 The changes to the agenda, I have one that I want to make, which is to pull the, I think we can probably get through the first few items before I go. So no, I don't have any changes. The only thing I'll add is we, I forgot we didn't have a quorum at the last meeting, so we still have to approve the January 22nd minutes. Yes. So we'll have to add that to the end. Okay. So item nine will say consider minutes from February 2nd and January 22nd. Okay. Hearing no other changes, we'll deem the agenda approved with those amendments. Number three is comments from the chair. And my comments are that I need to leave the meeting early tonight. Kirby has agreed to run it, but it's nothing personal. I just have other conflicts going on tonight. And then the other piece I kind of want to mention is we are gearing up to move forward. To move forward with a new city plan. And it will be interesting to see if we get new direction based on a new council. But for the time being, my understanding is that we should just keep moving forward with this. And then if policy chains need to come, they'll come. We're not far enough down the road for us to really have any policy that needs to be changed. So I don't really see any issues. I just wanted to make that note. So that's all I have for comments. Item four is general business, and that's intended to cover anything from members of the public that have it. Topics that aren't already on the agenda if they want to come up and provide general comments. We don't have anyone from the public here tonight, so we can move forward. Could we ask Jim Libby back for another lecture? We could. We'll try it next week. So then item five is welcome to the new commissioners. Yay, we're so excited to have you on our team now. It's great. We haven't had, we've had one or two new commissioners over the past couple of years, but it's been one at a time. It's really exciting to have a couple new on. And obviously we're going to miss what the prior commissioners brought to the table. They brought a lot of great insight and productivity, and I know that we're going to get new skills and new productivity. And I think it's always really healthy for committees to have turnover, so I think this is great. And maybe as part of this item we could go around and introduce ourselves first before you introduce yourselves. And you can say your name, when you join the commission, and if you want to indicate the area and town where you live. Feel free. You want to start, John? I'm John Adams. I joined the planning committee at the same time as you did. So I'm going to look to you for, what, two years? Three years? Three years ago? Yeah, roughly. And I live... I was hoping you would say it first. Yeah. And I live adjacent to the middle school. I'm Leslie Welts. I have been on the commission the same time as John, the same amount of time as John. Are you going to disclose what time that was? It was, I know it's in August, because I'm up for reappointment every two years in August, although that might change, but the charter changes. I think it was starting in... Yeah, well, it could be. I think it was 24th of May. So we jumped in and we thought we were about to approve the zoning at that point. We were a month away. Right around the corner. So, and I live in the Brooklyn area a month earlier on the other side of the river on Prospect Street. We just, we haven't come up with a good name for that neighborhood yet. I think that works. I'm Mike Miller. I'm the planning director downstairs. So I will help to staff the Planning Commission and help to keep things, try to do some of the work that needs to get done for you guys. And I've been here since maybe 2014 or 2013, so going on four years. So you're just a few months before we came on, is that right? Yeah, it might be. So we were, so I've been, I was at the City of Berry before I was here. I was there for five years. But I don't live in town. I actually live out in Hardwick. It's good to have some separation. Yeah, it's nice to have a little bit of distance there. So my background is actually natural resource planning. Although I spent most of my time doing city planning in more downtown and economic stuff than doing anything with natural resources. But it's good. It's fun. I didn't know that. Is it certified flood management? Anyway, I'm going to talk about that soon. I almost talked about it last week. We were watching our basement to see if it was going to flood. I live on Elm Street on the river. The basement flooded in January. It did, yeah. And we still haven't replaced our hot water heater that was down there. But it's nice to have these experiences for this committee. So I'm Kirby Keaton. I joined about a year and a half ago. And so with the two of you joining, I'm no longer the rookie. Congratulations. Yeah, congratulations to each of you. And yeah, we're looking forward to as less as ever, looking forward to a new energy and new set of skills to contribute. My background is I'm an attorney for the Department of Taxes. I work on a variety of taxes there. And some of them relate to this through land use and property taxes and that kind of stuff. I draw off of it a little bit. I'm also a representative for the Regional Planning Commission. But that could change. And if either of you are interested, that's something we could ceremoniously hand off to. I kind of acquired it because I was the rookie actually. So that's something to think about. Did I miss a meeting? Did I miss a meeting? Is that what happened? Yeah, I think so, yeah. That's why we got avoided. Oh, I didn't even know that. Apparently I was like decided when I was here. Plus studying in a resume. Right, right. I think that Kim became an alternate because he was missing a meeting before I joined. I was an alternate. I alternated so much the only way I was. That's why you received the packet. I'm officially the alternate right now. They did have his address on their record. With your name, so. Yeah, that got corrected, by the way. I'm Kim and Jeannie. I live around Main Street Corner on Town Street. I guess I'm retired. Quite figured out. Chasing cops and robbers and joining them sometimes. Mainly litigation. I think I've been here since 2011. It's here before Michael. In fact, I helped Michael get his job. But as I look around the table, I guess, it looks like I'm the most senior home survivor of the great zoning. So you won't have to do that again. That was fascinating work. Awful hard work. Well, thank you. It's really important. You couldn't have new energy, but it's really important to have the continuity that you provide. Well, it's interesting how things evolve. Obviously, we're a political institution. You start out, I think, you're going someplace, and then something changes, and you're going someplace else. So it requires a bit of adaptability, shall I say, as well as an exchange of opinion on this group. It's always been respectful and perplexing at times. But it's very helpful. It's been a lot of fun. People can always say what they want to say, and we encourage them to do it. Then we figure out whether we agree with them later. In regard to public comments, you mean? Yeah. Any debate that comes up here? Yeah, I'm Ariane Kassam. I live near Camp on Sunset Avenue. I'm not sure we have a name for our neighborhood, either. And I work at the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, so I have a master's in planning, but I've never worked in planning, so I'm really excited to really learn planning. So next up on the agenda is the update on historic preservation between Barb and Kim. Kim is here. Well, Barb and I went to the meeting at 12, I believe it was. What's going on is a whole rejuvenation of the idea of historic preservation planning in the city. And I think it had fallen on kind of inaction over the last several years. So I was excited. This group is interested in interesting and they're very committed to developing a plan for the city. But I think you did it. We had a little bit of a controversy a year or so ago with an area up behind the State House or in that area anyhow, which to my view was a historic development and some people in that neighborhood wanted not to be in it because they felt the regulations were too burdensome. And the zoning effort, we made an effort to change the regulations so that contemporary materials could be used under a certain guidance. But then historic preservation people didn't like that. I don't think they're against contemporary materials, but they wanted a design component. And I think there's very low awareness of historic preservation at the moment, what it means to the city and what it does. But I think the new commission is going to be active and we'll be following them. They very much want our involvement. So, sorry I don't know this, but this is a historic preservation commission that's been formed by the Design Review Board by the city. By the city. There's been a historic preservation commission for years. It's been pretty inactive, given the whole conflict over design review criteria and who should be reviewed and who shouldn't be reviewed. There was a lot of controversy about that. So we got a fresh start. The people that wanted out of design review are now out. But I think it's an opening question as to whether they, whether new regulations will be more cittable and expand. So the design review standards were part of the regulation, the zoning ordinance we were looking at. And then we ended up just kind of separating that out and not settling that piece when we passed the zoning. So this committee is looking at a way to create new design review standards with kind of looking for the goals that the planning commission had kind of voiced before, which are a little bit more flexible, easier to apply. Currently, our standards are kind of vague, as I understand it. Is that right? Yeah, they tend to be vague. So we want more specific standards for people to follow, but also there's some flexibility, especially on building materials, things, windows, there's a big thing that came up. So we'll be having this relationship with the preservation committee that's working on this where eventually it would be the planning commission to act on whatever recommendations they have been producing for us. So Kim and Barb have been tending to kind of get to know their process better. I personally have a lot to learn about slip regulation. You have what? I have a lot to learn about it. But that's something that's down the road that we're going to blow up, maybe acting on these design review standards and pass them on to city council for a vote. Well, as I was driving down the State Street saying, would you rather look at this scene, or would you rather look at the development on Barry Street? And if so, what is the new building and what's going on? They're not mutually exclusive, obviously, but there are things that give the city real character, historic preservation. It also has money to help people. Just to what I say, there are grants. But I think one of the things I've been asking them to do is develop a slideshow of buildings and neighborhoods in the area and why they are or are not in historic preservation. I think that's a great mentor, history of art teachers, spellbinding lecturers where you would take pyramids to Frank Lloyd Wright, complete with music of the periods and try to get an idea of what was going on in the world. This historic preservation isn't just about the past. It's about our sense of place and how we are, what we value. It's a complicated and very subjective business. So the Quist Street neighborhood that you mentioned, just to fill these guys in on, so they lobbied the city council to be removed from the historic preservation area and were successful. So Quist Street is not part of it anymore. But one thing, so kind of along those lines, another thing we can look at besides the design review standards is to look at whether or not the current footprint of what the historic preservation area, if that's really what Peeler wants it to be or if it should be something different, especially in light of the fact that there was a recent change with Quist Street being taken out. Is that symbolic of a policy shift for the city council to want to make it smaller or was it really just the folks in the neighborhood who were just successful lobbyists? The boundary doesn't make a lot of sense right now. It just kind of doesn't follow any logical boundary. It was just kind of dropped out there. It doesn't follow the National Historic Register district. It doesn't follow any zoning district lines. It just kind of punks in there. Some historic areas, some not historic areas. So you've got these rules that apply to not historic areas. So one of the questions is, let's find out what we want to try to do and maybe some areas will be removed like National Life, which isn't historic, but it has to meet historic standards. You're left with these odd places like that. And then other places like East State Street that you would think would be in the design review district isn't. So a lot of people have commented why Cedar Street could be allowed to happen. Well, even though it's really close to downtown, it wasn't in design review and that's why that project was able to be built without any design review. So there's some questions that they've got a tough job because we put together a proposal that the community rejected. So we know they're going to have a tough job coming up with a proposal and talking through the public and educating the public. Can I have a consultant right now that's helping them get started? Yeah, they're working with Land Works out of Middlebury. I think that's on the regulations, the design regulation. To me, this is not a technical problem. It's a protocol. And the technical part is obviously follows the politics. But I don't know anything about Close Street except driving up there and taking a look at it. I heard you both do that. It's an absolute gem of a little name. That's beautiful. It's just an amazing little place. So the whole issue of regulation and what people can do with their own property is clearly the lightning rod issue. But you'll have fun working on it. Did they get in the weeds at all in this meeting? What's that? Was it the last meeting you attended? Have they started the process? No, they were getting organized. They were getting committees and figuring out who was going to do what. There's complete anonymity that historic preservation presence in the city has really suffered. They'll do some walk-arounds and they'll get some people to know about why and how to explain it to people and see if they see the value in helping preserve it. So I was impressed. I think they're energetic. And I have Sarah McChain like a system that's helpful. Did they have anything else in historic preservation? Okay. I think the follow-up on that, they had another organization meeting and I'm waiting to see if they haven't really got in the policy very much. I'm trying to get organized and figure out what they're going to do. And we'll follow up. They want us involved because I know what's got to end up here sometime. Would it help if we had some general discussions about the policy input? I think it's premature. I want to let them do their homework. Are you thinking they would get a draft together of some kind? Not necessarily a draft, but some thoughts together, a report to us is the first step. I don't think they need anything on paper right away. An assessment of what's in the city, what's worth preserving, why, what difference it makes to people. It's hard to say, but I give enormous pleasure out of going down State Street. It's just like looking at the way you get it. The city would be very different if anybody could do it to destroy the past. So I think the first thing is to get some introduction of what is historic preservation and why are we concerned about it. I don't think we're in any drafting part. When I'm in drafting, it's like a proxy for just who reports to whom first is kind of the question. I've seen the slideshow, what they think is important. As soon as they get that ready, I'm going to come here and put it out to the city. At least that's my agenda. They may have a completely different agenda. I know their grant goes through August, so they've got a certain benchmark that they're trying to meet in the next five, six months to try to get through. And by August, they plan to have standards? They're going to have standards, but what they want to be able to do is to pull together the standards and boundary and have kind of a direction that they want to go. So that way in the fall, they can apply for some funding to actually do. I don't know if you were here when we did them, but we had design workbooks. Brandy came in, she took a couple of them from around the country where people, different communities, you have a set of standards and then you have these design pattern books. So they want to be able to put together a pattern book, but that's kind of a step two. Step one is what are your standards? What are we trying to accomplish? Where do we want to try to enforce this and go out to the public and go out and make sure we get feedback? It really can't be adopted until we have this pattern book that would go through and start to really illustrate and give that detailed guidance to the RC. It seems to me that the planning commission and the residents of Alpular and the city council should all probably weigh in before standards are written. So well before August comes around so that what we don't end up with is a set of standards that are written in a vacuum and that is kind of rejected by the community. Well, they're going to be going to the community with them. They've got three meetings, three public meetings, plus a couple other input pieces that they have to try to go through and vet these ideas and concept. So that's the process? Yeah, they won't be debating the actual words of the standards probably with the public until they get to the end. Because what they really want to do is to talk about the ideas and concepts. What is it you guys are willing to accept and then we'll write the rules to implement that? Mike, could you ask Shelburne to send us about six copies of their book? I had one which I gave to Kirby, but I think that was the most impressive. Did you mean to bring that back to you? No. Okay. If you're going to ask them if they could send us some. Mike, it's probably something I can download. I don't need a paper copy in here. Are the public meetings coming up? They're meeting tomorrow as subcommittee so they've got a subcommittee who's working on starting to look at other communities' standards. So they can start just what do other communities want to do. Yeah, I meant the ones where they're soliciting input. But they're just going to be their regular meetings. They're going to be soliciting input at some of them, you're saying? They're going to have actual public input meetings that they're going to set up for ones here. I think they'll try to get at the senior center. But they're meeting in subcommittees. One is working on the rules. The other one is meeting on when those public input meetings will be. And how to get topics so that should be coming out. So if I would be following up on that in meetings in the short term. Well, the next item on the agenda is report from me, which is pretty short. So what's going on at the Regional Planning Commission right now is there's a regional energy plan that's been discussed and is being noticed for public hearings. So those hearings are coming up at the next couple of Regional Planning Commission meetings. We had a kind of a first reading at the last meeting last Tuesday. In which there was a significant change from the draft that had come out of the Energy Subcommittee of the Regional Planning Commission and while it was before us at the last meeting. And so a little bit of controversy came out because some staff of Regional Planning Commission made a substantive change. And the change that was made was that the Energy Subcommittee had wanted to put a ban on industrial wind for the region. So for all towns in central region. And what the ban on industrial wind meant was that it wasn't going to allow any towers that were more than 100 feet from the stem part of the tower. So nothing higher than that would be allowed anywhere. The reason for that is that looking at the ridges that exist in our region. They didn't think any of them were appropriate for something that size. And then anything kind of off the ridges lower didn't need to be that size. So that's kind of that. That was what the subcommittee thought it was agreeing on and thought it was passing along. Staff looked at something that came from the Department of Public Service that made them believe that if you ban wind towers of 100 feet or more then you're also banning all other buildings of 100 feet or more. And they went ahead and just changed the ban on industrial wind to say that to basically wipe out the meaning. It would allow well like wind towers much bigger than 100 feet. So there's some drama over the folks who wanted the ban and being caught off guard by that. And the resolution was that at the next meeting staff will restore the original language and we'll get some further written input from the Department of Public Service at the next meeting. So that's going to continue to be debated. And if anyone from the public shows up, which I haven't seen so far, they'll be able to comment on that. But that's the biggest thing there. And the only other really big policy issue within the regional energy plan is there's some analysis of conflicts between local plans and the regional plan. And the plan kind of goes through the process for all of that, which I guess is kind of a novel thing. It hasn't been done before. I went through it. I didn't see any issues. It all seemed like common sense, such as if something has regional significance and then the regional plan tends to have more weight. And if there's a conflict, if something's really specific to municipality, then its plan would be able to contradict something to the regional plan. But anyone who's interested in learning more about any of that stuff can go to the regional planning commission's website and look at the proposed energy plan. And it's been like 80 pages. And I believe I shared it with other folks. I can actually forward that email to the two of you. Do we have their emails? Yes. It should be a part of the email that went out. The latest one? Great. And is the regional energy plan binding? I mean about wind towers? Does it have some, like a sign? And then the biggest point to having it is that the, what's the name of the... It'll get deference in front of the public service board. The public service board is, so that the regional energy plan would get deference. Otherwise, if there's not energy plan, then comments from the RPC would just be disregarded and it would have weight. Is there any other place in the state where there's such a limitation? Yeah. From what I was told from other members of the regional planning commission, the other regional planning commissions that have this have also banned wind in a similar way. And so now they've created this sort of domino effect of everyone's scaring that they're going to be the only ones that don't ban it. So that there'll be the mecca for dust relief. I don't know if that's necessarily true, but... It's really just disappointing, you know. It hasn't come out that it's more of a system of trying to find out where it would be and how it would be appropriate. Because I mean when these things come up for vote, they pass by overwhelming amounts. There's a handful of very vocal people who don't like wind towers. And, you know, the Lowell Wind Project for all the grief it gets when it was put to a vote was 85% in favor of it. Because they don't pay municipal taxes anymore. You want lower taxes, you know. If you have some wind tower sites, you know, they'll erase your municipal property taxes. The Regional Plan also has some sites that are suggested for or are considered viable for smaller wind. And the quarries and various, and then they came up as one of the best places in our region. This is all Regional Plan-efficient staff that are deciding this stuff. A lot of it's on paper, I think, in many of this. What about solar? Are the plans anything about that? It does, but nothing as exciting as bands on anything. You know, they have goals for the future and what they want it to look like. And there was some debate about how many cars are we going to have in the region, which is what it is. Do you have something, John? No, I was just going to say I don't think we have any suitable wind speeds anywhere in our village. I wonder where it does have any discussion. Part of it, part of the energy plan go out for areas, preferential areas to receive favorable rates for selling electricity back to the grid. So that's part of the piece of writing here deciding the difference between the two. One interesting thing looking at the plan that I took away was that there's actually three solar installations in La Peleria that are in a decent size, which, compared to surrounding towns, is actually a decent number, which I'm a little surprised to learn about. I don't think that one counts. The National Life one was there. Well, Log Road is up Elm Street. There was no gravel pit. That's where the city's our power. 500 KW site is. That's the third one. Something to look up. It's looking like it's going to pass. There were some other discussion, the meeting about some language in the plan that identifies residential development as making a large negative impact, like new residential development in forests or undeveloped areas. So sprawl stuff is actually addressed as an energy issue there. And I found it interesting that the representative from Calis was kind of offended by the statement that new residential development is a bad thing. She thought the attitude of living in the woods by herself is very back to nature. So there was a little bit of that. And she said that she thought people in her town would be really offended by that. And she tried to have it removed. But all the other towns were like, no, we've learned about this. And it does make a really bad negative impact. Sorry. So they're defining that though? What they're considering sprawl versus? No, sprawl was my word. Yeah, the language used in the plan was just about, he's basically saying that new residential development is the largest impact on, as opposed to commercial or other types of uses, which in that statement's made, I was not interpreted to mean in the aggregate, because there's more of that development happening to kind of chop things up than other types of development. So what's the area for Kirby? Why don't we want residential and all that and some out in the woods? Sure. I mean, so there's other conservation things besides energy, like forest fragmentation, which is a big issue in Vermont right now about, there's a lot of questions about, we have a lot of forest, but how much of it's high quality forest and it's a lot less high quality forest as in good for habitats and things like that. So we don't have as much healthy forest because it's broken up by roads and development. That's one thing. And also the automobile usage and commuting and those impacts and things go to the energy part of it. So looking at all the designated centers in Vermont, so we have our downtowns, our growth centers, if you compare vehicle miles travels from those, within those centers to without, inside the centers they drive about, I think a median is about 10,000 vehicle miles travel a year compared to about 22,000. So less than half, they'll drive less than half as much. So if you're energy planning that much, you can get more housing close to where you work and close to where you shop than you have less vehicle miles. Completely out of nowhere. Is there any discussion of the deer population and the destruction of the forest? Yeah, we've heard from Fish and Wildlife gave a presentation on forest fragmentation and the impacts there. I don't think they mentioned that deer specifically, but that was part of it, was the wildlife habitat. The woods are in my house. Nothing can grow in there. That forest will never regenerate itself. Any little twig is eaten down. So you get older trees and young ones can survive. That's my amateur forestry view when I walk through the woods. There's absolutely no winter story. Maybe more unique to Montpelier than some other places. We don't have rifle season here. I saw deer running down Bailey next to the State House one day recently. We're getting down the street. Another thing that's come up is we've looked at some of the states' maps and what they consider a conservation resource. You look at Montpelier and you see that there's not much that's been set aside. The rivers are a focus for the state. And juxtapose that with some of the towns surrounding us where it's more than 90% green like priority for the state to consider. Even our own Hubbard Park isn't considered big enough to be a valuable resource. It's great for us for recreational purposes as residents but it's not part of the state's plans for ecological stuff. That's the last couple of meetings I've been about. Thank you for attending. A couple I went to, I thought a huge crowd of people was pretty unmanageable. My view on the Regional Planning Commission, by the way, as Montpelier has represented it, is that I feel like it's a resource. The regional commissions are resources for smaller towns that don't have a lot of staff. I feel like it's a good place for us to bring them up. Montpelier kind of attitude of like, what can we do for the region? It's kind of my attitude about it. Because alternatively you could look at it like it's something like that. What does Montpelier get out of this? I don't think of it as existing for that purpose. I anticipate that as we do more work here that we might need to go talk to the Regional Planning Commission about maybe amending the Regional Plan and what it says from Montpelier to promote some of the things like for our zoning ordinance and where we want to kind of channel development and things. Because I think we're fine where we are but as we want to encourage more development here we might actually need to change the Regional Plan and we might need to have the conversation with the Regional Planning Commission that Montpelier sees itself as a place where more development needs to happen on a regional scale, which means possibly less other places. It would be interesting to see how other towns view that. Because I think there is a tendency that no matter how small your town is that's where you live and you want to see it like grow. So I think during the economic development sort of plan or hearings there's a lot of talk of support for regionalization of various services and I wonder if there's an opportunity in at least our plan updates to get into that and discuss with the Regional Planning Commission and maybe we can hear anything specific in mind or anything. One of my other adventures is being on the border with a central non-regional public safety authority which very few of us were ever heard of but here is to the attempt. I mean the long range of vision would be to have one place fire a medical for a central non-regional authority instead of various towns fighting each other for the budgets. But right now it's all about dispatching trying to get all the safety services where they belong. We'll be looking to work at the Regional Planning Commission to get some support for that as you say because I mean it's the key to good public safety is being able to get the equipment where it needs to be as quickly as you can get it. Everything appears to be working fine until it doesn't. Quebec taxicabs, jammer, computer, our circuits so you can get an emergency and taxicabs will take over. You can't even get information together. We have two dispatchers, centers, one in Marion, one in Napoleon. There's no way for one to hear what the others are doing. It takes a lot of improvisation to try to coordinate all this stuff. That will require some new hours, one new tower, but more equipment. It'll be a major project. Okay, well, Mike, what are the data on the city plan? So as Leslie mentioned with the city plan, so we just finished on January 3rd the zoning update and on December 20th or 12th we had re-adopted the master plan. Again, what's called the master plan, what we're now calling the city plan. So that was re-adopted just so we could have another window of time. We had to update a few pieces of information to get that going. So where we've been a little bit in kind of a little bit of a holding pattern is waiting to see what's up with the new council. The current council, the mayor and two of the counselors are not running so we're going to end up with at least three new persons. So we'll see what the new council would kind of like to give us for a direction to go. But we've said for a long time that we wanted to develop a new plan. There's a lot of effort that went into and a lot of visioning that went into developing this plan in 2009 and 2010. When it was developed a lot of input sessions, a lot of people came out where a number of us felt it fell short was a little bit in developing strategies for how we're actually going to implement and reach our goals. So what we want to be able to do is kind of take this plan which kind of threw everything into the soup and kind of break it back out to some fifth pieces and then write a plan for housing and write a plan for transportation and write a plan for energy because we have an energy committee that can help us with the energy plan. A transportation committee that can help basically be the person who's going to people that are going to implement transportation plan and housing. We've got the housing task for us so we've got these committees so we kind of want to break it up. We've got a committee, work with the committee, develop a plan, strategies, what we're going to be doing and kind of work in that back in that vein to direct the plans going forward. And then to really spend some time asking hard questions about how we're going to actually implement the plan. The housing piece that I gave you that was there, some of you have seen that before, that's what the housing committee kind of came up with as their implementation strategy. It was just more of a white paper format. It really wasn't anything that would be inserted into a plan but it started to outline what were their aspirations, why they thought that was a good goal or a good aspiration, what are some strategies, how would these strategies come together. And the goal really being starting to have some of those questions, starting to get away from strategies like we want to encourage accessory apartments. Encouraging accessory apartments doesn't make any accessory apartments. How are we going to encourage it? Are we going to develop a marketing strategy to do it? Who's going to do that marketing strategy? Are we going to have financial incentives? Are we going to do a plan to find out why people aren't making accessory apartments? And to really start to come up with a strategy that the housing committee can work on with the community development specialist to really start to say let's advance this. We've got money and a housing trust fund. We have a couple hundred thousand dollars that might be sitting in these kind of defunct revolving loan funds. Can we take those funds and reapply them to help to make housing happen? And then the question is okay, well what is it we want to do and how can we best use these funds? Let's start lining up the train cars in such a way that we can start to take our resources, establish a goal, establish a program and start to make housing and then evaluate the program, see how well it works. So we've got different ways in which we've talked about of we can set policies, we can find out what we don't know and decide what we're going to plan for. We can change our zoning regulations and other rules. We just finished at the last meeting and the council did addressing the sprinkler ordinance. That was actually in the plan in a couple of places that said we should review that as the sprinkler ordinance, a barrier to housing development. And so that's been removed now from the sprinkler ordinance. There's not a requirement for single family homes and duplexes any longer. So we want to start to do those kinds of things of identifying and evaluating and then kind of moving forward to start to implement. So that way we can look back in the eight-year life of the plan to kind of start looking back and saying are we making real progress? Because that's our goal is if we do all these steps are we going to start to accomplish our goals or start to advance our goals? We really want to make sure we've got good strategies because unlike a lot of places it's difficult for places like Calis or Woodbury to accomplish goals. They don't have staff. They've just got volunteers. They don't have a lot of resources. We do. We've got staff. We've got resources. We can write grants. I think we just need to do a better job of really asking hard questions of finding out what it is specifically we want to do and then start to pick a direction and start to go and start to evaluate how well we're doing. And I think that's what we want to do. We want to start with housing. That was because they're the farthest along. I thought that would be a good one. Many members of the council I think are interested and many members of the public are interested in getting more housing and how can we make housing more affordable. So I think that's a good first one to take. But it'll be interesting to see from the council whether they want to see, you know, we want to see the entire plan rewritten in two years. Or whatever. Then that means, well, we can't be quite as detailed on everything. We can put together some framework of plans for all the 10 chapters and then amend them later with more detail. But we thought we would get one chapter done because we thought if we got one done we could use it as a model for others. And the hope is eventually we would have all these white papers for housing, let's say. But ultimately we have to write six pages. I think we have to calculate that. That's like 1,500 to 2,000 words or something like that. So really you've got to digest all this down into your selling point. If somebody in the public opens our city plan to housing that they can really understand housing in about six pages. Because we're going to have lots of chapters and we really have to really start to narrow that down and tell a good story, tell the story that we think we need to tell about housing. And fortunately we're not going to be doing all the work. The committees are going to be doing a lot of the original heavy lifting. Certain chapters will be here, land use. There isn't another committee for land use. That's going to be the planning commission. But a lot of the other chapters already have committees that would be responsible for doing the initial work of recreation, open space, natural resources, has conservation commission. That's kind of where I see it going. And I'm certainly open to your suggestions and ideas as well. And we're also going to, as we said, see what happens in the next two weeks with council that's pointed what their goals and directions are. If they want to send us in a single direction, we do have staff, but we've got so much time. So if council says it's all about downtown economic development, then that may take away from some other working on the master plan. But they may turn around and say, we're together, don't they? They do. I can't just pick one and say, do I fix the others? Who wrote this document? I wrote most of it and gave it to the housing committee and other folks to kind of, I threw the stuff down as ideas for them to start to chew on. When would we see, I like your idea of giving us a draft and saying these are the goals, these are the implementation, this is the time frame. I think that's very different than the existing. I would love, if you could develop one of those that we could look at. So we know the methodology. And that's what we're going to be trying to do with the housing. Housing will be the first one that we'll try to work our way through. This was just one that we had started in 2016. Leslie had asked that I bring a couple things to go and kind of kick off what we're doing, what we've done. I mean this is a much shorter version. This really just looked at, this was them when they wanted to put together their goals, policies, and recommendations that we started to talk about. Looking at the old plans that had existed back in 2000. So we look at the old plans, the regional plan, a number of other things started to pull ideas. Key words that we thought would be important started to pull them together. Do we want to have a single vision statement? Do we want to break it into, in this case, four aspirations? How did we want to structure it? And it's going to be an evolving process until we come up with one that we all think that kind of works. Well my very quick read as you were speaking is, excuse me, there's a lot of meat on the bone here. There's a lot of definition of issues and problems. But not a lot of discussion on how we get there. No, there are some as you get later in the document. I couldn't read enough. Yeah, farther in you actually get to where they list the aspiration and then the policies and goals that go along with it. So the first one was where did these aspirations come from? Why do we think these are appropriate to be aspirations? And then later it has a list of, but it doesn't really explain how or who or what. It was just, here's a strategy. And here's one thing that we could do. And hopefully if we did the strategies, each strategy helps advance the goal. So if we did all the strategies in theory we would be helping to accomplish our goal. I think new members might be interested in why this makes a difference to anybody to have a plan. I mean, the one we worked on for zoning really guided the zoning. But that's not the primary thrust of a new plan. Maybe you could give us a quick review of what the plan, I know it's not regulatory but it definitely is. Yeah, I mean it's a policy document. It's setting out the vision and in a lot of ways my background, I spent eight, nine years working at the Regional Planning Commission doing a lot of just writing master plans and comprehensive plans. And one of the things, of course when you're just at the Regional Commission is you don't really get the chance to implement those plans. And it was always disappointing to not see a lot of the layout of all that hard work to actually see things change on the ground. So I started just paying attention to places that I would see change and start to follow up on. You know, even little things, you know, what happened in, you know, little village grotton. And you're like, well, you know, fixing up a post office and fixing up a couple of things and suddenly you realize it's like, oh, none of that had anything to do with zoning or these other things. They're doing projects. And so when I went to Barrie and now a lot of my focus is zoning is always important, but zoning and your regulations, they're reactionary. They're not proactive. So a lot of what I try to do and I'm kind of winging it and making up as I go along is to try to keep finding ways of being proactive about issues. So we want more housing and we want more affordable housing. We can write all the zoning we want, but chances are good if we're going to implement it, it's going to get implemented through either a program or a project. And really the only difference between those two is a program is something that's ongoing where a project is something you do once. We do one, one Taylor Street. We have a first time home buyer program. So the first time home buyer program, every year we issue six first time home buyers. If we've got the funding available. And there's a purpose for that and a reason for that. And it's not just being done to be generous, it's being done because we have a specific outcome that we're trying to accomplish. We wanted to get more kids in the school. How can we get more kids in the school? We need more young families to move to Montpelier. How do we get more young families to move to Montpelier? We need to provide a matching funds to down streets first time home buyer program. So that's what we do to try to encourage young families to move to town. Offering $10,000 each child that ends up in the school will be another block grant from the state for the school. It doesn't help the city government municipality, but it helps the school for each child that ends up in the school system. And I think over the years it's resulted in nine students that have stayed for a number of years. So for the amount of money that's spent, we've gotten far more than that. And while you always hear on the radio of declining school enrollments, we don't have that in Montpelier. How much of that can we attribute to our first time home buyer program? I don't know, but it was certainly something that was a very specific concern that we came up with a specific program that we can actually document with these students, you know, and how long they stayed and how much money we got as a result of the investment that we made in the first time home buyer program, which we don't have to, we don't have to do, but I think it certainly would make it more challenging, especially with our high housing prices for us to get young families into town. So it's those types of things that I'm trying to do. How we actually write this, how we sell it to the public, this is, you know, I think, I think it's one of the things that, you know, I know I don't do as good a job at. And I know, even just looking, watching the news and the amount of distrust that a lot of people have with the government, I think we just need to do a better job of saying, you know, it's not, you know, it's not Ronald Reagan's work. Government isn't the solution to the problems, the government is the problem. Well, I think that mentality has been very cancerous because there's a lot of things that we can do and a lot of great things we do that help to fix a lot of the problems that are in, you know, as a result of just economics. So I think we need to do a better job of selling it. The city plan is a good place for us to do that. Our website, if we could tie this into the website, do a better job of explaining to people why we do what we do and why it's important and what the results are. And if people say, we don't like these goals, then great, we don't need to do these implementation strategies. But if people say, yeah, affordable housing is important, we need to have this, then I'm going to do my best to say, all right, we're not just going to put in wishful thinking, we're not just going to encourage things. I'm going to try to do some homework and some proposals for people to consider to say, here's how we're going to do it. And we can say yes or no. I think that's a really good point. I think that's something that we can do while we're going through the process of coming up with a plan and coming up with things to actually act on and incorporate in the plan. Nothing's stopping us from going ahead and acting on some of them right away and going to city council with some of these things right away as we're contemplating through the plan. Yeah. I think that's a good springboard ordinance which is something we would have put in here to reconsider it. It actually is in there because it was 2016. Right. Well, we got some momentum recently and we repealed it and that was a barrier to developing housing in Montpelier. And the more that we can just get momentum and go ahead and get things done now, I think. Yeah. So. Why put the work into a plan when we can also put in the work and just get it done? Yes. But it's important in the end to kind of be able to tie those back to a goal. So we can go through and say, you know, this is why in the future we don't do similar things or why we don't make the same mistakes or why we do the same things as, you know. So, and that's our hope is to just go through and be able to say, here's the problem and here's how we can try to fix it. You know, as I said, it's always been the challenge, you know, the goals and policies here, encourage housing development that maintains and expands housing diversity. You know, that's a recommendation that's almost meaningless. Encourage adaptive reuse of existing buildings. These are a lot of the strategies that exist and not only Montpelier's plan, but a lot of plans around the state. So we're just going to try to, or at least that's been my goal. So it's just to try to find ways because I really, I didn't become a planner to plan. I became a planner and I wanted to, you know, help to make the world a better place. And, you know, if I get out of here in 20 years, I'd like to think some things have gotten better. So to follow up on this for the next meeting, should we be ready to jump into housing for the next meeting? It certainly is a place to just to start to review and get some understanding. I'm starting to pull some things together. I've gotten more time lately. It's been kind of a challenging winter. So we adopted the zoning January 3rd. And then right after that, had some stuff at home that I had to deal with that. I'm now starting to get back to be able to spend more time at work. So it's, it's, this is what I've been actually working on is revisions to this. And I'll try to get more stuff as we get into our next meeting, which is March 12th. So that will be after town. And just, we could have commission members think about you could get in touch with Leslie if there's something like a housing issue you want to go into. And I think that brainstorming on various strategies for housing is... And maybe I'll talk to, I haven't had a chance to talk to our housing task force. And maybe I'll see about trying to organize a meeting and see if we can get some of them to come to visit and meet with you guys. Kevin Casey, our community development specialist who kind of runs that program, had his baby two weeks ago. So he's been kind of out on paternity, so I'm a little bit short staffed in that area, but I think we could still bring, pull them in to kind of have the discussion of stuff. Because they're going to be the first ones. They're kind of going to do the heavy lifting coming up with their specific recommendations that they can bring to you. But I think it's also helpful for them to hear from you at the start as to what you guys think. Should we have discussion first to make sure everyone's on the same page in terms of what we're working towards so that the work that any of these committees are doing is going to be helpful and not seen. It won't be us basically tearing up what they've done because it's like human or an ape. Yes, we should have some of those discussions up front with the committees. With the, yeah. They should come in and say, this is what we're thinking. Well, committees are going to want to get into substance and have a lot of great ideas and I think part of what our job is is to help guide them and help them prioritize so that we can pull things together and have a clearer picture of what we're working towards. You can pick up almost any plan in the state. You'll have a 300-page document with a lot of great ideas and great strategies but good luck figuring out where you should put your limited resources. I think I had a hard time doing it until I heard I mean, you need some background before you can give guidance. Well, he's talking about giving them some guidelines to sort of make them more efficient, to make them more in one way, right? It's not all about substance. We expect it to be about this long. We expect it to be about this format but that kind of... Yeah, I think if we got made sure they understood, they're eventually going to have to come back to a six-page thing, but they may have if they want to do a 30-page white paper on... with the data analysis and all this other stuff that's not going to go in the plan. That's just going to be a white paper that if somebody is really that interested in it. It's just a common understanding of like, there's a room for throwing out... there's definitely a place for throwing out a lot of ideas and you don't want to discourage that at all but we also don't want to make it seem you know, we want them to be on the same page in terms of we're not going to be adopting a plan that has all of these ideas and let's work together to prioritize these and the reality is that we know that these really long plans without real detail of any data plans are not effective at all. So you think you have one general message that we could send to all of the committees about what our expectations are going to work on that next time? I think they're... Yeah. And some of that needs to be what are our expectations or what do we... You know, they're going to be doing public outreach is that going to do something we're doing? Is it happening at City Council? Within their context, I think they're going to be doing some... I think it depends on the committee and what they're working on. I don't expect a lot of public outreach from utilities and facilities and their pieces. I think a lot of their stuff is to... The Capital Budget Committee would probably be doing a lot of that work and but others I think really do need to get public input. I mean historic preservation is not going to come up with a historic plan without going back to the public and selling them on it. So should we be setting up expectations around that as well? Yeah. I think there's outreach and I think there's also going to be a little bit of there. They're providing drafts that I think ultimately you guys are going to be reviewing in the same way that you'll send up the council and they may may make changes. I think each committee needs to understand that there may be a certain amount of drafts that they send to you guys that you guys are going to make changes to because you guys are going to be looking at a much bigger picture. So while an energy committee may be focused on getting everybody out of their cars you ultimately need to also go and look at the transportation plan that may be saying we can't do everything that you guys want it. We have to balance this with our other goals. Natural resources may not be taking as much into consideration on economic development as you will and vice versa for economic development. When we do that plan we're going to have to look at that in light of other issues. So they're not just getting these are our plans and approve them and send them to the council. I think there'll be an important piece that you'll have to take in weighing this in light of the other pieces. One thing that a discussion we had last time some suggested that the whole economics of development are going to change because nobody has to spend any taxes on it. When we're doing the zoning we had a few developers come to the planning commission. I went around and talked to a lot of people and figured out how to read all this crap. One or two building a house. No money. There's no money in it. There's no reason to do it. So a certain amount of reality there are some things going on in the city and Dodd and his downsizing group an interesting group that discovers desire or demand but not much supply but it's interesting I think the whole tax I don't like conventional wisdom if I see an idea that's particular analysis maybe things have changed we should have another look at why we're not getting housing and what housing do we want I don't know how we get the economic data. Tim Heaney is always anxious to come in and tell us what to think and I value his comments I'm not a developer Part of it is that the economics are really important but part of it across small town America is that there are there's no developer who's going to come here and start building things in a lot of other amounts of other big money isn't going to come here because they're not going to get it back but so we need to be being a developer on a very small scale is not necessarily that hard to start looking at we have a lot of really smart people who have some of those skill sets that are necessary to be a successful developer so how do we empower those people to start doing that it could be doplex or proplex do you even get a mortgage for a single bank account on two sheets of paper it's not that hard to do I don't disagree with that I'm just suggesting the people that want to make money out of this are the people that got to tell us what they're problem with I would say that if the same ideas are kicking around since 2014 it's probably because we haven't acted on many of them that's why the landscape has changed because the same barriers continue to exist when we're doing the zoning everything convinced that the economics of what's going on is far more important than anything we put on paper the planning is 2008 it's just rippled through the economy and it's when we're doing something else but seven or eight years we were recovering now we've got a whole new tax law that frees up money do you mean tits when you say that what's that do you mean the tiff district when you're talking about tax no, I mean that if you're a small developer in a form of corporation which is a pretty powerful center look at whiskers in Washington subsidizing development, not us I'd like to know more about that I think that's a looming reality and I think it has a lot to do with development far more than what it really is guidance that we've looked at I think that's what the housing committee's going to look at is the economics that was what I was trying to say with the zoning as much as the zoning as we do we may remove some barriers that may put some encouragement in there but ultimately I think we need to understand what the economic barriers are because it costs $250,000 to $280,000 to build an apartment unit so if you're looking at a quadplex you're almost up to a million dollars for suddenly you've got to go and start seeing how much am I going to have to get in rent and if the economics aren't there people aren't going to build and the question is how can we put your thumb on the scale to help to lower those costs that was what we did in Barrie when we wanted to get more economic development in Barrie we had to look at the fact that commercial rents were only getting $8 to $10, maybe $12 a square foot to build some of these buildings you'd have to be charging $18 to $12 a square foot to pay the mortgage so these projects aren't going to happen so we did a TIF district and we did tax stabilizations because the tax stabilizations saved almost $4 off on a square foot so we started to be able to lower those costs to a point where with new market tax credits and a few other programs because it was a distressed area we were able to put the thumb on the scale at best and create the 500-700 jobs that it did it happens because we consciously put our thumb on the scale to try to make sure we understood it and I think the same thing is going to have to happen with housing we haven't had the chance to really start to say where can we we've got this money that is what I said with the housing trust fund can we find a way to make that money make things happen is it because you don't know what you're doing and you don't know how to actually go through the process of doing this maybe we could establish micro-grants that we could use to bring in an architect that would lay out the money and go and say John, you can put in an accessory apartment we'll put in the $5,000 to help plan for it and help you explain the economics of it and what it would cost to design it and what it would look like and if you decide to go ahead and do it then you owe that money back because you'd probably be able to charge and pay that back over three years or five years or not at all this is 800 square feet maybe not your house but that idea that maybe if we could use these of a micro-grant we have to look at why is it people have big houses and high taxes why wouldn't they put in an accessory apartment and we really just need to talk to the people and find out if we helped you by spending some of this housing preservation money that's sitting idle if we can repurpose that we might be able to help people to put another accessory apartment in I think the obvious answer for me working out being a part person studies policy and research policy for a day job the obvious answer then is it's not easy enough for people I mean people are not acting in a way in which they could a rational person would do this because it's just a boom it's not easy enough or is it misinformation people think it's this and in fact what we need to do is look at things while I never do that because I don't want tenants who are going to be this or that now we've got to educate people on what it means to be a landlord and it's not as scary or hard as it seems and we have the resources to help educate you on how to be a good landlord if you're going to have a tenant living in your garage in an accessory apartment being the city being represented in the city the oops people have to jump to it to get there and making that as easy as possible yep that's less of an issue but we do need to certainly keep an eye out for the barriers there but I think it's the other thing to keep in mind just your comment there about what we do is also within this plan I've always tried to focus and within here is really what we as the city government do is make sure we're directing our resources towards nobody lives in a house owned by the city of Montpelier it's all owned by our partners or landlords or private so when we want to create housing we aren't going to build any housing we aren't creating anything we're going to be providing incentives to help other people do things so we always have to make sure we're writing and recognizing that's what we're doing and making those types of things happen I think that's so that's my that's a little bit of my brain and how I'm hoping this goes over the next couple of years we can put together some really good plans whether it's complete streets whether it's housing, whether it's energy that we really can put together a nice plan that helps set a good direction because I think there are a lot of goals this is a very progressive a lot of things they want to try to see us be net zero, have complete streets good biking and walking and I think each one of those just needs a good plan and a good strategy to how to implement that plan and we'll start making progress okay so we'll keep moving we're not, we didn't really have that ambition of our agenda and I so no reason to stay really late so to move things along just to kind of tap off that conversation we'll we'll talk to Leslie about getting on the agenda next week something where we're going to frame our expectations whether it's committees and based on what we talked about tonight Mike would it be possible to have some a draft kind of instructions as the right word framework of our expectation trying to think, yeah I mean I think what we would talk about next time would be what would be our expectations would it help I think it would help people to have because I imagine it's being like a paragraph or not a lot more than that right oh for what a chapter might ultimately end up being where we eventually go way out and collect up all this stuff but eventually we're going to funnel it into so some kind of written framework for us to look at then we'll discuss and then talk about how we want to add as attracted from that but with the goal of having it ready to be kind of worked on next week and for us to pass on that so we can get on to the committees so we can start doing the work on I think to some degree it's a framework of not just what the final document should look like but how they should be thinking about it so if we want to say well what do we want to see in this area what are the goals we're looking at and what are the barriers we're running into and what sort of resources does the city have that's how I'm looking at it so within each of these areas if they're doing those things then they'll get some sort of document that looks some specific way that I think what's more important is to set up that initial how they should be thinking about it framework and also just what our a message kind of I don't know if I'm explaining how in terms of what our expectations are and how we're grateful for their work and support and we'll be going back and just because we've brought an idea hopefully we can just communicate to them early on we're all partners in this and don't take anything personally they've just seen processes where these communities work inside of those they send everything over and then they they meet with the and I've seen that the other way we're applying the commission to develop all this stuff and their own silo without input from them and the transportation and the energy committee and our point I think part of that might be for the committees if they want someone from the planning commission to be attending their meetings so they can be in liaison in these meetings or whatever we're talking about that section they can come and be a part of that so we're in the commission for that that we're encouraging that that's a really good thing to include like an open invitation basically setting up that expectation that this is so that's to me for next week also would it be possible to have someone from the housing task force at the next meeting do you want to talk first amongst ourselves about this framework before we meet with them or do you want to try to have somebody I wasn't sure what we'd like what other people think about is it important to go ahead and start a conversation with the next meeting if it's not the next meeting I would have them at the follow-up so I mean the question would be whether we have them at the 12th and show up on the 26th I would say the next one just to set up the framework in the meeting we'll always know who's on the council we don't have any input from them yet I don't see any downsides going ahead and talking to the housing task force is that what you're suggesting I'm saying we might have other things to talk about before we actually meet with them to figure out this framework yeah I think that this might take us a better part of the framework of the housing task force tentatively for the 26th okay and I'll talk with them I think they've got a meeting I'll say to me I'll find out what their schedule is and I'll meet with them I'm actually not going to be up the next meeting but I would put a plug in for also if there's any sort of outside of the separate topic areas if there's any higher level outreach or anything like that it would be good to talk to them so it's not just silent within each group if there's something bigger we should be doing that would be good to talk about I mean a little bit of what just to give you a little bit of background of how we framed this with the council in the past with that the 350 people and the 50 public input sessions and everything that there was a lot of visioning that went into this we still need to go back and get input to kind of refresh and make sure it's almost 10 years old going at 10 years old now we do need to make sure that that vision is still accurate but there had been a lot of that visioning that had been done and I think revisiting it isn't bad but I don't know if we would necessarily get in and do another really big we told council we were going to go back and open up a vision month a year again I think it's still a good check-in to see if that's still the right vision I think there's no shortage of resources a lot of these issues have been looked at by previous plans and things I think we should absolutely look at all of those things going into each of the different sections for the plan so it looks like we know what we're going to do with that and we run to the next item which is to consider the minutes from February 12 and for January 22 do we have the January do we have the approved I put one of each over there do we have a motion? how second? John so the interesting part about February 12 is that it wasn't actually actually was a meeting we didn't we only ended up with three people there we did not have a quorum so those are more just I think we'll technically approve them but there are more notes than minutes okay January 22 I'll make a separate motion to approve January 22 second I don't know if I can vote on that so then we have a quorum I think technically you don't have to be present to vote on them we'll just leave February 12 alone because that wasn't an official meeting and listen January 22 we have a motion I ask you to vote for the motion which is my first time you think after all of the times that I've heard it all those in favor say aye all those in favor say aye that's pretty easy to remember okay any opposed any abstain I could tell you're struggling with we will officially get a 4-0 vote anyway so that's second and that's uh adjourn