Here. Yeah, I don't, I don't have anything for changing myself. So before we move on, is there even good on number two then? Okay. So the third one is the biggest as far as public reaction. Map change on or field streets to change the, some parcels on the east side of the street from in you are to and rural to res nine. I have a few, I have a few takeaways just generally about this. And I think it's for one, I actually feel like this whole thing exposed that when we went to went through and redid the zoning a while back that I think there were some holes we were aware of, like I'm aware that the zoning is not in what I think ideal shape on that side of the river in that area. Because I see that as an area that has access to public transportation, some like bus routes and it has access to downtown. It's kind of on the edge of what's walkable to downtown could be considered part of the downtown if things were done right. So it seems like it's underdeveloped for what the city's needs are. And at the same time, there's a lack of parks over there and we've and that's come up in our park discussions when we were going through the city plan redo. I think we are aware that that's like I think John at one point mentioned where he lives like near the middle school. There's an overabundance of park access and then other places like the neighborhoods over there, there's not a lot of park access. So I think I feel like those those sort of weaknesses that we were kind of already aware of came up in this. I think there's a need for open space and parks over there. And there's also a need, I think, for the zoning to reflect that it's an opportunity, an area where development could be useful. It's my general reactions. What do you, what do you guys think about number three? I've got a question for the. People who are involved in the previous zoning update. Why was this one, and I have the same question, not to like raise everybody's alarm bells, but I have the same question for Saban's pastor. Why were these zoned rural to begin with? When we never intended them to be rural forever. My perspective is that zoning remake was large, which is largely based off of trying to make the zoning look like the real world right now. It was, I, that's the way I see it. And I'm glad you really asked that because I've been kind of wanting to get this off my chest. So to speak, I feel like when we did that, when we did that, we were like trying to catch things up because the zoning was. It got behind it got behind it became like really closed off and like a tool to like keep things as they are. And so that's that redo was to catch things up with reality somewhat. So, so, because, so Mike did his thing where it was like to catch things up to 90% conformance, right? But it wasn't super forward thinking, I don't think. I don't, I don't think like it was just to catch it up. And so we caught these areas up, but there's these areas where it makes a lot of sense for a lot more housing to go in some places. But since it hasn't happened yet, that zoning redo didn't catch it up. You know what I mean? Yeah. John, what do you have to say you were around? Yeah, so for savings fasher, that's not what the planning commission recommended. It's what the city council changed it to. I think there was some public pressure to. Down zone that. Into a number of different districts. The. The. Neighborhood new neighborhood PUD was sort of an attempt to. To address the concerns being articulated, which are similar to those, I think we're currently hearing. Was, was around access to trails and open space. So we were trying to find a way they weren't actually around density or anything that had to do with housing. They were just. The idea was, you know, there's. A lot of people didn't want to lose access or they saw an opportunity to gain access to a net. Potentially a network of trails and open space. So we were trying to find a way like how do we facilitate. The creation of those networks and open spaces while not putting these arbitrary limits on. So we were trying to find a way to do that. So we were trying to find a way to do that. So we were trying to find a way to do that. So we were trying to find a way to develop. Development. So. But in, you know, the. We're saving as fast. Sure. It's not what the. The planning commission recommended. It's, it's what was changed. And as for the. North field. Property. It never. It never as far as I can remember came up. In discussion. When you're, when we're. You know, you can see how. How that can be a flawed logic unless we're being purposeful about. Identifying an area that we want an increase in future development. Make the thinking around that property was. It's. Has some excess, some challenges with regard to. The. Apography and accessibility. No one was proposing to. Develop it. And it had not been part of any. Conversation compared to a few other high profile. So it just. Came originally proposed like that. No one really asked for. For different. And there wasn't any discussion around it. Yeah. And I think, I think there's, I think the public should be, they should be. You know, At least they don't have so much time. You know, so it's like. Things like this, like actually exposed. Things that maybe should have been obvious when. Going through it. Yeah. I think there's other Northfield streets around. Other other places where we. There could be some good development, but you got to catch the zoning up and allow it. I think it was already in there. Yeah. I think it was under the B. The press view chain zoning. Was that part of the. Previous zoning rewrite, or was that. Yeah. Yeah, it was under the zoning. It was there. We've made some tinkering with it. At some point, but. It was, it was already in there. Cause it had already gone through and I believe in act 250. It was proposed to be subdivided. Already had plans for extending sewer and water in there. So I think there's a reason for that. But. I think that's something we've assumed at some point, this is going to have sewer and water extended into it. So, you know, rural is any place that doesn't have access to sewer and water. So. A couple of these parcels made it in. Yeah, I guess that's, that's something I didn't realize. So. As soon as, as soon as a developer. are intending to bring sewer and water in is when we might make these changes. It just seems sort of a confusing process to me. I guess. Yeah, I mean, we should, in theory, and this will probably and hopefully should come up as we talk about our land use plan, is to start looking to the future of where we want to draw. I mean, I hate to use the word urban growth boundaries, but a lot of times we have to decide where we should stop our urban, so that way we don't have just sprawling sewer and water. We don't have sprawling sewer and water, so it hasn't been an issue to have that conversation. But at a certain point, you have to kind of have that discussion of, okay, how far out do we run the sewer and water out Elm Street? Do we care if it went all the way to, all the way to the end of the town line, or should there be areas in Montpelier that are kept at lower density? We should have those conversations and not kind of play it on a case-by-case basis. But I think until we get to that conversation, we're kind of, as Kirby said, we did a lot to get our zoning up to matching what's on the ground. And a lot of the discussion was, a lot of the opposition we got was, this is going to change the character of our neighborhoods. And so by just matching what's on the ground, we could kind of really quickly put that discussion to bed. I think we do, it's very important for us to start having those conversations with the community about how can we increase the densities of some of our neighborhoods? Because we do, we have the capacity, we have the sewer capacity, we have the water capacity, we have police and fire capacity, we have school capacity. We can either add more density to our existing neighborhoods or we could run sewer and water out to these next levels. And that's really the question of, if we're going to have more housing, where do we want it? What's the best for our community? These farther out are probably less walkable and bikeable. Getting more density in town is going to be, the public discussion I think we need to have. But that's, that was going to be the next discussion. We had to get through the first discussion of it. Let's at least get the zoning to match what's on the ground. So we stopped having 65, 70% of our parcels being non-conforming and everybody having to go to hearings to do anything. And in many times not being able to do it. So that was get through the first step. Now we're in a position to start having some good conversations, I think, and I hope that we'll be able to have. And hopefully have a good look at our land use discussion about trying to look ahead to go through and say, where is it appropriate for us to start proposing zoning changes that would go through and reflect, as Kirby said, not reflecting what's on the ground, but reflecting where things could be. You know, what should the old golf course be? What should some parts of Saban's pasture be that are currently zoned rural? I think those are important conversations to get to when we're doing the land use plan. Yeah. Thanks, Mike. That's helpful. And I just want to second that that's a really important conversation because the character of the neighborhood complaint does not, I do not understand it. And I need, I have not yet heard like explanation of, you know, what it is actually the problem. And so it leads me to believe it's stuff that's not, we're not going to make policy around. So I really want to have that conversation. I'm just, Kirby, just really want to have that conversation. About what, like, about? Yeah, about what we, about this forward-looking thing. And like, when people come in and they tell us that, like, this is going to be, you know, like, I have notes from the hearing and there's just some, some of the concerns that I heard, I just don't, I just don't understand because I'm not following what they're telling me. And so, and I, and when people say it's going to change the character of the neighborhood, I just like, I want to dig into that. And I want to know what, what exactly they're talking about, about the character of the neighborhood. And like how, yeah. So if this can be part of our land use chapter, that's great. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Oh, and I was just going to add to on John's comment about making it like easy and accessible. Let's take notes about what we do for this so that we can do the same thing or improve upon it again for the city plan process, because we're going to need a really robust outreach process for that as well. Yeah, that's a good point. So as far as number three goes, I mean, I'm, I'm open to us maybe modifying that what we do here based on some concerns in the neighborhood. I mean, I, I agree that there's a need for open space, for instance. So whatever zoning change we, we do, I think we need to be able to tell city council that we feel good about whatever happens in this area that there will be open space. How do we ensure that? Do we own land over there? Does the city own land over there? I mean, somebody made a good point. Yeah, can someone explain to me how we would do that through the zoning because someone made a good point at the meeting of that this property owner could revoke their right to walk on that land tomorrow and we could do nothing about it. So I don't think leaving it as rural is an option. For, you know, preserving open space. Yeah, I guess if I can just jump in, it's it's actually, you know, gets to unconstitutional to be able to try to use zoning to allow public access. You know, I think we have a number of tools and a lot of times planners included. They, they, they try to get too much out of the zoning and it's, you know, sometimes there's right and wrong and better tools to do what we want to do. And I think, and I think working with our parks director on, you know, kind of connecting our parks director with, you know, with Zach and his project and trying to build towards a project and a process that would make that happen to be able to identify a part of that parcel that the city will buy or get an option to buy, I think is the best, the best way of reaching that goal because even if we did, you know, with this came up with savings pasture, you know, even if we required clustering down at the bottom and left the top open space, we can't through zoning require public access to that open space. It just means it's not built on, which is why these conservation ones work good for protecting natural resources, wetlands, steep slopes, because we're not actually giving permission for people to use it. We have a governmental interest in making sure people don't build in the wetlands for water quality, flood storage, and a number of reasons. That's why we protect it, but we can't give public access to it because that's, that extends beyond what we can do under the U.S. Constitution. So it becomes tricky, but we can work in a public private partnership, which I think is what Zach wants to do with this project is to be able to build towards a win-win solution, and what he needs to make his side win is to be resnigned. And if he's got that, then we've got the ability to cluster and be able to then work on plan B. And I think it's unfortunate because as you said, the owner can leave it rural and just simply prohibit any development. They could log it flat. They could, they could subdivide it into 27 parcels, you know, or whatever, 20 parcels and put individual houses on it. You know, simply saying it's going to stay rural does not mean it's going to stay unbuilt. I think if our goal is to have a park up there, and I think Zach wants to get a park up there, our parks director wants to get a park up there, city council would want to get a park up there. I think there's, everybody wants to get a park up there, but to try to go and figure out how to get the zoning to shoehorn that in, I think is going to lead to disappointment because I don't think it's going to actually work that way. So to clarify what I was saying, I wasn't talking about public access. I really just meant open space, and I meant like, for instance, making sure that a project like the one that Habitat's talking about can go in there and doing it in a way in which that is possible and that more, that cluster development in general and that open space is like something that's available to be done up there is kind of what I was getting at. But I love what everyone's saying about the park thing too because I think whether this Habitat project happens or not, we need to have some discussions about parks over there, maybe this parcel, maybe somewhere else, maybe both is a great idea. But I wasn't necessarily talking about public access there. Well, I also think, I was just going to ask Mike, if he thinks that like as proposed that it achieves like kind of what we're all talking about or if there could be improvements to really be able to assure the neighbors that whatever change we make is only going to be for the good for them because it's going to mean that it's more likely that there'll be open space, possibly open public access. But as you said, that's not guaranteed unless the city buys it. Yeah, I think the message to the neighbors is, you know, certainly if the zoning change isn't there and you know, Zach has to abandon the project then the neighbors haven't gotten the park. And there's, we have no connections with anybody to advance a project because we have a Burlington property owner and, you know, maybe we could work with, have the parks director working with the, you know, the reach out and see if they could build a relationship to go and to develop some park land up in there. But I think the easier path is when we have an existing developer who's interested in the site and is interested in creating a park and is, you know, in need of the resources and it would benefit their project to have us, you know, be able to contribute to the project by, you know, purchasing, you know, if we purchase the park from him then he's got that cash on hand to use on his project. And I think there, you know, there are two options or win-win and kind of lose-lose and I think having the project fail is putting it back in the court of, well, there's still no park and there's still no proposal for a park. And it becomes a little bit more challenging to figure out how we would make that work. But it's not impossible, you know, I think Park's director's been doing an awesome job with what he's been working on so far and I think he would be able to get to it. But he's got a couple of projects on his plate right now that he's working on. So do we have an idea if the, oh, sorry. Go ahead, Arianna. Yeah, I was gonna let her take her shot because it was my fault. She didn't get to talk. That's okay. Well, I really support just moving forward as proposed by Mike. And I guess, you know, I definitely would support, you know, seeing a park plan up there and that's exciting to hear that, you know, the park's director is thinking about that. But I would, you know, I would also think I, my understanding of this parcel is it does have a lot of steep slopes. So, you know, if the neighbors feel worried about, you know, we rezone this, the Habitat Project doesn't work out, somebody else could come in. Well, yeah, somebody else could come in, but they're, I think they're very unlikely to develop on the majority of the parcel. As if my sort of basic understanding of the parcel is correct. So, you know, I don't know if that's a reassurance to the neighbors or what, but just to put that in there. Okay. I was just gonna ask Mike, if you had any idea if the proposal would work with the new neighborhood PUD? I don't know, I don't know the conditions off the top of my head that, or the specifics. The different PUDs have some different hangups with them. I think the hope is that certainly with the new PUDs, with the general PUDs, the clustering would be available. But I don't know specifically what would be the hangups from using the new neighborhood. And it requires a mix of types of units. It requires that 40% of the area, the exact term, undeveloped or, yeah, set aside as open space. And there's, you know, provisions around which parts of it should be, but, you know, looking at that, that would not be very hard to meet, especially given the percentage of the parcel that's just encumbered by some very steep slopes. So some of it comes into these other questions around a mix of type, types of housing units. Would that be problematic or not? Well, I think the issue, one of the issues, I mean, not insurmountable issues is that new neighborhood is not allowed in the rural district. No, I know, but I'm just saying if you were to rezone it and the new neighborhood PUD were to remain, would that be a problem for this project? Yeah, that would be getting into the details with Zach as to what they're proposing very specifically and whether it would meet all of these rules because it would be, as this is written right now, there's a proposal to strike number two, which is a requirement. He would be required to do it this way in a new neighborhood, as opposed to having it as an option and using just a general PUD to cluster. You know, I think some people had pointed out that, you know, there could be as many as 270 units that would be possible and he wasn't looking at needing 270, but there is, you know, if it stays rural, he only has 27 and that's not enough units. I always hate to throw this one out because I hate this zoning designation, but there is zoning 24,000, which would not be as low as one. I don't think anyone's concern is actually the density or the zoning, right? It's protecting the open space. It's, yeah. So if this gets them the number of units they need and they're going to be open to preserving or designating that much area as park anyway, and that might be a way of saying like, you know, moving forward, this ensures that there'll be a partner matter who tries to develop it unless they go very low density, then they wouldn't be required if they're under 40 units to the new neighborhood PUD. I'm just, I was just wondering if you knew whether or not that would be an issue because that could be a way of addressing everyone's concerns. Yeah, and I can't, I don't, off the top of my head, know what would be the barriers. I honestly haven't been, I've known only generally what is being envisioned and not specifically what's being proposed. I think part of that is in their next six, nine months of feasibility is kind of going through, you know, they're thinking they need around 50 units in order to be financially feasible to cover the costs of extending and building roads and sewer and water and kind of making the project work. That's how they're kind of getting to this needing about 50 units. And, you know, maybe it grows to more but they're not looking to grow spatially because most of that, you know, as Ariane pointed out, it's mostly unbuildable without great expense. I mean anything with enough money but if you're looking at building affordable housing, it's not going to be in these hinterlands. So I think that's, we would have to do a little bit more homework on that to determine whether simply changing the zoning but keeping the required but in would satisfy that. Yeah, that's an interesting thought. I guess at this point, we're just going to have to be comfortable with the possibility of a new neighborhood PD going in or the building was taking place without it since we don't have that info. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't understand that. So, John, are you talking about changing the zoning but making some requirement for new neighborhood PD or can I, I don't understand? That's existing right now. So if we were to, right now in the new zoning proposal, we're proposing to get rid of the new neighborhood requirement. Oh, okay, sorry. So if we were to up zone this but the new neighborhood requirement didn't go away, I'm just wondering if that creates an issue or not for anyone. Understand why we're proposing to remove it and there could be some issues with it but at the same time, if the project would be able to, it doesn't impact anything of what's being proposed then it's one way of saying, listen, like we're giving them the units they need but in turn, there also needs to be a certain percentage of this land that needs to be set aside as a park but we don't know. I think that's a good thing to keep in mind maybe we can vote it out a certain way but if that information is made available later before city council, maybe it could be factored in so I think it's a good thing to flag at least. I have a question and this goes to just concern over potential challenges to any changes we make. The city plan says where an entirely new neighborhood has created the existing characteristics of adjacent neighborhoods shall be used as a model to allow commercial uses or to allow commercial uses to make use, I don't know, there's a typo here or something, to allow commercial uses are integrated with residential uses in ways that maintain neighborhood character while allowing more home and neighborhood-based economic activities. Mike, do you feel like any changes that we would make if we made this proposed change that it would meet that? I mean I'm not sure when that particular phrase was written whether it was under the old zoning or under the new zoning but I would think we're not cutting it out to be a separate zoning. We are matching this neighborhood to the adjacent neighborhood as in the zoning. I think just topography is going to make it difficult for us to match uses and match everything significantly. I think what they're trying to do is maybe look at ones like the Harrison Ave change where you're going to make a zoning change and neighborhood change and you want to make it consistent with those surrounding it. And I think that in that case that meets it. Same with Heaton Street I think is we reflected a little bit of the fact that it is not consistent with its existing neighborhood. So that's why we're kind of separating it out to treat it uniquely. And I think this would be a case I think we would still be fine with because we're not creating a separate neighborhood that's plunking in between. We're keeping the rules the same. I think we'll be on solid ground. Okay. Of course seven attorneys you'll get seven different opinions but I'm comfortable in my position saying that I think this is fine. Yeah I feel good about being on the record about this is something that was on our mind and just stating that in our deliberations that we are comfortable with making a zoning change and we believe that the existing characteristics of adjacent neighborhoods would be like a model for this. But with the caveat that Mike said that the topography around here is really challenging. So it's not going to be exact and we're also aware of that but we're comfortable that we're following the city plan the best we can. Yeah probably a better example would be you know Saban's pasture as it gets developed its neighborhood it's changed. But at the same time we're trying to make it consistent with those other properties on Berry Street. It's kind of meant to integrate with that existing neighborhood. You know yes it's changing yes it's in a new neighborhood but it's meant to integrate with the uses and buildings and bulk and messing and it's kind of meant to integrate in. That's different that's that has direct connection to the street. This one is going to be more challenging because it's going to have a long access road to get up to it because it's got a bunch of unbuildable part before you get to the buildable area. So it's going to be a more challenging place to kind of use that as a guidepost. Thanks. Do we have do we have other comments about this? I think that the point John made is definitely worth noting. I didn't I don't I don't hear him saying that he wants to like wait to vote on whether we gain that information. If we can yeah we can kind of decide that afterwards probably kind of if we can always make make decisions and not necessarily necessarily vote it out tonight and kind of put it in Zax he's he's on the line listening so we can I can sit down and have a conversation with him tomorrow and we can you know see where let him take some time to think about how much of a problem that could be because I don't think on the fly we can we can reply we could certainly you know make some decisions tonight that says this is where we're we're thinking of going and then he can come back in two weeks and give some input to go through and say yeah I think I can make that work or I actually I really need the flexibility because of x y and z and and then you guys can make a decision with that input but at least he'll have a couple of you know two weeks to kind of go and chew on what the proposal would be. Okay yeah we can decide that at the end. Okay does anyone want to say anything else on item three before we go on? I I did want to go over one thing real quick just for the for the record again as you were talking about legal legal stuff we did get the North Northfield Street zoning change petition which technically you know it doesn't work I mean it's it's not like a zoning thing but it was a petition they put together and they had six comments and I think some we've talked about some of them but I feel if we got a petition with you know 30 40 names on it we we should probably at least just touch on the six points one they were complaining it was this this was going to be spot zoning because it was changing it for the benefit of one legally I don't think that's that's an issue you know usually spot zoning is talking about it's not even a thing it's coming up kind of a cloak wheel thing we talk about spot zoning but usually what spot zoning is looking at is is treating a similarly a similar parcel differently from those parcels around it so you know they're they have the same character they have the same thing but we're going to we're going to cut carve them out for preferential or deferential treatment and I think in this case we're not yes we are changing one part technically changing two parcels but we're changing one parcel in particular but we're matching it to the neighborhood next to it we're not carving it out for special treatment we're actually carving it out to treat it in the same way as it's abutting properties so I think I think that argument I don't think really stands up and you know again I'm not an attorney but I think we're fine there they commented on some of the ideals within the master plan including protecting hill sides and ridge lines and accessible well maintained open space this comes up enacting zoning to protect hill sides and bridge lines um and this area recommended for biodiversity conservation area designation and I don't believe it actually is designated as one of the areas for biodiversity and I don't I don't disagree that the master plan does talk about those other pieces but again I think as we talked about earlier the open space issue is is an important one but I think it's one that has to be addressed outside of the zoning because you know we can protect open space but we can't make it publicly accessible and I think what we all want from the city council on down to the residents is to to get some parkland over there I would I would add to that Mike that what we're trying to do here is we are trying to achieve that we are trying to um in a sustainable way figure out zoning that's going to to work for open space so we are actually proactively doing the opposite of what that's claiming I believe yeah so the third point they wanted to make was that they felt the infrastructure wasn't available to support it including the Montpelier schools are overcrowded we did pull some data to go and show that the the schools are not overcrowded they they have plenty of capacity left that's that is not an issue um they said with the additional boves project that's being proposed there wouldn't be enough um school capacity and according to the school board that's just not the case so um with the data uh and that cherry street is a steep and narrow road and can't handle additional traffic and um you know the habitat project isn't proposing an access through cherry street and if it is then it would be addressed um in the drb hearing you know we're just looking at at the zoning in general um but the proposal my understanding is is coming in on northfield street so I don't think those are are ones that are significant um for the proposed zoning changes reflects a continuing and significant lack of equity in Montpelier um and this is specifically going towards um not receiving public amenities we get a burden of the traffic infrastructure higher speed limits we're on the wrong side of the tracks um and the land that's being proposed is one of the few that could be used to produce an enhanced public amenity to address equity issues and and I don't think any of us disagree with that um it's come up in our conversations with the green print in the discussions of parks in the discussions of natural resources that this this side of town needs needs to get a park um and as I think we discussed earlier I think this is actually our best case to get a park is actually to rezone it and let this project move forward so we can take advantage of the opportunity to get a park put in there potentially um their fifth comment was that the proposed change to a more intensive use will greatly impact the view scapes uh developing ridge lines again um the joining areas are within the valley and the zoning changes affect primarily the ridge top um I'm not sure these based on the length again that's kind of getting into the specifics of the project there's certainly a lot of conditions that the drb could put on a project to ensure that um certain areas are not um logged or cut to protect the fact that the you can build on top of a ridge line and if you don't cut down the trees you're not going to see what's up there um what becomes an issue from a ridge line of view scape standpoint is when somebody goes up and you build you know basically mansions on the top of the hill and everybody wants good views so you cut down all the trees to make sure you get great views um and certainly that can be addressed through the the public process um and then there was issues about number six was about steep slopes um and storm water on neighboring properties and I think this again we we have some very in 2018 we adopted some very strict storm water rules and these are only getting stricter at the state so I think whatever um habitat or whoever is developing this is going to have to address significant storm water rules for whatever impervious cover they put up there um you know there's two levels once at the state and if you are exempt from the state then we cover you under our zoning so I think they've they've got they they they laid out their concerns I just wanted to make sure because it was a signed petition that we'll kind of make sure we've we've heard what their comments were um you know I opined on a couple of them but if you guys want to discuss those further before moving on I wanted to at least put that out there I like what you said Mike I'm glad I'm glad we have that in the record I would add that um you know this is not an isolated change this is part of you know we have an incremental longer-term plan to do more um in this area um we're working on the city plan to do more and they'll in the very long run in this area and this is all part of that same work um so I don't think any of the planning commission's making any change here that we think's isolated or or you know one-time thing this is this is part of a longer-term thing anybody else have anything to add for number three okay let's go on to four and find it proposal to reduce the side setbacks and res nine from 15 to 10 anyone have anything on this I think I think I think it's good I live in a neighborhood that I think is uh higher density than that I live in the meadows our side setbacks I think they're probably non-conforming but there's like hardly any side setbacks in a lot of places and it's a fine neighborhood just add that aesthetically no comments number five change the setback change the setbacks on property lens and budding the rail line this is the rail line issue we heard about that it's everyone seem fine with the proposed change there we did get an amended response from alicia about the what their suggested language could include which was one a setback of five feet will be permitted along individual property lines that but railroad properties to a setback minimum of zero will be permitted along individual property lines that about rail lines if an access agreement is secured between the railroad property and the property to be developed from maintenance of said property such agreement will need to be executed prior to the city of montpellier zoning permit issuance so that was some suggested draft language that they had so I think I had put in there that it had to be five feet because we really couldn't allow a zero foot setback but they they talked to the state and she sent the context of the email so I've got the email proof that these were actually communications with the state so I'm confident that the state's on board with this proposal if we want to amend it anybody have anything on this one okay we'll move along so are we agreeing to amend to alicia's proposal I was brought up in the hearing wasn't it I mean I thought we had that at a time so I it seemed reasonable to me to include that okay yeah yeah thanks for the clarity though like yeah that was my my assumption was yeah I know that this proposal at one point kind of kind of updated yeah okay the next one is uh PUD language so number six was new planned unit development rules for general PUD and footprint PUD requests my first question for you Mike is you you sent us the language a while ago it was a seven page document with some strike throughs and some highlights it has it changed since then no I haven't made any edits to it okay do you want to do you want to give us the summary of um so the real quick summary is that um so most communities have a general PUD most of them don't have specific PUDs so um you know just a general PUD allows somebody to you know two acres owning ten acres you got five parcels you could cluster the five parcels each one gets one acre and then you've got either one that owns the big parcel or a separate open space parcel that is either owned by the community something along those lines so um that's generally how a general PUD would work you're not looking at a density bonus you don't have very many requirements but it gives developers the ability to start to to shift and move stuff based on topography um and and it's generally just a good a good tool in the toolbox for developers to be able to work with um again these are subdivisions you're really talking about clustering building lots and deciding how to allocate the amount of development on them um so that's that's kind of how the general the footprint PUD is just kind of it's it's a you don't hear about it very often but in in projects it comes up a lot and really where you'll see a lot of our condominiums where you were going to own your townhouse and you own you own including the walls and roof and everything else you own the townhouse but you share your parking you share your recreation you share um storm water and all of these other things so you're still going to pay a condominium fee um as opposed to you know a true condominium where you might you know you own everything from the paint in you don't own the building itself you you kind of own um a piece of the property so really where the footprint PUD comes in is where you're actually going to subdivide parcels and cut out little pieces of land so if you're subdividing land then you need to have this PUD and there as an option and again it usually comes up it will come up uh I think it would come up a lot if somebody decided to do a tiny home subdivision um you might go through and and subdivide and you might even have something where you you have your own parking space but really you're going to own a very small piece of land maybe a thousand square feet to plunk down your your tiny home and a little place to park a car and everything else gets shared your your access road your storm water and you're going to probably pay a maintenance fee to a condominium association but you own your house and you can sell your house and improve your house because you own the house and that small piece of land as opposed to you know um I don't know the exact nature of of the ones up on the hill but you know some of the other condos you you kind of own the unit but you know you you don't you can't go out and um you know you're not responsible for the roof the condo association is responsible for your roof and you're not responsible for you know because you don't actually own the building you kind of own the right you don't you own a piece of the building um but not the land so that's kind of where things start to differ um legally it's it's a little bit clear when you get into land use attorneys they kind of understand the difference between the two but really functionally the difference is are you subdividing the land to create the condo or are you not subdividing the land to create the condo um and this would make sure we've got all the flexible tools out there that we can make um but again there's no density bonus because you're not doing anything above and beyond there's no density bonus in there okay does anyone have any questions or anything for this one there wasn't a whole lot of comment about this area but as we're looking at our goal of increasing housing the more flexibility you can provide developers to be creative some of them don't need the density bonus if they need it there's ways that they can develop to get that but this just allows them if they don't need the density bonus some more flexibility yeah this is a bigger question but I feel like we have this problem the PUDs don't have enough of an incentive yet um so I don't know I don't know what to do but because I'm not educated enough in the area to know like how how can we I don't know how can we get more interest in using PUDs I think a little bit of it is is we're kind of bite ourselves um and this happened with the conversation last time in 2018 when we did the zoning is you you kind of have to take one or two choices savings being the perfect example the planning commission proposal was we're going to require PUDs and then we're going to set a low zoning density for the entire 100 acres there therefore the developer is going to want to do higher density by the by the road and they're gonna have to then do the PUD to cluster and leave open space so that gives us the ability to kind of um to kind of work it out that way but as soon as you kind of match the densities to the ground and say okay well down in the lower pasture we're going to make it 20 you know 14 or 27 units an acre there's no incentive to to cluster because you have all the density you need so you kind of have to make your choice you we're either going to make densities low and then um artificially low and then have PUDs in there so that way it encourages people to go to do the PUDs or we just set the density where we think they should be in the first place in which case nobody's going to probably need a density bonus in which case nobody's going to want to actually do a PUD so I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing that people are willing to build to our densities um so I guess that would be my I think they're actually are I mean they're Montpelier has some pretty significant opportunities I think the reality is is that the economics haven't made sense for people to come in here and build the prices people were willing to pay based on the cost of labor and materials and that's changing and that's why you're gonna you're seeing more people starting to think about this and starting to you know but it's takes a long it takes a long time to get these things in process so I don't know I think time will tell I think you've actually done a really good job thanks Gabe I was I was thinking along the lines of like if if we could come up with some sentence other than density linked sentence um I've been but I haven't done a lot of research about about whether such a thing exists so and I think PUDs are also tied very much as I mentioned they're tied to subdivisions and we just simply in general don't get a lot of subdivisions when we get projects that happen even the large projects like you know the boats project that isn't going yet but you know has been discussed you know at at length um you know that's 40 units on a single parcel so there's there's no real subdivision there there's they're subdividing that parcel off from the Econolodge to create a lot to build this project but you know usually PUDs are going to come into play when we're talking about you know taking taking a Sabin's pasture and cutting it into you know 30 40 lots um but actually the proposal that's for Sabin's pastures you know really to only make maybe eight nine lots because they want to put in big you know bigger bigger structures um you know we want to 12 to 14 unit buildings so you know if we get 10 parcels we can do 120 units so that's that's the scale of what they're looking at which again PUDs just don't um necessarily invite that um usually you're going to see a lot more PUDs in areas that are you know a fast-growing Franklin County um where somebody's got a 30 40 acre parcel that was an old farm that they want to subdivide it to single family homes that's where they start to kind of make sense on the PUDs kind of work. Anyone else have anything on this number? Number seven we will require PUD language in new neighborhood and conservation PUDs. Give a refresher on this one. I was going to say I was the one who's thrown this out multiple times um and it's and it's survived my endless putting these things out um so yeah I mean again my thing is I find that they that the requirement ends up being a disincentive you know if we require 40 units then somebody may be more likely to come in and just do 39 in order to avoid the requirement when we want more housing but either they they can't make it work because of the rules or they simply don't want to you know their their project idea doesn't match that so they simply do a smaller project and I think it's it can be a disincentive it can be an issue and I think the conservation PUD in particular has a number of administrative things that um make it a nightmare um because it's counting units over 10 years so um you know uh I own I own 50 acres uh I sell I subdivide and I sell John 20 of them John then turns around and subdivides and makes eight more parcels or we'll go 10 more parcels now he's tripped into conservation PUD so all the conservation all the everything that's happened over the last 10 years gets rolled in so I only subdivided one parcel but I'm now caught because he subdivided further he did 10 10 units which tripped us into the required conservation which means 40 of the parcel now must be conserved so am I now losing 40 of my property even though I'm not the one who did the subdivision but I'm one of those 10 parts but I'm part of that 10-year subdivision um it's it just has these these funky things and then then who's got the conservation requirement and who's got the development rights and if you don't use all the development rights who's got the remaining development rights um you know uh there's there's still 30 developable units still out there how many of them does John have how many of them do I have they're just all these unanswered issues with the way it was structured it's making an assumption that you're kind of one developer doing everything but the reality is I just subdivided 20 acres and gave them to John because I thought he was going to go and you know put in a little you know miniature pony farm and next thing I know he's subdividing it and putting in condos and I'm now wrapped up into a conservation PUD and how much rights do I have and that was the complaint actually that Dan Richardson had who's a local attorney now with Burlington but he was a local attorney on the DRB and was on the city council and he opposed the conservation PUD because he thought it was it was just fraught with these administrative issues that we're going to if and when it gets used it's going to end up catching somebody and it's going to be a legal a legal mess just because it doesn't account for enough of the factors so that was my concern specifically with conservation but I felt the the new neighborhood PUD as a requirement can also come in as it did for Saban's pastor because they wanted to kind of do this neighborhood of 12 unit buildings to kind of match you know this 8 10 12 unit multi family housing and it has a requirement that you need to have no more than 75 percent so they were going to have to build 25 percent single family homes so if they did you know a hundred multifamily or if they did 75 multifamily they were going to have to do 25 single family homes and they didn't want to do any single family homes but they were going to be required to do single family homes because they were pushed into the new neighborhood PUD those are the types of issues that come up those requirements that all of a sudden you're like yeah but I don't want to do single family homes well you've got to you got to make 25 percent of them single family homes um and and I you know that was you know and and they had some issues with how the buildings were oriented they had to be oriented certain ways to the street but you know why wouldn't you orient your buildings to the south which is what Saban's pastor was complaining about we want to orient our buildings to the south yes this road's gonna cut and go straight up the hill but we don't want to be facing sideways we want to be facing the valley we want to be facing Barrie street but the rules are going to require us to turn all of our buildings and face them so you see the sides of the buildings and so those were the number of the design considerations that makes sense when you're looking at them on paper but when you start to apply the rules in in topography and in context you kind of end up deciding maybe that's not resulting in the best outcome anyone have any comments about this one everyone so that means everyone's everyone's okay with removing these requirements Mike you Mike you mentioned that you brought this up before and it was shot down is that what you were saying yeah we uh this was proposed uh actually last february we had this this come up I had pushed to remove the requirements when it was passed in 2018 and the proposal came up again in last february because it was part of the in order for Saban's pastor project to move forward they had to have a number of zoning changes made because the zoning and I think there were some changes to traffic requirements but one of them was we had to remove the PUD requirements so what the planning commission and city council eventually did was to very narrowly just cut out so the riverfront used to be a required district so if you're in the riverfront and you're doing 40 units then you have to meet these rules and we just plucked riverfront out of the requirement but left it in effect for all the rest of the town and we kind of said we would revisit it as it comes up and so uh being that we were talking about adding in general PUDs and adding in these other PUDs I inserted that one back in for reconsideration again um and again we'll have to evaluate whether it does or doesn't impact Zach's project afterwards if if we make this change does that make does that make look the thing John was saying earlier mute though because it would um that'd be the question is do we keep it in and evaluate it um there's no particular project sitting out there right now that this new neighborhood PUD will prohibit um you know we can go with John's proposal give it two weeks and have Zach review that and we can decide whether or not to remove the new neighborhood PUD requirement in two weeks I mean if we're ready to move things forward I don't know if there's a way to add a note to push that conversation to city council and have uh Zach or others you know this was again an attempt at a previous planning commission to try to find some kind of middle ground or compromise given what we were hearing and what the projects were proposed um like I do think some of what you're saying was maybe not completely accurate there would never be a requirement for 25 percent to be single family homes they just um no more than 75 percent of the units can be the same type so um that could be a duplex you know um the idea being they'd the planning commission at the time and based on the feedback we wanted was they didn't want just a bunch of monolithic buildings that were exactly the same being put up yeah that's true it does say not of the same type so it wasn't saying they had to be single family and with regard to the 40 percent with with all of these large parcels the reality is 40 percent of them are all probably undevelopable I mean 40 percent of those those parcels are probably undevelopable anyway if you look at slopes and wetlands and other features so that wasn't an issue for the developers but it sounds like maybe the requirement to uh have a certain percent of a mixed type of uh building unit the and then the you know there were I think other things that were also added the the solar oriented the solar orientation which I can't remember if it's part of this pv or where it is but you know I was maybe not a fan of it was um that that was included but given I think the the challenges of just developing anywhere in Montpelier it didn't seem like a seemed tricky so anyways I'll have to say I don't I don't want people to hold things up on my account but I do see it as a potential opportunity if if some of these things are going to be met anyway and it does ensure or does help address some of the underlying concerns that have been articulated it could be an option yeah and that was my thought too listening to the hearing was the pud's the use of a pud for the northfield street area would resolve the concerns plus a well like appropriate housing to be built and meet that need as well so I mean yeah I had the same I had the same thoughts about that might be an ideal solution to make everyone happy sounds like the project that was proposed on the other hand is very similar to what a pud would be at the very least whether whether we do what John was saying about about possibly you know checking in and finding out if pud's possible even if we don't end up like insisting on going that route it would might be useful to to learn from Zachariah that whether or what about the project would not fit with the pud rules I think that would be an important piece of information for us even if we voted out might be interested just to know just for our own knowledge like what what about it might inform us about what's lacking about the pud rules I don't know in general though John are you I mean how do you feel about in just in a vacuum the number number seven item here and making these changes like what do you think in your mind where the frozen columns that we're moving the especially the requirement for you know in any development over 40 units to have to follow this I guess again it gets at the uncertainty around how a property will be developed which is always going to be there you know you can't you can't legislate good design or zone to make sure you get a great project right like and you can get rid of zoning and get an unbelievable project and you could try to craft the you know most specific detailed zoning and end up with with one that a few people like and this was trying to get at the primary concerns were articulated around you know where everything this whole property is going to just get paved over and we're going to lose lose access or you know these opportunities to create these network connections are going to be gone so if you remove that does it increase or decrease the likelihood of either of this happening I'm not sure but previously that seemed to work for people now it sounds like it doesn't I haven't read it in detail enough to know what other you know every little thing starts to add up so I am a fan of if something there's no real purpose for something let's remove it so yeah I'd be okay with sending it to the city council and perhaps you know there is a footnote saying you might consider this based on some conversations with developers and understanding whether or not this is really problematic or we're getting the way of us meeting our housing goals or not the more ways we can give them ways to because the city city council will want to be responding to any concerns being articulated and if they can find ways to address them or if we have ways to tools to give them they can say you know we've heard you were we believe this should address it and great okay okay um for now let's let's move on and then at the end Leah let's get to these next few items and at the end we can decide whether we want to vote tonight or wait for more info for the relationship between number three and and number seven here um okay eight removal of residential density requirements for riverfront and res 1500 so this was the thing I had asked Mike to put in feedback we received was just I think people were wanted to know if we had an idea of what would happen with this I think the expectation is that nothing will really happen and I think that's meant to kind of the point of it is to say that if we can start backing away from using density so much that it's going to be a good thing it's going to help us have better conversations about planning and zoning um the only thing I can think of for because there was talks about studying it the only thing I could think of for studying this would be just to look at what was our experience with the downtown core when density caps were removed and whether there was subsequent development that exceeded those caps I think that is like a fair question and that's the closest thing to a study I can think of about what we would expect to happen with this change Mike do you happen to know the answer to that um no I mean those that there hasn't been density in the urban center for a long time so um I don't know how much that changed I do know um which I mentioned the the review which we don't I don't have the the report yet from congress of new urbanism and air but they did say you know they they think we have a good idea that is um just not quite ready to go because we need to have better design review rules that was their their comment yeah so we should be working in that direction but we really should do um admit whether it's by neighborhood or whether it's um something slightly larger doing a handful of neighborhoods to go through and say we want to adjust this area to remove the residential density so we should get better design rules I'm hoping we'll get more from CNU when we get the report but so which of these which what parts of these neighborhoods are not subject to design review because I've definitely assumed that they that they were subject to design review so residential 1500 not all of it is so I think if you get over near the pioneer apartments that's not design review um kind of over where John lives I think he's over that way there are parts of that that are residential 1500 but don't have um a lumus street um lumus street has half of lumus street is res 3000 the other half is res 1500 they are not in design review over there um there uh I want to say cedar street a couple of these um there there are quite a quite a few of them and then there's a lot of riverfront um almost all of river street is outside of design review um and that's all front um a lot I mean I think the design review goes out to granite street but beyond granite street granite shed lane uh caledonia spirits heading out that way is all outside of design review so there's significant significant portions that don't don't have the design review rules that other places do okay and all of all of downtown all the downtown court does have design review yep all verben center one and uh a good chunk of as I said berry berry street out to the uh out to granite street is in um and I think out out to the roundabout in a little bit past it but it only includes a part of it I think it goes out to the school but doesn't include the school so oh so there but sorry I mean specifically my question is do we currently have any any any place in in the city that that does not have a density cap and also does not have design review well it's just urban center one two and three we're we're running out of time I would think I would think we do everything currently in urban one two and three would also all be in design review I don't think without looking at the map I can't think of any of those that would be would be okay um so so what do people think about this like knowing that there's interest in pursuing this do we want to move forward now do we want to wait and work with the two NGOs that have reached out about the topic I think it's a cool endorsement of the whole idea that we have national NGOs interested in the same thing the same tree that we were barking up here but what do people think about it and I won't have her feelings if you guys want to put it aside um I have a question about like the eight two and eight three section that we would be wait sorry um yeah res 1500 districts the the green on the map the neon green right am I looking at the right thing um I'm wondering about we started a conversation earlier about parking minimums and I could you know if density shot up in those areas I could see a parking a street parking issue parking was not made available I don't know that I feel strongly enough to hold up the discussion I just still have thoughts about parking and we never really got anywhere on that so I don't know if that if I'm completing the two things or or not but we did have that conversation and already res 1500 does not have parking requirements great thank you I knew the downtown didn't have parking requirements downtown doesn't have downtown doesn't have parking requirements and res 1500 does not have a parking requirement and that was actually a proposal you guys made that was actually a proposal city council put in so it was kind of a one they threw in at the last second okay then good point any thoughts on this does that mean people are okay with with proceeding with this is like a incremental experiment and I don't see it as directly conflicting with anything that the NGOs are interested in looking at um I think it starts us down the path and then they can then we can go in and have whatever work we do with them kind of reconcile what what they would like to see with with you know with this change okay so not hearing any opposition going to move on okay minor technical fix it's are there any of these that people have concerns with signs changes for the dog park nothing okay remember 10 is the reserve we did get some written comments on that one just that way we make sure we reflect that on on number nine the technical yeah the gentleman um thomas weiss had his concerns which I think we had heard I just wanted to make sure we remembered he's made some comments about wanting to maintain the the create creating a right of solar access and you know he wanted it actually expanded not risk not contracted but I just wanted to point out we did get written comments that were forwarded to on those so the the soul the shading thing was in those technical fixes sorry I didn't yes because I I think didn't um Kate Stevenson also mentioned like you know keeping that in there for future solar installations I have to say I don't know like I I support generally you know restrictions that are easy to work with so to encourage development but I did feel a little bit confused about thinking about that issue whether like yeah it does seem good to plan for future solar development but on the other hand it's so hard to develop I don't want to keep a shading requirement that's really hard to work with so I'll just put out there that I was I was a little torn I guess on that one I'll mention my neighbors have a zero foot step back on my property but my solar panels are all shaded by the trees on the schoolyard so unless we're going to start requiring people to cut down their 60 foot white pines on that along their property boundary I don't know that this is going to do a whole lot for solar okay thank you that's helpful so my inclination to go ahead with it is feels better go ahead I thought there was I thought there was something that was going to remain having to do with like new solar or something yeah exist existing and permitted would be protected so if you were if there is an existing you know and again that's just from structures so if you've gotten existing solar panel on your roof and if somebody does a project that trips this requirement in other words you've got to do something significant to trip into this in the first place but when you do if you're building a new structure um and there is that solar panel that exists then then it will you you can end up impacting the project because you can't shade an existing or proposed or permitted solar project um so that was kind of unless you use trees unless you use trees then you can plant as many trees as you want um and exact your revenge for not being able to build your two-story house that would be some yeah hefty neighbor trolling you're like getting importing like redwoods and the popularity stuff yeah um okay so you're good Ariane sounds like okay and number 10 river hazard seems completely non-controversial you won't have anything on that okay so we've got nine minutes left uh what are our thoughts about about the idea we set aside do we do we do we want to vote now or do we want to wait to hear more about the pud possibilities with the northfield project i say we vote okay is anyone else i was gonna say i i still feel i i just haven't done enough of my homework on the pud i issue i still don't understand um wait what that is okay in a nutshell we could change it so that uh the zoning is is changed to allow a project but not that did not make it so that uh uh the pud wouldn't apply so this particular project or any larger project more than 40 units would have to do it as a pud yeah i guess oh okay if we don't if we don't wait if we spoke tonight the proposal is to also get rid of the pud requirement so so any project going in would not have to be pud and what right now what we don't know is uh whether the proposed project could do it that way or not so we shouldn't so we should wait and find information out if we're gonna try to go the pud requirement route okay well i'm i'm in support of moving forward with northfield street as proposed so i don't i think i'm okay with voting tonight then in that case yeah because the if we the pud if we made it apply to north north fielder we think we wouldn't um number seven then the removal of referred to the language and new neighborhoods and concert is that what's in conflict uh that would be on hold two because if we're gonna try to take the the pud approach to handling the number three issue then we we shouldn't change seven because that's that requirements part of that plan right okay i see um okay i was worried for a second it sounded more like spot zoning if we were gonna say well let's try to get this one like in order to address the concerns about parks which i think are obviously we've all agreed are relevant by the pud thing i was worried it was going to be but it um a little bit more spot zoning but maybe that's not the case my brain is like getting around it but barely i think mike is right that we're not anywhere any close to spot zoning with any of this because we're we're taking the whole area into account we're taking city needs into account this is not this is not about helping one landowner okay frankly i don't even know who the landowner is or anything about that it's just yeah you know i think we're far from it okay uh so marcella are you which side of it are you on voting now or not i'm fine the vote now okay i haven't heard from jeff or erin or john about that you guys have any feelings about that yeah we can do it now i'm like i said i'm fine to vote now the reality is no one we received zero comments on the puds so um like i said it could be worth mentioning to the city council that there is potential for an opportunity there if if it meets everyone's needs but if no one is asking for it then there's no no sense in i think i think you know we're gonna update the memo and be for that a lot i think that's pretty obvious mike knows that's what we want um i'd be fine with noting that that everyone else be fine with noting that that there's this pd avenue that's possible but just put that out there to the public and city council i mean along with like all the other stuff i mean it would just be yeah i guess i'm just concerned that what if we put that out there so again i apologize for my lack of understanding but if we put that out there and then the city council hears all these comments and says oh we should put a required pud in the northfield street parcel but maybe i'm not understanding something quickly i just i'm concerned about creating barriers for a development yeah i'm concerned about i'm concerned about if if we're not understanding it as well maybe it would be difficult to just maybe we should do the research if that's an actual question maybe maybe we ought to do or we mike would help but you know okay yeah i think we can cross that bridge later was we can find out more info and we can maybe ask you know mike to share the updated version of things and we can sign off on it because we should sign off on the memo that's being passed along the city council is that sound okay mike so the we're drafting things to make the change at number three to be res nine thousand we're going to we're going to continue with the recommendation to remove the requirements for new neighborhood and conservation but we're provide more information to the city council that reflects the fact that that we considered keeping new neighborhoods in at least for residential nine thousand as a requirement and if we did then a larger project would have to meet these requirements and then in the interim we can develop you know a certain amount have a certain amount of conversation with Zachariah about how much of an impact that would have but what gets recommended to council is not it is to remove that requirement but yeah council is aware that they could certainly put that back in if they feel that it won't impact that project and it won't if they're if they're concerned about what we're recommending is going to uh is going too far is not cautious enough or whatever their reasons are to let them know of an alternative we considered but but yeah by voting this out we're we're saying that we are comfortable making the change as proposed and we believe that it lines up with the city plans goals and is a needed thing yeah and usually I mean you guys as planning commissioner usually reflecting things with your planning commissioner hats on and certainly we should all be aware and cognizant as things move up to city council that um politics and and other things become you know more more of an issue and more relevant to their position I mean they're obviously going to be concerned about the city plan and in the zoning and all the details I go into it but they're they're usually a little bit more removed and and may have to as happened in the zoning proposal we made um you know in 2017 we made proposal to them and they went through and based on public input made a number of changes that planning commission didn't support but recognizing that they were trying to make sure that this was going to pass muster with the with the you know the politics with small p um you know to make sure it you know the town hill got their zoning at 24 000 even though everybody on the planning commission thought that was ridiculous but that's that's what ultimately was needed to get that passed um and to to make that to kind of make that sausage and making that legislation um and so that that reminds me and I do want to make the point just for the record here before we vote that one elephant in the room that we haven't talked about in this deliberation is that I think it's on all of our minds just to put in the record is the city plan calls for a a lot more housing development and for the city to take seriously the need for housing we're all very concerned with housing and we're supposed to review according to the city plan the bylaws to address housing needs and that's all a big part of this um and I do want to just get that in the record that that's that's a big part of why we're wanting the changes that we want here almost all of these changes touch on that need for housing and it's a citywide need um so it sounds like we're uh ready to vote and and prepare to vote so uh why don't we do that we'll cover the contents of the information we want to put out there about this as Mike gets it to us later so those in favor of um well actually I guess I need a motion a motion along the lines of sounds like uh along the lines of uh whether uh we want to pass all the proposals as they are currently proposed because we've not um decided on changing any of that right now I think the only the only change was the rail set like if you're talking about the document that's posted online the only change was that rail setback right correct let's be clear about that um so uh what changed specifically with the with the rail setback for number um for the number five it was like can be zero if an agreement is made between the rail and property owner right yes and that's not reflected in the document online but is reflected okay so thanks for that clarification so do we do we have uh my motion that we vote to approve the the whole slate together uh to include that amended recommended amendment for the rail lines okay that sounds good do we have a second to Gabe's motion I'll second it okay a second from our own uh those in favor uh or do we have any further deliberation on the motion before we move on any discussion of the motion okay those in favor of uh the motion proposed by Gabe and seconded by Ariane say hi any opposed any abstain okay so that's seven seven zero zero uh motion in favor from the planning commission on that and yeah Mike when you can um try to give us an updated memo on everything we talked about and and let's get that posted in all the places we discussed well I'll draft it do you want me to yeah yeah yeah before posting so that way it's a memo from you guys to city council or do you want me to draft it with me to city council or the two of us and have you guys just approve it at the next meeting or what's your I guess since uh yeah since since we're gonna want to approve it you could do it from us um and then you know prepared by you I want you to get your credit uh but yeah let's do it that way uh because it because you know you and that also lets you like do your own thing if you want to communicate to the city council something aside from what we want to is that okay yeah yeah nope I'll draft it up and you guys can can shuffle it and chop it apart and do whatever you feel is kind of reflects your I think it's good for city council to also hear it with your voice as well so that way um you know yes I prepared the original draft that went to you but at a certain point it becomes your your proposal to them so to make sure that you know I'll put stuff together and you guys can wordsmith and kind of capture and make sure we've got everything reflecting your voice that this is your the planning commission recommendation to city council yeah that's great and and also yeah we want to get it out there publicly too that's a big part of this is we want to make sure that the public gets to gets to see this and so that so that we if so that so that it's well understood or people have an opportunity to understand it well before the four city council to get this okay uh we're gonna we're gonna put off the minutes approval because we're past time um so uh do we have a motion to adjourn I move to adjourn okay motion from aria on to be the second second second from Marcella those in favor of adjourning say aye okay uh see everyone in two weeks thanks a lot thanks everybody