 December 16th meeting of the Essex Planning Commission, Essex Junction Planning Commission to order. First item as audience for visitors. That's still a little bit. Can you turn the volume all the way down on that? Yeah, I'm going to just throw the, I like hearing my own voice, but. Boom. Not echoing my voice. Not echoing my voice. Yeah, once the volume goes down. It might be it. You won't get the echo. All right. So first item is audience for visitors, which is anyone in the audience that wishes to speak on something that is not on the agenda. Is there any? Seeing none. All right, we'll move on to item two. Additions or amendments to the agenda. Anything, Robin? No, it's not specifically in the agenda, John, but we're going to be talking about retail cannabis for a little bit. As it's something we're normally talking about. Yeah, I mean, it's a, you know, it's, you know, it's the land development code. So come on to that umbrella, but it wasn't called out. Okay. Well, we started it, but it got interrupted. And now we have a graphic to work with. So that's what we asked for. Yeah. All right. Third item is the meeting minutes of November 4. I'm assuming that you all have a chance to look at those. And does anybody have any comments or corrections? I had none. All right. I have none. Any motion to approve? So moved. Second? I will second. Any more discussion? Bill? No. All in favor say aye. Aye. All right. No one else is here. So motion carries. Thank you. Item three is the public hearing on what's listed as a final site plan review for planned unit development to construct six residential units with parking at 41 Maple Street in the R2 district. Is the applicant here or someone speaking on behalf of the applicant I see? Yes. David Burke or Leary Burke? Jump right into it. Do I need to be sworn in? I think since you're speaking at the table, you don't, but we will ask anyone who is prepared to give testimony to raise your hand and swear that the testimony that you may give tonight is the truth under pains and penalties of perjury. I do. Anyone else in the audience planning to speak tonight? Please say I do. OK. Thank you. We can swear you in again later. It doesn't, you know, you really want to say something, let me know. OK, David, go ahead. All right. And just kind of walk us through it, because, you know, we've got the plans. We all had some questions about the way this complies with the plan development code. And we just had some questions. So help us figure that out. I'll try to wrap some of that into the overview, hopefully. Good. Again, David Burke or Leary Burke, this project did early in the year come in for sketch. That sketch plan was essentially this layout, six units with that parking area. It didn't have all the details. Didn't have the additional sheets with it. David, it was audience for visitors. It was brought in for audience for visitors. Audience for visitors, OK. Had feedback at that time. And I wasn't directly involved, but did have some feedback, I guess, at that time. So we submitted back in August, and we're finally here. That's not any fault of Robin or you guys. That's the process that you have in the back and forth with engineering review. So it did that two times very slowly and got through those items. There's a couple in the staff notes that we might need to hit on tonight. But briefly, I'll go over this. We're at 41 Maple Street. This is a lot that used to have a house on it. Access is directly off Maple Street. The house in the front was also owned by Mr. Bushy. Sorry, Mr. Bushy, the landowner is here tonight. When he sold the house in the front, he kept the access rights that were always there. If you go back into the land records on this piece, this piece, I want to say it was like the 1940s. There was a six-lot chopped up development of this piece, a plat in the land records. And the house that was there was on that front lot. Those lots had gotten melded together by basically the listers. But there is an old plan that showed this as a subdivision. So the proposal is to come in with an access drive. The plan shows 18 feet. One of the things in the staff notes is it needs to be 20 and that's fine. Connects to municipal water, connects to municipal sewer. The water within the project is within a easement as required by the review by the village engineer so that that can be taken over. It also includes a hydrant based on the review for fire protection. So right at the turnaround on the parking area, just off the end of that is where the eight-inch line with the hydrant would end. And then from there, it's individual services to the six proposed carriage units. The difference of this, the kind of the PUD innovative of this is that it comes into a parking area versus a road. And then there's a common pedestrian access to the units. The submittal included a elevation, a proposed elevation of the buildings, basically somewhat of a cape style structure, 30 by 34 small footprint with a full width porch on the front to have that kind of welcoming feel because it is pedestrian motivated here. We won't have any of the typical pedestrian versus vehicle conflicts that you have in any standard development. One of the things that I neglected to put in the application or our office neglected to put in the application is that the base density for this parcel is 5.4 units. And it was the intent to include in the application that one of these, we would be looking for one of the units to be perpetually affordable with your okay on that. That would be an 11% bonus. And that section reads that as long as 10% of the units, which would be less than one rounding up to one is perpetually affordable. You can have up to a 20% bonus. So that's with your approval, but it is part of the regulations. So I think that might be the biggest, maybe that was one of your biggest questions, as far as how do we get from the base density of the 5.4? You're in the 7,500 square foot residential district here, eight foot side yard setbacks. All of these units exceed the conventional setbacks, meet or exceed the conventional setbacks. We're not looking for any waivers on setbacks, which is typical in a PUD. We are not looking for any waiver on lock coverage, which is also quite common in a PUD. The conventional lock coverage is 40%. The lock coverage proposed is 32.4%. So the only thing in my opinion that we're looking for from the Planning Commission is acknowledgement of section 723A2H. And that allows up to the density bonuses are as follows and that one's that 10% of the total number of units needs to meet the 80% of the portability in perpetuity. It's most likely that that would occur by the perpetually affordable mechanism, a deed restriction, because I don't think a land trust is gonna be interested in one unit. They're used to the big PUDs. Some of the other things with the PUD here, when you get into your PUD regs, for instance, the objective talks about some of it. There's two places when I reviewed this today that came to my attention. And one of them is section 723B5C, which talks about up to 15% of the gross PRD may be developed with passive or active amenities. So I'll get into that a little bit, but I think the key there is that it's up to 15%. Anywhere between zero to 15% based on what you folks think, and it's a May. And then there's another section that also talks to that. And that one reads, I think that one reads up to 15%. So there's a May in one of them with a 15%, and the other one says up to 15%. What we have here, again, we've got 32.4% lock coverage. So in theory, 67.4% of this parcel is open space, not meaning building or parking or sidewalk. Tried to space these units so that they each have their own individual feel. We certainly have enough room behind each of the units for a decent size garden area for each of them if that's what they wanna do or if the board feels that we need to designate that. We don't have an issue with that. And then the other area that we would have if there's an amenity that's desired is we could do kind of a picnic area on the plan. It doesn't look like it's much area, but it's because the individual water services, which are six feet underground are there, but in front of unit two, off of the parking area. The other area that we have is we kept, it's 20-foot rear yard setback in your conventional zoning district. And that's what's shown on the plan. Again, we're not looking for any waivers from the conventional requirements. The closest unit, proposed unit, unit five is actually 40 feet from that back line. And that's because the abutting house of La Bounie is very close to the line. So we just felt that it was better to give a little bit of additional space there. I did receive, I don't know if you want anything more for an overview with the lot size and the impervious. There's no stormwater trigger at the local level or at the state level or the local level. The parking area is designed so that the runoff flows towards the units away from the house that's in the front so that the little bit of runoff that there will be is goes towards the project. And then there's a depressional area proposed in front of lot one. That's not a requirement, it's just good planning to have an area where runoff can go to. We're in an area out here that it's deep sands too. So infiltration is good. As I said, we went through two rounds with the village engineer and they were good after the second round. Some of the, in the staff notes, some of those items, that's the letter we got back after the first round. So they did one round of review, we responded. And what you have in your staff notes is after that. I don't think we ever got a response back from the second time around. Other than that, we were okay with a couple of things that were more up to staff in the planning commission than they were the engineer. Yes. Is this a sub-division? No, it's a, well it's a plan unit development and each unit can be sold individually. So there's footprint lots that that are on the unit. So footprint lot is not a lot for town zoning. It's a call to footprint lot for legal purposes but it's not a lot for zoning purposes. I'm sure you've had, I gotta believe you've had a footprint. Each individual would get a 1-6 share of the lot. Each individual would own 1-6 of the overall but they physically own what their house sits on. So the difference is if you don't do the footprint lot, it's a condo and they fear, they don't own the land that's underneath their building, which is foolish. So that's, that's why the advent of footprint lots. Most of them, they own the house but they don't own land and they don't lease it out. They own the house and they own land that the house sits on with a footprint lot. If it's a condo. Plus the sixth of whatever's left over. Plus 1-6 of whatever's left over. Yep, yep. And that's different than the, than a condo project. But, and what that does is it fixes this proposal. It's a 30 by 34 footprint. So it fixes, you know, it can't be bigger than that. That's the, what you see is what you get basically. And, you know, one of the things that I know, and we don't have an issue with it on the fire chief wanted sprinklers in the kitchen area and the boiler room area. The hydrant is only 200 feet from the fire of this unit. The spacing of these units all exceed what could be done on abutting conventional lots because you're abutting conventional lots in this district or eight foot side yard setback. So in theory, houses can be 16 feet apart on separate conventional lots. We've got 16, 17 and 19 feet between these units. On a side yard basis. Fire trucks come down to unit six. No, they don't leave the driveway. They sit there and then run a hose back. Yeah, it's only 210 feet from that hydrant back to unit five. So they would pull the hose in. But I think the, even with that, sprinklers for the kitchen and for the boiler room and we're not, we don't have an issue with that. I did receive and review the staff notes and I think there's probably a fair amount that I went over a fair amount. So I don't know how you want me to handle that, John. If you want me to just jump into it and stop me wherever you want. Just follow up quickly. I want my colleague was asking, is the intent for home ownership or the intent for rental? Home ownership. It is home ownership. Yes. Do you have other questions at the moment or do you want to continue with going through item by item? Can I ask a question about the fire issue? Yes, go ahead, Bill. So it sounds like the fire commissioner recommended the sprinklers in the furnace area in the kitchen. Was that like the minimum that was recommended or was it, did they recommend to have sprinklers in all parts of the house? No, I spoke to him. He said that was sufficient. He said sprinklers don't put out a fire, they just slow it down. That's all he needed for them to get from five corners to this property. Okay. Thanks, thanks, Robin. If you have a question, Andrew. Anyone else? I just wanted to know what, is there a timeline when it's going to be from a rental to a home ownership? Is there like a timeline? Like, you know- Home ownership as soon as you have a buyer, no rental is- No rental's proposal is going to sell right off the bat. Correct. In the staff report, I noticed that there wasn't any home ownership documents, so I said they would have to do that for it to be sold. I believe it's in process, but not completed. Yeah, and there's nothing, I mean, it's, every regulation, the regulations can never anticipate every project. So a lot of the PUD reg when I read it, and it reads much like most of the Chittenden County towns, it's really geared towards bigger PUDs. So when you get into, like, you know, the complaining commission may require a recreational component, I didn't feel from review of the regs and with this project that the complaining commission would require that. It's a very small project, it's got a sidewalk out on Maple Street and everybody's going to go to the park anyway. So it would be foolish to, you know, put any active recreation on the site. But- Can I ask another question? Is this size of this project require a charting station for a car in that parking lot? That's coming up anyway, so we're gonna love that. Not that I am aware of, not that I saw in the regulations. I think the requirements for charging or ahead of where we are on development code at the minute. But if you're willing to put one in, I think that was very beneficial. So normally what happens, I guess, you know, can commit to the conduit for it, but I would say that it would be a awful big ask for six units to require a charging station. There's charging stations within the village, but we could certainly provide the conduit so that if the HOA decided that they wanted it, it would be easy for them to do. Put the wires through the thing and there you go. Yeah. That'll be a voice thing, I think. Yeah, that would be smart to do, I think. So I'm gonna, you know, the staff notes, a lot of it is the regulations. Again, I'll try to go over what I think you want me to hit on and please stop me if I don't catch it. So in the staff notes, as I already stated, six residential homes, parking area connected by a five foot path to each of those homes. The staff hits us pretty good on the landscaping. The landscaping as proposed, the intent behind it was not to limit it to two species as much as it was that evergreens, in our opinion, is a species that should be done here. So there's rows of evergreens adjacent to each unit to help buffer from the neighboring properties. Keep in mind that, again, that dashed line that you see there is the conventional setback. We're not asking for any waiver from your conventional requirements. The other area that we felt that there was a need for landscaping was at the front of the parking area adjacent to the lot that Mr. Bushie already sold. We are wide open if the board has different species or feels that evergreen is not the best way to go. We're open to any of that. The next section of the regs. We're also here on the landscape. When I went and walked around the property, there's a hardwood plus an evergreen that's in the middle of the lot. From the orientation, it looks like it might be in the snow or a mulberry here on this land. Is there any intention to keep that, one of those two trees as opposed to getting rid of those since there is a viable tree on property. The rest of that things are, of course, the necks of the fences are all weeds that are growing in or amongst the fences themselves, which I would think that you can probably take away since they are interfering with the fence. But since there is a viable tree, one of the two of them, is there any plans to keep one of those trees? Yeah, I don't believe we've located those two trees, Diane. I can commit that I can add it to the plan. If we haven't located it, I can add it to the plan and I can commit that if either one of them or both of them can be saved, we'll save them because it's, you know, any tree is better than a newly planted tree, basically. But I'm not sure that we've even located them yet because there was so little for landscaping existing on the site, I didn't anticipate that we were gonna be able to save trees, but if you think it's in that, roughly in that area and we can save it, we'll save it. I think it's roughly in that area from one off around, because the parking lot is currently elevated here. Yes. And it was below the, below that area. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it'd be in that general area. So is there gonna be more landscaping other than just the pine trees for screening? There's typically foundation plannings and things like that. The, I'm not sure where the number came from on the bottom. I didn't see it, I didn't see the 41,000 in ours. The number that I suggested from this was 18,000. 18,000, we've got 60 evergreen trees between the pines and the cedars. And as far as an installed guaranteed price, if you use 300, that's 18,000 with a $900,000 plus or minus budget at 2%, that's 18,000. So I think we meet the minimum because this is a PUD, it probably warrants more than what's shown right now. Yeah, the whole landscaping thing is gonna come up again because there is no plan. But the number, the value is, I'm just wondering how we came up with the value is it's based on the overall development cost? Well, it's supposed to be, one of the documents I received, it did say 41,000 for landscaping. Okay, I didn't find it. I didn't see anything. If I was gonna pick a number and I picked 82,000, not 41,000, David, so it's definitely in here somewhere. So if it's over a $250,000 project, that's 2% of the total construction. Yes, right. So I'll just say, we can follow up on that, John. I would argue that, I mean, it's incorporated in the site plan. So the site plan does show landscaping, there's a proposed landscaping schedule. So there's not a separate landscaping plan, but to us, it seemed appropriate to include it with that overall plan. If you can hold your comments, we're actually supposed to be going through the commission first, and then there'll be an audience for everybody else. And then we'll come back to us again. So we've all kind of flagged landscaping, we kind of know it's out there. I'm still, we had a lot of things to talk about like the, I'm not sure screening the houses, well, that's one approach, but there are other things that could be screened here, like the parking lots are normally screened, the parking lots are normally lit, so there's no lighting. So why don't you keep going through the staff comments and we'll, we're making our own list of things to come back. Yep, absolutely. So the next section there talks about the fire department. We already hit on that. Again, we do have a hydrant eight inch line that comes into a hydrant. The far, the closest units are only 40 feet away. The furthest unit's about 200 feet away from that hydrants. So that alone, if you're in a residential development, that alone meets exceeds that requirement. So I think that the, you know, the sprinklers in the furnace room and the kitchen is a good trade-off I guess because they're not parking out on the street to get to unit five and six. They have to pull a hose in a little further. The next section, staff talks about the size of the units. I talked about the full roofs in the front, just trying to keep a nice appearance, trying to keep this to exclusively to single family homes. While there are some duplexes, long maple streets, predominantly single family. I'm an S6 junction resident for the last 20 years and there might be a duplex on my street, but if it is, it's not legal. But anyways, we tried to keep single family, single family to be more compatible with the area homes. And these homes are equal and or generally smaller than the area homes. The bottom of page one talks, staff talks about landscaping needing to be approved. We would, we basically like input on that. We don't disagree, we don't have a problem with it. I do feel that the parking area, I mean, we could do some more screening, we could add some screening to each side, east and west, but the predominantly it's that north side. So that's why we had kind of shown that area. Onto page two, we don't have an issue adding a bike rack. And that bike rack would basically be up close to, just beyond the handicap space, close to where the sidewalk goes to the units. The parking. The intent of the bike rack is for people that are visiting or rather for both. I think the intent is your regulations recommend bike racks. So yeah, so I think it's, I think it the bike rack would be available for both with full, full with full porches. I don't think most of these, I think if these residents have a bike, they would probably bring it to their, to their home. I doubt they would leave it out front. So I would guess that the bike rack would be more to serve visitors. Right. With a common parking area, no garages, is there any type of other storage? I'm just thinking about bike storage. Somebody might not necessarily want to lock it to their porch or a bike rack in the parking lot. Is there? There's no separate building proposed. We are 7.6% below the conventional 40%. And with a PUD, you can arguably go higher than the 40% coverage. So if you were to do a common, you know, some kind of common shed or something, it would probably be towards the back. I don't think that's necessary while the units are small or on the small side, it doesn't take a lot of room for a, for a bike. Mine, mine go in the basement when it's not seasoned. Do these have basements? These would have basements. Yeah. So, parking, this surprisingly, I think I had missed this and I don't think it came up either time in the engineer's review. But we've got 12 spaces, which is two per unit with the small units. I'd suggest that we're gonna have probably an average. I think with small units and at this location on the, on the bus route, I think that we'll have an average of 1.5 cars at best per unit. So not concerned ourselves about adequacy of parking, but we don't have 13 spaces, which is that one extra space. So that is a waiver from the 13 to the 12. I don't think staff suggests that that's an issue, but it's certainly a valid point. The homeowner's docs, those are, those are in the works. It's pretty standard here. Basically everything outside of those footprints is on 1.6, everything is maintained 1.6 with the exception of the water. The water has the easement that I talked about that would be conveyed to the town. The sewer would be private right out. But once it gets outside the right away, it's a private sewer system that would be maintained by the association. There's no requirement for a master plan for this small project in the residential two districts. The purpose of the residential two district is high density single family residential 7,500 square feet. Again, the 7,500 square feet gets you to 5.4 units for this project. And with the one perpetually affordable, you need an 11% bonus. And this section that I cited is a 20% bonus for doing an affordable unit. On lot size, lot coverage, I already went over that, but we're below the 40%, which is the standard on setbacks. I think generally when you see PUDs, again, they're a larger scale than this, but almost every PUD that I've done in Chittenden County comes with waivers on side yard setbacks. Rear yard setbacks, lot coverage, we don't have any of that. And that's mainly because this is a high density residential district. So it's in keeping with the regulations in that sense. The main thing, I've mentioned it a couple of times now, minimum side yard setback is eight feet. And we have more than eight feet to the abutting properties. In the back, we have closer to 40 feet on that rear yard compared to the 25 foot conventional standard. And we have more than two times the between any of these structures. So when you measure between unit one and two, between three and four and five and six, they all exceed 16 feet. That's typically what I try to do. I try to take the conventional setback, multiply it by two and see if that works for the PUD that's being proposed. Section 708, screening buffering. Talks about mitigating potential negative impact on adjoining. And to me, this is the key, incompatible land uses. There's not an incompatible land use here. Single family structures against single family structures. So that section is clear to incompatible uses and these are compatible uses. So to that sense, the landscaping that's proposed is more than enough, but I know there's other sections that get to landscaping. Well, while you're there. Yep. Since you have a parking lot, that's going to be having the cars drive in and specifically hit units one and two. Why don't you have any screening near the storm or pond or near the hydrant snow area that's on the mat to not have the headlights slanted into the building versus only taking care of the mountains. Yeah, that's a good question, Diane. We typically not as worried or not as focused on what's being planned and proposed impact on what's being proposed as trying to lessen the impact on the neighbors. But I don't disagree that that would be a good place for some landscaping. Yeah, there should be drugs and some deciduous trees to give some screening to the car. Yeah, I just added a couple areas where you were talking about that would make sense. Yeah, I mean, normally on a single family home it's just one unit. I wouldn't be concerned about that because it's not homeowner coming into their unit. In this case, you have six potential homeowners. Right. It's different. Yeah, no, I think that makes sense. And I think that the numbers that we have probably need to go upwards anyway as far as the budget. Yeah, I'm just looking at the application page. When I got to a mixed up, you see the left side was 41,000 square feet, but you said the landscape cost was 8,000. Well, I didn't, but I'm not sure where that, which I see that, I see that. Yeah, we're just saying that now. The percentage that the code requires, that's... Well, I think the takeaway already and we're not that far into it is there's gonna be additional landscaping. So we're gonna have to provide more information on that. Now we get to section 723 on the PUD and talk about encouraging a higher level of design and amenity and then there's sections that I'm gonna go to if I can keep this in order. So in a PUD, it talks about under 723B, B5C. It says in that location, it's kind of weird language because it says add a minimum up to 15%. In the other place, it says the planning commission may require up to 15%. So with the two together and even this one, I read it that anywhere from zero to 15% up to the planning commission can be, shall be developed with passive and or active amenities. Everything outside of the impervious and the buildings, the parking and the sidewalk is in common. I think as part of the landscaping plan, I mentioned that there's adequate area. It's about basically without imposing on the unit behind you, you'd easily have, if you were 10 or more feet off the back of the building, you'd have about a 10 by 25 foot area that you could do an individual garden behind each of these units without impacting the lot behind you. And then we could do picnic tables up towards the parking area. And I think in the scale of this project, not being a big PUD, that's certainly subjective, but again, anywhere from zero to 15% in one place that says May and in this place that says contradicts it in this place where it says shall be developed but it's up to 15%. And the other location that I saw it, if I can find it here, not finding it right now, but I will find it as we go on. Section 908, recreational open space. Section 908 on recreational open space reads that if required by the planning commission within any subdivision site plan or PUD, so not just a PUD, the planning commission may require, so it's if required and may required and there it says not more than 15%. So there's those two places that are the sections of the regs that we can go to, they're consistent in that it's up to 15%. And then when you get into one of the, on the definitions, it wasn't in the definitions. Well, one, I found, I think I'll get this on the record, your open space definition shall mean the area within boundaries of any lot or development that is intended to provide light and air and upon which no improvement, of which no improvement which creates impervious services may be installed, erected, or constructed. Open space shall generally be available for entry and use by the occupants. Ordinary open space shall be maintained with vegetative cover. So you take the 32.4%, we've got 67.6% of open space by the regulation definition. And then there's the definition of plan unit development is also helpful because it talks about deviations from the regulations. The only deviation here that I'm aware of is we're asking for the 12 spaces instead of 13 spaces. And I think that's it once we get on the same page with landscaping. So I'm gonna go back to the staff notes. Plan unit developments already went over density. So it was down on two H. I would argue that we also meet two G. I think this is quite innovative design, different than the status quo, but in the purpose of this district being high density, it makes sense to utilize this project appropriately and appropriately is at the five units without one being affordable or six with one being affordable. The parking, I call this a parking area, not a parking lot. I know there's not a definition between the two. I did not feel it was appropriate for lighting in this area. If the board feels that they don't have that ability, I believe you do in a PUD. PUD gives you carte blanche on what you wanna do just under the PUD definition in that section, but I do not believe you need to require lighting and I think lighting would be a detriment to the abutting homes. This isn't something about cost or anything like that. It just, we didn't feel it was appropriate to propose lighting here. However, if it was your home, would you expect to have a light on the front of your home that would allow you to walk on your sidewalk or in your driveway to get to your garage if you had one, in this case you don't, to get into your, built into your unit? Okay, and I expect this lighting will allow somebody to get out of their car in this parking area. To walk up to that unit however far it happens to be from their car or if they're walking in the evening, there's some lighting that goes from the sidewalk or past the Matthews to their unit. And if you had your car there, okay, if I have a mic right there, I have one of those cool lights that lights up part of my driveway. Is it up on the top? No, it's actually about six or seven feet tall. So I think we could find some accommodations that we could find some residential lighting that will fix the situation and that there's a lack of lighting right now. If the board is in agreement with you, Diane, on more of a pedestrian lighting, have no issue with pedestrian lighting, I would say that you're probably one out of 25 that has a pole in your yard. Most of us just have our driveway and we have the light on the house. All of these will obviously have lights on the house. It's not that far to the first house, it's not far between houses. With porch lights on, there should be ample lighting to navigate that sidewalk. I can't assume somebody's gonna leave their porch light on perpetuity. That's assuming that. So again, if the board is interested in pedestrian level lighting, I think it would be more, I think what would be appropriate is more of the ballard lights that are made for sidewalks versus even the lamp poles. But, and those could start closer to the, closer to the parking area because those wouldn't have, those are low enough where they don't have an impact on neighbors. Yeah. I'm gonna second my colleague here around the lighting. I'll say two out of 25 have lights on their driveway. And they don't need to be lamp poles. But it'd be great to see some sort of plan to see lighting in the parking area along in the pedestrian way. You know, I've gotten down some notes. I do have some questions around the whole idea of home ownership in this common space. And if the home ownership is just gonna be that plot of land, who maintains the sidewalk? Who maintains the parking area? I mean, I would think that there should be some lighting there for whoever is owning that and maintaining that, shoveling it. You know, is that up to the six residents to shovel this sidewalk as well in the middle of the winter? Only if they chose to. I mean, common maintenance is HOA, common maintenance is for everything. So it all gets mowed at the same time instead of having six people mow early on a Saturday morning at different days. It gets mowed, it gets maintained at the same time. No, that's great to know that there is an HOA that's gonna be maintaining the property. Yeah, yeah, it's standard in that regards. There's no, without coming back to you and there's not a lot of percentage there unless they were trying to go above the standard 40%. There's no other buildings that can be proposed here. So contrary to my home in the village, I can put in a pool, I can put in a shed, I can do all these things that most of us can do with a PUD, what you see is what you get. So in that respect, in the common maintenance, sometimes is helpful for the abutting homes, that it's one time that it's done, but. I'm also gonna jump in here and agree with Diane and Patrick. This is Phil and just agree on the lighting. Second, what they've said already that it doesn't have to be pole lighting. It can be, be creative with the lighting, but I also agree seeing lighting in the parking area and the long walkways. And along with the convenience of it for the residents, I think it also adds a safety factor, especially when you have an open parking area. I think most people would feel a lot safer with lights in an open parking area. I concur too. So far I've already written down additional landscaping and pedestrian slash ballard style lighting, but we'll, I know that that's an item. Design considerations, we're down to, everybody's gonna have a different opinion, but we feel that this is innovative land use and building use. Again, the purpose of this district is for high density homes at 7,500 square feet. This is how you meet the purpose of the district. The next section on design considerations, it says the planning commission may determine that the design is not innovative and standard district requirements shall apply. The commission may authorize following modifications. We're not asking for any of those modifications in regards to standard setbacks. We are, I think we do fall under B3 though, basically the use of zero lot lines clustering. So that one's the one there. I'm down to, didn't see anything down to item D. And I didn't have anything I needed to go over there. The next section is all the kind of, from the back and forth with the Village Engineer. Item one, we understand. And we actually, I think just sent a letter to Terry today starting the discussion on sewer and water allocation. But we realized that we need sewer and water allocation. Again, connecting to both the municipal and water and sewer right there at the street. Down on site layout, item three. Item two, we did do a second back and forth with Hamlin. So the plan does represent that. Item three, we're okay with the 20 foot width versus the 18 feet. Six E, we already made that change for Hamlin also. On grading and drainage item three. I had the discussion with them. The state trigger is one acre of impervious. The town trigger is a half an acre of impervious. And we've got about three tenths of an acre of impervious here. So there's no calculations. We have that low area to properly take the water that's gonna come off of the parking area. But there's no calculations with it. It's just an area to infiltrate. So we can provide some information, but there's not a hydrocat model in this case. There's no requirement for it. No storm drain for the parking area? There's just the parking area. You can see the 349 contour and 348 are kind of a chevron across the parking lot. They both direct to this low area. So there's basically a two-foot, two-foot depressional area, mowable, that would collect water in a heavy rainstorm. So there's no storm rain there, just a low spot? Just a low spot. Yep, just got deep sands here. And again, it's just such a small impervious area compared to, it's just not a lot of area. On item three, we made the change. We had to shift the waterline a little bit to make sure that they had their full 20-foot easement. And we did that. Item nine, we did. Item 11, we did. Those are just, these are all just technical items. Item 12, again, we did that already. Item 19 on sanitary sewer, we made that change. And that's reflected in the plans that the plan set. And then it gets to lighting and the lighting talks about, I had a direct discussion with them and while they said that they weren't opposed to it, they were pointing out that parking areas talk about lighting. And the conventional lighting would be your higher lighting. So if it's pedestrian scale, I'm in support of that. As far as the proposed stipulations, item two I already talked about, that's where it says Village Engineer will review plans on stormwater. It's really nothing to review. They've already reviewed the plans a couple of times and we're below the regulatory standard, including the village's standard for that. So I would suggest that the second part of that, the second sentence of item two should be struck. We already went over item five on the sprinklers. We're okay with that. We're okay. If the board's okay with item eight, we're okay with that. We know we need more landscaping. I think it's more of a question of whether we're back before you or if we're close enough that that can remain as written. Not item 10, we're adding the bike rack. And item 11, we do need the one space waiver from 13 spaces to 12 spaces. Again, with these size units and where they're located, we believe that the average will be closer to 1.5 cars per home, which would be about nine cars in that parking lot on a normal day. The only comparison I have for that on calculations isn't a project like this, but I did do counts. Like 4 or 5 a.m. in the morning and 10 o'clock at night on a couple of your larger buildings on Pearl Street. And it was there, it was coming out like 0.67 to one car per unit. I would expect that they'd be a little bit higher here because these are ownership versus rental, but still the 1.5 to me is comfortable. And I guess that's why I think the one extra space isn't necessary. And item 12, those are in the works and we understand that staff and the village attorney will review the HOA docs. Very straightforward, as I said, one six ownership, one six maintenance with the exception of the water main, which will be taken over by the village. All right, missionaries, any further questions at the moment? Is there gonna be a professional landscaping plan or is this gonna be something they're drawing up or is there gonna be, is there a certain amount, based on a certain amount of money being paid? Requirements are for a licensed landscape architect registered in the state of Vermont to provide a plan. So that's not here. I think that's, I think that's when it's over a million. Yeah. Do we know, how do we know what the value of this is? Do we know? I mean, the land is all based on it. What's the good question? What's the value, the value, the market value, is the value and what a cost on the bill, first of what they... Construction costs. Construction costs. Not what it's not. Not what it's not. Not market costs, no. Okay, that's construction costs. Are there projected construction costs? I quickly said it was about 900. And that wasn't anything to do with the percentage actually goes down over a million. And then it comes with that requirement, just because you're proposing so much. But... 900,000 to construct six single family homes? I'll check with, it's their costs. I mean, Andrew would know better than me, but 150,000 or 140,000 for a small unit like this at their cost. I don't know that that's not reasonable. I mean, it's just... 130 bucks a square foot for the house. That's right, that's... 130. What about that? When you don't have a lot of up there. Yeah. Yeah, so that would be about 140,000 in this case. So it's somewhere close to a million. So 900,000 for construction, what does that work out at their code percentage? That would be $18,000 at 2%. And I don't think we have that now. I said 300, the Austrian pine are certainly at least 300. And I mean, the prices are installed and guaranteed, but white cedars aren't 300. So we know we need more landscaping, regardless. And we've been given some advice already as to where some additional places are appropriate, including in front of lot one and lot two for the interior headlight shine. But I think what needs to happen is that plus foundation plannings. And then what I didn't go over is the site is almost, and Diane was out there, but the site is almost entirely fenced now from the butters. So that kind of helps as far as impacts there. And do you put landscaping up against a fence? Yeah, I think the point is we're trying to make sure that this development is of substantial design and meets the PUD requirements, which tend to, essentially they all say, we're looking for something a little better than normal. And so I'm doing calculations that have you over a million bucks. And I'm saying for me, it would be great to have the benefit of a landscape architect to help you with the site lighting it, even if it's pedestrian, to integrate the plantings into the whole piece so that it all works together and you get the bonus. Basically, it's a bonus of design lifting through a higher standard. And then we're not stuck trying to design by committee because none of us are licensed. I mean, I can do it, but I'm not licensed. Our landscape architect, so. We can commit to that. I mean, we need to update the landscaping anyway, so we can commit to that being a. I think you got a few things all circling around that one item that will benefit from, yeah. So can I? And I'll commit to that, regardless of what the number is, if it is less than a million. So when you say guarantee, that means the plants will live for how long? It's usually like a three year guarantee. A guarantee that will replace them if they don't make it type of thing. Right, right. It's just basically to make sure they take and it's the right species. Sometimes it's just that the species just didn't do well there. But as we say, there's a lot of sand, obviously cedars or thirsty trees and trying to plant in something that doesn't hold water very well. Maybe with the benefit of landscape architect, they'll say that's not a great choice. Yeah. So part also in our regulations in the landscaping section in 719, it talks about having, it's D7, talks about the tree advisory committee getting in on having some issues of dealing with advisory or watching trees and things being put in. So what has happened in the past. Hit me six if you want to gather. Yeah, I don't have the full document. I got sections, but if it's in our regs then it'll be covered under a staff notes that you have to comply with all of our regs. Right, and what has happened on past PUDs that I've worked on in the village is that Robin and Terry come out towards the beginning, but it really comes to culmination. In this case, really with the six unit, they came out again like on village walk at the end and basically took a look. So I don't know if that supplants what you're, I think that the status quo has been, that staff has been the one that's been making sure that landscaping is going in. And the nice thing about doing it, in this case of the six unit is you got a good idea whether they're healthy or not. I think we're relying on staff to count them and see that they match the plan, but I think there's another issue in there, which is the tree advisory committee includes a tree warden and some other folks that are pretty heavily involved in exactly how they get planted and what's the best way to make sure that they survive. And I think you'll find that process helpful. I know that they've been doing a heck of a job and have lobbied hard to basically improve the likelihood that the landscaping will survive. Yeah, I mean, I guess with committing to a landscape architect whether without the being above a million or below a million, I'd like to rely on that person and I'd like the board to rely on that person, not have that person questioned by folks that are not licensed landscape architects. So I understand that it might be appropriate for them to take a look at things after, but I don't think it's appropriate for them to be telling the licensed landscape architect how to plant things or what the details should look like. That's gonna be reasonable. We've had their present a tree advisory committee and the tree wardens come to our group to talk to us about how to rewrite the rules that will help include them in more decision making on all kinds of other projects, but that doesn't apply yet, so it doesn't matter. But the section B7 does at the moment does apply. So I'm gonna hope that staff knows how to logistically include that balance that out because if it's required, then maybe they reviewed the planting details, but I tend to agree with the fact that if you're hiring a professional, they're supposed to take care of that kind of stuff. So that said, the regs also say something else, so somehow we gotta balance that. Whatever the board comes up with, I just wanted to say my piece that if you're committed to that. Yeah, well, as a licensed professional myself, I appreciate that because that's what you're paying for. So I think, again, it's gonna be staff and maybe we have to figure out how to balance that and reclare, so. Anyway, the other thing that we've seen in landscaping is sometimes the neighbors are involved in kind of at least being able to express their concerns for certain landscaping, and that can be something maybe we get a little of that tonight when we get to the audience, but it's been very successful and it happened at Village Walk that there was a little bit of back and forth on what those plantings might be in places of higher concern. So hopefully we'll be able to get some of that too, yes. Yeah, I have opportunity to confer and ask questions to the commission myself. Somebody explain how this fits the definition of PUD because reading, it talks about subdivision and there's clearly no subdivision happening here. So I'm just, well, PUD, the thing is it still says one lot, right? It doesn't get subdivided individual lots. From my perspective, and I said it in the staff report, the two main things about this, they give a design perspective for PUD that we normally don't get is the houses themselves are relatively small compared to most of the other houses we've seen built in the village. And also completely separates the pedestrian residential homeowner section from the car. So if I've got a five year old child that I used to have who runs about a crazy person outside the house, they're not worried about a car coming around the corner. So for me there, the two main things that set this aside from a lot of the other PUDs we do, which may have common space, may have shared space, but they still have a sidewalk and a road right beside the sidewalk every bus. All right, maybe I'm then just misunderstanding the definition of a PUD. I'm thinking that's not like a neighborhood subdivision where you've got planned buildings. It's intended to be an opportunity to provide something different from the normal development. And I would agree in this case that this definitely does. When they came in before us, we said, it wasn't sketch, but we did comment. And we said, this is interesting enough that if it's done right, we would encourage it because we don't have a lot of variation in a lot of the development that happens normally. So if you say we'll let you do something that is not normal as long as you show us how it works and it seems to work in a way that gives the village some of the things that we promote, like more density and higher quality. I do like the thing where the kids aren't next to the cars and this could be its own little neighborhood. I mean, these people are gonna get to know each other. Oh, without a doubt. And more of an education piece for myself, just trying to understand. So I think in this case, there's some items that are pretty interesting, like you're not actually asking to break a lot of the rules. All the setbacks are still there. We're not really being asked to change the overall way this is dealt with, including the density, which is less than would be allowed under the affordable housing rules that they're working with. So in a lot of ways, that's pretty neat. I do have a few other comments, but I do wanna get to the audience. My other thought that I just wanna ask my other committee members, is the thoughts and feelings around the sprinkler system? I mean, is it only gonna be in the last two houses or it's gonna be in all six? All six. And home ownership, I mean, I'm just trying to think of places where I've lived that may have had a sprinkler in the kitchen and I'm thinking about the home I live in and my oven will set off the fire alarm. Is that gonna trigger the sprinkler? Like what's the sensitivity to those and potential water damage if it accidentally goes off? I can tell you that the life safety people and the fire marshals in general are pushing for everything being sprinkled all the time everywhere, which has not included single family housing up until now. So that's been less of an issue, but that's what they want. And do they want it because of the distance to the fire? They want it because it's been shown to really save property, it's mostly lives, but I'm not willing to get in the middle of that issue right at the moment. Yeah, Chris, I had time, sorry. I understood that the staff comment was coming from Robin and not the fire chief, but the fire chief wants it then. Yeah, I think the hard line approach from our standpoint would be why are sprinklers needed because we're not asking for a waiver from your standard eight foot setback. We've got more than 16 between structures. We're within 210 feet to the farthest unit from the hydrant. But on the other hand, realize that it's 210 feet and okay, I guess if I was smarter on pushing back, I probably would have said, well, how about units three, five and six have sprinklers in those two rooms, but your regulations do not require sprinklers in this case. So it's more of a something that, in my opinion, that we're giving to the fire. Yeah, no, fair enough, I was just wondering if it was. Yeah, I was. Go ahead, Bill. Oh, I was just gonna say, Patrick, like I was thinking the same exact thing. And but that's why I asked the question on what was the recommendation from the fire chief. I feel like at this point, deferring to the fire chief on what the property should have for the safest, to provide the safest protection makes the most sense. Excuse me, I think part of my thought too was around that the fire chief made those recommendations based on the plans that are in front of them. And if there were potential alternatives, but it sounds like sprinklers are something that are being pushed for single family homes. And if that's the case, then I guess it does make a lot more sense, but. Yeah, as John said, it's not just the village, it's not the town, almost every fire chief in the last 20 years has been pushing for sprinkler systems and everything. And it just hasn't gotten to that point in regulations. It's kind of one of these, do we all dry bubbles? Yeah, I mean, anyway, we'll let it go for now. Anything to do with the HOA? Or is that completely out of your jurisdiction and somebody else does that part? I'm just concerned about people working on their cars in parking lot or whatever, because right across the street, it's already got a mechanic over there doing something. I go by every day. It's a big eyesore. So I mean, can we say, hey, don't the guys work on their cars in their yard? Because it's not pretty to look at and leave easily leaves a mess. Most of that stuff is baked into what the attorneys already have, but if there's things like that, add them right into your stuff because like the no unregistered vehicles aren't allowed. So a lot of that's already baked into the HOAs. They're not writing an HOA for this project per se. They're pulling one up that's been used 50 times and updating it. But yeah, we certainly would have that. We can make sure that it adds no maintenance work on vehicles. I mean, somebody should be able to change wipers and stuff like that. And obviously put watcher fluid in, but we don't want them jacking cars up out there to change their oil. They don't have a garage to work in. So they're gonna do it somewhere. So they're gonna do it in the parking lot. I will say Andrew that a lot of the HOAs in the village in terms of that sort of stuff, are actually stricter than the long development car. Oh, they're much more restrictive than your zoning. Every HOA is much more restrictive than your zoning. Yeah. And then just one final as I was looking at this again. So there's one handicap parking space. Accessible parking space, that's one of the 12. Correct. 11 non-accessible, one accessible. Correct. The overall design, universal design, accessibility to the units. The, what do you, I don't get the question. Is there accessibility to the units like the overall with the sidewalk and it's all being planned for universal design so that there is, you know, you're already planning for an acceptable parking lot. Right. Well, that's a requirement of your regulations. The sidewalks are proposed at the, you know, they're typical sidewalks. We're not proposing that one of these units be, you know, meet all handicap accessibility. Kind of be pretty tough to do it this small size. At least the regs here. But your regs require that we at least have that handicap space, whether it's for a visitor or whether it's in, my mom has a handicap thing, but she doesn't have a handicap house. A lot of, there's a lot of people that meet the handicap requirement for a parking space that are not yet to a handicap house. Yeah. So when we were talking about being accessible, you've got a kitchen door going out the sides, either left or right. The scenario, the style, what depending on which side of the walkway it is. Is there going to be a pad or do they just walk out on the grass? A pad on the side. Another good question, Diane. I think beyond the pad, the follow up, I don't have a good answer because the follow up to that is, I don't know whether I need a step to a pad. So I need to look at that. There's going to have a foundation that's going to be out of the ground at least a foot. Yeah. Yeah, that's why I say, I think I probably would need a step. Well, most of the grading is showing it about a foot different from the house. So even if you had a step, if somebody was right, needed the accessibility to, you know, regrade that little spot would be pretty easy. These are close to, there's very little grading here. Yeah, there are some state regulations. I don't know if they apply to single family homes. They all apply to any kind of apartment that has to be visitable or adaptable, but I'm not sure they... I think with residential, unless it's changed the, well, so if you do a four plex, one of them has to be handicapped, but adaptable. Triplex, you don't... There are some requirements in there for that. Oh, the front door would be a three-foot door, and the side door would be a 32-inch door, like a standard house, and both doors are gonna be a 36, so signing a walker can get through it easily. I mean, that's a different detail, I suppose. Yeah, again, we're not proposing these as handicapped adaptable. So I would say it'd be a standard, you know, the 36 and 32 scenario. I think the requirement is at least one way in and out and a route through the... I would hope that it is accessible. Any other commissioner comments, or can we go into the audience? Any other questions? Yeah, I just... Oh, there. You guys can battle it out with someone. The second... I'll go ahead. Four on these are pretty small, and so they could put a bedroom up there, so a person's gonna be, like, talking to get into a bedroom, but these don't look like they're very tall, so... These elevations were not intended as... This is absolutely it. The main thing with these elevations is that it's capestyle and it's got that full front porch. So if they wanted to go an extra two feet higher to get a more usable area upstairs, they should have that ability. So in the future, so if they wanted to build up to get more bedrooms, would that be a different issue for us to deal with, nothing to do with... Like, you can add onto your house and go higher and make more bedrooms, so then you need another space because there's not enough spaces as it is. I don't know that we have that purview, but in the PUD requirement, it does give you a benefit for having very building massing. So I was kind of hoping that we wouldn't see six of these. We'd see maybe a little bit of variation. You know, the one that we got is basically a log cabin. I don't know if you're doing log cabins or not, but it's pretty normal to have a generic like this and then you have an option for a couple of dormers or you have an option for whatever, so. Right, and we're good with that, John. I don't believe you're... I mean, I don't know that your regulations even required that for this. No, but they do like varied massing. So I'm just saying, we know what the footprint is, we know what the arrangement is, and within that you've got some leeway and the requirements for the PUD suggest that you take that leeway and do something. Understood, okay. Do I move her today to just public? You're welcome to state, well, yeah, I guess you're supposed to vacate the hot seat and then we'll get something else up there. I just would like to say... Hang on, no. Oh, I don't have a question, I just have a statement. I just wanted to say that like I'm excited about this development. I think this type of development is needed in our area. These sorts of single family houses, small houses, affordable. I'm excited about the affordable aspect that perpetual affordability of one of the units will be. I'm not gonna talk about landscaping, we talked about that a lot, and but as far as the parking goes, I don't see a problem with the waiver for the parking spot. I think some of our parking regulations are already outdated from what's normal. And as far as the recreational aspect of the PUD design considerations, I don't really see that being an issue either. I think this is a very unique development and one that's greatly needed in our community. So I'm excited to see this through and see the updates to the plan. Thank you. Thanks, Bill. All right, audience, it's finally time. So when it's your turn to talk, come up to the table and state your name, please. David Hamlin? Hey. Well, I've been taking notes as I go along, and Tina Logan is my neighbor at eight McGregor. I'm at six McGregor. So we're directly behind? I see who would be behind five and six and then I'm in the land that's behind that. We haven't discussed what's happening with that bit of land. And I'm curious. Behind five and six. Behind five and six, very cool. Yeah, well, that's a big thank you. And that was, as you were new to our, that was more, we did that more for the low boundaries being so close to the line on the back. But what do you think there? That's just grass. It's just grass? Yeah, at this point, that's just grass. No, can't be any structures unless the nature way came back to the board. I think what I would like to see back there are natural plants for the area, native plants instead of grass. I think it would just be better for the entire environment here. That's fine. One of my comments was going to be about the landscaping plan which they need to provide would be some way for the applicant to try and help us understand what happens in the open space. So the open space is a good thing from the design perspective and the PUD perspective and possibly the neighborhood perspective, but right now it's sort of undefined. So I think if we could get some help understanding what does that mean? Is that a forest open space? Is that a meadow open space? What is it? Because it wants to be something. It could be, if you imagine, they would put in playground because the HOA hasn't happened yet and none of the owners are there so who knows what they want. So I understand that there's a little bit of interest in allowing them to decide what's going to be there. Which makes sense. At the same time, I think it would be helpful for people looking at the proposal to get a little bit more of an idea of the kind of things that might be there. I didn't get to see the plans for the house itself, the houses that are going there. It looks like it's like a one story with a dormer that could be a two, more like a one and a half. Yeah, that's what I'm imagining. There's some variation for that. What kind of finish on the outside are we looking at? Not vinyl siding, I'm hoping because that just falls apart and looks dirty after five years. I have no information about that and I'm not sure it's in our requirement. We have no control over that. We have no requirements for that? Not in this district. Okay. Also, we're talking about Tina and I, both are gardeners and we know a lot about plants. The two and a half inch circumference white cedars won't make it because they are very thirsty plants and they also grow very slowly. So they're just kind of, you've seen them by the new developments where they just kind of, you see these sticks that kind of wither and die and then you see a gap and then nothing. Yeah. I would recommend Norway spruce. I have two right now back at that tree line that I put in in case this development happened. By the way, we were told that if anything went in there, it would be two houses by Mr. Bushy. He said that if he built anything back there at all, it'd be two houses for family. He didn't tell us any of this was happening until we got the letter. So there wasn't total honesty there. I'm a little confused because didn't Gabe handy come in with it? Well, he's been talking to him about it. I looked at the regulations and tried to look at what the max uses. So he hadn't talked to me. I told him what was possible by the regulations. I see. Next thing I'm concerned about because of the shrubbery going there, if you look at the back of the lot where these houses, they kind of cantilever into the side yard. So they are eight feet away from the easement or whatever it's called there. But when you put shrubbery in there, that shrubbery is gonna grow and actually mess up the foundations of these houses over 15 years. So it's not gonna be good for the houses that are going in, which is gonna be good for the people who are buying it. Or it's just gonna mean those trees are gonna die. So I think... Are you suggesting that the shrubbery will have some kind of a root ball that's larger than the actual shrub or is it gonna creep along for a while? The way trees work is they will go under a foundation and eventually start cracking it. I know I ran into it when I bought my house 11 years ago. I had a lot of work that I needed to do on it. I'm just saying that's something to think about if we're talking about putting houses that close to the property line and then putting trees behind it. I don't think it's gonna be good for the house or the trees in the long run. Okay, so you're looking at the landscape hedges there. What are we? Yeah, I'm concerned about how they're gonna hold up over time. And that's as a homeowner right there. And of course I'm concerned about that because I live in a great neighborhood. I love it here. Okay. The Norway spruce, not white cedar at all because they just won't make it. No. The lighting. The Norway, just so that I understand that the Norway spruce though is a much taller. It will get taller over time. It grows about two to three feet a year as opposed to one to two feet a year. Does it roll down more than out or? It spreads like this. You have to trim it on one side. But they're pretty hardy and they're drought tolerant. I don't water anything. I have a beautiful perennial garden that is drought tolerant and I put those in on purpose. All right. I did my research before doing any of this. And Tina as well, she's got a beautiful drought tolerant garden that goes right up in that area. By the way, as far as runoff goes, my yard gets pretty mushy in the spring. So I don't know if how that's gonna work for runoff in the back, which is one of the reasons I'm saying native species in the very back. And then if you could change the grading to where it goes to that area, it would actually be better for the environment while they're building. Mr. Bushy brought up about the lighting and everyone seemed to be in agreement that lighting is a good idea. I agree. It's a good idea. Just from being there for so long, I see how the lighting is off of the main street off of Maple Street. It actually lights things up pretty well where that parking lot would be. I suggest that we do put some lights in there, no taller than six feet in the parking lot area, but then the bothered lights going down the walkways, I think is a much better idea than pole lamps, just because it would make my house a spotlight. Right. All the time. That's what I'm concerned about. The houses are basically going to be right running up to our backyard. Yeah. And one of the reasons why I purchased 24 years ago is this big open lot and concerns about, I appreciate having small single family homes. It's a lot though. I think it's going to be pretty tight back there. So I would say lighting would be very much appreciated. For sure. That's the lighting would be not glaring in our backyard. Mm-hmm. And I mean, the house is done lovely, the whole pathway originally. I think, you know, it's this whole mission where people are saying, oh, they can't figure out because it's not enough for a road back there. But a solution has been brought to the table, which is creative and very cool. But I also just, I'm hoping that it will be mindful for the rest of the neighborhood. So, because it is going to be tight. One of the things that Mr. Bushy brought up as well was about the parking, where he did some due diligence by going around and checking the lots that are there now. I have a friend that lives in one of the new buildings on School Street. There's someone that sits in that parking lot every single day and works on a car every day and nothing's done about that. So, and that's going to be a concern over here as well, I'm sure. But George, the guy who lives in that building right there who's handy, is it handy to build that building? Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, if you look down from the window in his apartment, the guy's always there working on the car. And the ear tastes the living day lights out of George. Building that. It's a rental property. They build as the senior housing building, right? That's that you can see from School Street, but it's not on School Street. The one in the back. It's behind where the dominoes was that. Yeah. That's not School Street. Okay, whatever the school back there, whatever that is right there. It's Park Street School. Park Street School, okay. I never get those names right. School Street's right behind Park Street School. So, there's a person, yeah. So, enforcement, we have a whole lot of long list of things that we want enforcement about it. It's not so much. But I'm just saying, it's not going to be easy to get that enforcement in the new spot if we can't follow those rules in spots that are already existing. I'd like to write up to the trustees and the police chief and ask them why this isn't happening. Yeah. And, you know, that's. But I'm just using that as an example of something that can't be enforced and it's not being followed now. So, don't expect that it's going to be followed in this parking lot when it's built. It's just. Unless the neighbors keep complaining, keep bugging them. Yeah, still no one seems to listen. I've been complaining about that house on Maple Street for years, nothing's been done about it. That's not true. It's still a mess. We went to court with them. They changed it. When you go to court with, I'll keep it short. Okay. When you go to court with people if they cure the issue and it takes a long time to get in front of the judge, then they've nothing to answer. Then the village drops it and then maybe three months later, they start all over again. Then we have to start court case all over again. And maybe it's nine months to get into it. And if before it gets in front of the judge, they clear up the violation. There's nothing to answer. We can't go in front of the court and it starts all over. Is it not a violation to not have any siding on that house for the last 10 years? Actually, no, it's not. Oh, you do? Wow. It might be soon, but it's not yet. No. So, interesting that you ask us that because as we're rewriting the land development code, we're trying to increase the number of districts that we have design control. And so I hope you come out in support of that because that'll be important for all of us as we try to say, hey, listen, we expect more, we expect better. Yeah. I would like to say that I do appreciate the design. Yeah. It's a little neighborhood. I mean, it seems like it's going to be very far and that it's not, they're going to be single home. Yeah, which is great. I think it's that neighborhood feel for sure. I just hope that the mining could be easy too that we're not having to provide where we might and also the landscaping to give enough privacy in between. Regarding the parking, I don't, I think you're going to need at least two spots per spot, not 1.7 or whatever the number is. Only because if you go around to these buildings and look at how many cars are there at night and in the morning now, those buildings are fully occupied. So what's going to happen is if we don't have, if they don't have enough parking in that parking lot, they're going to be coming around and parking on my lawn, which I had trouble with with other neighbors when they first moved in. So just because I'm the closest street, you can't park on Maple Street, they're going to have to go somewhere. So I think more parking or you're putting in six houses, the occupancy that it should be just slightly less than that, why not put in five houses? Why does it have to be six houses? Why not make them to where they can be modified a bit and have all the houses back there, charge a little more for each one? Does that, is that because it takes you over the million dollars and then you have to worry about. I think they're trying to make it as affordable as possible because we don't have that in chipmunks. But only one of those is being set up as affordable. As petrally affordable. The others are going to be sold at less than what, positive that size normally sell at. At this point in time, we got to have apartments, which may be, maybe maximum at 150 square feet. They're not really affordable. No, they're not. And then we have houses that might start at 2,000, 2,200, 2,400 square feet and go up. There's a gap in the middle. This is an attempt to fill that gap in the middle. And if they drop it by one house, but 1,200, if they drop it by one house, and the price of all the others go up, it defeats the purpose. Then make two affordable. Why make one? If you're going to do all that, I just. Well, that's what the code asks for. We might get to that discussion later tonight in our housing, affordable housing presentation. Currently we don't have much of a stick to create that. And frankly, I think they could achieve some of this design without the affordable piece. So I think I'll be happy with the proposal. But I think we should be very sensitive to the notion that you are developing, sure, it's an empty lot, which could have been anything, but we want to really be careful with the landscaping and the lighting, which I think is all sewed up in one package now. So I don't expect this to be the last time we all have comments on that. Okay. So what did we agree on for the lighting? We're going to, normally it's included the pedestrian lighting as a function and often shown in this plan as the landscaping. In other words, it's not calculated based on some kind of magic foot gamble number that came from the engineering world. It's more about the feel and the sense of safety and things that you get from a landscape designer. Yeah, what I was thinking is I like the idea that the ballard lights through the neighborhood itself. And I do, yeah, there should be higher lights in that parking lot because I wouldn't feel safe coming in with the dark. Although there is light off the street. There needs to be a couple of six-foot lights there, at least. Well, there's also car lights. There's headlights in the car. Well, the point is because at least this is my feeling, the point that's been made, and I'll just reinforce it, is that there seems to be some burden on the developer to make sure that the normal expectation of parking your car, getting out of your car, and making it to your front door is a safe event. If that was a single family home, you'd have a lot more control of it. I don't think it's fair for neighbor X down at the end here to rely on the rest of his neighbors to have some lights on in order for the pathway to be lit up. So we're asking them to go wrestle with that and come back with the plan. And I think that's appropriate. And it may be a complication of doing the parking arrangement the way that it's done here. But so be it. That's what they're looking for. And we all kind of like the idea, but you've got a little bit more work to do now to make the pathway safe. And not bother the neighbors. And if you have any other questions? No, I think they've all been answered. I wondered if there were two story homes originally that are the same size as my house on McGregor Street, which is good. Same size or same height? Well, I have a 1 and 1 1⁄2 story bungalow. So basically the same kind of thing. Yeah, that will fit in depending on the finishes. Yeah. There's a lot of different fencing shown in here. Some of it seems to be part of the property. Some of it may be existing already. Actually, the fence they put in will be good for about 10 years, and then it's going to fall down. I know because I had the same fence back there before it lasted about 10 years and fell down. So that's not a permanent solution, what they have up there now. I don't have a comment. I've seen them last longer, and I've seen them not last time longer. Unpainted softwood fence. Not all the fence that are surrounding in this actually are owned by this property, these adjoining properties. It depends on where you are. What they put up is the softwood fence, which I was grateful for when it went out because mine was in bad shape, and I'd have to replace it. Yeah, of course, the back they put up some fence in the West and Eastern side. Yeah, there's a brand new handle, except I want to say that for that gate to actually work, they need to take down the sides of the ground to make sure that the gate doesn't work. There's Virginia creeper all along, and now it's beautiful. Yeah, on there, actually. Are there any other audience members that wish to comment at this time? On camera? No, anyone? Yeah, online. Yeah, yes, please. Hi, my name is Hilary Holmes. I live on Oak Street, which is just down the street from King's Court, which is directly across from this proposed development. To eliminate the point about street lights, there is a street light right at the end of King's Court. I walk my dog every night in that area, and from the end of Oak Street, I'm well able to see the houses on Maple Street in question with all the mechanical work that happens there because of that street light. So it's pretty well lit. Still, I know people do prefer safety, so light is good. And I just want to cast my vote in favor of ballard lighting as opposed to any more highlights that shine down. OK, so that's lighting. To the point about bike storage, because we are living in an era where we're really trying to encourage bike transport or anything that's not burning fossil fuels, if each of these units isn't going to have its own garage where people could store their bikes, I would be in support of there being some sort of communal secure shed that encourages people to do biking. I hear the point that there are going to be basements in these units, but I know if it were me, if I had to plug my bike up and down the stairs every day to use it, I'm not sure that would encourage me to use my bike every day. So just want to throw a little advocacy for folks to have easy access to bikes. One of the points that was made was about runoff and drainage. And I think living so close, I know that the soil is all sandy and it does tend to drain pretty well. But I wanted to just check in about that one unit that's going to be the low income unit and just to advocate that that one low income unit not be the one that has the low lying drainage spot in front of it. Does that make sense? Yes. I can't really hear if people can hear me. OK. I think that's all of it. And then just a curiosity because I don't remember the name of the person who was answering all our questions at the beginning, but he mentioned that there was an old plan a long time ago for six homes on that lot. I was curious about whether that plan included parking for or at each individual home. Just a curiosity. Yeah. I don't know if I said six or around six because I don't have it with me, but I did see it when our surveyor did all the review. And it didn't show homes. All it showed was the street going in. And at the time, the street was, I think, since that time, some of the homes on Maple Street got half. There's a strip of land in there. And a lot of those homes got half of that strip of land. So this overall piece was a little bit bigger. So it showed a road going in and then just showed lots. It didn't show any detail as far as the individual homes. Yeah. So, again, as a neighbor, I want to throw my support behind low income housing. And I love that we're addressing this gap that exists between apartment rentals and home ownership. I feel really lucky that we happen to get into this neighborhood right after 2008 when homes were really affordable. And I want that for other people. I also want us to balance that with quality of life issues. So making sure that there is high quality in the units that are being built, also for the neighbors, like the quality of life issue about whether people can be doing mechanical work on their cars in a space that's a common space, that does impact quality of life. So I'm just glad that these conversations are happening. And I want to say also thanks to the members of the commission for donating all of your time to these issues. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Did somebody else leave? I guess not. OK, so any final comments from audience members? Public? I see none. Could I have the commission want to say anything since you have looked at the application? I know that was on your agenda yesterday. We actually didn't meet yesterday. Thank you. Thanks, chair. Katie Ballard is on the line. And I'm wondering if she has any comments. Hi, this is Katie Ballard. Thanks for giving us an opportunity to provide you that we, as Neha just said, did not get to meet yesterday. But I would absolutely believe that our commission is in support of ensuring that all affordable housing units are not done in a way that allows them to be any less than others or put in a place that would not allow the same dignity and respect for the rest of the units. So thank you for the opportunity. We appreciate it. And my apologies that we had to cancel our meeting. All right. Thank you. All right. Anybody else? All right, I guess I'll close the public hearing. And we can deliberate at the commission unless commissioners have other questions. I second. Close the public portion. OK. All in favor? Say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? OK. Aye. That was a delay. That was a delay. Good. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for your input. All right. We've all taken a lot of notes. It's been a lot of questions. Andrew, you're good. You know what you want. Do you have any other items you want to talk about or points that need to be made? I've said what I had to say. I'm just kind of concerned about future houses are so small. I have a feeling they're going to want to bump up. And what is it? When that happens or if they just get shut down right away, say, nope, not going to happen. And they're going to move to get a bigger house. Because they're going to have families and families growing and more space. So I guess that's about the only thing. It's the people I wanted. They can't go out because they're pretty, you know, they might have more. Well, the footprint lot concept is going to keep them from going out. Right. So at least they can go. They can only go up. I mean, that's super obnoxious. We thought about doing that once to our house. Yeah, but it's I don't know if we can do a restriction on what they have to come forward to get the permit anyway to do that. So whether you're shut down or not at that time, I don't know. They'd have to come to us again. Oh, would they have to come? Plus it also have to get the adjacent natural resources to get them. More sewer. More sewer. Maybe. Put the bedroom. That's about it though for me. Yeah, I guess I mean, I'm all as hopeful that the concept of a starter home or something that you don't stand for your whole life. I mean, sort of a normal progression of homes and the markets so weird that you don't normally have these issues. You just move to a bigger house if you need a bigger house. So I'm pretty excited about the notion that this development does offer some things that we don't have a lot of right now. Or the it was right next to the park. So I'll tell you when I lived at Briar Lane, we had a single family home on our own little lot and we played in the backyard and all that. We really wanted to play. We went to the park. And so you can't expect this to do everything. But I do think there's some common areas in here that could be explored for something. Community use, which is kind of suggested in the PUD, not so much the wider community, but the small group that's here. There's some there's a little ear off the back that seems to be somebody's got a couple of, there's a whole bunch of fencing going on there. It doesn't look like it's all where it's supposed to be. But you may not want to fence your way out of that area unless it's an odd place. I don't really know that much about it. But I'm just saying when the really when the landscaping plan comes back, I think a little more input from the African on the type of things that are being considered. You don't have to pin it really down all the way. But you do have some opportunities there that would be reasonable for the PUD group to enjoy. And that would be nice to include on the plan. And I think the landscape architect can help you on that. That was really my thing. I think everything else, you know, we've been making notes on our list of stipulations that are going to give us the few items that we talked about that we need to talk about further. Billy, have you got something else? I mean, my one just thought around the perpetual affordability. I love that one unit is in my mind. That means the other five are going to be market rate. But it doesn't sound like that's necessarily the case. So I didn't know if there was any more we could do around the affordability of the other five units outside of the limits. The five would be market rate dictated by their size, but market rate for their size. And the regulations are 20%. Basically, it's an 11% bonus that we're getting to go to that sixth unit for one affordable. It's 10%. So if you had 10 units, you could have one affordable for your regulations. We've got one affordable out of six. So I know it's not as good as everybody might like. But I think to John's point, we can limit. I've been writing some stuff down. And we can limit max to three bedroom. And if it's more of a true one and a half story that I don't see with the HOA, I think I'll just tell the attorney to cap it at that point because to John's point, the size is one of the nice things about this. So while it is nice to grow in space, it's nice to keep these more at the starter home. So the next person gets to enjoy that price level versus the price levels we're seeing on the 2,500 square foot homes nowadays. I mean, yeah, nowadays price level even on three bedroom 1,200 square feet is still at market rate is still not reachable for a lot of families. But as Robin said, nobody's building them. So while it's still a high number compared to what we may have paid, I bought in the village 20 years ago. But it's a product that's not out there right now. For sure, which they'll probably go a lot faster into demand. I mean, that means the market demand not quite there. The price is probably going to creep up and get a little higher. It's just basic economic. Well, the park right there is going to make them come out of a nice spot. Yeah. You don't get to hear the noise either. Yeah, I'm going to discuss for it. I'd love to see more built-in perpetual affordability as much as possible. All right. Any feelings, Patrick? Diane? I'm pretty much there, Robin, when he's saying. The presentation is going on. So the real question is, are your notes good enough to make a motion? Oh, gosh. Couldn't do that. I'm sorry. I have three things you might want to add. You've brought everything in. You want me to start? Yes, please. Contract for future electric charging station. Yeah. Mm-hmm. If there's going to be a homeowner's documentation, it must be produced before even one unit is sold, and it must be approved by the village attorney. Say that again, Robin, please. You repeat? We've been told these units are for sale. So before one unit comes onto the market. The timing. Yeah, that's number 12 on your list. So it's already in there already. Oh, it's in there already? Yeah. You had one more? Well, that was the second one, but apparently I already had it. Sorry. OK. Bill, any notes for the proposed stipulations? Ballard light should be on there, right? Yeah, ballard lights. The ballard lights? Not working on cars. We don't know. Can't say much about that. I'll give you a joy. Norway Spruce sounds like a good idea. The guy knows what he's talking about, so. So my updates to the landscape plan note that's written by staff already include landscaping plan by a registered Vermont architect that meets staff approval in the village of these D and includes addressing the value statement, which we don't we need some idea of what target number we're at. Yeah, we're forward because I don't really have that. But yeah, David said he a 10,000 would be which is is slightly less than a million dollar project that that cost. But you know, just an idea because we were supposed to be documenting that. Right. And it will address screening of the parking lot. And I would rather say screening and shitting of the parking lot because we want screening for the headlights. We want the shitting stop. Yeah. One thing we didn't talk about is shading of the parking. We have, you know, cedars that or. Well, there should be an indigenous indigenous deciduous tree. It is a thing, and one of our regulation pieces talks about them shading, so we haven't discussed that. Well, that's why I said they'd have to reach the top. You've got to plant the shade trees on the south side, though, because the north side will never shade the park. Here we have trees on the north side. Right. Well, the south side, sorry, down the south side is the side of the parking lot. The house is dark. That's perfect. Lovely thing about the table street is that it runs east west. Yes. That's what helped me. But God ADL. OK, know that you drive into the sun and you drive into the sun. Right. Depending on the time of day. So this stormwater is all north. It's all the way in the south side. So those trees are definitely north or somewhat close to that. Yeah, and plus that it's mobile, so it's not that deep. So, yeah, I mean, you have proposed in your staff reports to have an arbor or something. And I know that we've talked about, John, even I have talked about having, in some points of time, that parking areas or parking lots could have to help me with the wording. But having some kind of structure that was shade, physical structure and shade, it could be an arbor. It could be an arbor with climbers. Climbers, whatever. Solar panels. Solar panels, that's right. We've talked about solar panels. Well, life is changing. We're all going to be electric. We're charging. You're over 30, 20, 50. So, you know, so that has a possibility to not just a live. No, but then if they put in solar, they might be asking for a second density bonus. It is actually not about this. Yes, it is. The life that we get on that one. But it's, you know, that has not been addressed. And the other question I have is if there, if there, I really would love this, not only to have seen the landscaping plan. I have the landscaping plan belonging to the tree advisory group for an opinion. But because one of the part is having these cedars or straddling pines or whatever they happen to be, whatever, you know, having them become dead sticks. That's why we're going to have a landscape architect. They're the experts. So, well, I like not be dead sticks for years for them. The, the shrubbery planting list already includes the trees that the neighbors say don't work there. So we, well, it depends on the soil. It depends on the soil, the location and all that. But I'm saying that if you're going to stick to what's in here and go with the species that are identified and nothing else, then you aren't going to get your Norway spruce. So the arborist, the landscape architect and maybe staff, I think it still points back to staff and staff can bring in advisors if they want. Yeah, interestingly, when Warren was here, he'd talked about native species and asked, but it's not saying indigenous. And the code, he said, no, it's the same thing. He gets some naturalized plants, but native species are indigenous species. Well, and there's a lot, I mean, there's a lot of native species that grow in. Point is we're asking for a landscaping plan. Yes. And it will address those. Landscape. The parking lot lights and the lighting of the parking lot as well as the headlights are all items that can be addressed in there. And then I'm, I heard a lot about bike storage and it's not a bad idea, but I don't know that we can require it or should require it. I think I'm going to just ask that the item 10 add bike racks and consider bike storage because that's an amenity that goes with the PUD. That's pretty nice little setup there, but. Right, I'm just thinking, I don't know, maybe referring to the weeds, but with a pergola, I find this little thing that's being in Canada. It's about this size. And you put it off the ground about the height of your second wheel and the wheel just clips in. So when the bike's not there, it's free space. Not like the bike racks in front of the Firebird Cafe, even when the bikes aren't there, there's this thing you got to walk around. Well, actually. Only 25 bucks. What's more of a concern is if you read, read the Front Forge forum is how many bikes are being literally walked off with. Stolen. They have been, you know, have clipped the chain where water is holding a lot. So that's a problem. And that's a problem. So why, you know, acknowledging that that's happening. I'm sure if we spoke to the police in November, they could tell us how frequent that is. Why set somebody up? I'm sure. Well, the bike rack we're supposed to have, but the PUD has asked the developers to provide amenities for the PUD owners. And that fits on the list. And it fits on the list well. So I'm just saying, let's put that out there as a top consideration. I don't think we can require it. One nice thing down about this design is it's defensible space. It's one way in, one way out. It's not like driving down, walking on John Street and seeing a bike in front of his garage. You can go right, left or center. Yeah, I mean, not if you live in a five or six, you'll have no idea anybody's even at the bike rack trying to steal your bike. Unless you're behind five or six, you're gonna be hitting from the road. So that's a... Yeah, I'm gonna defend if you don't know what's happening. And the site light, I have another, the point, my 13 was the conduit for the charging station, because within five years, you're gonna want that. Yeah, I think that'd be a nice addition is some kind of a conduit. At your house, you have an extension cord that goes to your garage, but if you're not at your house because you're 150 feet away, you might want something out there. Absolutely. And then the whole concept of the site lighting, have we pinned that thing down yet with the pedestrian lights and parking lot lights that are in the site plan? Do you have a ballard lighting no more than four foot tall? Along the walkway, sure. And I'm still open to what happens at the parking lot, although I tend to agree that we don't want to go overboard with it. Yeah, all the lights all the way around look nice. How are the lights at the parking lot? I think there's lights just at the edge of the pathway and maybe a couple. And the high side of the parking lot, you don't see any more than that. Part of your landscaping plan. I mean, this is an opportunity to have a nice little soft spot in the village. The Jude lighting. We're not lighting any helicopters. We still want the safety for the residents who are going to be coming in off the street there. The one, I guess I don't see, is there a way to walk in from the street like a sidewalk that comes along the driveway? There isn't one. There's not a separate sidewalk. It's a curved surface. We're opposed because, well, now 20 foot width, just six homes and a 20 foot width is pretty excessive, but it's 20 foot because that's what the LDC wants, mostly because of fire. So no, we've got a 30 foot easement there and the water's there. So if we were to put in a sidewalk, it would be over the water that the town is taking over or the village is taking over. We're saying get the fire trucks in there number one. And after that, cars are, I mean, it's a limited access thing for pretty much residents that's a dead end. You might have a visitor. Right, with six. Is that, does anybody else have an issue with that? Is that okay if we do that? Like a deeded footpath or something along the side of the road? Is that what they do from that? Well, I'm, I mean, I'm just, like I never had a problem walking on the street, but that doesn't mean that that's the way to do it. I don't see an issue with the shared path as it currently is. No sidewalk seems okay to me. Is there any striping that happens? Or maybe like a curb? We could. I mean, the 15 is enough for the passenger vehicles. So if you want us to stripe a four foot along that, because it's now 20 feet, we could. It seems like you might, it's easy to apply, but people know where it should be. Well, it just keeps cars to one side. But I mean, most of the time, I think most of the time you're gonna have one car at most. You're not gonna be at that moment that there's a car going each way. It just feels like there might be a benefit to at least trying to suggest where walking people might be since they have to go down the, right? And we all want them walking out there and going to Maple Street Park because they probably, it's probably their number one destination unless they're going over to bother the guy fixing cars across the street. I don't know, they're going up the ADL to the school. Yeah, so probably on that side of the drive would be nice. East side. Do enjoy one of your fine establishments right here in five corners. That's true. I mean, they're so far away. Yeah, really, you gotta walk like, and yeah, it's nice. Number 11 on this list, asks us to either put the extra visitor's space back in or go to the labor of one parking space. I tend to agree with the people that say, you know, two spaces per unit is probably more than where per want to promote. Like I don't want two cars per unit. I want one car per unit or something, but it's not gonna happen. But I would be comfortable with the waiver for the extra space and just stay at two cars per unit. And keep the accessible space. And keep the accessible space. And I think I've heard some other people okay with that as well, but it's more consistent with where parking is trying to go, which is stop having so much parking. And at the same time, you know, I hope there aren't a lot of people just leaving their cars around so that if somebody does come to visit, there's nowhere to park. You know, normally what we would do in a case like this is maybe suggest that there's a future spot location at least dotted in. So if somebody had to, you know, if it ended up in a problem, you at least knew you could do it, but I'm okay with the waiver also. So like I'm looking at it going, okay, if I was the last guy in where would I park? And, you know, I have a Jeep, so I don't really park wherever I feel like. I've seen that. Yeah, you're out. Yes. Well, you know, there's also the turnaround and I know it's not gonna be parked in, but on that occasion that it's needed. My point is I'm not the only person that does that. So pretty soon you'll find out if you have extra cars trying to park there because there'll be ruts on everything that's not pavement. And that's why I'm saying if there was at least a concept of where you could put a future spot if it turned out you needed one, hopefully you don't. That would make this a lot easier to just say to people, you know, we allowed them to put in 12. And if they needed that extra spot, there are provisions to do that. Yeah, and you know, from my perspective, David, on the landscaping, it's not really landscaping, it's screening. Can we put something in it, it raises our spur a little bit, you know? I, even before the board, I got that with the staff notes. You want to get people doing it? Sorry, digressing. Was there anything else that the village engineer sort of tossed into our laps? I know there were a couple of people. The lighting. What about us? What's the meaning? Are we wrapping up these extra things to the requirements or whatever? Because Diane brought up this back step on the back of the house. That's a good point. Because he doesn't have anything drawn in here, so. You want to say all entrances and exits to buildings shall have. Not just a three foot wide landing or something? A level landing and steps as needed. That's fine. Three by three landing and steps as needed. It may modify the footprint to include that landing within the footprint. Right. I mean, we already know it's, now when no one has space in it, it's going to take a step. Yeah. Yeah. And again, what I like, I have people do around parking areas, not sometimes I like on the plant fruit trees. Fruit trees like dry feet, this sandy will do pretty well there. Sometimes it's nice if, you know, like Patrick's night for a jog and he comes back and he can just pick an apple before he goes into the house and stuff. It's so nice. But for all the stipulations, I would like to add a sentence in there that the notes that the planning commission has reviewed this proposal and found that the design meets the requirements of the UD in that it has a creative approach. Yes. It really does. Provides, right? We need that statement. Provides amenities and quality of design as evidenced by the amended layouts. Separation of vehicles from residents. And then the amount and quality of landscaping, which has yet to be finalized on the landscaping plan has interconnected common space and will support a variety of building massing and contains an affordable housing unit. Child-contained, a perpetually affordable housing unit. Well, it's a proposal, it's that. So I word it that way, however you want it. But we need that statement in there so that we can show that we've accepted it as a PUD and we believe that meets the requirements and we can go into the stipulations. You can't say anything about the color of the houses though, right? It's not, that's not our purview because they got log-siding on their picture here. Not yet, we can't know. It's not gonna be log-siding. Not gonna be log-siding. So is it, can we say like we recommend earth tones or whatever? We can say it, they don't have to do it. You know if we do it? I'm okay. Can you commit, I'm okay with it. Can you commit to putting clabbered siding on the building? I can't myself tonight, but my house was vinyl-sided 25 years ago and looks awesome. So I disagree, I disagreed with the statement earlier. I think if you get a good quality vinyl siding in it. It does last. No kids that play lacrosse. The only work it is that they aren't all the same color. Yeah, I think the biggest thing is gonna be the color and then like John said, there might be, it might even be a fake dormer, but there can be some changes that way too. I think we can say, we can't pick the colors, I think you can say that the siding on each house should not, each house should not have the same color siding. That's fine. Across the same price. It's fine if it's earth tone. I'm fine with that. They make cedar siding or vinyl siding, looks like cedar. Yeah. Brown. It's hard to tell the difference, what's up? Brown. Brown or tan or, you know, it's not white, not... It looks like cedar. Yes, but it's an added expense. Right. As long as it doesn't look, they aren't six all the same color. No, we don't want that. That there is some differentiation, there is something about having the identity of having your house look like your house or still like the next four names. Otherwise, it's a development versus, I mean, you're talking about making this as an identity in itself, so I'm gonna do it. That's another thing that gives us a reason to set meets PUD standards. Siding on the same color in every unit. Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. All right, so I think that concludes our discussion. All right, so we have our proposed stipulations. Anybody have any other comments that haven't been addressed? And we'll have to see all this read back to us at some point by... You wanna say, add enclosed bike racks? I don't. You just wanna say bike racks? I want the applicant to consider if that's one of the amenities they wanna offer as part of the development. Okay. You know, because it could be something else. It could be a trellis arrangement that has a little more security than, you know, but bike storage is a big issue and it has a visible quality to it and there are lots of different kinds. Right, it could be really creative and built into the landscaping that's gonna be requested along the side there, so you wouldn't even see it from Maple Street. Right, yeah. And it would add some security. Frankly, I'm still of the opinion that most bike riders are gonna ride the bike ride up to their own house and... Yeah. And do something with it there, but, you know, it's not totally like you're on a campus that needs a secure bike storage location. Your bikes disappear from the driveway from what I'm reading. Actually, some people's bikes disappear from locked inside the garage. Yeah. That's scary. That's scary. Could there be like a variation? I mean, I know it adds to the footprint of the house, but, you know, you can do small little single-sided things that you could slip a bike into off the backside of one house and it's enclosed and covered and I'm just shooting off there. Yep, yeah. And those are all things that are encouraged by the PUD language and should be considered by the applicant as something that they're choosing to include. Anything else? I think I'll take that. Are we ready to... Did we ever get a motion to do this? This is final. Can I have a motion to approve the application as amended with the PUD statement, the waiver for the extra parking space and all the proposed stipulations, including the ones we added? Next second. Somebody's got to make the motion. Just asking for them. So move. Yeah, I'll motion for that. All right, so you can second. Diane, beat you to it, you're on a time. Oh, okay. Second. Yeah, any further discussion? I wanna make sure that Amy's got all this, right, Amy? You got this? She's here. She's out there. You're putting me through my paces tonight, my gosh. Well, hey, before we move on, it may get a first move, make sure that you've got what we said. I think I got most of what you said. It's a little hard for me to hear you sometimes, Diane, and definitely Robin. So I can read back what I have, if that's okay with you. It might not be in the order that you discussed it at first. Is that all right? Yep. All right. So you're gonna have to fill in all the blanks here. Something about electric chargers or a conduit for a charging station. A conduit for electric car charging station in the future. Okay. I got most of the words. Ballard lights, no more than four feet tall along the walkway. I had something about a handful of lights, a few lights on the house side of the parking lot. Did you guys land on somewhere with that? And by parking lot, I'm sorry, I mean parking area. I just suggested maybe we could have some ballard lights along that edge. I don't know. So when the cars park, they don't knock them over. Okay. Someone mentioned, oh, sorry. You want one on each side of the parking lot? Or just on the west side and that's on the east side? West side. West side. West side. Side side. The high side. Right side. Okay. Sorry. S-O-U-T-H. Okay. I'm sorry, guys. Don't worry. Someone mentioned Norway Spruces, but then also discussed having a plan by a registered Vermont, or a landscape architect that meets staff approval and that staff may bring in advisors. So do we want a specific recommendation around Norway Spruces or defer to the registered landscape architect? Refer to the registered Vermont landscape architect. Yeah. Okay. That sounds good. Someone mentioned something about working on cars or having mechanical work happen on their lawns. Is that a stipulation that you want to have? I just put it down as a note. The applicant said that he would make sure that goes into the homeowner's documents. I'm going to the HOA of the condo, what do they call it? What's it, Village Haven, they call it? No. There's no name for it yet. That's not a bad one. I thought it said Village Haven on here. I think somebody's got that. I thought that somebody had that. The heave, that's the name of the house, okay. Next. Oh boy, okay. Applicant will address screening and shading of parking lot. Looks like we've vacillated a little bit between a physical structure with shade, like an arbor with climbers or solar panels. I think what we're saying now is that the Vermont registered landscape architect will produce a plan that includes those things. Do you want that included in the condition around the landscape architect or just not worry about it specifically here? It should be on the landscaping plan. Okay, all right. I'll be on the landscaping plan for just by registered landscape, Vermont landscape architect. Okay, all right. I had applicant to consider if they would like bicycle racks or storages, one of the amenities they offer. Well, they shall have bike racks and they shall consider and close bike storage. Okay, thank you. And then I had consider striping the road to indicate where pedestrian should walk. Shall, shall. Shall, okay. It's been a long day, I'm sorry. And then we already mentioned the waiver for the parking space. After that, I had a three by three landing for each house and steps is needed. For each egress. Egress, thank you. And then each house will not have the same colored siding and I don't know if we got more specific than that. Earth tones are preferred. Earth tones preferred. Is it white and earth tone? Tomorrow. I was left in the desert. Tomorrow. I don't know. Depends if it's snow or not. And have you got the one house, shall. Be perpetually affordable. Yes. By. From what I can find, let's see. Or by HUD or, what's part of that in? From what I think financial agency does usually do that. Isn't that harder to see the density violence and like, isn't that same? Well, no, we're saying that it shall be perpetually affordable. We wanna give a definition to that. The land development vote includes the definition. Okay. Awesome. As per the Belize land development code, shall be perpetually affordable. As per the Belize land development code. Thank you. All right. Did you put in a bit about John wanted in that it's been approved because it meets the requirements of a PUD, the design requirements of PUD? We wanted a sentence. It's not one of the conditions that it's finding of. It's a finding of the planning commission. I have a finding that the planning commission has reviewed this proposal and found that the design meets the requirements of the PUD and that it has a creative approach, provides amenities and quality of design as evidenced by the amended layouts. A mountain quality of landscaping has interconnected common spaces and will support a variety of building. And then I had a blank because I missed it and comma and shall contain an affordable housing unit. Yeah. Housing massing was wicked. Housing massing. Thank you. Perfect. And that's second. And these come all come after the stipulations that were originally in the staff report. Yep. I'll throw those in there. Well, the PUD statement is before the stipulations. Yes. PUD statement before the stipulations, but these are added to the 12 stipulations that were in the staff report. Correct. Yep. So PUD statement. So motion PUD statement, stipulations in the staff report and then these extra stipulations. Absolutely. Well, thank you. Thank you. There's a little editing of the staff notes as they sit. One of them asked to select between the waiver for the parking and putting the parking in. So since we're waiving the parking, that one can just say that we're waiving the parking. Yes. Okay. Thank you. We're waiving the 13th parking. Yes, parking. Number 11. All right. Anything else? Any further discussion on the motion which has been made in second? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you very much. Thank you. So my question to you now, John, is do we want to see the landscaping plan or any other things that we requested? Or are we having staff take care of what we're doing? The way it's written, it says to be approved by staff and consultants. Yeah. And also the Homer associate, that'd be approved by the village attorney. Yeah. I was refreshing to see a project come in that's different and has an opportunity to be different. So, and still doesn't really ask for many things that are above and beyond the normal, which is great. Yeah. I mean, it's because, I mean, because the starting point is your high density district. So, you know, it's inherently kind of tight to begin with. So, you don't think that's appropriate to try to go tighter. Yeah. Well, you could have come in with a single house. Yeah. And so the fact that we're trying to take advantage of what the zoning allows is done in a way that a lot of people are going to be happy with, I think is nice. So thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Great, great. Nice. Nice. All right. So we have one, at least one other thing on our agenda tonight. Which I believe is part of the housing committee. Yes. And yeah. Yeah. So we have, we have members of the housing committee who will present inclusionary zoning. Hi, I'm Mia Watson of the joint housing commission. I'm joined by Allison Levy and I believe our chair, Katie Ballard, is still on the team's call. So I sent a presentation to staff and I was wondering that doesn't like it. No. Yes. That's the one that Patrick has, looks like it. Yes. Exactly. This is the ECOS regional plan that's talked about housing. The ECOS? I have my own. Thanks for speaking with us for two and a half minutes. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Is there any way we could pull up the slides? Is that not something you do? I don't think so. I can share them. Can you share them? Yeah. All right, somebody's going to share them here. Okay, just give me a second because I have to download it from the website. Okay, sorry. Yeah, I just didn't participate it. Well, I can just talk briefly while you're getting that up. So my goal here tonight is to sort of touch base on what our inclusionary zoning working group has come up with. Patrick has been very helpful in representing the village on our working group. And we've also been joined by Ned Daly of the town planning commission to help first steps on our inclusionary zoning work. So yeah, as part of this, I'm hoping to get you up to speed and then also get a good sense of what the village planning commission, how much you'd like to be involved and what steps in the process would you like to give your input on inclusionary zoning? So I'll talk more about that. So let's go to the next slide. So first of all, what is inclusionary zoning? So inclusionary zoning incentivizes private developers to sell or rent a certain percentage of the units in new housing project below market rate. In many respects, it's very similar to the density bonus provision we just discussed, although it definitely differs in other ways. In terms of local municipalities don't have a ton of levers in which they can directly encourage the production of affordable housing. And inclusionary zoning has demonstrated to be one of the most effective policies that the municipalities have available for them. Inclusionary zoning can be voluntary, but 80% of programs nationwide are mandatory for all projects above a certain threshold. Usually municipalities will cap it so it doesn't capture extremely small projects. Burlington, South Burlington and Hinesburg all have mandatory inclusionary zoning in at least some part of the city or town. And Winnowsky is considered inclusionary zoning as well. It was recommended in the Essex Housing Needs Assessment and in the most recent town plan. So, in the next slide, you can see, next slide, thanks. So, you can see, this is from a national study of inclusionary zoning programs and it shows the different incentives because in most inclusionary zoning programs, the developers get some sort of incentive that basically compensates them for the lower rents or lower price that they're able to command based on the inclusive units. Density bonuses are by far the most common and usually it's some sort of zoning variances or expedited permitting or fee waivers, but 30% of nationwide inclusionary zoning policies have absolutely no incentives. It's just mandatory and that the developers have to comply with. So, next slide. So, the big question is, can inclusionary zoning work in Essex? We've really found that the devil is in the details in inclusionary zoning policies and it has to be situated in an area where there's good natural development. The danger is, if you're adding new incentives for developers or sorry, new requirements for developers without appropriate incentives, you could chill development overall and that's something we definitely don't want because we need more housing and even market rate housing is generally a good thing to help us alleviate some of the pressures of our extremely tight market. But as you can see from the table, inclusionary zoning has been implemented in Burlington and South Burlington. In the last five years, based on building permits, Essex as a whole has actually more combined units than either Burlington or South Burlington. The town and the village have slightly fewer respectively, but as you can see for our area, Essex has reasonably strong development. We'll have to look at specific conditions in Essex to craft the right policy, but there's no indication that we're in an area where there's lacking natural demand. Vermont data from the most recent census showed that Essex had the largest single population growth of any town in the state of Vermont and most of the growth in our state has been concentrated around the Burlington, South Burlington metro area. So I think it's likely that developers are going to want to continue building in Essex and I think the big question that we need to ask ourselves is, what can we do to ensure that at least some of the homes that are built are affordable to people in our community? Wow, I know you're a numbers person. But this five-year period, Williston, 449 building permits, I mean, it just seems like with that task corner development and all that housing that's going up. Yeah, I know. We've matched in the village almost. Oh, that was proposed prior to the, prior to getting around to building it out now. So those permits might have been issued outside of that. I mean, it put on a moratorium for a while because they were freaking out. Yeah, and I think the Williston is also a little bit more concentrated, so it's a little less obvious than what we're seeing. And Williston is really all in one place in Essex. I think it's a little more dispersed. But I was a little surprised about that too. Yeah, I think there is strong desire to develop in Essex. Next slide. So having met with our working group, here's what we have so far is what we think the policy will likely contain. And we're not set in stone on this, but we wanted to have a sort of direction to start off with. We think that inclusionary zoning in Essex should be mandatory for all new projects above a certain size. I'll get back to the size thing because that is a still an outstanding question. Inclusionary zoning doesn't really tend to work if it's voluntary unless you have a really good incentive. So the density bonuses are already sort of providing that, but we still want to do more because not every development takes advantage of the density bonuses in Essex. Most of the programs that do have voluntary inclusionary zoning have really strong tax incentives, like in New York City stuff that we wouldn't really be able to easily provide. When we've spoken to staff about this, they don't really feel like there's much really available that they could do voluntarily in terms of reduced permitting fees and expediting the process. They strongly feel that the process is working really as well as it can for the most part. And so if we really want this to work, we think it's likely that it's going to have to be mandatory. And in Burlington and South Burlington, it is mandatory. Without incentive, they make it mandatory, even without incentive, they have to do it. We could do it that way. Burlington and South Burlington have incentives, but it would be legal as far as I know to do it without an incentive. I know there's some worries about what you can mandate without giving something in return, but according to the national studies I've seen, it said that nearly 30% of programs nationwide have no incentives. So I think we want to do an incentive because like I said, we don't want to discourage development, but I don't think that's the main feature of this program. I think we're leaning towards more that it's going to be a requirement for developers. We also feel strongly that inclusionary units must be perpetually affordable. There's already precedent for that in the density bonuses and in other areas. It's perpetually affordable in South Burlington and Burlington, it must be affordable for 99 years, but we see no reason why it shouldn't be perpetual considering that's well established and developers are experienced at complying with that. We also feel that the policy should apply to both new rental and new homes for sale. When we presented before the joint boards, they felt very strongly that home ownership should be included. So we see no reason not to. That doesn't mean that the rules have to be the same for rental and home ownership. It's possible that we could set, for instance, different income thresholds and we likely will. And then we feel that the ordinance should apply both throughout the town and the village. We could, for instance, as how Burlington does, only have inclusionary zoning in part of the town or city, but we thought from a practical standpoint it would be really difficult to include home ownership. If we say only included the village center, for instance, there wouldn't be that many home ownership projects that would likely fall into that orbit. So we felt like, and it also goes into the, do we want our communities to be fully economically integrated to the greatest extent possible? So I'll talk more about adoption later, but this would be included as part of the larger zoning code. So it has to be adopted separately by the town and the village, but at this point, we're going to propose, I think, that it be enacted in both the town and the village through the entire municipality. So the next slide. So we still have some work to do on income targeting, but we've sort of developed the broad parameters of who we think these units are likely to serve. We're definitely going to have to narrow it down, but we don't think it's possible to do inclusionary zoning at less than 50% of area median income. Usually when you get below that, it's paired with rental assistance from the government, which isn't something we could easily arrange. So I think 50% is likely the broad low mark of the income we'd be able to assist with, and probably 100% AMI is the top of that. For units for sale, we were probably looking at 80 to 120% of area median income. And just for context, South Burlington serves 80 to 120% AMI for both rental and for sale units, and Burlington is 65 for rental and 70 AMI for sale. And on the slide, I've kind of showed you what the max rents or max sale price and the max income levels at those targets would include. What's that AMI stand for again? Oh, I'm sorry, it's area median income. So for instance, yeah, if it was 100% of area median income, that's the median income, and it's adjusted for household size. So for instance, if you were renting that apartment, you'd have to look at, okay, like there are tables that you could do to say, so if I'm serving 60% of area median income, that's 57,500 of income for a family of four. So there are definitely resources available to help developers with compliance. And as you can see, that's not a very deep subsidy. This is not a great program for serving very low income people, but as I've said, that really needs housing vouchers and other sort of deep rental assistance to make that possible. This is really asking developers to only go, I'd say moderately below what the market is able to command. I think for context, the median new home in Chittenden County sold for $446,000 last year. So even selling at, for instance, for 80% AMI, the maximum sale price for a two bedroom would be 252,500. So we really have to balance like, what are we asking the developer to give up and how far can we go below without, surveying the lowest incomes possible, but without making projects financially unfeasible and perhaps like I said, scaring off developers. So that's really something we're gonna have to dig deep into and I'll talk about this more, but we're gonna probably do hopefully soon a forum for developers and we definitely wanna get more insights onto what they think is possible. So Mia, this is more of a hand up than a handout. Yeah, I'd say so. I think it's really, like I said, about economic inclusivity. I just don't think like within, developers are making money, but they're on pretty tight margins. And I don't think it's possible to serve very low income households with a program like Inclusionary Zoning because we are asking them to do this perpetually and without a deep subsidy. They're really only gonna get a density bonus and maybe a few other small concessions for doing this. So I think it's a question of, can we do a little bit better? Can we make new developments a little bit more inclusive and affordable without making them impossible? So let's go on to the next slide. So we have a lot that's left to be determined. So for instance, what is the number of units for a new project above which Inclusionary Zoning would apply? In Burlington, it's five, in South Burlington is 12. 10 seems to be very common. We're really concerned about home ownership in particular and what that means. In the project you just saw, that's only six. So if we set it at 10, that project wouldn't apply for Inclusionary Zoning and that's not something we want necessarily. So, but at the same time, if you're building like a single duplex, we don't necessarily want this to apply for you either because that could really make very small developments immediately cost prohibitive. So we're taking a look at the development in the town and the village over the last several years and we're trying to get a sense of like, okay, what does the project even look like and what is likely going to be the outcomes because of that? Can I just add to that too? Developmental space here in the village, there is very little. So you're likely to see, I would think in terms of home ownership, single family homes, probably not very many. Right, exactly. But there are some and so we want to capture them. I think that might be an argument for potentially different options for the town and the village, especially considering potential separation and then also potentially different limits on home ownership or rental. That's not common from what I've seen that you have a different size threshold for two different types of projects, but most of these are done in like large cities. So Vermont's inclusionary zoning is really not typical of what a national inclusionary zoning experience would be like. And then similarly, what percentage of the units in a project would have to be inclusionary? I think the density bonus is 20%. So that would be a reasonable target. In Burlington, the target is 15% with some exceptions and in South Burlington, it's also 15%. And we just really want to know like, with home ownership, is that going to get kind of weird? Usually people write in provisions for rounding up and things like that, but we didn't feel confident enough in our initial work groups to say like, okay, we definitely want to set it at 15 or 10 or 20. Like I said, we need to narrow income targeting limits, beyond the broad parameters that we thought were probably likely. Should we allow developers to make a payment in lieu of complying with inclusionary zoning? Burlington lets you provide and develop offsite some of the affordable units instead of at the main building site or a payment to the housing trust fund. And South Burlington also lets you do a donation in lieu or building outside the city center where it's required. We've kind of gone back and forth about that because allowing people to sort of get out of this requirement really doesn't achieve the goal of economic inclusivity, but again, we don't want to make this impossible. It can also be a great funding source for a program like housing trust fund, which the housing commission is also looking into. So we didn't want to take it off the table, but I would say that we're somewhat leaning towards not having exceptions, but again, I think we need to research that more. If I think about this, I certainly would not let them build outside the development site, but maybe money in lieu, if it's real money, not just paper money, they're playing around with the numbers. And then the housing group could do something with the trust fund to make it happen. But I agree with you that telling somebody, well, I know you're building all these, high-end houses in the middle of Burlington and you can put your inclusionary zoning requirements somewhere distant. So it does dilute what we're trying to do. That's our feeling so far. It's interesting, the Burlington payment in lieu ranges from 35,000 to 85,000 per unit, which is not at all the cost per unit. I need to talk to someone from Burlington to learn more about it, but it actually used to be higher and no one was taking advantage of it. So I think they, after speaking with a consultant, decided to actually bring it down to make it more useful. Again, I'm not really sure about the logistics of that. So I think we'll have to ask. And like I said, I think we're lightly leaning towards not making options available, but I certainly wanted to share it with you as something that's common in inclusionary zoning features. And I don't think we should dismiss out of hand because it's something we should think about. And then what incentives can we offer developers? I believe a density bonus would definitely be on the table, but we have to reconcile that with, okay, like what is the density bonus already? How do we loop that into the inclusionary zoning framework, which is a big discussion. And then are there any other incentives that we can offer developers to offset the costs of inclusionary zoning? Maybe an extra story. Yeah, I mean- Take it up more loud. Take it up more. Placing the village. Yeah, I know there are always issues in terms of like what's feasible in terms of fire safety and other issues like that. So I think that's something we definitely have to explore more like, I'd like to think, especially with your land development code updates that were already reaching towards high density and what's possible. So I'm not sure how much wiggle room is really going to be there in inclusionary zoning, like something that you wouldn't just offer to everybody in the interest of just building more housing that Essex needs, but that's definitely something we'll explore. I think, and you know, John would know the numbers better than anybody else here, but I think if we have something that's, and we'd have to get this past the trustees, it says in the Village Center District, you can have an extra story as long as it's specifically for inclusionary zoning. Otherwise you don't get it. Too many times you get it. Yeah, the- Because the next story is a lot cheaper because the foundation's already in. The Burlington one is pretty intricate. We've done a few projects that have gone through that process. Commonly you are allowed density bonuses or height increases or lot coverage increases, which all help with your density. And often- I can care for a lot of increase. And they will put it into different categories for housing for the elderly or affordable housing. So there's some different routes through the housing types they're trying to promote. And I think all of those are helpful. The density issues and the height issues are already we're trying to push those in the Village Center, but that's only one of our seven districts. So there's a lot of room for allowing some of those other incentives, which up until now really not proved all that useful. People aren't taking advantage of those- This will be the second time- This will be second time. Exactly, so we've seen a little bit, but the interest isn't quite there. I think offering to let them make a payment in lieu of doing this is not in our best interest. It doesn't get it what we want. If we'd allowed them to build somewhere else, I don't know what that means. I mean, they're doing a project in the Village Center and they don't want to provide it. So they have to build inclusionary zoning units in one of the other districts. That's worth a little thinking. So I'll leave it at that, but it is, I don't think I would endorse something that doesn't provide the carrot along with the stick. Feels kind of like we should be, I mean, we also want more density, at least in the Village Center. So, and you could argue that most of S-Extension as compared to the town or some of the surrounding areas in general should be denser because it's more compact and on more previously existing traffic patterns and bus lines and all the rest of the reasons why being a walkable or hopefully walkable area and place to live is all desirable. So it really is a great place to also have the inclusionary zoning. Yeah, I think we should strengthen our existing, you know, land development code where it promotes it. I was just reading through our, while you were talking about the town and the village, I was reading through the Village Comprehensive Plan, which is our guiding document for overall things. And in our housing goals, we did actually say that we were gonna look at ways to achieve more affordable housing and so on. So all the triggers are in there for us to do something like this. We can find the right way to do it and if we can hammer out some of the items that you've left for us to hammer out, we're looking forward to seeing how that all comes together. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's going to have to be a collaborative process. You know, it's going to have to be inserted into existing zoning and that's really tricky. And I think it's going to require a lot of hands. I'll talk about this in the next slide, but I think we would, once we fleshed out, I think what we want the general structure to look like, I think then we would probably hire a consultant to help bring it in line with the existing zoning code, just because that can be really tricky if you haven't done it before. But I think there's some work we can do beforehand to sort of getting more of the broad parameters because I think that's more of a policy issue. That really just speaks more to what we think the market can handle and what we want as a community before bringing it into zoning code. So let's go to the next slide and final slide. Oh, sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see that. Hey, Katie. Hi, sorry again. I just, Robin, was that you that was just speaking a minute ago about the concerns in terms of the places where we might need to spend more time? I just want to make sure that I don't have my camera. I can't see. Thanks. Was that Robin? I was John, I was the only one talking for the last five minutes. Okay, I apologize. I can't see because my camera's up on my end. I just wanted to mention that your feedback in your input tonight was definitely very valuable. And I would love to invite you to join the Inclusionary Zoning Work Group or come to the Housing Commission when we talk about this next because your thoughts would be very helpful as we're working through this. Thank you. So I'll take it under advisement. I'd like to be inclusionary with the zoning or the, what drives the prices for the houses? Why do developers have to get so much? Because, you know, even said the margins were tight. So if there's something like the community can do as a whole, maybe lower the tax bill on that project. If he's willing to put a unit in, more units he puts in, you get to break on the taxes or whatever. So he's not fronting the whole thing himself or doing it for themselves or whatever. So, you know, I put in three, four of a unit. So I'm getting the tax break of 10 grand a year on my taxes. So he's not carrying the whole thing. So that could be an incentive. So that's the community involvement. You know, everybody in the community say, hey, we're getting less tax money now, but, you know, we'll have some more folks we can afford to live here now. So, you know, they can lower something down. So the developer's getting a break somewhere, you know. But I don't know if that's an idea. Yeah, I think that's worth looking into. I know one of the, I'm blanking on who it was, but I know one of the, either select one members or trustees mentioned that there were possible tax options. I haven't seen that too often. Like I don't think Burlington or South Burlington do it, but that's something we should look into and see. I'm not personally very well versed into what levers, you know, you have for, you know, developer taxes. Also, I think it is worth mentioning that this is, you know, going to be perpetually affordable. So if it was a reoccurring thing, I think you'd have to be careful about, you know, in 50 years still offering someone the same tax incentive. That's going to cost the area a fair amount. Like you said, I don't know if we'll be able to do that. Yeah, it would have to be a one on all. Right. And I'm not sure what, what sort of levers you have for that, but that's definitely something we should look at. Yeah, limit it first five years, 10 years, and then it goes back. The trustees and the select board both have tax agreements that they can make, but those are usually. Two to three years. Two to three years. So it's not for new construction, it's for construction and fill or adapt to reuse, stuff like that. Yeah. So the way, the way I'm looking at it is, is if the developers are getting something out of it, they'd be doing it anyway and they're not cost them, it costs them money to do this. So the only way you get them to do it is to make it mandatory. And then if the community wants to put in something like a tax incentive, then that's the community putting it in their money. Cause that's essentially what's happening. You're saying, okay, Mr. developer, this is a developer. We'll soften your burden. We'll take some of it ourselves. Well, I'm sorry, John, I'm assuming the burden isn't taken by a developer. He just puts the money on all the other units on the development that he's selling and then new neighbors coming in. And the cost of the units fall off. It's a tough equation to solve in. And I know that some of the people that have been in house development, house building, mostly larger, multi-family houses, 30 units and bigger have either gotten out of it because the numbers don't work or they've really struggled to keep the numbers reasonable. And there was another, the other document that I had copied for you all, I just got it yesterday. It's the state of residential development in Vermont just released this month. I'm an author on that. Are you? Yeah, I thought I was trying to name them. So, you know, it just kind of acknowledges that these numbers are high. I mean, it's expensive. Yeah, but we need to acknowledge that what we're trying to do, which we should be doing, great professional affordability is also increasing the price for everybody else. It's just simply economics. Well, can we go back a couple of slides? I just, on the AMI slide, something, yeah. So I was, I'm, what's interesting is that the, the housing prices here are now geared to somebody's income, not to anything that has to do with how much it costs to build them. Right. And I find that to be, I'm trying to connect them somehow or trying to make it more of a, you know, more of a way for them to, to sort of be married together, like, okay, well, everybody else has got to, you know, follow this market progression of how much it costs to develop and build a housing, you know, is, you know, does the bottom keep moving up because the top keeps them moving up? Or what we're really saying though is it's, it's pegged to income. It's not, we don't know, we don't care how much the house costs, we're going to make you pay what's relative to your income. And, and I find that a little disconnected and I don't have to do about it, but I just somewhere in here and maybe just for some people maybe they don't understand what the 120% goes like because, you know, how do you, how do you deal with somebody who's, that means that they're making 120% of the average median income, they're still eligible for these units, is that? Yeah, that would be the upper level of it. So yeah, basically we would set the income, you know, at 50 or 60 or 100. So we'd set the income for what, who we want to serve, right? And then we would say that you can't earn more than that amount and be eligible to live in that unit or buy that house. So that would be, you know, the limit that you, that you as the renter or home buyer have to, to me. And then we're saying that sort of separately but connected to it, the developer would be restricted to a certain maximum rent or maximum home price. And those tables are produced every year. So for instance, if you're a rental housing manager, you would consult the table and say, okay, I can't go beyond X dollar amount for a three bedroom unit targeted at this income level. So yeah, it is, you're definitely right. It's a little divorced from actual development costs. And, you know, I will say that I, you know, conventional theory would suggest that developers are already pricing units at the highest level that they think they can earn. There's not, you know, obviously they have to meet back their margins and, you know, based on that study, we don't think that the costs are escalating so quickly. I don't think there's a lot of margins. So that's why we don't want to target, we don't think we can target very low income levels. We're asking them to go just a little bit below what they normally would. That, I think Robin's definitely right. That does sometimes lead to higher prices on other units although like I said, I think they're already asking for everything that I think they can ask for from the market. And, you know, I think it's also worth noting that, you know, we think about per unit development costs but literally not, I mean, a lot of that is baked into the building itself and the land acquisition costs and things like that. So I do think there is room a little bit to shift, you know, a few units out of a total project is my sense. But I think we're gonna have to be really careful and thoughtful about doing this in a way that, that we don't make it impossible or undesirable for developers to do this. Based on Burlington and South Burlington's experience, I think it can be done, but it has to be deliberate. And, you know, because Burlington is so built out and because South Burlington is only requiring it in the city center, I think it's very possible that we might say that we don't feel like we can go to the deeper income levels that they're able to serve. So it'll, maybe have to be something we think about. And I just add to that some of, some of what ends up making this workable is the ability to do the units. I'll say offsite, but not necessarily offsite. I'll give Cambrian Rise as an example in Burlington on North Avenue. So all of the IZ units that are required from that 700 plus unit development are managed and partnered with Champlain Housing Trust and Cathedral Square. And so they built those units up front and you can see them there today and they manage those buildings and that's how the partnership with Eric Ferrell and those two housing partners work. And there's definitely a cost of benefit and assistance in allowing that to happen. But you definitely end up with those units being in a separate building than the other buildings. And so you're losing some of that inclusivity that would be ideal if we could do that. But the reality because construction costs so incredibly much right now, allowing a little bit of that flexibility to bring in the other housing partners could help. That's definitely a good point. Although I will note that the Champlain Housing Trust and Cathedral Square buildings on those that site are actually mixed income. They're a higher level of affordability than required by inclusionary zoning, but they are mixed income. All right, we skip back from your last slide I think. Yeah, so the last slide is just a, yeah, let's go to that. It's just a plan for how I think this might go. So we're still in phase one. So, you know, this was our sort of plan once we got the blessing from the joint commissions. And so right now we're definitely in the process of reviewing inclusionary zoning case studies and literature and then working with our working group and now the planning commissions. As part of our preliminary stage, we'd like to do a round table with local developers to get their sense. I don't think we're ready quite yet because I do think we need to do some narrowing down of some of the targets and really just ask, you know, making a list of some of these questions that are coming up. The next step would be to create a plan and that's not ordinance language, that's just, you know, what are the income levels that we think and what are the broad outlines of this plan? And then we would probably, we've committed to going back to the select board and trustees with the draft plan so they know what, you know, we're likely heading towards. I think that would be a good time to hold community forums to share the plan. Inclusionary zoning is tough because it's very wonky and I don't think the distinctions between AMIs and the density bonuses are that meaningful but we would like to hear, you know, people's thoughts on that. And then at that point, once we feel, I think, confident that the inclusionary zoning plan is what we'd like to move forward with, then we would work on drafting ordinance languages and that one when we would bring in a consultant to make sure that it's workable with existing zoning codes. We would present the select board and trustees with the ordinance, we'd open public comment and incorporate edits at that time and then, you know, as part of that process build awareness and then that would be adopted by the planning commissions and be subject to final approval by the select board and board of trustees. So that's a broad outline and like I said, one of the reasons I'm here tonight is to see where you would like to be involved in the process and what you think would be meaningful and useful. I like your outline up here already. I think we've been talking about this for a while. We've worked back and forth a little bit. I've been on the town and the village planning commissions on and off and I know both bodies are actively considering this. I think that's positive. Other activities may keep us apart a little bit but I think we're kind of headed in the same direction. So I don't see anything wrong with us. I'd love to see this happen in two weeks and be done with it. And it doesn't look like from your slide there that the timeline is probably more like a year and a half or something. I said I was hopeful that we could do it in a year. I personally would love to have this done before separation if that happens because I think it'll be more challenging to do it but obviously there are a lot of factors that could influence that but I'm hopeful that we could do it sooner than a year and a half. We'll see. It's gotta be a deliberate process for us to do it right. Yeah, I guess I would encourage you to fill in some of the questions that you don't think you have answers for yet because I think if you kind of drew a line in the sand and said this is what we're hoping it looks like, maybe we're not really that far off from doing that. And then just float that out there and see what kind of response you get. I think going through the sheet that had those open questions, fall in in two minutes, just from what I feel like would work and what would be okay. And I think maybe if you challenged all of us to fill it out and send it in, you might actually get pretty comparative consensus. Well, we would love that as part of our working group. I mean, like I said, I don't have all the answers to that. So if you do have thoughts on it, I encourage you to do it without feeling like you'll be locked in. Even it's really tough because inclusionary zoning doesn't have wide parameters. Like all of the inclusionary zoning are pretty much within a not very large range of income levels but the details really matter. So even if you have a feeling about which one, I think ultimately we're not going to know that when we've created the policy that we're going to 100% hit it, we really just have to do the best we can. So if you have thoughts on even initial impressions on what you think is probably going to work best, I'm very eager to hear it. Yeah, and I'll say that we're always trying to improve our land development codes because some things that we think we want, we're not getting and we have to look at those regs every couple of years or all the time and say, we have these incentives, we're not working. So I say try something on the inclusionary, float it out there, try to get it through and then see how it works. Because the best case is it works great. And the worst case is it discourages development. And you won't know until it's out there for a little while. So I say that I would encourage all of us to town the village, all the people working on this to try to get a reasonable not, maybe that's not too aggressive to begin with but try to get a reasonable consensus put together and then just put it out there. We're going to be through with our land development code updates shortly. I don't know, why can't we just do it? I mean, we could just write it in there, right? We do absolutely, right? So maybe we're the test case and let the town see how it works or see what schedule they're on and, you know. Yeah, absolutely, I'm certainly not going to stand in the way if the planning commission wants to pursue this more aggressively. You know, Mark and I from the housing commission are definitely at your disposal to weigh in on it as well. Patrick has been sitting in on some of our meetings. So I'm really, you know, I think we're pretty open to, you know, obviously the housing commission wants to stay involved in this but I think we're open to, you know, changing our approach a little if you're, you know, willing to consider this soon, you know. We've all talked about it. It's consistent with our recently updated comprehensive plan and I don't know why we would be dragging our feet. What are any disadvantages to just writing it straight into the LVC? The only disadvantage is it discourages development. You just put brakes on development if you don't get it right. And it might do that anyway. I mean, development already is... Yeah, well, I guess I mean that versus ordinance, right? It's like, because if we get it wrong in the LVC and it is discouraging, we have to go through a whole process to pull it out. Whereas if it's just an ordinance, you can just cancel the ordinance. Well, you can do little tweaks and those can happen anytime. You know, the process of tweaking the code doesn't mean you have to rewrite the whole thing. You could change the parameters that the AMI numbers are. You could change the percentages or numbers of units that are required and kind of whittle it back. But right now, everybody's screaming for more housing and they're screaming for housing that's affordable without any AMI. I mean, I know people that are looking for houses in there to jump into a house right now is the scariest thing ever. And there's only kind of two ways you can fix that. One is to finally get some kind of supply out there that helps ease the demand or you have to artificially create affordability and that's kind of what we're doing here. I don't think we're in a position to do it. I think the time might be. I think one of the really big assets you could have to encourage affordable housing is to have public land that's available. The municipality, the state own the land and they put it up for affordable housing. I will say there was somebody called Ron Seacrest who has property in the Tainan village and he's trying to give away some land in time for quite some time. He says he's depreciated everything he owns. Can't depreciate it anymore. And they'd like, there were some lands but an acre of land or something. Is that the parcel with the wetland thing though? It might be, but I mean, you don't have to build an all of it. You can get the small part of it and it's free land. Well, maybe there would be a way to incentivize land donation in a way that helps create affordable housing on the land. Right. I think that might be out of scope of inclusionary zoning unless you did a specific thing that said like the payment in lieu. Like sometimes that is the payment in lieu like South Burlington has it where you can do a, they said a dedication, including a land donation that is considered to be of equal or greater value than the unit. So, so you could write that in. I think it does get really tricky in figuring out if it is equal or greater and, you know. All right. Well, there are plenty of examples of inclusionary zoning out there. And I think, you know, I guess I would hope that we can move fast enough to get a version of it into current rewrite. Regina can remind us what the schedule is because it's pretty fast. Regina is here and waiting. Yeah, but the presentation was great. You're sort of preaching to the choir in a lot of ways. We've all been talking about it. So if we can make this happen sooner then later I think we'll all be happy. And, you know, we'll keep looking at this and seeing how we can do it. Yeah, well, absolutely. Like I said, we're gonna continue with our plan. But, you know, as soon as you say that you really want to pursue this, you know, more aggressively and that you have space. I'm happy to come back and keep talking about this. Great. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Mia, can I just ask when you're doing the developer forum? Because I would think that would be sort of a critical feedback loop, particularly on the AMI target and the offset that's gonna be provided to folks. Yeah, I think we were hoping in the first quarter of next year but we haven't had anything, you know, set in stone. I really wanted to, you know, we really wanted to meet with the planning commissions first to kind of get that feedback piece. So I'm hoping soon, but I agree that it is a crucial step. I also want us to go into it being, you know, well informed. Like I don't want to really be like an uninformed free for all about like feelings about inclusionary zoning. I'm really hoping we can get them like very grounded questions that will be, you know, really informative. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Regina. Nick. Regina, you have 10 minutes. It's already 9.20. So it's about 10 minutes. Robin's in here or just got off the plane or something. Did you get one? Uh, do you like it? So. Thank you. Thank you. So I want to try and wind this up because it's a little late to be starting something. Yeah. Well, so I think the only other thing is Robin wants to just talk about this cannabis situation. Is that what you want to do, Robin? Well, I was talking to this point, I forgot that Monday I was in the joint meeting, talked about cannabis. It seems like it was a plan one. I love it. Oh, you're a good mom. Yeah. I'll tell you what to say, you know. Can you ask the CSURPC to help you before you get the sentence finished? They say, yeah. Is it from the old country, Robin? They're from the old country. I'm sorry, I can't hear you because you're moving around. So you want Robin. I'm on Pleasant Street. On Pleasant Street. Oh, sorry. On Pleasant Street. Yes, we've been going back and forth with this. We had a forum a few weeks ago, which was sparse to attend it. Really, the state are driving the bus here. The state cannabis control board are going to make a lot of decisions, especially when it comes to integrated programs, which is really cultivation, manufacturing, retail wholesale. And only the state will decide where they go. I've talked to the attorney, the state cannabis control board, and he said probably they won't increase the size of the dispensaries, but only the dispensaries will have an integrated plan. I don't know much about here. Miss Paladins can vote to opt in. There is petition going around to get a ballot in the time meeting day. If a majority of those voting vote in the affirmative, then you can have retail cannabis in the community. Because we're still part of the time, if that passes, then it's conceivable that somebody would have retail cannabis in the village. But the way it's written, unlike liquor, where it says time or city, you know, liquor control boards. For the cannabis control, it says municipalities. So any municipality, even if it's within another municipality, could have its own local cannabis control board. I'm not sure how effective they would be. I think it would be ineffective. The attorney of the State Council of the Board advised that zoning would be the best way to control what you want to have happen. They're still making the real state level. One of the rules that they come out with was that you could, that they have stipulated that you can have a retail cannabis operation, then 500 foot at the school. Now, locally, they have given us the ability to make it 1,000 foot of a school. Regina has a map that was put together by CCRPC. You guys got in your packet, but we can look at it here. The darker circle is 500 feet. Lighter blue is 1,000 feet. And, you know, the areas generally that you have retail in the village, the village center, highway, arterial, transit-oriented development. You could have it in the light industrial zone, but it's not very likely because that's all mostly global finders. So these are the areas, and I often say that zoning is set up through view applications based on merit. It's not a morality code. So if there's an opt-in, then we should be looking at where we think would be appropriate to have retail cannabis. Not where we should exclude it. We should look at it where we want it. Yes. Yeah, I mean, at first I was thinking we'd stay with the state guidelines, but I don't really have a problem with the wider region. What I would also suggest is that you draw the same radius around all the parks. Like, you don't want it right next to Maple Street Park. Yeah, I'm not sure we have... Why not? The building, the state hasn't given it to us. Well, it's recreational parks, so it should be... It would have to be retail across the board then. Well, I guess I'm thinking anywhere that you're expecting and promoting a high concentration of children is... Yeah, I looked at the places where you would... And they don't include that in their zone yet. Well, wouldn't it already be limited based on zoning that you wouldn't be able to set up a shop of business adjacent to Maple Street, right? You're right. We've got all kinds of little small, little, you know, called office kind of professional things going on. Well, hey, somebody could build something in the development there that IBM has next to the Essex Police Station. Now, that might be a good spot. Yeah. If they want to put up something that's dedicated to it. But that's within the 1,000 foot buffer of ADL. No, actually, the lower sections are... Isn't it like right here? But no, no, we'll be down in here. Oh, just after that, right, because there's that road that, yeah, yeah. So just referring to people selling it out of their houses because a lot of this is not even near a commercial zone, anyway. No, it would be where retail is permitted. Where retail is permitted. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I mean... I mean, right now, the commercial areas that might have a place that would be selling would be posed off a square or the Essex shopping center or anywhere down 15 that there is retail type operations going because that's not within the school areas. And that's also within our retail area. There's nothing on 117 until you get into Essex town. And that's starting 2A. Most of 2A that's outside the bubble there is residential. So that would exclude retail. So unless it's being sold out of a home. Right. Home occupation, we get excluded from home occupation. Yes. I don't know that it can be a home occupation. So they need to be, so these are... Stop, ugh, sorry. You guys are like little minuscule things in the bottom of my corner when I'm sharing my screen. Much like tobacco and liquor sales, these are gonna be licensed retailers. And so that's why Robin's saying you're enabled to only do so much through zoning but really it's because they have to go through a whole other regulatory scheme even if you do have it in zoning as well. So you're gonna use your zoning. They'll likely be a local cannabis control board much like a liquor license board that the select board or trustees run and they need state licenses. And I don't think anybody's gonna give somebody a home retail cannabis license. I don't think, again. In the same sense that you don't see somebody selling liquor out of the garage. Right. Right. Yeah. Though some people have breweries out of their garages and there's some room for taste testing. Yeah, well, one guy did that, you know, it's like, wow. Yes, there is availability for taste testing. I guess. Small breweries that are doing one. Thank you. I mean, do we need to take some action on this or just generally say we're okay? The first time a retail store could open in a community that opts in is the 1st of October, 2022. So it's a bit odd, but it's still, it's on the horizon. It's not over the hill. All right. Yeah. I mean, I'll just say where I've seen these in Massachusetts and of course, you know, don't know all their zoning rigs and how it's built out there. They tend to be in late industrial areas or shopping malls. Strip malls where you drive. Right, a retail, already, zone retail area. Okay. I'm comfortable with the wider going up there. Yeah, I think it makes sense. I mean, otherwise, there's all kinds of places that are, you know, central beverages is possible. You're really right on the main routes for all the kids walking to school and stuff. So I think the larger... Yeah, I've asked questions about routes at school. Could that be an error? We exclude certain retail and haven't had any definitive response from them. I mean, can I just jump in? Sorry. Yeah, go ahead, Phil. I'd be interested in seeing that map with a thousand feet where pharmacies are or any place that sells alcohol as well. I think when we start regulating one type of retail, it's a slippery slope in our zoning and... Yeah, that's why I go... I think we want to consider that. Well, that's tricky because all of your gas stations and drug stores all carry wine and beer. So you have to draw the line in what you mean by, you know, many other states, you draw the line between wine and beer and hard liquor. Hard liquor, absolutely, and that's... But, you know, they can be right next to each other. They just can't be in the store. You know, there's a whole lot of things to talk about once you start wanting to do that. And it is, to Phil's point, it is an argument to maybe consider an ordinance as opposed to using your zoning regulations for this because you're ideally in zoning, you're talking about where you're okay with retail, where you're not okay with retail. To start getting to the specifics about what the product sold in the building is a little trickier because it's also trickier to enforce if it's not being done correctly. So you can sort of think about the pros and cons of going that ordinance route. And really, it would be the local cannabis control board that then they are putting all the conditions in their license. So there'll be like, there's a Department of Liquor Control, right? The state runs all the... And, you know, so you don't have, you know, three on the same block next to each other. Right. Yeah. We're looking at that level of regulation from the state, right? And they're proposing to license individuals to sell, like the drug stores are selling regulated substances too, would be your wine and cigarettes. Right. Right. And that that's like part of our culture. You know, you can buy that stuff anyway, which some people object to. Well, that's the only state I've ever been in where I stopped to get gas and they were selling alcohol and drugs. No, alcohol and guns. Yeah. Gas station. Yes, ma'am. So... Yeah, and part of it comes like, that's where some of the prevention folks really want to try to like work on this buffering kind of concept. So you've got some controls, whether that's the local liquor license doing that or the local cannabis control board doing that or the zoning in terms of physically citing where these can go. But then also it's stuff like, don't put advertising for a tobacco under three feet. So the little kids walking around the store are just like, oh, it's this awesome thing. You know, and some sort of more behavior controls, which really you can't do in zoning, but you could do in other mechanisms. So Regina, I mean, we've got this map here, of course it has the zones, but the possibility of having a mobile unit, in other words, somebody has a trailer or whatever, and they could potentially put it into a parking lot, like the ice cream place that was there this summer at the shopping center. Could they do something like that in our retail designated areas and get away with it? They need a license for that kind of thing, Robin. They have to come get a temporary license. Temporary license, okay. So I mean, so they could unfortunately move that around. I mean, there are shopping areas here, where part of the shopping center is within that thousand foot buffer, but if you just move it, you know, 20 feet down, you're out of the bubble. Yeah, I see what you're saying. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, but at the same time, like you don't see beer trucks and liquor trucks being sold. But I see food trucks. Right, but I think this would be regulated in a similar sense as liquor. Okay. And there's also a level of security too, because at the moment, a lot of these cannabis businesses are all cash. Okay. So they can't just, like it's, so there's just a level of security that they need to build into whatever entity they are selling out of. So the food truck option wouldn't exactly work for them. It probably wouldn't work. Yeah. You know, I think, and I hope we could write it, but if we say, if a lot is within a philosophy, it only has to be one corner of the lot and then might exclude the whole lot. Right. What about signage? Like you put a sandwich sign in the somewhere near the schools on, hey, come another mile down the road and get all the pot you want or whatever. Well, they wouldn't be able to put a sign there. Yeah. Right. That's the same thing. You know, it was just saying around advertising with tobacco and there were certain regulations around where you can and can't do that. Well, they can't even put a sign there that says ice cream down the street. So it's not going to happen. It's just a little far off field here. Yeah. I'm going to make a motion that we endorse the little chart here in the case that it comes, you know, to be relevant in May or not. We don't know. It's the thousand foot. The thousand foot buffer. It has to be into a brick and mortar building. You can't be in a cart like she was talking about. There are all kinds of other regulations that are going to show up in all kinds of other things that we're just, we're going to think for our own, at least this part of it. Yeah. And I think if we say I thought the foot of a lot, you might look at this map and notice that it's a one acre lot and 20 square feet if it's in a circle, but it covers the whole lot. Yeah. I don't know if I'm ready to say that. Yeah. Fendalizes people have a big lot. But I think what it does is it creates a little bit of confidence publicly saying that we took a step beyond the 500, but we're also trying to say too that if it is going to come into our community, it's probably going to happen along route 15 corridor. Yeah. And if it does come in, it's because the majority of the people voted for it. Yeah. Not like we're voting for it there. So there's a fair number of dumbling blocks ahead before this is even. Well, we're talking 10 months minimum before anything could open. Yeah. I mean, what it does like to... There's a big vote. I think we get a lot more attentive if the vote happens and it says, okay, we're going to allow it. Then we start working on all these other things. You know, what's the select for? What are the trustees? Yeah, because if it says yes in the time, sorry, the trustees may decide to have their own vote. They want this because there's a vote, the votes will be a vote going on town meeting. Isn't that the next possibility? Well, if they get enough significant, if they get a 5% of the registered voters then it'll be on the ballot. You knew a bit more about that than me. Well, I, okay, so it, okay. So the next town meeting is when we have a vote, but the next time that the town possibly could be voting would be August 9th because that's primary. The town doesn't vote. Actually, I guess the town does vote in April because of the school district. Yeah, it'll be April. So, you know, there are three opportunities before November. Yeah. Is the federal government still regarded as being illegal? Yes. Yes. Which is why they tend to be cash only because the credit card companies won't bag it. Yeah. Because federally it's still illegal. Is that right? Yep. I mean, what I do with this thousand foot buffer is it basically just excludes five corners more or less is because that 500 feet starts to cover the five corners area. Right. Which I think it's not necessarily a bad thing. And I think I'm okay with, I mean, I would welcome a business like this in the community. And I think this just allows a little bit of confidence saying that we are trying to do our due diligence to regulate what we can. Right. All right. So there's a motion on the table that's not done. Second. Any further discussion about accepting a thousand foot buffer as a recommendation or as a, you know, we're okay with it. We'll support the thousand foot buffer. Or retail cannabis if it occurs. Yeah. Yeah. And our favorite. I'm sorry. Hi. Hi. Phil. No, he's still up there for you baby. Hi. Hi. He could be opposed. He could be opposed to most of the carries that he's been in the city. Thank you. Baby. Hey Phil. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Phil is reverted. Reverted. I'm not ready to tackle any other land development going upstate to Regina. Yep. That's it. We're done. Thank you. We'll hold phone most of the next time. Don't feel bad. I sat at the joint meeting on Monday night until 10, 15 before they let me speak. Although I do want to acknowledge that you sent us an email on November 5th that kind of outlined basically our request to come up with what's in front of us in all the sequence of events that we still have left to do there. Very good. Robin, I think you can share that with the whole PC. They haven't got yet? I don't think it went yet. Okay, we'll get it tomorrow. So share with the whole PC. We'll use it as a working outline for our upcoming meeting. And I want to continue to recognize Diane's work for initially setting up a whole list of the page full of things that she did on her mind. Absolutely. So I don't want to lose those. I want to sort of bring them back and back at this. That's good. But it's time to start really pinning down with things that we maybe haven't talked about yet because we've been going through all the mandatory regulatory updates. Hopefully, and kind of my is talking about those and mandatory and get more of an update on what it really means to us. And then we can get on with the number of items that we have. I'd really like to get stuck into the design review trunk road. Yes. So the key items we're expecting to find for to include more of the trunk roads that I think we are getting pretty close on. Right. And it's a long list. It's a long list. We'll get it back. We'll get it all. She's already found it. It's attached to this note. Yeah, it is. It's attached to it. So when you get that in your email. All right. Electronically, it's a 10. All right. OK, so that's what we'll talk about on January 6th, right? That's your next meeting. Super. Awesome. OK. So motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Yeah. Second. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you all very much. Happy days. Thank you, John. Thank you. Thank you, Regina. Bye.