 Any adjustments to the agenda? Look, it's so cool. It has a smaller font than usual. Actually, it's because it's a new program. Okay. Okay, so hearing no adjustments will deem the agenda approved. Number three is comments from the chair. So we weren't able to gather a quorum last meeting. And it's okay. It happens sometimes. But I think for the two with newborns, you're off the hook. But for everyone else, we really need to make an effort to be here. You had an emergency, so I understand. And I know you were going to be out of town. So it really was beyond what most people, you know, it was an emergency. But I just wanted to use it as an excuse to remind everyone that we really need to make an effort. And if we can't meet on a certain day, then we can try to set up another meeting if needed. Of course, I'd like to avoid that because we'll just, it's hard to keep momentum if we only meet once a month. So it's, I don't blame anyone. I know everybody had extended circumstances. I just wanted to remind us all of the necessity of being here. The second thing I wanted to mention to everyone is that Kirby and I had lunch with Eric Gilbertson, who is the chair, I think, of the Historic Preservation Commission. Commission, right? Now committee. Yes. Thanks, Barb. And he is a member of the Design Review Committee. And he's been a member of that for many years. And he gave us a quick overview of the Historic Preservation slash design review committee work that's been undertaken, that has been submitted to us to review and that they're going to present to us in June. So I really encourage everyone to make it to that meeting. I think we're looking at June 10th. Is that right? Yeah, we're going to set the date. Number six will. Okay, so we'll set the date. Leslie, is that going to be our next meeting then? Because we won't have one on Memorial Day or do we want to reset the Memorial Day meeting? Well, we can talk about that. Let's do that under item nine. Since we didn't meet last time, it might be a good idea to do that, but let's just hold on to that for now. Good question, Barb. Okay, any other old business or lack of a better word? Okay, so item four, general business, comments from the public about something not on the agenda. There are new members of the public presence, so we'll move on to item five, which is for Mike to provide us an update on consultant selection for the Montpelier downtown master plan. Okay, RFP. So we did the RFP. We did the request for proposals. We got five applicants and we had a committee that included two transports. Well, actually three transportation folks, two from the transportation infrastructure, one from the complete streets, which was Gary Holloway. Then we had two kind of open space. Elizabeth Courtney and Ricardo Erickson from the River Conservancy. And then we had two economic folks, the MDC director and Dan from Montpelier Alive. So they were the review committee for the five applications. Went through and narrowed to a short list and had interviews and hired SE group who did work with St. Albans and a couple other communities. A lot of work in Burlington on their Great Streets project. So they were really happy to have them on board. I've known members of the team for a long time, but I haven't actually worked with any of them directly on a project. So it would be good. So the only comment that had been made about their proposal was there was a feeling that they didn't have enough public input. They actually had a lot that was more on the technology side. They were going to have websites in interactive. A lot of the whiz bang things that John would love. But some of them wanted a couple of more technique, more meet the people where they are type things. So SE group is giving us a revised public input plan that will involve more direct face-to-face. So going to farmers markets, going to parades. Rather than try to get people to come to you, they're going to have more events where they go out to where people are. So he's coordinating Mark Kane, whose SE group is coordinating with Dan at Montpelier Alive to kind of coordinate when the big events are, with when they can come out and try to work with the public to try to get their input on some of the ideas for making a state in Maine coming up with that downtown master plan of what we want to try to see. I know the council is excited and on board and they have a number of ideas. They know these are kind of expensive endeavors, but they're kind of looking at, they really want to see if we could kind of do one of those downtown, large downtown projects that have been done in Barrie and Winooski and they really want to get in and see if we could kind of make 21st century streets out of our downtown. We've got to replace the street trees anyways with the emerald ash borer. We have to do more stormwater treatment, so this is a great opportunity for us to get in and kind of transform our streets. Doesn't St. Albans have rain gardens or some sort of fancy stormwater treatment system? Yeah, they have some in the same group that helped do some of those, are going to help here. I guess we'll learn a lot from what St. Albans learned as the first one. The same group, the watershed consulting group also did our demonstration project that's being built this summer on Taylor Street. So Taylor Street is actually going to have a lot of those rain gardens and tree boxes, tree cells, silver cells, which are going to have catchments underneath. So as stormwater goes in, they go through the cell and then there's a catchment of pipes on the bottom to bring the water to the... Treatments. Yeah, so the treatment is through those tree beds. So it's a neat system. A lot of it, we're doing a demonstration project on Taylor Street, so Public Works, the Tree Board and other departments get a chance to kind of see how they work, how easy is it for maintaining them, all of those types of things. And so hopefully what we learn there, we can transfer to state and main when we redo those streets. Can you give us a little bit more context about how you're envisioning this fitting within the city plan development process? So this is really a nuts and bolts plan for the publicly owned parcel. So they will look at the parking lots as well because a lot of this involves trade-offs. The current plan for state and main or for Barrie, the Barrie Street intersection, they did the scoping study. The plan there is to take some on-street parking off of Main Street as well as Barrie Street. So there's a net loss of 30 or 40 parking spaces, so we have to balance that. So we really have to look at all the pieces of our parking networks to kind of decide, if there's a desire to have more park space and we have to remove parking, then we'll need to have more answers for parking and maybe that comes with the parking garage, maybe that comes in another parking somewhere else. But it's kind of going to be looking at all of the downtown, all the publicly used pieces in the downtown. That's going to obviously plug into the city plan, but the city plan is really looking kind of big picture and it would probably mention that one of the... As we talk about how to implement our city plan, one of the things is going to be implementing the downtown master plan because that will be a big... That's a big lift, but if people want to have bike lanes in the downtown, at some point there's just no getting around the fact that you're going to have to shut down the street and bang out some curbs and start moving things around if you want to have new street trees and new drainage systems and we'll have to make some big decisions. And I think what we'd end up with is, in our city plan, a discussion of how are we going to be... In the natural resources we might be talking about stormwater and the importance of treating stormwater and then one thing is going to be how do we treat stormwater in the downtown? It's more challenging than in... Once you get out of downtown you can treat a lot of stuff on site and it becomes more challenging when you get to a place that's 100% impervious. But you can do it with technology. The parking garage will treat all of its stormwater on site before it discharges. In fact, a bunch of it will discharge into the sewer system so that way it gets treated at the plant as well. But treating the stormwater that's on our streets is going to be an important piece and that's just one example of all the things that are going to come up in our downtown. So there may be a number of goals that will come up in the city plan broadly that we'll be implementing in the downtown master plan when it gets constructed. So Mike, it's called a master plan but really it's state and main. It's the two streets really, right? Yes. So we had a master plan for the capital complex which is from Taylor Street and Governor Davis over to Bailey. So that's box. Just nine hours. Yeah, that's theirs. We've done a master plan and are building out Taylor Street so we'll have that street done. And then the idea was originally let's do state street to main so that way we're just kind of build off of this what would the street lamps look like because the light poles that light the streets don't actually work very well. They're very old and need to be replaced. So we have a number of things that just need to be replaced on there including the Rialto Bridge and we figured this would be a time to just shut down that section of street, fix that up, and then when questions came up about what to do about Confluence Park and the Moat property where Eminem Beverage was, then we had to expand this into a broader discussion and then main street out to school across to Elm and down so obviously Langdon Street would be in. It includes Langdon Street and that square. Oh, okay. Yeah, so there is kind of a piece. Obviously our emphasis is on state and main and berry. Berry to Hubbard actually. We wanted to get passed. We didn't want to stop at the rec facility because you really have to discuss how let's say somebody coming down the hill and Berry coming into town. How do they transition to the bike lane if you're on Berry Street? We really want to look back as far as Hubbard Street to see maybe it's all the way back to Hubbard Street that we don't have on street parking. Maybe it comes off later but we'll look at a slightly larger picture so we can kind of fit all the pieces in. I had one other question. Is the actual proposal public knowledge? I mean, can we see their proposal in terms of what they're going to be doing? Yep. Yeah, that's a... We should add it to our website. We should. It'd just be good to know in terms of including what they're not so we don't ask questions that they're not covering. Yeah, I'll try to send out a copy of it. Where did the guiding principles come from that were included in the RFP? Like for instance, like the bike lanes where did the idea come from? For... For like bike lanes to be part of this master plan. Like the things that are actually there to be addressed. So there's been a mont pillar and motion plan and then there was a complete streets plan that came out as well which talked about a lot of how to get bikes and pedestrians into the downtown. And then it was left off that the downtown is so complex we can't just come up with a set of general rules. We really have to plan for specifically where they're going to end up being. State in Maine was kind of the piece that needed to be answered for a number of projects. We have TIFF, the projects for saving the pasture and these other projects can't get Act 250 approval until there's a fix for very in Maine intersection. So we kind of had this thing on our list of things to find an answer for. We knew we had the bike lane coming through so we still had the question of how do bikes get from Main Street to the rec center. We've got a bike path built that side and a bike path built that side but nothing in the middle. So we had a number of these questions Public Works Department did the scoping study for the very in Maine intersection which included most of the downtown. So that project and proposal is going to be the foundation that these other folks will work off of. And that one was looking at where are we going to put the bikes? Because whether you have bikes or don't have bikes and where you put them makes because the question was do we put a roundabout or do we put a streetlight at Berry in Maine? And then same question for for Maine in Berry and then state in Maine, same question. And then school in Maine, same question. Do we have a roundabout? Do we have a light? And it was found that you can actually make roundabouts work at any of them. But... Don't they have to all be roundabouts though? There was a question of them all being roundabouts and it came out that you could do a hybrid if if state in Maine were a light you could still make it work. I don't know what the final decision is yet for the council. I don't know if that's coming up. I'm just looking at their board up there. I don't see it on that one. So I don't know if they have voted yet on which is their preferred alternative that they're going to have the consultant finalize. I think the consultant is recommending a hybrid but the recommendation is just that. It's a recommendation and council can decide and there are councillors who have said that they would prefer a roundabout alternative. So we kind of have to see where that goes but that's kind of where some of those foundational pieces came from was the complete street plan. We have to plan for bikes, pedestrians and motorists but the question starts to come in in limited real estate. Do we need to remove on street parking? If we do where do those cars go what is the impact economically? Are we better having the bikes share the road and the share road situation? Which would be perfectly fine. You could simply just go through as we do now on State Street. It's share road. If you want to ride your bike you ride with the traffic and that's a perfectly fine alternative but if we wanted to encourage more biking and having less conflicts and we want to encourage younger and older people to be able to feel safe riding a bike then you sometimes want to have a separated bike lane which means removing on street parking that's where they put that in but hopefully those decisions will be made before SE Group starts too. So it sounds like we need someone to synthesize these other reports? A lot of it is synthesizing and a lot of it is kind of taking what was planned out here you're starting to get closer up because while that was a plan that talked about a lot of the very important pieces where are the cars, where is the parking, where are the bike lanes, where are the sidewalks it didn't get into where are the street trees, do we want street trees? Do we want benches, where do we want benches? Street lights, how often do we want street lights? You're starting to get into much finer detail if we've got a bump out for a crosswalk that shortens the signal something I learned at a meeting a few weeks ago so how long a crosswalk light turns everything red depends on how far the crosswalk is and so by putting bump outs you can shorten that time which helps traffic flow better By the way it's too short at the intersection of the memorial driving You have to run It does look short But you then have to start to decide where you're going to put your street lights because I think we've all been in communities where you're driving along and all of a sudden there's somebody in a crosswalk and you didn't even see them because there's not a light pole there and you can see them if the sun is down So I think there are just a lot of pieces that once you get past where we are right now which is we've got a course scale we know where the lanes are we know the turn lanes are we know whether this is a roundabout or a street light got all those answered now we need to talk about the details where we put our crosswalks where we put our curbs how wide let's make some final arguments as to whether we want four foot separated bike lanes or five foot separated bike lanes and start to make these very detailed questions because if everybody agrees the next step would then be to basically bring it into the hands of the civil engineers and start to go through and say okay if we were going to build this thing out let's start looking at conflicts let's start looking at what works and they have StanTech on board who is our one of our primary engineers we work with and so a lot of these questions will hopefully be addressed early their SE group kind of was the choice because they had worked on so many projects that had gone from conceptual to built and we wanted somebody who is looking ahead so we're talking here they're already looking ahead to know So Aaron since you just joined us we're on item 5 and the quick update is that the consultant that has been selected is the SE group and Mark Kane is the principal on that so you should know from your time working with him and they did some work and St. Albans and Burlington to develop downtowns in a more cohesive approach and so this would be really state and main and what I'm understanding is they have StanTech on board which is what you're just getting at they're going to be looking at the complete streets report the modular and motion report and then taking them a little bit further and developing more detail I'm still not entirely clear on how we will be interacting with Mark and his group it seems like maybe we're delegating an aspect of the city plan a little bit here but we also would want an opportunity to weigh in and so I am it sounds like that hasn't all been fully developed yet which is fine but maybe we could continue talking as he presents ideas and we nailed that we can certainly keep everybody in the loop on where they're at and what are the pieces that are going on and if you want them or him to present you know as they wrap up pieces we can have them try to go and build that in I would like this to be involved I just don't want to get a final product at the end and I say oh no you know I don't know that that would happen but there is a risk that that will happen if we don't feedback and yes we can individually members of the public provide feedback but I think that our group is you know greater than the sum of its parts here I mean we are a committee that have been working together we have kind of a sense of some of the issues where the public might feel strongly and it would be great to be able to provide some input along the way how do others feel about that any thoughts on process you want to provide now before we get too far down the road I have a question about what you said before Mike so are they going to be waiting on decisions from council before they get started yes but D and K is supposed to have the very main scoping study done by the end of this month so that's another piece that they need to be yeah that's one of that's one of but they can start doing pieces other pieces so we're working on their contract right now but there are a lot of integrating a lot of plans that are out there so there's not just those plans we have the EDSP we've got the net zero Vermont competition and the results all those results which they are aware of so we've got a number of different pieces and plans that are out there that they can start reviewing and assembling and pulling things together even if they don't have the final very main scoping study yet what's their timeline for the project they're planning to start in June and be done by March just again their website but most of the heavy lifting will be done by December January and ending stuff as presentations to council so can you give us sort of just the skeleton of their their plan for developing their ideas and I mean because you said they're planning to go to the farmers market so I'm assuming they're going to be doing that in the summer for example so I mean I guess sorry I'm putting you on the spot because you don't have their actual proposal yeah I don't have it in front of me but yeah so they kind of broke into three pieces one of which was kind of compiling the first one is to compile all of the information and to start working with stakeholders on kind of the development of issues problems understanding all of the plans that are out there where the conflicts may exist bringing all that together and then the second then there's a second piece which is I guess they called refining the vision where they're going to be trying to go and then work with the public to go through and said this is what we found in doing all of our homework and then after they get that's where the farmers markets and these things in the windows where people can punch stuff in and text things in and their thoughts and put stuff online these opportunities for people to provide input in this second window and then the third window is this is what we've heard this is where we're starting to put stuff together and then start looking for reactions from people on alternatives here are a couple of alternatives it won't be as it seems like a good time for us to get involved the third you definitely should be in on the third but yeah the second or the third because they're going to need to have your input before but you'll definitely want to be watching what's going on in the third piece but I think that's going to be I think that's kind of how they if I'm clumsily lumping them together it seems like we'll be farther along in the plan process and maybe be a little more informed than we are now too maybe a little bit more prepared to have that conversation then thank you for all the detail any other thoughts or questions about that so I'll send out a copy of their proposal it doesn't have we're still waiting on their revised public input proposal so it'll just be what they submitted and are the complete streets reported the Montpelier and Motion report are those on the website somewhere? I would think they would be and the city's website I don't know if they're on ours but maybe they're under the transportation yeah transportation infrastructure committee with the new format it's going to be a lot easier to find things I would hope so not the web guy but I hope so okay that's item 5 item 6 update on historic preservation commissions efforts to revise design review provisions and zoning bylaws so as background for those of you who didn't get to go through this with all of us when we were working on all of the zoning changes there we kind of stumbled when we reached the design review section and um we heard a lot of feedback that the current design review process was not working particularly well and we came to the conclusion as a committee or at least I came to this conclusion I think the group agreed but that it seemed to be an issue of lack of clarity in what the standards were and how they were being applied was being perceived as arbitrary so we sought to clarify the standards and reduce the opportunity for discretion within those standards and we received a lot of pushback from the design review well it was really more of a historic preservation group which had been disbanded or not disbanded but inactive for quite a while and so individual members of the group came to our meetings and said hold on first of all no don't adopt these standards because they're not aligned with the secretary of interior standards and we think those are the gold standard that we should be applying in addition people who seek tax credits and I think there's some grants available for building located in places where the standards are applied they have to meet the secretary of interior standards so having them applied is part of the city to be able to meet the standards the argument is why not just require it but that was there requiring everyone to do it just because it's a grant requirement it doesn't connect to this you only need it you can only eligible for grants if you have a commercial property and then applying it to all the residential properties anyway then we put it back on them and said okay if you don't like our language give us what you think we should work with and they said okay well we need to do that so that effort was undertaken and they are now reporting back on that that's my understanding of where we are we had some public input and the public didn't exactly come out in favor of it either we had a room full of people who didn't want us expanding the historic preservation well there was a couple issues that were getting conflated as far as the actual design review standards that are in the zoning I've summarized that the other issue that Mike is talking about is that in conjunction with changing the standards we were thinking about changing the area the design review overlay district and the historic federal historic register lines didn't align with the city's historic overlay district I don't know the better way to describe it the design review isn't the same as the historic district so we felt it was a no brainer to align those two the public didn't agree on what basis it does seem like a no brainer well it means more regulation on the people who weren't previously in the design review district and now would be and given the perception of arbitrarily applied standards by the design review committee the public that were soon to be regulated were very upset about this concept so the city council heard anecdote after anecdote about unfortunate processes before the design review committee which may or may not I mean they were all one sided and the design review committee came up and some of them gave well just really Eric spoke Eric Hilbertson and Eric has incredible expertise he used to be the state historic preservation officer for many years but with great expertise often comes people getting in the weeds really fast and so we'd hear resident after resident complaining about the process and then he'd get up there and talk about how the trim needs to look a certain way and it just wasn't a very compelling counter argument so I think city council agreed with our recommendation to just wait I don't remember exactly how it all played out but ultimately it came back to us to just wait and get this input on the standards from the historic preservation commission with input from the design review committee they were tasked with together coming up with standards that they were not acceptable and it would be applied because the design review committee is the committee that actually applies to standards so and then what they do is they provide a recommendation that goes to the DRB so it goes to the DRB or the city council to the DRB that issues the decision they approve the design review district or the design review regulations oh so the projects that are being presented the development projects or but the actual district does need to be approved by city council you're right so we have standards that we'll hear about from era later on but the boundary decisions they don't really have a suggestion for that just as a heads up but that's still a subtle question that seems like we're going to have to continue this well actually they pushed it through after everything quieted down didn't the historic preservation the historic district boundaries change I'm fairly certain that they did yes but not design review so this will be looking at the design review is the historic district bigger than the design review district? they're actually just different areas they partially overlap if you happen to be into the design review and are not part of the historic district then there are different standards that apply to you and we wanted to have kind of the same set of standards but then certain aspects of them wouldn't apply but I don't know exactly how the historic preservation commission landed on that which we will be hearing about one of the questions that we put to them to decide was and I'll need to go and read carefully see where they came out on it was did they want design review standards did they want historic preservation standards or did they want a mixture of both because you can have design standards that apply to 302 nothing historic out there and you could have some historic rules that are very specific about historic structures and you can't do X, Y and Z to historic structures and if you're a non-contributing structure then whatever you do can't have a negative impact on the historic structure so it's really kind of a much lesser mix of the two and what we have now in the old rules that are still in effect is kind of a mixture of both that never really makes itself one or the other it's kind of a little bit of these scenic and design requirements and then one that says and you can't have a negative impact on the historic character so part of this when you start talking about the boundary is if you're only doing historic preservation it doesn't make sense not to be outside the historic district places like National Life the areas past the high school so the Vermont Electric or the Green Mountain Power and those buildings are all in the design control district even though none of them are historical and how was the design review found originally determined? Do you know? I don't have the history of that one that came out in the meeting, don't you remember that? Everyone is like shouldn't we look into how it got to be this way and you know we just don't have that information why they didn't coincide I certainly understand but it does seem like some aspects of the design review district are a bit bizarre mind if I close the window sorry there's a couple of them oh they're like okay I'm just going to close this one so for people who got the three that is the current version of what we have in effect the big heavy one is the draft of what they're proposing and then Eric Gilbert sent you guys a memo with his two and a half page memo of his input and you just emailed these out today so the thought wasn't that we would review these tonight but that if I got them to you tonight then you would have them for the next meeting which they were going to look to try to come on June 10th or June 24th depending on how it works out so they sent out a feeler as to which day worked best for them and either the 10th or the 24th would work for them we're going to wait and hear back and Meredith has been trying to heard those cats try to get as many people from both the historic preservation commission and design review committee to attend as possible because I think and I would encourage all of you to come I don't know what date it will be yet the 10th or the 24th so we'll let you know as soon as possible but the more people that can be part of that discussion the more productive it will be so is it going to be part of our meeting the current dates? they're coming to us yeah okay I wasn't sure the way you said encourage you to come just want to make sure we all get in here just once June hits hopefully the weather will be nicer it's harder and harder to get here but we got it so anyway so the set possible joint meeting I think that I did I add that Meredith sent out the email actually Audra Audra kind of after we were talking about it we were like well let's at least put it on there as a reminder that we could set the possible joint meeting that waits we have to notice that any earlier than we would normally for our meetings no certainly not for you guys because your meetings is that night if they're going to have a quorum of people there then with special rules they might have to we might have to okay word the agenda in such a way that it says that there's a possibility of a quorum of historic preservationists or design review folks that might be here so what's the process then that presented to us and then they're going to go back and change things based on comments my understanding is that they want to go and actually take this first to the planning commission and then second to and I don't know if they're asking you us to do the the public outreach and then go to go to council they're not going to adopt these rules in their entirety what they need to do is to get enough public input that they know these are going to be acceptable because what they want to do after this is do design guidelines because these kind of need a guideline design book which we had people who were here as to what it means to like rehab or restore or replace it's a very graphic set of guidelines that just go through and say yes we want this no we don't want this these types of windows are good these are not this is when we talk about maintaining the fenestration this is what we mean we want to see this not this Shelburne has a good set of rules and Brandy when she was working with us on the zoning gave us one from around the country they're just very 100 plus pages of kind of this and that type scenarios but we can't spend the money making that type of spending that much if somebody comes in later on and says yeah but we're not going to do that so what they want to do is kind of run this through but we can't really adopt it because we wouldn't have the guidelines but there's no sense making the guidelines until we have a good sense that this is where the public would like us to go so I think that's the catch 22 that they're in is that they want to try to kind of get some feelers on this see what the planning commission thinks what the council thinks and then move forward with the guidelines so we would provide them potentially we could ask for updates or we could just take it and make the updates and then at some point we recommend to council they give the green light to develop guidelines using these rules I think so and then it would all come back for us to have a full adoption of the new standards plus the guidebooks that go along with it and maybe because they seem fairly detailed to me but the design guidelines will be more about the buildings or can you tell me a little bit more about what the I think we'll get more when they get their presentation okay after I've actually read this yeah because there is I think they do have quite a lot of specific in here because I think there is what they have under general design standards and then they have some specific design standards and then there's the guidelines that would go along with each of these there's still a lot of subjective language in here like it talks a lot about how an addition shall not overwhelm the primary yeah I saw that too so I think this this guidance would be like an interpretation I hope yeah that's what you need to have the guidebook that would explain what that means windows in the facade shall create a rhythm most properties change every time seems like some interpretation is in order most properties change most properties change every time changes that have acquired historic significance in their own right shall be retained and preserved that's helpful to understand yeah and just out of curiosity there's no requirement that we have to have a design review district right correct but don't we have to have some historic if we want to have a CLG which is a certified local government for historic preservation purposes then we need to have design standards but not a design review district you have to have HP design standards or depending on which which argument you're having with which person historic preservation oh it's you're supposed to have standards that would protect that would preserve or protect the historical integrity of the district so that would be the standards so you could have them applied city-wide and we could get rid of a district I think when it's just that we need regulations some kind of design review regulations for a lot of different reasons our TIF district and our designated downtown as well some kind of design review regulations it's possible to have two sets of regulations we could have a larger central downtown area the less strict outer area because some folks who have elected in the past would be in the kind of outer part of the historic district I think that was something we had discussed and were moving towards because we have a designated downtown area that's the commercial core and then most of the complaints were coming from single-family homeowners replacing windows or siding and we didn't hear much from the commercial owners so there was this thought that there could be a higher standard for the downtown commercial core designated downtown it's already different standards those are the ones that can have applied for the branch the rationale being that there are actually public funds available to offset the added costs yeah offset the added costs where that it's not an option for the residential property you have to see what the DRB thinks of that so be a little harder for them to have two standards to apply but if it's two separate districts then you're just applying one set to one district and one set to the other district so it doesn't make any more work for the DRB the issue starts to come up if it were city-wide the design review committee the DRC currently reviews all projects in the design review district if we went city-wide that would simply exponentially increase their workload and everybody would have to go to DRC so that would be just a consideration unless there was a separate process for them as well yeah I think having a DRC earlier I mean I thought they may not like to have to keep track of you know but I think a lot of these are good questions to ask because they're going to come here with their PowerPoint and present to you guys and I think they're the ones to ask a lot of questions I haven't met with them about these I was given a draft over the winter that I reviewed and gave some comments on and my brain didn't retain enough of it for me to so they've made some revisions to that draft so I haven't seen the final version until now and Barb you're a historic architect specialty right well I wouldn't necessarily say a specialty I'm sorry I came back with a bad calm but I certainly have been involved with buildings in the city and other places that had historic aspects to it so what I'm getting at is you might have to be a translator okay and actually I think at one point Mike had given out copies I think of the one that Brandy did work with yeah Shelburne right and in terms of looking at guidelines that's really helpful because it actually has drawings and indications of what they're so it would be easier to see how those two pieces fit together Mike do you think you could add that to the google drive so people can take a look at it if they want maybe these the historic preservation documents that the commission sent to us and then the Shelburne standards interested planning commissioners can review is there going to be a document created I'm not necessarily asking for more work but I think the ideal thing would be to have a side-by-side of what currently exists and what they're proposing here that would just be ideal because what I mean by side-by-side there's two columns this is what it has now and this is what's either being added or removed over here there's just so much being added currently exists is basically what was there before we just took what was in the zoning document previously so wasn't it just like follow the secretary of the interior standard no we wanted to do that we said follow them except when it comes to windows and historic preservation commissioning like that anyway so this is what the current zoning has printed out for us and it's pretty bare bones yeah most of them point D most applications are going through point D on that front page which is just preservation and reconstruction of the appropriate historic style if the proposed project is in the historic district or involves a historic structure that should be the committee shall evaluate design review plans based on the following consideration so it is pretty general right now one question though is why is it insufficient one question for our meeting winner why is this insufficient I think it's a good place to start it really doesn't meet the the legal answer is if somebody really wanted to press us on J.A.M. Golf we would probably lose which is a court decision on vagueness regulation is going to be void for vagueness but it's pretty rare that that rises to the level of being void for vagueness well this one is pretty much asking for it to say that the DRC shall consider the location and appearance of utilities how is an applicant going to know whether or not there's just nothing there to sink your teeth into there might be some of these and in a one through seven we might be able to find two of them that we could sufficiently feel comfortable with but there really should be more meat on the bones to go through and say that's a good standard so usually if you've got a performance standard you'll have a guideline or an entire book design guidelines but that's usually what you hope for with these so you don't get thrown out in court they exist because nobody's challenged them for the most part the DRC doesn't deny applications they do a lot of working with people to help them make their projects better and most people come back appreciative of the process one of the big complaints we had um was explained with the DRC or their argument explaining the complaints they had was that a lot of these applicants came in having already bought materials and when the DRC said they couldn't use those particular materials or windows then that's when the conversation went off the rails so when people come to them early and work through problems with them it tends to be a more successful collaboration but when people come in with an idea this is what it is I have funding for it I do it hasn't worked or they've already done it or they've already done it so that's the background that led us to where we are I'm interested to see what we're going to see from them we can probably expect at least one member of the public to come yes we'd probably expect that one we've had one member of the public who's been tracking this very closely and as long as they stay out that's all he cares I'm sure he has other interests because the neighborhood is currently not regulated but anyway so we'll see that'll be in June sometime okay anything else about did we want to set that date so we can I think we should wait till do we need to tonight because it seems like Meredith is getting email replies are you on that chain yeah there's a lot of it kind of going back and forth is she waiting for? no it's just to warn the joint meeting so we just wanted to make sure everyone was Meredith sent an email out to all the committee members on the DRC and then for his HPC and included Mike and me on it and asked people what dates they could come and tonight's meeting was possibility and then clearly we didn't it wasn't going to work so what I saw was most people can make either meeting one person prefers the 24th but I didn't know if she's waiting for us to give the green light so I guess if you're okay with either I'll leave it up to Meredith to set the date for the joint meeting then and we'll is there a date when is anyone anticipating not being around on I won't be here on the time okay close to the 24th I combined with the one member's preference don't make plans it's too late we just did is everyone okay with that okay that's good it's on the 24th right that's historic to bring protein yeah I think that's compatible doesn't overwhelm the facade okay moving on item seven city plan so we're gonna get this you know I don't know if I wrote this or Mike wrote this because it's been a few weeks but we had been looking at a map and dropping pins left and right with ideas about things that we want to do in the city and then we decided we should probably take a step back and revisit the goals that the committees provided us at their all committee the all committee kickoff meeting that we hosted so I don't know if people had a chance to revisit those I did print out a copy I tried to print out copies but I was unsuccessful so I can walk us through what I have as a reminder anyone else who has computers with them I think you can access it it's in the google drive and it was pretty easy to find actually what? I can't remember where I found it well I printed it out I can't say that well we're gonna go through it together right now we'll give Stephanie a second to pull it up we'll see if I can find it when we're talking okay so so MIAC, Barb is on MIAC Montpelier Energy Advisory Committee so I mean my review of this is that they really have one goal which is that the city should go 100% renewable is that fair to say well net zero energy so you can translate that as 100% renewable okay what is the difference it says 100% renewable in the scribe that you wrote I was writing what they said yes okay we'll take their word 100% renewable was there a date there are a couple dates up so by 2030 100% of municipal energies will be renewable and by 2050 100% of community energy use so can you just describe the difference that we have control more control over municipal energy use and we're already well on the way with municipal we've got quite a bit of the electrical use thing offset by our two 500kw solar arrays and a lot of work going on with work on the individual buildings with energy audits and improvements and the work with the wastewater treatment facility which actually has a different name wastewater recovery recovery facility or the water recovery whatever we know what it is it's a sewer plant so trying to look at different options the biggest stumbling block I would say right now that the committee is looking at is transportation and trying to see if we can address transportation in terms of vehicles and also the city has trucks and heavy equipment that kind of thing so how would we know if we meet our goal of let's say 100% renewable municipal energy use and what does this mean it would mean that we're no longer spending money for fossil fuels so no propane being bought no gasoline no diesel all of that has been replaced by biodiesel or some other fuel and by we spending money the city so the budget would no longer have fossil fuel that's good to have sort of a no-city money on fossil fuels okay right? yeah kind of like my gas stove I know that's the hardest part it's like my ex-pub will never give it up ever um we just have an asterisk in the park for everything it's a question I really liked 95% but they decided to just dive in from so so obviously by 2050 we have a much bigger step to take in terms of getting people city-wide um it's but the state also has a 2050 goal as well this is more stringent than that but not a whole lot so we are trying to so when you say community energy is how is the committee defining that? again that would be that the electricity was offset so we have net metering so at some point yes we're going to be drawing electricity from green mountain power but that we are ultimately putting back at the equal amount into the grid well they're trying to go over to a bull anyway yeah right which actually helps us a lot and then the other thing is replacing the heating fuels with alternative biofuels or replacing where possible with heat pumps and other electrical why are biofuels acceptable as far as because the carbon emissions is the concern here right? actually the fossil fuel consumption is the first one but basically yeah the biofuels as I understand it I mean I've seen some demonstrations first of all they're generated renewably and when they're when they're burned they are not the fumes being given off that are toxic but the primary issue is to my mind anyway is source so biofuels are a much more viable possibility than we thought originally yeah the corn as it grows it takes the carbon out of the air makes it into the corn which we crush into ethanol which we burn which releases CO2 which goes back into the next growing plant that grows in so it's neutral it's neutral you're just using farmland that could be used to produce food you're not using it to produce it has impacts because of that so it's just one of those considerations that other people are looking at but ethanol is not the only biofuels ethanol is not the only one but that's the big one so what are the biofuels maybe we're getting too down a rabbit hole here yeah I think that's we're going to get way down there so waste waste oils basically okay big bear biodiesel black bear biodiesel okay so that's the top goal I mean that's what's written here that's right that is the top goal okay and it'll have impacts across a wide range of everything from the transportation plan to the housing plan to the utilities facilities plan it's each one of these will reach out to a number of other ones and that's just one that touches a lot of other plans and just curious has Miak of the transportation committee interacted much on this well I can't say exactly because I've been gone so I haven't been at meetings I know that right now there's a big focus on the municipal side looking at municipal consumption so I can't say that there was a as far as I know a general outreach to the transportation committee but I think that but do our buses count under the municipal goal what do you mean our buses like the Montpelier circulator oh the circulator bus because I think that's funded through a city budget partially and there's going to be there's going to be considerations that have to go into reducing obviously if your goal is to be a hundred percent renewable then you've got to eventually replace that bus with a hundred percent renewable fuel source sometimes you take things as a step in the right direction busing is 27 cars are off the road and we've reduced the amount of carbon that's being produced and we're looking at other transportation options so not necessarily continuing with the same transportation options that we have now and trying to replace their fuels I guess I'm just curious whether any of that work has already been done or whether this is a great opportunity to bring the committees together and work through some of these challenges well I can tell you more after Thursday sorry we'll just we'll put a pin in that and make a note but I can also tell you that the Sustainable Montpelier Coalition is working on transportation options that would impact that as well well let's go to their goals then Sustainable Montpelier Coalition so they gave four points here the first is not labeled there's three goals but before the goals there's notes that say reimagine and foster stakeholder community city engagement so I guess that's sort of their charge and then their goals are increase access to rivers and open space with a 2030 deadline attached for results second is to have 1,000 new housing units and third is free downtown from vehicles free downtown access from vehicles oh free the downtown by the vehicle that's right and with the idea that using satellite lots could be a way to do that so is that what you're getting at and the discussion about reduction eventually elimination of single occupancy vehicles so that's where the transportation piece comes in but they are moving forward along with the Department of Transportation and other stakeholders on putting together an alternative transportation plan so all of those goals by the way are 2030 because that's when the coalition technically wants to be done with their work so it's a little bit more ambitious than the one with the goal were they created for a limited time? is there a sunset? they're private they're grant funded so okay not connected with the city so right now what they're working on is the transportation piece and the open space piece and they've been involved with the conference right and some of the members around that committee the proposal review committee for the downtown master plan yeah Elizabeth Courtney who's a consultant to SMC was involved with that okay so going back to the order that these are presented in I just kind of want to quickly go through them sorry I got in the weeds it was my fault everybody I pulled myself out quickly go through them and then talk about the functioning statement that was the idea just throw around some ideas so conservation commission's three goals are stormwater management plan to inventory the natural resources in order to better protect them and to teach to do some public education about where the resources are so I see those two is actually kind of tied but one perhaps for the first one did they have a goal of changing our system so that our solar system does not pollute at all I think they're involved in the development of the stormwater master plan but I'm not positive there was a lot that has been going on and certainly is a lot at the state and I think we've just got a lot of pieces that we haven't been doing as much as we could be with stormwater I think we just have a lot of pieces that just have to get pulled together our zoning didn't get an update to the stormwater rules because the state wasn't ready with their rules so we still have to do that we still have to get some Stephanie do you have the powerpoint in the files there was that my go so that was my made that so yeah somewhere in my files I do because it has been a while I mean this is the meeting that was in August so it makes sense that we wouldn't remember and there are state and national federal rules that we need to meet for stormwater as well is that right yeah yeah there's an EPA it's a TMDL requirement for Lake Champlain which we're part of so there are um that filters down through the state to us requirements as well as goals yeah and we've got floodplain river corridors so there are a lot of pieces that though not directly stormwater are kind of related to water quality they didn't send us notes I had a time so I just talked about placeholder okay alright well I haven't in with them I could ask yeah I think that's that's a big issue for the city to continue we're part of the downtown master plan FC group effort right yeah that'll certainly have a big impact and then as far as their mapping I mean are they working on the city map that what's it called the official map no the official map was kind of put to bed because that's not what the parks commission want the inventory there is kind of I think more of a classic just getting all of the inventorying all the data so no regulatory well it could if we've got better data and it points to something that we should be looking at from a regulatory standpoint I mean we've kind of jumped in with steep slopes and wetlands and vernal pools if there's something else that's in there that we should be considering in our zoning I'm a big fan of regulating to the map so if they are mapping resources and finding things that need to be protected Act 250 looks at prime ag soils I don't think we should be looking at them because we're kind of a city and we want people to be building here so they're not building in the country but obviously any of these natural resources that get mapped as a regulatory basis and by the way the vernal pool in Herbert Park near the new shelter, the wood frogs lay their eggs there you can go see them right now there's a fence around it to keep the dogs out but no buffer is that the pond at the bottom of the hill that okay good I was going to say the one at the bottom was supposed to be cleaned out this year what? he's an upstanding citizen she hasn't gone in this year okay touch your fingers Montpelier development court their goals the main, I guess there's like three ways to achieve this goal Montpelier is a cultural, economic social center number one wrap around for new and existing businesses I don't know what that means I made sense when she said it though number two destination for arts and culture number three transform community values and amenities are realized meaning the river etc wrap around for new and existing is that like technical assistance or support or something I think so yeah existing businesses okay can you raise your hand I think it's services okay it doesn't have like a hug emoji okay housing authority so there's a housing authority on housing cash the housing authority goals are to promote cooperation and communication with agencies and I guess they mean which agencies well they're washing county mental health a couple other ones I mean so the housing authority is kind of the housing of last resort that the city has so they administer the section 8 vouchers and they have housing in a number of locations which is different than say down street who has affordable housing okay and so their coordination they're usually coordinating with social security and Medicaid and washing county mental health and you know these folks that are you know the police and fire when they you know domestic violence sorry just a oh hopefully it's not housing of last resort but housing for people and you know straightened economics hopefully it's not the last resort should be quality right do they have any goals I mean do they want to see more housing developed for their clients my memory of their presentation was they basically want to maintain what they have which is their thing yeah I mean housing authority some other housing housing authorities do want to develop but this housing authority has maybe a different outlook okay um just keep plugging through so transportation committee um it's funny because they're I guess their free goals are implement the existing plans safe and inviting atmosphere for pedestrian and bikes and accommodate and encourage transit so the existing plans are the mobiliar and motion complete streets and main street scoping study is the main street scoping study the okay it's different from the downtown master plan the same thing is going to be based on the public ones no I actually it's hard to keep these all straight and how they enter relate and act so yes they were each slightly different probably should have done them in a different order but we got there anyways the complete streets looked at a street typology what would you expect each one of the streets to have as their components the mobiliar motion was really a gap analysis where we missing our sidewalks where we missing our bike lanes we've got a sidewalk here that leads to nowhere then over there is the next sidewalk we need to complete the sidewalk here so that plan was really laying out a gap analysis of what we should be working on and where we should be prioritizing our fixes but sidewalk focus well sidewalk bike lanes but mostly a lot of sidewalks so the relationship between the transportation committee and the city is pretty tied I would hope that things they identify or what the city is prioritizing yeah we're trying the main point of those is to provide the evidence and information we need to develop the capital improvement plan so that $600,000 we get every year to build new projects retaining walls and sidewalks repaving painting whatever it is that we've got this chunk of funds and so they've got a 10 year plan and they lay out for 10 years what are all the projects we're going to be working on well what comes out of these plans helps to push some things up to the front to get them done sooner scoring them a little bit better moving them up in the capital improvement plan or putting new things on the capital improvement plan that we didn't know about so that's where the strongest link comes in for the transportation committee is they fund a lot of their stuff through the next project online and that's the same as the infrastructure committee transportation infrastructure yeah that's basically the transportation infrastructure committee because the other one that's to complete the streets committee is really just more events okay public safety authority this is more about dispatch services right? it's dispatch services it's pretty much toast at this point as far as I know we didn't I don't think we fund them I don't think there's any more money yeah I don't think they did we've finally pulled the plug on their funding so I think they may technically exist because they're a chartered entity but I don't know where they would go staff they might have staffed through June 30th because their funding would end on July 1st but but the goal was to look at a multi-city dispatch yep that seems to kind of fall apart I think that's a question we'd have to ask Kim Cheney he was on the committee are we resorting to a state dispatch? no we still have our dispatch and Barry City has their dispatch but the thought was we could merge these two into a single dispatching service this committee was looking at that this could we and there are a lot of side shows that go along with it if we didn't have it then we would just have the state dispatch right? yes the thought was this does actually function for 27 like we provide service for a number of communities through contracts if we stop doing it it would require major expansion of the state E911 system which may not always be good if you don't have the local knowledge so an E911 call here in the city you're going to get somebody in town to propose Montpelier as opposed to getting an E911 call that's being dispatched to Welleson with somebody who may never have been a Montpelier is there any data that supports that? it's an argument people throw out along and I always wondered like one it doesn't you don't have guaranteed local knowledge for someone who works somewhere and two wouldn't have really good experienced dispatcher potentially offset some local knowledge a statewide experienced dispatcher? I'm not suggesting one or the other I'm just saying I've never seen any kind of data that supports one argument or another but maybe that's not bad going through these where you've had this morning's nest because I think we would have to invite them I think we would have to invite folks to come in and pitch both sides and how many how many other areas are dispatched for Berlin and other surrounding it's really a mix I think they've got 20 something towns that we do and Barry has a handful that they do Berlin I think is serviced by the state police I am right coming there are some others that are different as well and I know there was some discussion of the way things work right now if somebody called if it got dispatched to fire then it's going through one service if it was dispatched to police it's going through another service in a situation which may have multiple dispatching things going on you're going to have two separate sets of communications going that aren't connected but like I said this is not something I'm first at I've sat in a couple of council meetings while they've had some debates on these you could go to those John I'm not going to do that seems like the return on investment for us messing around in there might be pretty low in it if this thing fell apart let's move on to the housing task force on that note so this is the group that wants to expand housing yes these are your big heavy hitters of housing so their goals are to have adequate rental and owner occupied homes with diverse and then something kind of fell off there but I guess I'm assuming it's diverse types of homes for different needs to fulfill different needs they want to have safe healthy energy efficient resilient accessible mix of uses and open space so I guess that's access to those sort of uses from these homes and then housing for all their housing and inclusive community thoughts questions to be fleshed out a lot and we know it's a major need and to have some actual goals like we have the Sustainable Montpelier Coalition asking for a thousand new units that doesn't have a timeline on it but I think flesh it out 2030 we've talked about how the Sustainable Montpelier Coalition wants to have it worked on in 2030 so do you think that means 2030 that was based on the competition which was a 2030 goal so that was a thousand new units so that's where that came from the adopted numbers for the housing task force are 150 housing units in five years and 240 in eight 150 in five years and 240 over the eight years what are we currently doing how many units have we had last year the last year was not bad depending on when you're counting the year because we had 18 for French Block and 6 more for so yeah, French Block for us it was a pretty big project but that just amounted to 18 units and then there were 6 more in the Maple which is the end of Charles Street there extension and then there were a handful of 1's and 2's around here and there we'll get a better number in the next couple of weeks we'll get some better numbers of how many 10 units a year if we're lucky how many are we adding on Taylor Street the big projects are making big difference Taylor will be 30 and then there's another 30 proposed for the Christ Church which is if the parking garage gets built then Christ Church would be another 30 we have a long way to go to get to a thousand it's a long way to go to a thousand the big ones kind of come in if you can get the project the potential is 225 units for Savings Baster I mean it could be more than that but the trust for Public Lands was talking about 200, 225 units so the team Bridges proposal was talking hundreds but that requires a much bigger lift if you want to reach the thousand then you have to talk about making that rail line that trolley bus shuttle system where we could put a couple hundred units on Pioneer Street and then a couple hundred more units as you're going out to help people give people options where they could live without a car and just take these shuttles into downtown to go to work or shuttle out to price chopper and those places to go shopping you can get some movement moving around and then having some microtransit opportunities to kind of take those other other places but that's the bigger if you want to get that thousand that's what you're talking about is having to do some big transformational projects yeah you're building neighborhoods to make a thousand and I didn't realize it was that hard I was really surprised to see how how hard it was you see a big building and you think oh that must be a lot of units because 18 I mean there is some movement too and I think some of the bridges included this is that micro units so potentially in a fairly large building you could have a lot more units than what you would normally think that could have micro units that were half the size of the units in the French block yeah and the ADU program that's being proposed the accessory dwelling units is another one where we've got and it looks really likely that we're going to be able to just help people add units to existing houses so it's going to be building right into infill into the neighborhoods and there's a lot of people who are interested in putting an apartment over a garage putting an apartment in their house subdividing a second floor whatever so is that new money the ADU program that is a community development block grant with funding from the city and with funding from the people who are doing it which is probably get the wrong one VCFA one of these housing VCHB Vermont Conservation Housing Board VHCB VHCB VHCB no it's not VHCB it's yours yeah it's the finance housing finance oh VHFA oh okay there we go yeah so they've got they did a pilot in Brattleboro what does VHFA stand for Vermont Housing Finance Agency yeah which is why I prefaced my statement and I'm going to get the letters wrong because I can't remember which one it is but the idea is they were going to put in $150,000 the thought was you look at these large projects whether it's down street or Vermont Housing and they cost $250,000 $250,000 to build or renovate a major unit and the ask here was for $300,000 so we could do 30 units so we're going to try to get a lot more units for the same amount because the state's looking at their budgets and saying boy if we need statewide X number 1,000 units I mean that's millions upon millions we're just going to keep bonding ourselves out so we need to find a more cost effective way to add more units this ADU program is a match money so Kirby wants to put in an ADU and says hey if I had that I could make an extra thousand bucks that helps me because I could rent this unit out for $800,000 a month and I'm doing better affording my house plus I'm making another affordable housing unit for somebody else it's going to cost me $40,000 to do this to put in this new unit well if you can get a line of credit or do something like that borrow some money we'll match that money up to $10,000 or $20,000 we can give a 0% loan they bundle up a bunch of money to then try to help people do it and they put the proposal out and we got more than 20 people who are interested oh did you have people signed up well because we wanted to be one we went to the state for our application we wanted to be able to make sure we were in the front of the line because there's more projects in their money so we wanted to make sure that this pilot program would be up front and so by putting it out and saying hey who's interested we could put into the application and say look you give us the money this year we could start working on these so you should fund us before you fund those guys who have a great idea but they're not ready to go yet we're ready to go so that was our thought so we had a lot of people who are interested in doing these and so we're hoping we'll get funded and we'll be able to start working on those this year but that would be one at a time and you're up to 10,000 you'd have to the specifics you'd have to contact Kevin I'm actually thinking maybe this is a proposal to us and we just haven't reviewed it yet so I can find out about it I think we'll talk with Kevin because they're funding from a number of people we've got money they've got money, Community Development Block Grant has money it's going to be kind of a thing where everybody throws some money in to try to make it happen but I think it's another way of getting one of those when we start talking about how do we get 150 units there's going to be some of these that are going to be big chunks there's going to be some of these that are going to be small chunks some of these that are just going to be one at a time I don't know if we've talked about plans for an MPGE application I'd like to see if it could be complementary maybe to this sorry, Municipal Planning Grant which we apply for I think most years and one thing specifically that could be interesting is there's a group called the Incremental Development Alliance led by someone named John Anderson but not our John Anderson so the flyers for this could be confusing and they do developers move camp and they sort of focus on small towns across the country and the message is mostly like we're trying to encourage housing development to our town and you have a lot of well-maintained people coming up with regulations for these developers that don't exist that are going to come from somewhere to build something and the reality is it's just not going to happen and that if anyone's going to build something it's going to be you and that's how American developers people building things for units buildings and it's not that hard sort of I think they have a 3-day thing but also provides a bit of a community home it's a non-profit I think called the Incremental Development Alliance and John Anderson he's great he's very crass but he works well he does colorful language I don't know what that means I don't know but how does it speak at all? it won't be you're wearing a foreign costume so your thought is that we can integrate that to our new school funding grants? yeah I find some funding source I don't know how much it is to help them do you have a new school funding grant deadline in the fall but if we have specific things that we think we want to start exploring we can certainly pull them together because one of the new things that they let us do now is to put projects out to bid early so if we know what we'd like to do in the fall we can put out an RFP in June or July to solicit bids for what we want to do and then you're actually applying for the money to do the project and it gets better points and it's something new that they're doing I kind of like it you know how much you're going to spend because you've already bid it out and they've already told you we can do this project for $15,000 so you can put it in and say we've already bid it it's $15,000 and then you're ready to go instead of getting the funding for the RFP and then finding out oh we got a grant for $18,000 to do a project that's costing us 21 now what do we do so are people interested in pursuing grant money to put on a workshop to develop a boot camp workshop related to housing yeah like I said I can look and see what we know and how much these are and there's something in it that would be competitive mm-hmm sounds like John is sounds like John is it's a lot of the it's a lot of the folks are sitting in the congress and you're moving them off for a shame I don't know if those could be partners in this housing task force and I think ARP and BNRC brought them in to give a talk brought him in to give a talk sounds marked with it mm-hmm I'll look into it and see what the costs are potential partners the development so it wore a lot in the lab right so the development corps what was the other one you named the regional planning commission although I mean part of our goal is to have development urban areas they do have funding for things you know good idea alright next I think it's helpful for us to go through these goals I know it seems a little bit tedious but I think it's really triggering some ideas so and they list the bullets say this green print parks and trail access to all residents enhance outdoor recreation facilities for all abilities types of activity protect, preserve, natural areas eradicate invasives and parks advocation for improvement green print that's the map the trail map right and parks so it's kind of a mix trails and parks that's the thing it's planned and what they were hoping for and this was part of the confusion of the official map was they wanted to get the green print map and idea adopted officially but what they didn't realize was that all they had to do was go to city council and give a presentation and council would adopt it and so in the end we were like well if that's all you want then just go to city council and get it adopted so that's what they're going to be doing okay and the implications for an official map like that is that the city has first read over refusal yeah it starts to force a process which was countered to actually what the green print said which was in it the green print kind of expressly says this is all about willing buyer willing seller we're not here to force this upon you the official map we're talking about basically forcing forcing you to give us an option on the property when you go to develop the land and so it was one they really weren't comfortable with and in the end I think it worked out worked out well because what they want to do is to have it adopted the green print so they can start to pursue grant funding to try to purchase land because there's properties come up and you can reach out to people to go through and say we'd love to put a trail across your property we've got some grant funding they just wanted to have more of an opportunity but they couldn't apply for grants because the plan had never been adopted so we don't have to worry about the official map anymore? you don't have to worry about the official map anymore unless somebody else comes up with some other reason why we would want to pursue it so we don't have to have one is what you're saying they're only a handful of towns that do it was a requirement we have to have our land use map as part of our city plan but the official map piece that is the background for everybody background alerts it's really confusing so when we were walking through the zoning on I can't remember what the exact issue was here but I think there was some question about whether the natural resources maps which would trigger some restrictions on development around wetlands whether there would be integration of the green plant print trail map as part of that process and we determined as a permission that the official map was a better way to go about that then through the zoning and explain that to the parks commission and so there was setting goals for where parks should be or where trails should be and working through the process with landowners through zoning kicked it to the official map development which apparently they're now pursuing without our aid the other piece that came up in the zoning and how this all came out was from there's a tendency for people to go and start somebody comes up and develop and say oh but you should you know we should if you're going to make that open space on top you should make it open to the public and you can't use zoning the case that the supreme court has recently just kept pushing towards a certain pretty clear point which is that you can't use regulations to deny somebody their constitutional rights and if you're going to open something up to public use you have to pay just compensation so you can't use zoning to create a bike path across somebody's property or provide public access and so we eventually came across to go through and say if you want to require public access you can't use zoning you'd have to use an official map and we would have to buy it and so there were a number of cases where people came up and pushed and wanted to get that option to be able to buy those rights and fell off because the parks really wasn't interested in kind of forcing that they would rather try to negotiate for the right to cross somebody's land so it seems like the green print and then the next bullet parks and trail access to all residents is kind of tied together or the green print is one method of making this goal come to fruition enhance outdoor recreation facilities for all abilities and types of activity protect preserve natural resource natural areas so I guess that would be tied to conservation commission goals the parks commission owns the land so in a number of cases whether we're talking about buying a piece of land to protect it from development because it's a rare natural species habitat the conservation commission doesn't they may want it but they can't own the land so the parks commission ends up kind of doing the recreation fields that are down the road on Elm Street and they also have the places where we're just conserving land for conservation purposes so they do preservation and conservation in terms of how it might impact the city was one of their thoughts that they wanted every house every lawn unit to have access to parks within certain distance yeah ten minute walk or something yeah right so that becomes a larger plan to really look at those little park parks not necessarily big parks do you say we're running out of time yeah we're running out of time I'm just realizing we only have eight minutes left and we're going to get through all these goals that come up with our visioning statement who was it who came up with the idea for the visioning statement was it? maybe you can give us some more guidance on what you're thinking of and then we can come back with ideas my thought was just that we we spent the energy getting all these thoughts that was one piece but then also that we're talking about the plan in these separate sections by committee so to some degree it's we're sort of talking about it like we're outsourcing that work and for me it would be helpful that this committee have some sort of overall vision that we're putting out to those committees so that they're not just each doing their own separate thing right yeah I agree so I was just going to say and then we have the template that I did up for the energy committee based on what Barb had given me which provides the visioning statement those three parts visioning statement then measurable sort of objectives and then implementation policies and actions so those visioning statements for each committee right but not in overall vision which is what I wanted to do we want to bring this together yeah and it seems like that's what we should be doing is looking all of these and just I don't know in reading through all of them it does seem like there is sort of a theme of merging that ties all of them together it feels like a lot of it is around sort of housing and walkability in downtown and making a place for human beings to live in making a lot of goals yeah a place for humans a place for humans a place for humans a place for humans a place for humans a place for humans wait till all species goes after you this is a great starting point you just need some ideas to work with and start molding so pedestrian or walkability walkability sustainability energy no don't use that word not replacing parking lots creating more cohesive cohesive transport utilizing our spaces downtown and also when we said that utilizing our natural amenities the amenities that we have that comes up a lot and we have to recognize our amenities highlighting them instead of a place making them an element of the city do you know if part of the green press included future parks don't remember most of the parks I remember on that were more on the outsides more of a hub and spoke approach so we had a Hubbard park we've got a Confluence park is part of that but there's also now a group of people who are looking at basically looking at the string of the river as it goes through the downtown and trying to develop more of a parkland so what are the key amenities of the city I just list them off to the river Hubbard park Hubbard park what about the historic downtown yes the dairy cream historic neighborhoods just food in general places to buy different types of food just right poutine oh my god like state capitol being the capitol is really cool we don't go there anymore I'm not hearing anything about housing that's something we need to change right any amenities we have public amenities yeah you're right we're thinking geographically environmental amenities right now but also if we're talking about our historic downtown and our historic neighborhoods as well which those are those are housing we could say that the historic housing stock is not in a practical sense that we have old housing stock which is difficult except that that's what draws people here okay so challenges I think that's a good point that the historic buildings not necessarily meeting the current needs college street these gigantic houses that a lot of people can't afford to buy much less heat as one unit it's a beautiful historic building but is it functional for what we need right now if it's mismatched to our neighborhoods yeah because they certainly could be matched very easily but without losing that cultural historic so maybe we're talking about maintaining the historic neighborhoods well we're just identifying challenges right now we'll get to solutions at some point we have amenities and I heard amenities kind of morph into challenges so I thought let's just start with yeah sorry let's just take one more 30 more seconds to one minute and other challenges transportation I don't know how you award it but I mean we've got when you have 8,000 people come to town every day the parking is a challenge it's just to a certain extent there is a desire to not have parking and not have cars but to a certain extent you'll have consequences that will come out so the tension between being the capital and hosting being a job center swelling the population yeah that sort of bleeds into there's both local and regional public transit I think a partnership with the state seems to be an elephant in the room for a lot of these things the state needs to help us off the parking problem even every employee have free parking space in town would you like to be the person who tells them they have to pay now I've done it before continue to do it but people aren't very popular this idea is not terribly popular surprise surprise and the state owns a decent number of lots too it's a huge percentage of it is state let's pick up this discussion next time give up the parking pass the cash out California it requires that's what the city did this year to try to open up a parking space they offered everybody the money to cash out their parking pass how did that work didn't get as many as they had hoped this is for city employees I think six of us cashed out the state employee who walks to work I want to hear about getting some free money what was the cash out value $50 a month they could start with legislators put up meters I park in stone cutters out farther but it's in parking that nobody parks in alright let's pick this up next time we'll finish going through the notes from the all community meeting we'll see if we can get to some sort of visioning statement broadly and if we need to start with some of them I think we figured it out a place for humans I appreciate this before everybody let's quickly look at the meeting minutes from April 8 sorry okay do I have a motion to approve these minutes second seconded any discussion hearing none we'll take a vote all those in favor of approving the minutes vote aye opposed none they are approved there is no meeting on May 27th Memorial today do you folks think we need to meet next time I think we can wait until June 10 pick this up then Mike's going to drop some things in the Google drop take a look at that in between now and then we'll pick this up and we can look at the map again maybe next time assuming you're here yeah the information from the competition could that end up on our Google drive it's been there for like a year I think it was one of the first things everybody tell Marcus to take a look at the Google drive that's the homework all right do you have a motion to approve motion to approve second I'll second all those in favor okay we are adjourned thanks everyone thanks