 So I'll go ahead and call it order this meeting of the planning commission. This September 14th meeting. First thing we need to do is approve the agenda. Everyone could take a look at that and. Provide a motion. I moved to approve the agenda. Okay. Do we have a second? Second. I'll give this Stephanie by, by a hair. Okay. Okay. So motion by Barb second by Stephanie. All in favor of approving the agenda. Say aye. Hi. Hi. Okay. Gender is approved. First item we have is comments from the chair. The only thing I have to say is that. The housing group, which consists of Barb and area on and myself. Our schedule to meet on Thursday. Barb has some, has some things that we're going to, to consider. I have some things. I'm going to try to get those to you, Barb. In advance. What I'm going to do is. Well, I don't know. I don't need to go over that here, but. Yeah. So we're going to meet. We, we don't have a process figured out yet because we're waiting. From the. What's our, what's our working group. Continuity and structure. Group. We're still waiting to hear from them about, you know, having some sort of template to follow. So what's your thinking? Yeah. I think, you know, just for this meeting, we can just put together a rough agenda. And so we can just start taking the can down the road here. Okay. I'll put something together as the rough agenda. If, if you want to get me that stuff that you have beforehand, Kirby. Okay. I'll set a size sometime tomorrow then do that. Okay. So, you know, we've, so we've got that, we've got that coming. And that's, that's great. I mean, that's just going to be the, you know, the first. Working group we have going, but it'll be nice once we get with, get those rolling out. That's all I've got though. That's the only update. So unless anyone has anything else. I'd like to just throw in a question. I think it's a good question. I think it's a good question. I think it reminded me about the city council meeting to discuss the zoning change. Can we get an update on that? Good call. I want to know too. I actually didn't follow up. So everything did pass. It was a little bit surprising that everything kind of went through. All in one shot. So they took testimony. And we're swayed. And so they, they approved both sets of changes. They received no comments at all on the design review. So that kind of just floated right through. And then the pioneer street went through. After a bit of discussion. On the, on some of the details, there was, there's some questions they wanted to understand why there was. So much conversation at the planning commission level on it. And I think that was a pretty straightforward request. So. I said that you guys had thought much, much deeper about the consequences of it. And it wasn't fully. People voted in favor of it, but I think some of them were. Still hoping that things would be different in going into the future. They did want things better and different in this area. But at the same time, they recognized. The amount of time that the Barrett's had owned the land and improved the land and. That they felt there wasn't going to be a lot of change in this area. And it's current ownership. So they felt it was better to let them infill within their, their idea. And they went along with just what you guys had proposed for that narrow change of. Boundary. So that, and that will go into effect on the 17th. So I've made the changes. To. The text and it would spend proof read. By Meredith. So we had that ready to go. I just have one small typo that I've got to fix. And we'll get those put online. And the map was, I just received about. 15 minutes ago. So that's all ready to go. Okay. So I guess we did a pretty good job. They didn't. Change the thing. Quick. I got a quick thing. That's just. An item of interest. So I just was made aware of a new resource called black voices on the city. It's a resource guide that came out of. Mostly McGill University. I believe it's brand new. It just got lunch today. And it's essentially an online database that compiles. Written work. And papers and other things from black urban planners. And it's just a good reason. Looks like it's going to be a really good resource. To amplify. Black voices. And I can share that with everyone. The email. If you're interested. Or I probably will just share it if that's okay. Yeah. It's brand new. Yeah, it's got a good, it looks like it's got a pretty good. Detail, like different, you can kind of search by topic. Or by type of material. There's thesis, like a PhD thesis reports, videos, online journal articles, books. And they're actively growing it. And it's not just students at McGill students and alum of McGill, but that's kind of where it started. And it's growing from there. Great. Yeah, thank you. It's definitely something for us to try to incorporate into the city plan. Yeah. Does anybody else have anything? Okay. I should probably, yeah. Expand comments from the chair to comments from everybody from now on. Okay. Okay, with that, I'm going to move on to the general business. Do we have any members of the public who have joined us? I see Mr. shares here. We have him on the agenda. So. Anyone else? Nope. Okay. Well, the next item in the agenda then is to consider the minutes from August 24. Okay. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes. I'll second. Okay. Speak up if you're not ready. Okay. All in favor of. Proving the minutes. Say aye. Aye. Any opposed. Okay. Minutes from. Moving forward. Staff members. Okay. So the final minutes for the meeting. And we'll move on to the next item. My understanding of the meeting. It's approved. Moves us further along our agenda to. A discussion with. Mr. Richard's share. In his request to exempt banners from local zoning review. So we are mostly not caught up on this. So Mr. kind of set the stage for us about the request. The, you know, the the procedural, especially about about where this fits in with our role. Okay, so I'm still waiting to see if he, so he made it in and then I saw a second request for him to come in. So I'm not sure if he's okay trying to get in again. But the short there we go. Maybe he's maybe we have Richard now. So so the where the origins of this came in was a request and I'll summarize it as quickly as I can remember it. Mr. Shear wanted to have a banner put up to advertise a fundraiser of sorts in in South Burlington and the banner would go across one of the public streets. We don't have a street banner. I don't know if it was across Maine or across state, but we didn't we didn't have a pre-approved banner location. So we identified a couple options that city council could do city council could request a banner location much the same way that when I was in the city of Berry, Berry had a public banner location that had been approved, gotten a permit. It used to be right behind the memorial there where the naked guy is. But considering it was such a symbolic statue, we felt it would be more appropriate to have the banner somewhere else. So we moved the banners to the location of the library and then once the location was approved, city council would then have a process for approving new banners. So anyone who wanted to put up a banner would have to meet certain requirements and they could put up the banner. And we kind of felt that's probably the best approach for the city to take if they want to have a banner location is just to get one pre-approved, get the location. From that point forward, the city council would have a set of policies that would state what banners could go up for how long. And much the same way they have a policy right now for painting the street and a couple other related policies. So I think that would be my suggested way of going. But there are other ways of individually doing them or privately doing them. But Mr. Shear wanted to come in, Richard wanted to come in and address the planning commission on this. Currently in the zoning, it is what it is in the zoning. So that's where we're at. We can't simply approve this without going to the DRC. We can approve that banner individually, but it would have to go through the design review committee and it would take some time. So I guess I'll turn it back over to you, Kirby. And if you want to turn it over to Richard, you're welcome to. Yeah, that's great. Thank you, Mike, for the background. So yeah, Mr. Shear, if you're there, go ahead and explain to us what you're proposing and what your expectations are for us. Go ahead. Okay, can you hear me? Yes, hopefully. Okay, good, good. I thought I liked it and a real good job of summarizing what I was talking about. I wanted to commend his staff for their work on kind of informing me on what the current situation would be on an event spanner. Let me let me back it off a little bit. This has been under discussion for years. And basically, we are one of the only towns in Vermont, major towns that don't have an event spanner. If you were to go through Essex, you'd see event spanners. If you go through Winooski, you'd see them. If you go on Burlington on seven, if you go on Burlington on two, you see them. If you go through Bennington, you see them. If you go through Browborough, you see them. And again, from what I gathered, and our rules on event spanners having to go through development review is really restrictive. And what I didn't want was to walk away today with a decision on event spanners. But I just wanted to raise the issue so that in the future, it would be easier to discuss events, turning an event spanner, not over to me, but if an organization like Montpelier Live wanted to do an event spanner or a consortium of downtown businesses wanted to do it, it would be possible without having to go through design review. Because that's really, really restrictive. And that no other town in Vermont really forces banner that I know of, forces banners through design review. So I think the fundamental question I wanted to ask planning is you guys are the ones who look for our downtown, look out for our downtown in the presentation of our downtown. Is there an objection to an event spanner that would be similarly positioned as the Christmas lights above state and main are currently positioned? Is there some objections in that on a philosophic basis? Yeah, I don't I don't think we have much opinion. I mean, it's not something that we've expressly discussed before. But you know, I don't think there's any reason for us to be biased against it or anything like that. I have one question for you. If we don't have design review screen, you know, the process, who would decide the process? Are you do you think like Mike's office would decide if something's appropriate to put on the banner or or who? It's a very much depends on who is in the banner would be put up there. It's usually put up by a person who has the crane, which is the fire departments. But I would imagine that if it were Montpelier alive that Montpelier alive would screen the contents within a broad parameter that it wouldn't be used for commercial purposes or whatever. But I would imagine if the Montpelier Business Association wanted to do it, they would screen. If Microsoft is wanted to do it, they would screen but we'd have content parameters and we'd have design parameters so that it wouldn't strictly be the amateur hour. I mean, that's within a town's prerogative to make sure the signing looks professional. Or at least in my view, that you don't want bedsheets, you know, cut to a specification and paint it. But I think that that's just a detail issue further done. I just don't like the idea of having to go through design review because we've done that with my wife's store and it's not a lot of fun. I mean, and they hold guidelines for a reason. You know, the signs in front of the stores are going to be there for a while. This is going to be there for a week or two weeks. And it's a different criteria than design review was really set up to do, I think. But as I said before, Kirby, I wanted to open up a long term discussion. This isn't going to happen next week. It's not going to happen before winter. I just wanted to see if very possibly we could do this in a longer term framework so that it's possible for next summer. So I'm not asking just I'm not asking development do anything tonight other than to say, yeah, we'll take a look at it. Okay. Yeah, thank you. Does anyone else have questions for Mr. Shear? Looks like part of the question and then Marcella. Yes, Mr. Shear. So what what particularly is restrictive about going through DRB other than of course, the timing I imagine the timing is a little bit extended. What what do you imagine running into if you were to try and have a banner approved? Um, when we went through, as you know, as you I'm certain that you know, my wife has a downtown store. My wife, if you don't know, my wife has the quirky pads. And when we went to put up our sign, we got all kinds of questions about color. We've had other merchants who've had questions about design, itself, color combinations, really things that that in terms of a temporary sign, we got the feeling and in fact, we know for a certainty we've put up temporary signs in front of the quirky pet. And Bill has given us permission to do it without going through this development review or design review. I'm sorry to design review. We have our young entrepreneurs who used to come on Saturday is in front of the store and we have the young entrepreneurs banner. We didn't have to take that through. I'm review because it was it's up on a Saturday for a couple of hours. It's a temporary sign. So I would say that develop design review was set up for signs that are going to be non durable, but an event sign is something that's durable. We could set up broad design parameters past those through design review. In fact, it would probably be appropriate for that to be passed through design review. But once you get to the micro level of this, that I feel like is not a design review question. That's my feeling on design plus of course, it would also be a $60 fee for anyone who wanted to put a sign up, which I feel is restrictive because you're dealing for the most part with non profit organizations. So I see this as non commercial. I see this as just what it is. It's events. You know, it would advertise the market that's at the high might be at the high school this year before Thanksgiving. It would advertise Mount Pilger madness. It would advertise different community events and give us more of a sense of cohesion and community. And I am concerned about reestablishing community downtown. I mean, through no fault of our own, our sense of shared community has been disrupted severely. So this is not a short term thing. This is a long term discussion, a back and forth. And Kirby, I would appreciate it if I could work with Micah and framing something to come back to the commission again in a more detailed manner flesh out more. Okay. Yeah, let's let's discuss that in a minute. Let the planning commission get through their questions and we can discuss like next steps. Does that sound okay? That's fine. Whatever you guys want. Again, I'm not looking for any short term. Yeah. So I think Marcella had a question. Yeah, sorry. I just wanted maybe this is for Mike. I just wanted to confirm right now, if you want to put up a temporary sign, you have to go through the design review or the development review board, design review committee or development review board. It's design review committee. Unless there's some other reason that it goes to the DRB, it would just go back to the administrative officer to the issue. So most of what will be reviewed is going to be probably how the what materials, how it's mounted to the buildings. A lot of what design review looks at are items like how it's mounted into the mortar on the bricks and is it on historic buildings or not historic buildings or those types of features and questions. But yeah. So that's what they would be looking at and then it would come back to the to the zoning administrator. The two questions or the two issues that come up. One is a banner that goes over either state or main or both is over city property because the city owns the street. So city has to be the applicant or the property owner. So this could be something as we said that is approved. There doesn't have to be a zoning change. This can go through simply as an application to the DRC once and get an approval for a banner that meets certain specifications and then issued changes issued going forward to whoever the approved applicant is, which could be city council or some other agent. And so I think that'll be one of the questions that comes up. I don't think we technically need to have a zoning change to do what Richard wants to do. I think it could just be an application that goes through as I said in the same way that the application went through in Berry City for the banner in Berry City. It went through the design review, but it only had to go through once. Once it went through city council had a thing had a set of policies that said if you want to use the public community banner then you need to make a request or you can reserve the date in advance and they had a set of rules that would lay out you know who you would make the request to. I think it was to the city manager in Berry City. You would then go on the consent agenda and it would get all the sign-offs of all the departments that said yes we reviewed they've got they meet the material requirement they meet the content requirement that basically says you know it's not for commercial purposes. And then it's going on the banner it's going to meet this size and then the city council would approve it by consent. That's that's probably the best route to take on a project like this because once it goes through once we've got all the criteria set out. So I think that sounds like a great avenue to try to try to do this if it's going to happen. Who would in your mind who might be the best applicant would it be Montpelier alive would it be city council someone else and then my follow-up to that is where my part B to that is would that party be interested in doing this or is or is that the next step for us to investigate. I think that would be the next step that would have to be figured out is who is going to who is going to manage this going forward. Is the city interested in stepping up and being the manager or is it something that in some ways city council will have to be involved in some ways because if it was say Montpelier alive they're still operating over the city's right of way so the city would have to in some way have a memorandum of understanding with Montpelier alive that says we agree to give you the power to make these decisions on our behalf provided you meet these policy requirements or whatever I'm sure there just have to be some kind of MOU between the two organizations that would allow them to operate in that capacity otherwise it'll have to go it could it could be the city decides to just do it themselves and it's operated through the manager's office it probably would not come back through my office it would probably be managed through the manager's office would be my guess we probably run it through legal at some point when we when we get there we would probably have this get a legal opinion on whether or not this is more appropriate and I think it would be to run through the manager's office in which case it's still a set of policies that city council would approve that would just go through and say here's here here your directives Mr. City Manager in the same way we do street closures and a number of things we as a staff person various things come through and we just have to do sign-offs on them so I'm trying to think of one a parklet parklets are in the city right of way they are exempt from the zoning in order to put one up a request will come through and go through all the department heads and you'll have to go through and get a sign-off from the fire department that is not going to impede fire trucks you'll have to get an approval from public works that says it's not going to impede you know but for a banner that's so high up in the air it's probably going to only need a sign-off from city council or from the manager's office because they're just going to confirm the material the content and a couple other requirements and then whether there's a fee or not you know will we charge a fee for that that's not my department that's city council's decision as to whether or not they want to charge a fee for putting up and taking down the banner okay looks like a barb has something yeah mic I just have a quick question is isn't state street a state highway considered do we have any considerations with that it is it is a state highway we could not do anything within the capital complex but I don't think any of the discussions we're having right now are in the capital complex all state highways in the city of Montpelier are owned by the city of Montpelier so we have class one we have class one town highways for our state highways so these we don't have to ask aot permission to do this because they're already ours so my for what i'm understanding is that it would be best for the city manager's office to be to be involved if we if we think that the process that might just laid out was the best have they been involved so far with this are they aware uh they they're aware of this conversation um I I don't know if you know the question will be how do we how do we get this into effect I don't know who who is going to carry the ball it may be something that Montpelier alive makes the request or or the planning department makes the request or Richard himself makes a request to um to get this process going to ask the city manager to apply for that permit I'm not sure the the trigger I guess in that who's who's who's leading the charge to get this permit approved so we can get that banner location set and I don't I don't know the answer to that okay so so mr sure are you are you following what Mike is saying is that we you know the as far as the drc is involved under under the the current you know rules and law uh you know we could get the ball rolling on this without changing city ordinance or anything and it would only have to go through design review one time and then we would you know it the the hard part of it would be setting up this process for uh whoever's in charge figure out who should be in charge of the banner and and and the contents and and you know going through the process each time it goes up and down and like like setting that up and figuring that out sounds like the hard part can relative to the to the grand scheme of things as opposed to the drc part of it um what are your what are your thoughts on that mr shear I thought I thought what Mike said was extremely reasonable I think bill and his and his staff are the people who should be the point people uh I would be willing I am willing to sit and work on the logistics along with bill and and his crew uh what I came to your board is just aesthetically do you believe that this would be detrimental to our downtown and to your vision of what our downtown that's why I'm here today is is just to cut you guys in at the very very beginning okay yeah we appreciate that uh does anyone in the planning commission want to respond on that note about thoughts on the existence of of anner no I think I like the idea of making this as simple as possible on if an entity like Montpelier alive could just take this and they have certain parameters and they can run with it then great like let's if the beauty about these things are that it's temporary so um you know this idea that there should be a long back and forth and a process set up like no let's let's do it and then if there are issues then we can address those because these are temporary banners so like let's make it as easy and possible but like move forward with it and and adjust as we go and thanks John does anybody else have anything okay um I I don't think we need to take a vote or anything uh we just we appreciate you you bring this to us Mr. Shear uh you know our understanding is it looks like uh the city manager's office and maybe Montpelier alive will be involved going forward uh but no I don't it sounds like there's no hang up from the planning commission you don't have to worry about us perfect thank you so very much I'm going to help my wife paint the house okay have a good night you as well take care guys thank you okay um I think that went okay uh and I don't yeah I don't think anything fell in my slap as far as work so that's good like I sometimes worry about dumping too much on it because he does too much for us okay well with that we can move on to the city plan and the transportation implementation strategies I think Mike sent uh documents around for us did I actually remember to send out the no um so oh but I guess I should have sent out a follow-up the transportation committee did not have a quorum so they didn't make any decision on Friday so we are still with the draft that we had from two weeks ago okay if somebody wants I can resend that out so Mike are they are they thinking they will be making modifications or clarifications uh and the piece that we're actually working on now is not going to be not going to resemble their final proposal I always try to avoid guessing where committees are going to go and what they're going to do um they're supposedly only going to be working on making um priorities so that was what they were supposed to be meeting on was to go through and prioritize what they wanted to put as high medium and low for the next um work over the eight years and so I'm hoping that will go through relatively quick um but you said that their strategies are not where they need to be correct um they well they finished their strategies I still think within um they're still going to need to have some work on their strategies ultimately I think unlike a lot of the committees I think a lot of the committees really worked this all the way to the end uh the transportation committee really had a hard time getting there so they pretty much left a lot of things open and I think there are some areas if you get into it and you read it you'll recognize there are just some topics that aren't discussed that probably should be discussed um you know there's not a lot about the the the pavement side of things or the the road the road the vehicle there's a lot on bikes there's a lot on pad but there's some other areas where there's just some gaps that I think need to be touched on but we can get into those when we get them and start to see you know I think like safety comes up in two different places I don't know if we should just consolidate that into one um the hope is that all of their thoughts are there so you can kind of kind of absorb where they want to go understand what they're trying to do and then make some adjustments so I think unlike a lot of the housing and historic where we kind of reviewed it and tweaked it here and there there may be a little bit more work that we have to do with transportation yeah it does seem like there are whole areas that they didn't touch on and maybe they didn't feel that they were in in their purview but um you know no consideration of of commuter or rail and they allude to transit oriented design but they don't really call that out so anyway I think that there are some um holes in it right now well for for tonight I mean we we we've already discussed the aspirations and the goals last week I think we we had some good comments um do we feel like we need to spend time tonight discussing that further or or do we just do we just wait and call it he hasn't thought far yeah I did have one question um specifically about the inter interconnection between this and the and excuse me the energy plan um because the energy plan touches on transportation as well correct right yeah um so I'm not exactly clear about where that line is going to be end up being um you know are we because they reference fossil fuels as well vehicles as well um they sort of make um some illusions to reducing traffic downtown but not specific so where where should the line fall uh within their third aspiration they they have one about having a transportation system that's sustainable and um environmentally responsible something to that effect and so they reference in that third aspiration um having strategies of supporting the energy plan so they're not going to get into the electric car discussion they're pretty much going through and and following the guidance of the energy plan when it comes to that recognizing within that same third aspiration one of the goals is to is to look at obviously the the land use and the density they they want to support the housing plans and these other plans that are putting more density in the downtown um because that's going to make things more walkable and bikeable and um the more we can put things in a higher density the the less reliance someone needs to be for a car but at the same time it's all it's all a matter of balancing when you're doing you know car share and a number of things there's still cars and you know the question still comes up about you know they have a lot of debates about the parking garage and whether or not they wanted you know the parking in the downtown or any parking in the downtown and you know we we said that even in the net even in the net zero competitions they still talked about parking garages in the downtown they just looking at them with the ability of consolidating surface parking lots into structured parking so that way we can open up surface parking lots for redevelopment and that's a strategy some people didn't like that strategy they wanted to have less cars or no cars and we said well you know you want to get cars off the street you want to get on street parking off that means you'll probably need off street parking it's a balancing act unless you're going to go to a point of having a policy which there are two members of the city council on the transportation committee and both city councilors said you know that's that's not something that has any legs at the council to just go through and say we're going to have no cars in the downtown we're going to have parking structures we're going to have cars our preference is for a parking structure where we can park cars that is going to be easy you know if if cars become less and less common then we're going to remove more and more other parking lots until the only thing that's left is that parking structure that has the electric charging stations in it and that's kind of their philosophy is that it's a well located near near the transit hub near the downtown near the capital complex and therefore that's probably the best location and people are going to disagree with that but that's pretty much where the council is sitting but the transportation committee has some of their opinions on and i think that was the hard part for them was just trying to get over some of the differences of opinion unlike a lot of committees where there's a lot of agreement on exactly what we want transportation doesn't have that single opinion of what their vision of the future is yeah that's that's my concern just because under aspiration see the second goal that talks about environmentally responsible in minimizing negative impacts is pretty vague doesn't really give much specificity in terms of of what they would actually propose as strategies under that but it's certainly i mean it's something that we can take a look at in the subcommittee but i just wondered what other members to the planning commission felt about this document in general yeah it seems like it's okay not to have all of the answers but identifying the the questions would be helpful and and you can set out in a plan identify what those questions are and say like the plan is to to work on those and answer them but yeah a lot of it did seem a little vague it also it was sort of absent of any place it was just kind of out there this you know these goals and aspirations could apply to literally any place on the planet and most people would be like yeah that sounds good you know more people on bikes and walking around like of course we want those things but it doesn't really do much to get us there and one of the the the challenges i think or things that might be helpful for us and them to think about or work on is identifying specifically like what are the streets that we have that are going to be places that are you know our highest value for for pedestrians and cyclists and what changes need to happen for those to be comfortable to be to walk and bike and what are those roads that are not going to be that that are going to move cars right you can't you you can have roads that are places that are for people and walking and you can have others that are made to move vehicles as efficiently as possible and you you can't we sometimes trick ourselves into thinking we can have both and you can't like you've got to pick one and that's one of the actual requirements that we have and statute is to identify the function of some of these roadways so some of it's some of it's easy and obvious but finding those edges and finding where those questions are i feel like it's is a discussion we'll have to have and maybe something the transportation committee wants to think about yeah we have we have some of that laid out in our complete streets plan which is you know has the street typologies and it has a map and it lays out what we want for streets and we have Montpelier motion which is a little bit of a gap analysis we have the downtown master plan so we kind of have the maps and trying to get those now into implementation is is the challenge for them um but you're right the the challenge is that the hardest streets were the ones that you know when we did the complete streets plan we we laid out what we would expect based on the functioning of the street and um there were certain streets where the street didn't match its typology and you know the two that came out one was berry street and the other one is elm street as you head north on route route 12 just after you turn off spring street that stretch um out through past the meadow and both of them have the same conflict both of those based on typology should have separated bike lanes or um no on street parking and they both have on street parking so it pretty much is as as you you know kind of look at that you could automatically go through and say these are going to be conflict points and when you talk to people those are the conflict points um and the issue is coming up with how do we solve those really tough places the rest of it is pretty well accepted you can look at the street typology and say this road isn't wide enough and we need next time we pave it we need to widen it to add a an uphill bike lane um or something to that effect so most of the other ones pretty much lay out without much conflict but there are a couple of places elm street berry street it's just has way too much um overlap and conflict between where we park cars um you know low income neighborhood um not a lot of off street parking options for people um we can put in bike lanes but at the at the cost of the on street parking and that's you know parking that low income folks rely on or the other option is you know to find another location for the bike paths and i think that's just the conflict that we've got to work through on on those few locations so yeah we've got to get get the planning done but at least a number of the those big planning documents have been done and the other suggestion i made to the transportation committee is to get more involved and to request to be on the the cip the capital improvement committee because that's where the rubber heads the road let you'll literally in this case for the transportation plan um if if you're interested in if your entire transportation plan is really based on making sure that your projects are being prioritized and getting into the queue then you really need to be involved in the cip as it gets developed and as it gets developed year over year over year so you can start pushing for projects in in year two year five year seven and they haven't been involved and i think that's why predominantly the cip focuses on paving and less so on making these complete street improvements i think that's that's something that those are suggestions to them that they're going to try to get more involved in the cip process do we have any more thoughts about the transportation plan as it stands or do we do we want to i mean it seems natural that we would want to wait for it to you know to be in a more complete form um what do you think Stephanie i'm just wondering are they so that those other plans that you mentioned mike are they going to be incorporating things from that within their strategies i mean i think right now they are pretty general they're not including those sort of situations but those conflict points are to me what's really interesting and that's what's what's worth talking about and figuring out how we can how we can move those things forward but i think from the transportation section i think those things need to come up within the plan so i'm wondering how how the is is it this group that's going to be coordinating some of those things a little bit more into their next iteration yeah um so i think the the the big picture is the focus on because they have these you know they have a plan that says you know you can look at the plan and go through and say on this street it should have this street type which would have these um you know in a type four street may have a sidewalk on one side and bike lanes but no on-street parking or something like that that would be a street type and then every street was given a street type so that way it was both complete and appropriate for its setting and it balances everything from speed limits to lane width to accommodating bicycles so in in your smallest lowest density residential street it might be um a shared road situation with eight-foot bike lanes because you know there's there's just not enough traffic to warrant putting in bike lanes so bikes are expected to share the lane and maybe there isn't even a sidewalk um maybe people are walking on the on the shoulder if it's a short dead-end street with you know you know 10 vehicles a day and then it kind of builds up to the builds up from there so we have a plan that kind of lays all these things out what um you know and again we didn't want perfect to get to be to be the enemy of the good what we talked about what i think is is missing for the transportation committee is um i think the energy committee is a step ahead they are actually trying to build in their benchmarks of all right we've got this goal of where we want to get to by 2030 and where we want to get to by 2050 and here are the benchmarks that we want to hit um or here's our measure i think what the transportation committee is missing and they need to do a study on is to really start to go and look out um do a study to understand okay what is our goal um do we want to have all of our streets to be complete streets for 2040 let's say and what would that cost what would that take and what would we have to do what benchmarks would we have to hit if we wanted to make that make that a reality if we want to have all of our streets that if they're supposed to have a bike lane they're gonna have a bike lane if they're supposed to have a sidewalk they're gonna have a sidewalk um in some cases just a matter of changing where we paint a line in other cases we've got a widen the road in other case we actually have to narrow roads because the complete street plane actually also took into account um stormwater runoff so back 35 40 years ago the road standard for Montpelier was to do two 211 foot lanes plus an eight foot space for on-street parking and this included streets that were like liberty um not liberty but um if you go up northfield street there's some really big streets that kind of go off to the left where they're just single family homes but there's enough to drive two two lanes plus on-street parking and we're just like why do you need on-street parking if everybody's got a single family home with a big driveway nobody needs to park on the street so we're just wasting asphalt and creating unnecessary stormwater runoff so we can narrow this street um or should we convert some of that to a sidewalk and that's really what the question was when they did that street typology should this at what point does this street warrant having a sidewalk and what point does it not have to have one so they have those plans but what they don't have is is a schedule for how we're going to get there you know and whether that's a target of 2060 2040 2030 and obviously that is workload and money depends on how long it takes you to actually get all of your streets up to up to your code up to your standard um and they haven't had that discussion yet of what their timing is they just have a plan that says we're going to get there and every time we pave a road we're going to visit whether or not we can or should make an adjustment to meet a requirement um and and so it's kind of a little bit more ad hoc and I think if you want to get there I think you need to have to be more deliberate and you've got a set of policy that says this is this is one of our priorities and if it's a priority then let's let's put a let's put a date on it let's put something out there that says this is going to be our target and maybe we don't make it on every street because the cost of doing east state is going to be two million dollars because it's going to need a gigantic retaining wall all right so maybe we have to skip that one but we really should have a deliberate conversation about we're not going to we're not going to make this street a complete street and this is why because it's just too expensive but I would I would rather force decision maker decision makers to actually have that conversation I think it's also worth them talking about how similar to what you were just saying but how within not just saying we're going to get there but within the all the things that they have to do to get there what are their priorities so if the smaller streets are the priorities or if they really if state street is the priority that's the thing they want to do then for east state specifically yeah making those decisions I think is is important yeah that would be helpful too if they and they did they did call out one they did want to get the north south connector that is one they identified as a priority which is basically we have an east west shared use path now that is complete but we don't have something kind of kind of a shared use highway that would connect the north to the south of mont pillier and they wanted to come up with where's the location and let's start getting the money going so we can build that shared use path that's basically similar in concept to the east west path because then we can start building off of that to build a network but that was the only one they prioritized anyone have anything else so my are you thinking that maybe I missed this before but will we have for our next meeting when we have more fleshed out transportation plan do you think will they meet I sent I just sent you a couple minutes ago the the most up-to-date one it had highlighted the areas that I had changed for them again I didn't make any changes that you guys had recommended just because I didn't want to introduce another level of confusion for them once it's ours or yours you're free to make that those those changes as you see fit I think the next meeting they have is October 6th will be their next meeting and hopefully as I said on theirs they're supposed to just be talking about priorities what what is their what are their top priorities for the next eight years that they want to work on should we should we take a break from the transportation plan then and until we get a more final proposal from that committee should we transition to something else we might have to I was just looking at the calendar we do have another meeting of the planning commission on the 28th so they still won't have that ready by the 28th so we may have to just take a break from the transportation section until they wrap it up unless as I said you guys wanted to start working on it in theory they're only supposed to be talking about priorities and not changing their strategies at this point but again I can't it's tough for me to ever predict what a committee will do yeah I can I can relate with that since I tried to predict what city council would do if I'm here straight and they did this the thing I said they wouldn't so I get it you're wiser than I okay what what what is what does everyone else think about about what we should try to do for next time then now we can we could come up with something from the to work on housing again I mean we could come back and report that the housing committee working group could go ahead and try to come back and report uh that seems maybe premature though yeah because we would only have had one meeting of this committee by that time Mike are there in any of the other chapters that are even close to what we should be looking at parks is meeting tomorrow night I talked to alex today and he was saying their meeting to talk about the information I had sent them I gave them I've met with them a couple times I put together a draft for them to start working on and and thinking through um and so I they only meet once a month so it's going to take them probably a little bit of time um transportation natural resources I've got a touch base I we got caught up on parks and didn't get a chance for me to ask them about the conservation commission because the natural resources chapter was also quite a quite a ways in and the other one I've been working on is utilities and facilities but I've got to try to see if I can set up a meeting with Donna and Kurt to kind of go over where that is at so I don't know it's not going to be on the top of my plate for the next couple of weeks I do have to do the musical planning grant application and I've got a couple other projects that I'm working on um but I will try to see and specifically with the utilities and facilities it would be nice if I could get that draft to you guys um but I don't know the timing DPW has been short staffed and a little bit straight out so I got to see if I can get a couple hours of their time okay yeah I was just looking at what we had talked about previously about what about the working groups reporting back and it looks like you have the CNS that the CNS the community and Instructure Group is supposed to report back by October 12th so they're probably not going to be ready for next time um okay yeah I saw a slight shake of the head from Stephanie there so I'll take that as a no don't go there okay uh and again yeah we we had set a deadline for the housing group to come back on October 26th so uh we can hold off on that too so it looks like maybe we'll just have a light meeting um I can add one possible thing which we can talk about um briefly are dreaded um and I know everybody's you're free grown um for uh a couple of zoning fixes that have come up that will which we could should probably just take a look at um these came out from uh Dan Richardson acting as as attorney for the folks who are doing the savings pastor project and there were a couple of pieces they're relatively small but of course that they're small with large consequences so we kind of just need to go and take a look at what they are suggesting uh I'm as staff supporting the the changes um really in short what what it is is um the traffic requirement and it's actually not the traffic requirement that you guys had come up with but the traffic requirement that city council came up with on the fly during this the their hearings um the way it kind of nested in with the requirements it makes it difficult to impossible for somebody to actually develop anything near the berry intersection because it's a class F intersection so the way things are worded you really can't do anything that will impact that whether it's as far out as as savings or even something smaller in close just because if it's going to trigger conditional use or if it's going to trigger subdivision it automatically needs to meet that requirement and so they came up with a set of suggestions uh that as staff we will go through and put a review in but on a surface it looks like it's logical um there are basically two standards there's there's a standard and then there's two guide guidelines underneath it and pretty much if we removed one of the guidelines then the standard works just fine um and i can go through and review those with you and show them it's the guideline that ends up tripping up the whole system and so what they want is just to go through and say just follow the guide just follow the standard the standard is there it's a you know it's one that drb has all the power they need to approve or deny a project and it's whether it has a i think the requirement is whether the project will create a disproportionate and undue impact on uh the quality of an intersection so the way it was worded made it that even if you didn't have an impact if it was a failed intersection we still couldn't approve the project and so i think they were right um and then there are two other requirements both in the puds that made a certain pud mandatory and we'll have to just revisit i know for those who were on the planning commission when we did the puds there was a lot of conversation about trying to require these and that makes it very problematic in certain projects in the project that they're running is going to be a good project but um by creating more than 40 units they're tripped into doing a pud and the pud makes it harder to do the project actually makes it impossible to do the project but um i think we just have to go and look at whether or not we want to keep that as as requirements or just make those puds as as optional and you get the benefits if you know you get the benefits if you do them but they don't need the benefits they just they're just looking to do a project um and again as i said these guys are in savings pastor so we're talking about being you know a proposal for a hundred and something housing units um whether they get there they can't even propose they can't even put an application or to propose it they can't even start to design the project because it doesn't meet our zoning so the first thing they need is for us to kind of go through and say yeah we're we're willing to take a look at this if if we make these three small changes or four small changes to the zoning it will have a big impact because obviously if your goal is to require a pud then um that kind of um it does make a big impact but i think i think i don't think there were requests were unreasonable how's that um and i think we should have a conversation about that um not that we aren't sick and tired of doing zoning changes but um for for something as consequential as savings pastor and being to develop something within the tiff district i think it's worth taking a meeting to have that conversation i mean is it is it time sensitive i mean is it okay that we wait until next meeting um it's it's it is somewhat time sensitive but not to the extent that we need to be talking about it making decisions tonight okay i can scan their their letter that came in the mail the other day um i didn't think we were going to have time to discuss it today so i didn't um include it in the packet but i can get it out to you tomorrow or later tonight um so you guys can have though their request that they have and we can just have that conversation at the next meeting if there's nothing else going to be on the next meeting we can just have that conversation yeah that sounds good um of what what do you have bar i'm just wondering when you mike when you referenced the failed intersection are you talking about barry and main street yes so even if the savings pastor development um would be affected by that rating even though it's significantly down the street so to speak it is that's that's the issue that comes up it is significantly down the street um and we get rid of these like level of service ratings from the it that are from like 1986 arizona or something exactly um yeah but the impact the impact is is relatively minor in a times scope because we're looking at you know it's going to make things worse between four and five o'clock or four and six o'clock at night but the rest of the day it doesn't and the issue is okay well we don't even have an option of balancing it to go through and say is 130 units of housing if that's what it is 130 units of housing in savings pastor is that worth an extra 12 seconds at the intersection between four and six well considering other intersections that could take some of the flow it's not like it's a you know dead in street so there are a lot of issues that yeah yeah and so that's part of the question is right now the way it's the way the zoning ordinance is written it doesn't really even give us the option to to consider adding even two seconds to that intersection even if we said it's going to make a two-second difference instead of waiting two minutes and 45 seconds it's going to be two minutes and 47 seconds at that intersection we might all go say who cares but from the the technical standpoint it's made it worse so by just having a little bit more subjective um and talking about that disproportionate impact on that intersection um you know 10 000 vehicles go through that intersection and that project could add an additional um I don't know I'll make up a number 60 cars okay it made it worse but that much worse enough to go and say we don't want any development in that area it is walkable it is bikeable it is on the public transit route it is you know there's so many other things that we could put a value on um and I think so I think his case to me I think is is is good I think Dan does a good job of playing out why they think the the rule could be removed and I'll get you his argument and then I'll include the other two changes that were separate from this that had been talked about as well um which were the two PUD requirements that are causing causing some issues so we can talk about all three of them or yeah basically it's three changes um and then we can decide whether or not it makes sense to to advance something and it'll be through the winter you know we would just go through and say yeah make sense let's make these changes then I can work with my staff about actually drafting a strikeout version of what this would look like and getting the attorney opinions on that and then maybe December or January we're running a public hearing on it and if it becomes critical where they're like no we want to go right now then I can with your blessing take it to city council for an emergency zoning amendment um I don't I wouldn't probably recommend that as staff considering it is Sabin's pasture um that is the trigger I think I think that would be not a procedurally the best way to go but that's not my call to make if city council says no we're we're willing to take this up and take the heat from folks in that neighborhood um that's their call I think a full process would probably be the most appropriate okay that sounds good that sounds good and a good use of time next time Stephanie do you have something yeah a random question what happened to the planning around fixing the very main street intersection is there a plan in place for that it's all it's all a big it's a big thing um all the pieces kind of fit together so we we want to do that we have the plan laid out for what we want to do but it is not in the queue yet for getting in the capital improvement plan it could jump up in priority if Sabin's pasture needs that intersection improved um either because if the intersection is improved then um it'll go from an f to a to a d or an f to an e or whatever is the change in the level of service or even if it just makes the f a better f then um we might be able to move up the priority if we were able to take tiff funds from the development to go and make that improvement happen sooner um so we're looking at a lot of things because we've got that the clock ticking on our tiff district and if we can move a few projects forward we can maybe get you know the intersection because we've talked about the intersection berry street itself taking the on-street parking off on the south side of the street out to the rec center so that way the bike path will connect up and through so that's all part of one project and it's it's gotten through conceptual but we don't have we don't have permits we don't have um a design constructed in documents or anything ready to go but we could advance that project sooner if we had some funding that we could rely on around about there yeah i was gonna say what's the what's the plan for the intersection uh they reviewed two options one was to do a roundabout and a second one was just to do a conventional light um the uh it was it was much debated and the decision final decision was to put in the light and so the reason for that is what they want to what they the transportation folks want to be able to do is to take the light at um memorial the light at berry the light at main and be able to do probably get this word wrong it's like an intelligent system where they all communicate with each other and they're all so they're all working together so if they see a queue building up in one they might open one up to let the cars through so it's actually an interconnected system that works rather than each light working independently the three lights would work in unison so that was the proposal that went through they wanted i mean everybody wanted to do the the the roundabout but it actually made the bike path harder um because of just how how everything lines up um to to make the bike path work you are actually going to have to go and go through and do a four point turn basically you come up to the intersection and make a left and go down then make a right to cross the street and then come back and cross the street again so the the roundabout wasn't wasn't working um as well um it worked better for the cars if you were just talking cars then you should do the roundabouts at all the intersections but it made the pedestrian traffic harder and what we said was we wanted to prioritize trying the bike and the pad and by having the light you can hit the light hit the button the stop bar you get the lights all turn red everybody gets a safe crossing and that was the the safest way for people to get through those intersections um and that was the decision of city council not unanimously but that was their decision was to go with the lights rather than the roundabouts and then surprisingly terrible yeah and then it surprised us as to where the decision was where they went the other the other surprise was that the the downtown decision was to prioritize the pedestrian so the the sidewalks were wider but they did not remove the on-street parking for bike lanes i was almost positive that the bike lanes were going to win out but the bike lanes did not win out um the the sidewalks would be wider you know if we did downtown reconstruction according to the plan that was approved sidewalks would get much wider um but there would still be the on on-street parking although some of it would be converted to drop-off for for buses and for microtransit and for for those types of services there'd be a few more of those but there'd still be the on-stike on-street parking there would not be the bike lanes um the bikes would ride with the traffic which was a little bit of surprise that you know personally that that's where the the council and committees went um but now there's a proposal which you'll see in the transportation plan which is to slow down the speed limit in the downtown to 15 miles an hour and i think that would i would support that if you're going to have bikes and cars riding together i think it's unreasonable to expect that a bike rider will consistently be able to ride it to 25 mile an hour speed limit if you're going to force everybody to merge together then you're going to have to slow it on the cars to 15 miles an hour so that way bikes can reasonably travel with traffic i'll just throw it out there i'm opposed to using speed limits to do anything like we need to do it through urban design it through it it serves no it lets us feel good about ourselves maybe but like it serves no purpose it's not safer it certainly doesn't seem safer i'm i didn't i didn't realize i guess that they didn't take any on-street parking off there was some loss of on-street parking most of the loss of on-street parking were for other pedestrian items such as um putting bump outs in for the crosswalks um that costs you park some parking spaces um and a couple other things like that but in general the loss of parking was um there was a loss of on-street parking but not to the extent of if you wanted to put in bike lanes we're going to lose you know 60 parking spaces over here and you know just because you couldn't fit everything in we have a limited number of land limited amount of land land to deal with so um that would be how things would would break out as you lose parking for the bike lanes and the thought was there's just not enough bikers to warrant and the least this was the opinion and the decision at the time was there's just not enough bikers to warrant losing that much on-street parking um and I think it's the field of dreams um scenario depending I mean maybe there aren't bikers because it's not safe and if we made it safer then there'd be more bikers but the opinion is there aren't enough bikers to warrant taking them off um and whether it's right or wrong that's that was where the decision ended up yeah I know that there was a I think there was a nine-year-old nine-year-old girl who was killed riding her bike uh I think it was in Chinden County a couple weeks ago and uh I know yeah the way that mob healer set up I don't want my girls riding on the road that should be a metric for our transportation plan is just no death isn't that um isn't that New York City thing the zero vision zero yeah vision zero thank you um and even if we don't I mean we've had we've had people they weren't killed but we've had um young people hit by cars um out in front of the library last year was one um it's it's certain certainly needs to prioritize and I think that's part of the balance um and we'll see as I said I I think I think at some point there may be some revisiting maybe not um you know I always hate to redo master plans uh when when you put in that much work to do one but it did seem like it was very surprising that um the the way things ended up um that surprised me um it was nice to see that they prioritized pedestrian as much as they did pretty much their thought was everybody's a pedestrian um whether you bike into town you're going to be walking or whether you're um driving into town you're going to be walking so everybody's a pedestrian and we were going to emphasize that mode of transportation um but was there any discussion ever involving the planning commission I know they had a lot of public hearings and public meetings um that that was run by um um se group they did a lot of stuff that was outside I think it was when we were kind of waist deep in one of our other projects um so we probably should have brought them back around to have more of a direct conversation about some of the priorities they were working very directly with the transportation committee which is why I kind of expected a different answer than we got you're muted barb sorry is there a final document that actually gives us what the the city council approved um as as a okay it's rather than just the proposal that they had made earlier there's there's a final document as he group made I think I think it would be it would be relevant to our discussion next week to know what uh I know you already described it for us but maybe if you if you have at least the part of that document that has the berry street solution so we know I'll send out the link it's I think if I remember it's a pretty big document so if you have slow internet be careful about downloading it Mike we live in my pillar we have great internet here don't we are you lucky people with fast internet speed oh yeah I want to roll working from home something happens it's true we can't watch television and download a document that would crash the system so oh dear okay well does uh does anyone have anything else before we adjourn the meeting tonight looks like we've lined up some work for ourselves next week always good or two weeks next meeting anything okay well do we have a motion to adjourn so moved moved by barb we have a second okay second by Stephanie all favor of adjourn a minute say aye aye okay any opposed okay no no one wants to just insist on hanging out more okay all right with that uh we are adjourned and uh we'll see you the next meeting thanks everyone