 Getting to order. So the first second item is to approve the agenda. Do we have any adjustments to the agenda? So hearing none, we'll deem it approved. Third item is comments from the chair. So after much thought, I've decided that I have too much going on in my life and I need to step down from the Planning Commission. And it's not a decision that I've reached lightly. I've been hanging in line for months about it, maybe more like a year. But yeah, I mean just when my mother being sick and my child being young and I just started a new job, I just feel like I can't devote the amount of time and energy to this and all other facets of my life. So I just need to cut back on some of my commitments, so it's nothing personal because working with you all has been fantastic. And I know you're in a really good place, so it helps me feel comfortable with stepping down. So my thought was that I would continue for the next meeting. It's the meeting where the Historic Preservation Commission and the Design Review Committee will be attending to present their proposal. And I can help with some of the history behind that and talking with the Commission about it. And then I could step down after that so that you could get a new person in place in July. So you don't feel that just stepping down from being the Chair would be enough? Well, it's the time commitment of the meetings. Of the meetings. Yeah, it's not a good time. Yeah, it hasn't been too much additional work to be Chair because of the great group of people we have here. And everybody's readily handled it, taking care of tasks when I'm delegated. So it really is the time of the meetings. Yeah, I hope that I can rejoin someday when things are a little bit calmer because I have really enjoyed it. And I feel like it's very important to help contribute to the city. And this is a wonderful way to do it. But at this time, it just doesn't seem right. So does anyone have any thoughts on whether that would make sense to come to the next meeting? The stage where we are with the city plan seems early enough that it would be less disruptive for me to step down now than if I were to wait. What's the city process in terms of they're going to have to advertise? That's what I was looking at. We've got a 626 council meeting and we've got a 710 council meeting. So certainly that's the soonest. So keeping you on through the 24th is good because the fastest would be either the 26th or the 10th. The meeting's in July and this was going to be in my later notes, but I'll mention it now. The July meetings are the 15th and 29th. So that's the 3rd and 5th, not the 2nd and 4th Mondays. Usually we're the 2nd and 4th Mondays. We're going to be the 3rd and the 5th because DRB needs to shift with things. Permanently? No, just for the month of July. The club will be totally out. Three other meetings I'm going to rearrange now. No, it's just for that one, 3rd and 5th, so the 15th and 29th for July. So if it's either the 26th or the 10th, either one will mean we would be okay with having a full form, potentially, full staffing. Can I just ask a question on that? Because I have something about the 30th we have a meeting. Is it the 29th or is it the 30th? It should be 15th and 29th. Let's just be in typo or accident. This 30th would be a Tuesday. I think we ever talked about that. So I'll submit my resignation letter immediately, but I'll make the resignation effective the 25th. And then City Council can move forward on it on the 26th. Notice now that they'll need to take up a vote on the 26th and they can post it. So how long do they typically post for this? It depends on how many applicants they get. Okay, well, there should be some time and they could take it up the 10th if they needed to because the Planning Commission won't be meeting. I think they could have an appointment done by the 26th, but in the event something comes up that they have to push it to the 10th, that's still fine. Wouldn't affect. Okay. So I'll do that. As far as leadership is concerned, Kirby and I have been talking about it and I just sprung this on him too. So we agree that it probably makes sense for everybody to just think about it for a couple of weeks. And at the next meeting have a discussion about how you want to proceed with appointing a chair in the meantime. There'll be another elections are required every January. It's in our bylaws. So they'll be, you know, you need to appoint someone for about six months and then you'll have an opportunity to elect a new chair in January. Just have that in mind. Can resume. And since next week is pretty much booked up, I guess maybe we could plan for the meeting after that. There's going to be any action on that. So it'd be post Leslie. So that would be then the July 15th. Assuming that it's okay procedurally. And like, so I could fill in as vice chair for that meeting and leave the meeting, but maybe plan for July 15th to talk about appointing someone until January. Not hearing any complaints. Sounds good. Okay. Maybe Aaron and John have a lot of complaints, but they're not here. Okay. So those are the only things I had the comments for the chair from the chair. So item four on the agenda is general business and he comments from the public on something that's not already on the agenda. We do have a member of the public here, Marcella. I don't know if you have any comments that you want to offer us or. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Great. Okay. So moving on to item five. This is where I remind everybody that we have a joint meeting on June 24th to meet with a historic preservation commission. And I think the design review committee will be here too. They'll be invited. They're invited to discuss the revisions they've made to the zoning bylaws design review process. And we talked a little bit about the background on that at the last meeting, but it's been about a month. So as a quick reminder, the design review bylaws had been critiqued when we were dealing with the big zoning rewrite. And we got a pushback on that. And so we sought to make them a little bit clearer and to have standards be a little bit less ambiguous. There for there to be less discretion in the application of those standards or make the regulations read in such a way that there would be minimal amount of discretion to be applied. Because one of the things we're hearing was that it really depended on who was on design review committee as to whether a project would get approved. In one way or another way or if, yeah, so if certain members weren't present and things would go through and otherwise they wouldn't. And so we just wanted to try to reduce the amount of discretion that was available under that because it would offer people more certainty and applicants a little bit more certainty. That idea was not supported as written by the design review committee and the Historic Preservation Commission because they felt like the standards should be... There necessarily has to be a little bit of discretion in them, but they thought that the Secretary of Interior standard should be the applicable standards. And we said, okay, but that's kind of what we have now, not really, but a little bit. But we need a little bit more clarity behind. I think it was, we looked at the Secretary of Interior standards and thought that he had way too much wiggle room in them. And so Historic Preservation Commission said that they would apply for a grant and developed a detailed guidebook to help explain how the broader regulations would be applied and they would have illustrations and examples. And so before they go too far down the path of developing that they want to check in with us and that's what this meeting is about. So they do have funding for doing the workbook now? Yeah, I think they've been working on it and I'm not sure how far... No, they got the, what they got was the grant to do the regulations, but they haven't got the grant yet to do the guidebook. Oh, okay. I didn't realize they needed a grant to do the regulations. We got the draft regulation. Yes. Yeah, they think, yeah, they're a number of funding sources. They can go back to their same CLG funding to get some of it through the guidebook. So they sent us some materials and we have shared those with everybody. So take a look at them before the meeting next week and two weeks from now. If you have any questions, they may get explained as they do their presentation. They're going to give us a presentation, but... They are going to do a presentation. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, they have a PowerPoint. The PowerPoint. Yeah. Especially the same one that's on our Google Drive. I would think so, but... Yeah, because I think that may be the one that was in the public meeting. Okay, great. Yeah, and it's meant to be... It may be the same one as the public meeting. Yeah. But it'd be great if they bring a detailed one. Yeah, something that's more specific to the guidelines, the requirements. Yeah. Because they are broadening in some ways beyond what we have now. Well, I think they also want to talk about expanding the district, right? I don't think they are. I think they actually have punted on the district lines moving and they'll keep the lines the same. Okay. One thing at a time. Right. My understanding is they're going to want us to deal with that. Oh, like make a recommendation about the lines? Oh, okay. Yeah, I didn't... Try that. Yeah. Maybe we'll leave the lines where they are. Oh, we can, but we need more information. I mean, we can't just make a recommendation willy-nilly. We need something to base it on. That's what they say. Because I think they have the public information gathering process, right? Uh-huh. But then at the end of it said, well, we're not sure about the district lines. Yeah, and I think we needed to know whether they were going to recommend historic guidelines, historic preservation guidelines, design guidelines, or is it a mixture of both? Because if it's more or predominantly a historic, then we really should go through and adjust the boundaries to take out places that aren't historic. Yeah, we've got places that... The properties that are on Memorial Drive, the high school, Green Mountain Power, the state office buildings. I mean, there's nothing historic in there just, but they're all in the design review district. If you're regulating just the historic national life, you're just regulating for historic, you wouldn't need to include those areas in a historic design review guideline. But if it is design review as well or predominantly design review, then you may want to consider that because that's part of the gateway. So it really kind of comes down to where the rules are. How do you interpret what they've written? It's predominantly historic. I thought it was more historic, but I was going to see what their presentation was. I know they didn't want to make a recommendation, but it certainly makes a difference. So we're going to get separate design review standards to be developed? Yeah, I think we'd have to see what they've proposed and see if they really work in both contexts. What a new building and a green field have anything to meet if you're looking at mostly the Secretary of Interior standards. I think we'll see what their presentation is and ask them questions we need to and we can take that issue up as we get into the late summer and fall and see what we want to do. So I think it's meant to be collaborative. They're looking for this to be a little bit of an iterative process, but we should make sure we acknowledge that they've done a lot of work to get to this point. So it's important to keep that in mind. Very in-depth. Very in-depth. Yeah, and I mean it's just a very sensitive issue because what we're talking about is regulating, you know, and design. And people are, I think it's a little bit more personal than some of the other things we regulate. At least it seems to be in some of the public meetings that we've had. It's been something people have been the most upset about, and there unfortunately is often this attitude that, you know, you can trust me, you shouldn't regulate, you know, the color of my house, but oh, don't let my neighbor paint their house that color. You kind of can't have it both ways. So it's a challenging needle to thread. I'm not sure what the right way to couch that metaphor is. I think we just have to look at what historic preservation is proposing and eventually come to a decision of whether that's the direction we want to go because there are going to be other factors that are going to come in later on. And I think what they want to know is where we are going so they know whether to develop the guidebook or how to develop the guidebook because I think certainly when we developed our rules, we talked about looking at things like what was the design review proving already. So the design review was always approving, or at least recently, always approving replacement of windows on historic buildings. So if you wanted to, you just had to make it historically accurate. Consistent. Consistent with the historic character of that building. But you could put in new windows. Historic preservation, when we wrote that into our rules, because we said if you're doing that anyways, let's just put in the rules that says you can do that. If you want to replace your windows, you can replace your windows. You just have to do them historically accurate. Historic preservation really didn't like that. They wanted you to first prove that you couldn't fix that window and that you had to keep the 100-year-old window if you had a 100-year-old window. Now that's going to come up with other things. So we may have some good proposed rules that historic preservation supports, but we're going to have to go and see at what point is the design review committee forward as well to go through and start enforcing it. Because as much as they say they do it, they actually, I've never seen them force somebody to keep the historic windows, at least recently. Unless it was a national registered project, like across the street. But yeah, those usually are forced to by the funders, not by the DRC. Right, by the feds. Yeah, the feds are making them do it because they want federal funding. But even in those projects, French Block has new windows. Finally. Yes. But it took a while, right? They had to get themselves through. But it wasn't DRC that was making them put it off. No. It was the feds. So the question that comes up is, we just... Well, actually it was the state, but... What was the state? The state was more, anyway. Yeah, it was the state. More than the fed, than the national registered... Yes, the state HP can be more strict than the federal tax credit source, the interior area. Oh, that's interesting to know. It seems like you've had some experience with this. Yeah. That was the... Some of the crux of what we were trying to look at when we wrote our set of design rules for a proposal was that we wanted to reflect what was actually going on so people would have some expectation of knowing, if I wanted to replace the windows, I could do it. Or if I wanted to replace the porch, you know, could I replace the porch with modern material as long as it matched the porch that was on there? You know, could I use pressure-treated wood or do I have to use consistent materials as well? And that was, you know, just a question. We figured these were things we should be able to prescribe out front. And then that would take the question out of it. You know, you have to do this unless one, two, three. But those rules didn't make it through. And so Historic Preservation Commission has come up with an alternative proposal. And I think we'll just have to go and evaluate it and see how well it kind of meets what the public is going to do with the sport. And then once we make a decision and council gets a chance to talk about it, then we would have an opportunity to give them some feedback on their guidebook. You know, is it worth going forward with this? Is your proposal going to actually get passed? And then they'll go back and do a guidebook. So the process for this document would be to amend it in a series of iterations and then it would go to council or come to us. It just seems sort of hard to approve regulations without the guidebook when the big concern is that the regulations aren't clear enough. And I think what they weren't asking for them to be the regulations to be adopted at this time. But they did want to have some public comments. They did want to have input from the Planning Commission and input from the city council. But it wasn't going to go up for adoption. Because they were in a catch-22. They don't want to adopt guidelines to something that might change. But at the same time, you can't really adopt them without the guidebook. So they're kind of, well, let's go through the process as if we're going to adopt it. Take public comment. If we get a lot of negative public comment that says there's no way this is ever going to pass, then they know don't adopt the guidebook. Don't work on a guidebook. We've got to do some more work on the rules. Or maybe it's just a matter of making a few adjustments to the rules and then move forward with the guidebook adoption. But right now it's coming to us. And there are not any public meetings scheduled. So there are no public meetings scheduled yet. But I would expect once we hear from them that we would probably want to schedule something to hear from the public on what they think of these rules. So I guess this is the first of that process. This is the beginning of that process. I'll just ask one more question. So is there argument for room for interpretation that they have to consider what kind of historic resource that is? Or do you sort of know what their thinking is on why they need interpretation and not kind of like cut and dry, more cut and dry standards? I'm not quite getting the question. Still, I'm not quite understanding why they are saying they need room for interpretation on standards instead of... I think it's more about sticking to what the norm is, which is the Secretary of Interior Standards. Oh, which are open to interpretation. They're very comfortable with those. But if we did something that was more like... Explicit. It was more explicit and it would mean us changing those standards. Oh, okay. Okay, so it's more about that. So I'm just really highly valued, especially if homeowners are going to be affected by this, that they're very clear. Yes. Yeah. And that's what we tried to do. Yeah. The language? Well, it's supposed to, but they haven't written it yet. Yeah. That's the intent. Yeah. Yeah. And what we had ended up with was a set of rules that were very similar to the Secretary's standards, except that we had explicit outs where we said... For windows. Doors and porches where we said, look, we always approve these anyways. Some materials. Why make people jump through the hoops to get approved for getting their windows replaced on their historic building if we're going to approve them anyways? Just set the rule that says you can replace them as long as you meet these standards. And... Some of the buildings in town that are historic, that are historic, that have commercial, that are for commercial uses can avail themselves of certain tax credits, I think, if they meet the Secretary of Interior standards. And so one of the concerns that the Historic Preservation Commission had was that if we have competing regs, then there's a possibility for conflict, which is, you know, a valid concern. Yeah. And this state also made it clear that they kind of said that they could remove our CLG status if we didn't follow the Secretary of Interior standards. Oh, that's a good reminder. Even though our current rules don't meet the Secretary of Interior standards, if we adjusted them to make them closer to Secretary of Interior standards, that for whatever reason... And that goes for our historic district, though, right? We're still... Well, that was for the CLG. The CLG is community-wide. Okay. So CLG stands for what then? The Certified Local Government. But historic buildings outside the district aren't reviewed? That's what I'm... Yes, which goes to some of the... Whatever is that we parsed back and forth with Devanon was to go through and say, yeah, but we already don't regulate those buildings. We already don't regulate those buildings, and yet... So what was the response to that then? I mean, when you pointed out that there are buildings that we aren't regulating, we can't require that they follow... I wasn't going to push it too far because I didn't want to put ourselves in a double jeopardy of pointing out the fact that we don't meet the regulations and we don't meet the district requirements and then really have Devanon in a position where he's going to push back and say, well, I'm going to throw you out now. Yeah. Oh, I see. If you don't meet our 100 percent... It's a tenuous position. I guess. I reached a point of stop pushing that when he pushed back on the one. And so it's worth just keeping in mind that that was put out there, that one of the reasons we are eligible for a certified local government and the grants that they offer is because we meet these requirements. So... Even though we don't. Even though we don't. But... Would that inform the boundaries of the design review district? It could. It's worth... It's worth... Certainly worth running that flagpole at a certain point to see where... What their reaction would be if we passed... If we went forward and passed these rules as proposed by historic preservation, what would be the pushback from the division? Would the division expect us to expand the district to include these other areas? Or... Are they comfortable with what's proposed? And are they basing their recommendation on the federal register? Theirs is still following the arbitrary boundary that has been under our rules. Our boundary follows nothing. It just is. Well, nobody knows exactly why it was established the way it was. What Mike's trying to say. There's no rhyme or reason to... It doesn't follow the historic district lines. It doesn't follow any zoning district lines. It doesn't follow the... The only requirement that we must keep is we must have... We must have design review for the designated downtown. So that is the only really hard and fast thing. If we adjusted the boundary such that parcels were removed from the designated downtown, we could jeopardize our designated downtown status, which we obviously wouldn't want to do. But that's really a pretty tight floor of properties. Right now it's bigger than that. Yeah, it is bigger than that by quite a bit. It involves neighborhoods and portions of neighborhoods. Yeah. But it doesn't cover all of the historic district currently. The designated downtown is that just the urban core? Mostly just the urban core and downstone cutters way. So how... I don't know, maybe we should ask this next week, but when writing and asking questions here. Okay. How does a town establish their initial National Register District? I mean, Barb, you're a historic architect. Do you have any knowledge? Well, I have no idea how Montpelier arrived at theirs. Right. We've established that. But I think there was a survey. There have been several surveys done. By historic preservation specialists? Yeah, people who basically make the listing and then send it to the Secretary of the Interior. Okay. And so I think they just started with the downtown and then it seems to have grown just sort of beyond what would be considered the urban core. Should we apply for a grant for a survey to be done? That's what was done two years ago and was finally approved. Oh. So they remapped ours and included a few more properties that had been skipped before. So usually what you want for your historic district is buildings that are of a similar time period and a similar, I don't want to say theme, but they're of a similar character. Character, right. And so usually you may have a downtown that's broken into four different historic districts. For some reason, we just became one big one. But a lot of other places would have a number of smaller historic districts. I think I remember looking at Hardwick's, which is where I live. And I think they have three historic districts in their downtown core. One that was built within this time period and tended to follow these. This was 1840s. These were all built in Greek Revival and the city town started over here. Then when the grain industry came in, it expanded until here's a second historic district that's right next to that historic district and then there's a third one that covers another area. So you end up, most places have these piece by piece, but they all kind of connect. Yeah. That's interesting. I didn't realize that. Even some places as small as Hardwick would do that. Yeah. They would have multiples. I mean, that's why this is the biggest in the state. Because usually you'll break this into a number of smaller historic districts. And they have different rules, which would be each one or just... They would have the same rules, but when you talk about being of the character of compatible with the character, you wouldn't want to go through and build a... Somebody proposes something that takes a few themes of federalist and decides to stick it into a Greek Revival neighborhood and the architect's neighborhood will go and say, wait a second, this is an 1840s, 1860s neighborhood and you're going to try to insert this historic looking 1890s feature. It seems like we are wrestling with that because we have a downtown that's commercial buildings and then we have residential neighborhoods running right up to them and they really are different themes or characters. But... It's pretty easy to identify when those groups were built because oftentimes it seems as if they were built by similar contractors at similar time periods because we can see the early maps of Montpelier. Many of the existing historic buildings weren't on it. It seems like something to ask next week or the next meeting. But the historic surveys were all done just looking at what's on the ground not with an intention of turning them into design review districts. What happened is they surveyed it so that way they would have records of what the historic buildings are and also because of the changes at the federal level for how federal money would be spent and its impacts on historic resources, you had to have the maps. You can't put highways to historic downtown as easily as you know where the historic buildings are. Are you saying that we could have multiple historic districts, some of which could follow the Secretary of Interior standards as the historic participation committee wants, and some of them could maybe not have design review standards that would be a question for Devin. As long as it's not in there designated downtown I think it would be one obvious caveat there. Devin is a state... Devin Coleman. He works in the Historic Preservation Office or whatever the Department of Historic Preservation. I think it's DHB. Yeah. He's not the ship out though, the floor treatment. Interesting what you asked Kirby though. We could have separate districts that just might not have to meet the Secretary of the Interior standards but could still have design review rather than not having any design review on those historic districts. Part of what I was baking in there was to try to avoid being overly complicated. If we're having multiple districts it would be fine if really the only purpose of them from what I'm understanding here is that that just means that when they're looked at and judged they're going to be more in a vacuum among what's going on there. So there won't be apples and oranges and stuff going on which seems to make a ton of sense and it does make sense for Montpelier so maybe that sounds like a need. But at the same time that would help us with the problem of having the Secretary of the Interior standards which are very comprehensive and then maybe for some of the neighborhoods in town we know that the people there don't want that kind of regulation when it comes to design review. So could our like elegant solution involve having multiple districts and some of them having this department of senior standards and some not? So I think, and then yeah, that doesn't add a layer of complication whether or not we're going to have design review but that's not Secretary of the Interior. That's originally what we proposed, isn't it? It's getting closer to that. But in a different way. Yeah, so I'll just run, if we take out the CLG and we take out the designated downtown there's no requirement under state law and no requirement under federal law that we do any design review. We don't have to do anything. The only time we have to is when we've got these other two pieces and obviously I don't think the designated downtown will be an issue because I don't think anyone is going to propose to shrink anything to the point that it's less than the designated downtown. So because that really is just the urban core almost all those buildings are eligible for tax credits so I don't think we would ever, ever not do that. But the CLG will be one that we'll just have to work with the state to see how they, how they handle it and what their expectations are. So in other words, if historic preservation goes through and gets another certified local government grant and does work to get the meadow its own historic district which has been talked about. It's not in our, it's not in our historic district but it's mostly historic. The college has a lot of historic properties in and around it. That could be a separate historic district but if they put those in are we then obligated as a CLG to then do design review up there as well? That's in the answer I don't know. We'll probably go to your other question related which is what about these areas like Loomis and Liberty that are in our historic district now but are not in design review is the state going to force us to move our design review boundary out to capture those? Are you one of those? Neither. The historic district stops next door to me. So it doesn't come up very far at Liberty, you know, even halfway. Yeah, your saint Saint Paul Street is. It comes to a grand terrace, doesn't it? Yeah. And a kill of grand terrace. Yeah. So, yeah. And I know that was one of the issues that was brought up with the public comment is that there are lots of other neighborhoods particularly around the college that could benefit from a historic review and they're not part of it. That just revires a lot of public outreach. And yeah. And then the whole idea of expanding the district. Right. Well, I mean, I think making a list of all of the reasons why it would benefit the city is very important. I mean, it opens us up to grants in a way. I mean, right now they're available to us but they're under threat if we don't get our districts cleaned up, district boundaries, district boundaries cleaned up. I think that there's some level of certainty for property values that could be offered by living in a neighborhood that is historic and subject to review for that. So I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing but we need to be strategic about it and we need to think about where we want to have more infill and where we want to have more housing because we don't want to let this prevent back growth either. So it's complex. We've really talked about that but I think that is going to be a sort of elephant in the road. Maybe we need to learn more about what's being proposed next week but I think, yeah. Are you thinking about for new construction specifically? Yeah, to make sure that there's little to no interference with new construction or at the very least no impact on or at least for me it would be important to have no impact on what's done internally within a building as far as added units. But even new construction like which we need. We do have some requirements for new construction in terms of massing and articulation but right now but sometimes that becomes difficult in residential areas. But we do have some, right? Yeah, there's some and the question I think will come up is what happens when somebody wants to put in addition on to have an accessory dwelling unit. Are we putting barriers up to that if somebody wants to put a tiny house in the backyard? What barriers does to design if you put up it? It may be not much. The answer may be not much but I think those are the questions that anytime you start putting in a new layer or expanding a boundary you're going to have the question come up. Is this going to interfere with energy? Is this going to interfere with housing? Is this going to interfere? We have a number of goals that we want to accomplish and does do these new rules present barriers or do we have enough flexibility to work through those to be able to protect the historic character? I think that was Kim's concern when he was here as chair was that he felt there wasn't enough of a strong advocate and the reason why historic our design review rules failed was because we didn't have enough of an advocate. We weren't pushing for why this is important. Why is historic, preserving historic buildings important to Montpelier? It's our history. It's our bones. It's what makes us who we are and we really should be. The community should be embracing us. Embracing these ideas of going in and protecting a historic character. And because we didn't have enough of an advocate there we didn't have our, you mentioned a couple of groups that used to exist and really used to be big and pushing and making sure the community understood the value. I think this is just going to be a challenge and I think something we haven't worked through before. I don't think the historic preservation and development and new growth are mutually exclusive but they have often been seen that way. I think that's ideally, even if we expand the boundaries we do some things that look like an expansion or making a stricter regulation for historic preservation. If at the same time we're very careful to make sure that that we can tell people that this is not going to interfere with our energy or our housing goals. Like what we're proposing. If we can get to the point where we can say that. I think that'll help a lot. Yeah. I know Eric Gilbertson has some opinions about the argument we hear often that newer windows are more energy efficient. But at the same time everybody I know wants to replace the old windows, right? Yeah. See, I don't think it's for us in talking with the public. We've got to make sure that people are able to do the things that they want to do while we keep a story character as opposed to them having concerns in a thing. Well, actually, like... It has to be the original windows or the original materials. Yeah, because I don't think that's going to work. I think Kirby's saying we shouldn't just say well, actually, your windows are just as efficient as... Oh, yeah. Trying to counter that argument. But, you know, and then... I mean, we had a lot of arguments for replacement before. Only one of which was lead paint. And in the existing buildings it's a huge, huge problem with windows. The lead paint? Yeah, because all the old windows were painted with lead paint. Yeah. You know, take a double-hung window and you put it up and down. You've got lead paint dust in the air. And then, you know, children don't have to lick it, you know, just to be affected by it. So there's a health and safety issue too. We did discuss that when we talked about windows. So I haven't seen any addressing of that in here but they might be in the post. Any other thoughts about this while we move on? We'll get to revisit it on our next agenda item, which is... It's a lot longer than ours was. Yes, it is. It's going to double the size of our... Yeah, well... Our zoning has not been accused of being brief. I'll say that. But it's hard. You want to try to address everything and be specific. You have to. There's just no way of being short. Yes. Okay. So city plan. Next item on the agenda. Item six. City plan. So we... A month ago when we met, we were going through the list that Barb transcribed at our All Committees Kick-Off Meeting of the three goals that the Committees who attended and had representatives for presented. And I've changed offices and I don't know where my notes are for that right now. So I'm going to go off recollection. The minutes. Oh, the minutes. Okay. Great. We didn't finish going through all of them. I remembered that we did the Parks Commission and we didn't do the next one, which is a Recreation Department Advisory Board and the minutes support my recollection, which is pretty nice. I'm finally getting sleep again, which this is evidence of my brain working again. So, no, seriously, 22 months and then just started sleeping. It was great. But, um... Your baby will sleep like an angel. He does. He won't take naps. Everybody has challenges. Nobody has it any easier than the other. I'll tell you. Okay, so we went through, and just to recap what we did, because it has been a little while, we went through each goal and we talked about the goals that were articulated by the representative from that committee and we tried to understand it a little bit further and we came up with some action items about how, oh, we should follow up with this committee or maybe we should get these two committees together to address their overlapping goals. So, I'll find those notes. But I thought for now, in order to not slow us down, we should kind of pick up where we left off and there's not that many left, actually. I just have... I'll just rattle them off. I mean, and one is the Development Review Board and I don't think that this is... I mean, they're really more regulatory and like a judicatory. They're not really kind of thinking ahead. They're looking at how to review projects, so... Did they come up with anything? I can't remember. They did. Well, we can go through it. But I'll list them off and then we can go back and go through them one by one. So I have the Recreation Department Advisory Board, the Tree Board, Complete Streets, which I think we talked about. Development Review Board and Historic Preservation Commission. So that's why I said we'll get to come back to this topic. I think maybe we should start with the Historic Preservation Commission because it's fresh on our minds and then I can kind of resume back up at the top of the list. How does that sound? So their overarching kind of mission is to advocate for historic properties in walkable downtown and they've identified three goals to achieve that mission. Just to contextualize that. So the first is to finish their draft regulations. So we've just talked at length about that and the status of that and our role in that process. Goal number two is to plan a survey to add structures. So I'm assuming that's what we were talking about. Adding structures means extending the boundary of the... I don't think they're looking to extend the boundary of the current historic district because it's already the biggest and so they've kind of said they're going to create new historic districts. Biggest in the state, you mean? Biggest in the state, yeah. So they expect to add new ones and as I mentioned, the meadow has always come up, the college up and around the college. So they would just do like a stand-alone designation of a house, a structure, or a neighborhood? Of, yeah. There's a couple that were... Yeah. They were thinking, I think, in that one of neighborhoods, but... They're not thinking about Cliff Street, are they? I mean, I think the city council... Of course, I actually think the Cliff Street's already in. Isn't it? In the historic... Was it Cliff Street? Designed? Was it taken out or something? It was taken out of the design review. The design at Hall to remove them? Yeah, it was taken out of design review. Design review. So then that basically takes them out of any kind. And then they're still in the historic district. Well, I guess the action wasn't particularly clear. So maybe that's something that we could see clarification on eventually. I mean, I know... My recollection of the vote from city council was that they agreed to take Cliff Street neighborhood out of design review. I thought it was of the district. You're saying... It wasn't out of the district, it was just out of... It was just an exemption. I'm trying to think if they were in the district. An exemption that's been carved out? No, they were, they were. They were, because that's... That was our part of our argument where we said they should stay in design review. But I understood from Mayor Watson, who may not have been mayor at the time, but she was certainly on city council, was that, and she was the one who made the motion, was that there should be an opportunity to revisit this decision in the future, right? Yes, it wasn't permanent. Yes. So I think, you know, that needs to be part of the discussion about them wanting to add new structures and need to ensure that we understand the rationale very clearly before we agreed anything. And we're going to hear from that neighborhood. We should just anticipate that. I just wanted to mention that as part of my download of information. So goal number three is incentives for owner-occupied historic properties. So what are your thoughts, Barb? Do you think that this is meant to pass on some sort of tax credit or something that the commercially used historic properties have to owners who live there? Well, something, because they can't apply for those through the federal register, but it would certainly be an incentive to the owners, and I don't know that they even talked about what form that might take, but it would have to be something that would come from the city, I would think, because it's not a federal requirement. But it certainly could give them owners a reason to do the right thing. And why would it just be owners and not owner-occupied buildings and not residential buildings? Was it owner-occupied? That's what it says. Incentives for owner-occupied historic structures. I think if it was not owner-occupied, it could be defined as a public building, and therefore qualify for tax credits. Even if it's residential? A couple, two units or something? Maybe they just used that term as the other side of the coin from commercial. Yeah, maybe they mean residential. Because if it's not owner-occupied, then it's a rental and so it would be commercial. Maybe that's all they meant. Yeah. They know more than I do on the specifics of that. That's an expert committee. But yeah, that actually could be true that owner-occupied, I mean the rental units could potentially be eligible. Because I know John Anderson talked about his units. The state. Yeah, he's, yeah. And we've identified potentials for conflict with this goal two and goal three. So goal two, adding new historic structures. Goal three, incentive to owners for owner-occupied historic structures. Maybe not so much. But definitely goal two is potentially conflict with additional housing and energy goals, right? Well, not new construction. This is for existing buildings and neighborhoods. Add structures to historic properties? Yeah. Yeah, but like if there was a deteriorated property that was historic and they would let you tear it down, would that apply? Actually, we have other requirements for demolition. Okay. So, which we wrote pretty carefully regarding historic properties, I thought. But in terms of repair, that might, it might fall into, but I still don't think it's going to affect new construction significantly. Do you, Mike? No, I think the number one, I think the finishing, whatever comes out of the regs will have, just expanding the national or creating a new national historic district or adding new structures on, they don't think would. My concern with the, for talking about goal two, which was the incentives for owner occupied, my concern there would be having public tax money that's gathered from everyone and then redistributed perhaps to the people who were the best in position to take advantage of this, which might, is I think likely to be the wealthiest people in town. Fancy houses. Yeah. I think the distribution problem there is one for me. We already have money available for people to add accessory units, for example. The city's already providing funding, some funding for that, which could also therefore mean bigger houses. The argument to accessory units of things, at least you're adding units, maybe there's renters, maybe there's someone else that could benefit. With this, it would be to replace your windows. And specifically single family, if we're to find the owner occupied as a single family. Well, I mean by definition, you have to be an owner of a house to get the credit. Yeah. But also, yeah. We had some, several requirements in the old zoning that required owner occupant, for example, to add the accessory unit that used to be owner occupied buildings, right? So maybe that's a holdover. I mean, we could specify instead or ask them what they might think about switching this from owner occupied to multi-family or use it as an incentive to add accessory. Yeah. And we can see, I've been working with them a little bit with the Historic Preservation Commission on some of their implementation strategies to develop their plan chapter. So we have had some discussions about, and I just threw ideas out for them to consider. So I know they're working on how they want to, you know, those are the strategies that go to accomplishing their goals. And so I'm working with them on that right now. So maybe they'll have some ideas that they didn't have back in August when it was just looking at incentives for owner occupied. Maybe they've moved to a different set of goals. So it could still be incentives, but not specifically to narrowly to owner occupied. Yeah. I mean, we have different incentives in the city right now for putting up solar panels. We don't charge building fees, building permit fees to put up a solar panel. And you can get different, there are different incentives we can give that aren't all cash incentives. That's true. It was interesting. I'm looking at their kind of their mission statement that they have offered us. And it says advocate for historic properties in walkable downtown. The walkable piece kind of catches my eye. Do you think the idea is that having more connected historic structures will increase interest in walking in the downtown? I'm trying to figure out how these two things connect. Unless walkable defines a specific area that's close to the downtown as opposed to outlying neighborhoods. Yeah. I see this like it's like if there's a visitor who's visiting downtown, anything that's walkable from the downtown would be what we were trying to emphasize for. Okay. Yeah. This is advocate for historic properties and walkable downtown. Not in walkable downtown, but it could just be a typo. It could have been, yeah. What they said at the time wasn't specific to what they meant. Yeah. And that would make a little more sense. All right. So going back up to the middle of the list where I was. So the recreation department advisory board, which I'm not terribly familiar with them. Mike, do you work with them much? No. I mean, I know the parks commission. So I think the rec advisory board must be who Ernie reports to or gets feedback from. Okay. So their goals are, I mean, it's interesting. I mean, there's their notes, but the first bullet says, what to do with 55 Berry street old rec building need to plan for the future needs of the city. And that's one building that they're trying to figure out how to do that. Is that a historic building? This is. That's what I thought. I believe it's. Armory. Yes. Was an armory. Oh, it would make sense. It looks like. So we have a restricted ability to change the exterior. The facade, right? It's it's got so many issues on the interior as well. That the whole building because of asbestos. Right? Is that part of it? It's got lots of it's got asbestos. It's got lead. It had it had a shooting range in the basement. So it's got. Oh. Yeah. Police qualifications. I mean, so there's just a lot of things that were there. Plus it has multi levels and to make it ADA accessible. You need to put in an elevator. My understanding is that actually the plan now is actually to retrofit the building to keep it. Retrofit in what way? Add the elevator and go through. I think that I think it's still in the it's still in the development phase. The idea of I think this is where the jump in splash debate came in last year when there was a lot of discussions. Do we want to have a regional. Larger. Everyone wants to pull creation community center. And if we had that, we wouldn't need 58 Berry Street. We could demolish it and maybe use it as a small park or a small parking lot or whatever was the. No more parking lots. The same was said. People on Berry Street would like to have a place to park off street. Connection to the bike path. Yeah. From Berry Street. So there was a number of opportunities that were presented. If the building weren't there, we could do. We could repurpose that lot for something else. So. My understanding was after the the. CNA and the. Needs assessment was done that. The decision was to keep, to not do the regional. And to keep that building into retrofit it. Fit our needs. I think they're developing now what the costs are because you're going to have to come up with a plan and costs. So they can bond for it because it will be a million dollar improvement. But what, what is it? What will fit our needs? What is it that we're. Retrofitting it for. That would be a question for them. Okay. For recreation. Right. Basketball and. Continue to be used for recreation. Yes. Okay. Continue to be used for recreation. Because right now it is being used for recreation. But not very well. It's difficult. Okay. And if you were. Physical disability that. Would probably make it impossible for you to get in there. Yeah. Because it's. Even in the door. Yeah. Even in the door. You're coming up multiple steps. Okay. For recreation. The. Yeah. The notes say 55. But. I trust. I wrote 58. I took the notes on the. Yeah. So don't go by those. Could be 55 unless 58 is the senior center across the street. And that's why 58 sticks in my head. Oh, it doesn't be very straight. I know where it is. You know it. Doesn't everybody know what building? Okay. Okay. Do any. Do any? do any do any like middle school kids use that building yeah yeah no one I'm leaving to go back I park in stonecutters way so I've got to walk over and walk by it so when I go by it six there's always parents picking up kids it's always open I think it locks up at some point I've been at kids birthday parties there the sun's kind of like a dangerous place that kids birthday party a lot of the contamination stuff is in the basement oh yeah people aren't swimming around like what are you doing well we went through the dungeon themed birthday party we were digging in that strange child it's not a bad venue for that actually it's a lot of space yeah so and I think I think kitty takes the girls there for the there's a good gym class or something anyway I'm just really smart child goes there too anyway so there's second bullet for the recreation department advisory board is infrastructure needs and they have pool house etc written here so my guess is that we have these facilities and we're not supporting them with money yes so we need to do that for these ones that we are able to have done a good job of keeping up pool the tower everything there but there are a number of things that have been that have needs including the pool house the maintenance that gets you the maintenance I think though the Mountaineers have some stuff with it you need to box where they do the calls from you know that they have some spaces underneath the span stands that are being used but yeah I don't know what I just know there was a number of those that have been highlighted and I think that's on the list of because we have a facilities director who was approved in the budget we should be posting for hiring some point this summer it was a partial year partially year yeah so I mean this seems like something we can put in a city plan you know the goals are to ensure adequate funding for our our infrastructure and there's pretty easy measurables and they're unlike some of these goals yeah we can actually easily track but it we have to determine what the priority is for that you know compared to the green print so okay and then the last bullet for the recreation department advisory board is to provide recreational opportunities for all residents so I think it must be speaking to a variety of operation of recreational opportunities and the location probably where they're provided I guess so at that extent to the river I mean acts of the river for people to vote you know to where's the overlap with others so I think some of this is has been helped greatly by the fact that they are now a combined department so we used to have a separate recreation department in fact Arnie used to be working for the schools now the wreck department left the schools and now part of the city so the wreck department the parks trees the senior center have all been merged into a community this is a community services wreck parks and trees and senior oh community services so that's one of the things Jesse did just before she left was to work on getting a merger of those departments they haven't finished figuring out how to put it all together yet there was you know they're still is I think it's work in progress to kind of figure out how to how to be able to balance resources and needs and you know obviously that question of you know we want to park within 10 minutes walk of every neighborhood but what if it's a recreational what if it's a ball field instead of a park it is a ball field not just a type of park and so I think there's just being able to balance these parks parks rec senior and events and doing these various different things they just trying to coordinate and I know it also starts to come down when you start talking about how to maintain things parks might have some things that need to get mowed in the wreck department might have a lot of lawn mowers well if you're one department it becomes a lot easier just to go this is all that needs to be mowed we're gonna buy one set of lawn mowers we don't care yeah which one we're mowing at the same time if we need you know a large tractor well the parks department has a tractor we don't have to buy one for the wreck department the parks department has one you're all you're all the same department we can share resources and I think they're just still they're still figuring themselves out because unlike other departments there isn't a director of community services it's a department that includes three different directors so they still have some pieces to work out and that was part of the discussion were they going to make a hierarchy or were they not going to just go to sue when they need to tie breaker I don't know it has it seems as though everybody's been very happy with it so far there was a proposal it's where the cemeteries should be included in that in cemeteries has opted to stay out just think of Brexit yeah Brexit okay so um tree board their mission is to make the city literate about trees to educate citizens and they've identified three goals well I guess they're kind of related they're not all under that umbrella but one increase size and diversity of trees and canopy to educate citizens value of trees and care and three improve health of urban forest it doesn't seem like at least one and two should probably be kind of like measurable mm-hmm outcomes yeah I mean figuring out how to educate citizens I see that one yeah increase size and diversity of trees yeah we have to figure out what the bench you know the baseline is right yeah I don't know the pre-quiz and then the quiz right 10 years I don't know I think so because they actually track where the trees are going so and then they actually track me not maintenance but the check-in on them so I mean I think they planted a hundred trees a hundred city street trees this year yeah yeah well on their way to meeting their goal right right and you know and what they were trying to do was to acknowledge the fact that we've lost a lot of the big trees along the streets and many more are sick and probably going to lose them soon so they tried to a lot of trees get removed not very many trees get added back in right right or in the places or the necessarily the species that are more adaptable rather than replanting maple trees which were ash that were problematic I mean I think we can also we worked on the landscaping rags already and that would be part of this ensuring there's adequate what do we call it we just call it cover we call it something else yeah we had a couple of different terms for it yeah we had street tree requirements we had parking lot and then we had the general landscaping so if you managed to avoid the first two will catch you on the third one well I think that those would work towards one and two one and three sorry one and three which are increased size and diversity of trees and improve health of urban forest and they've certainly been working on the education with the labels on the trees actually downtown you know for the ash borer they've actually put labels around the trees so hopefully people are noticing those they'll be for educate yeah educate right so they're there definitely acting on that so maybe they determine some kind of a measure well if not we can recommend that they maybe think about that one yeah even if there isn't necessarily a measurable certainly the new rules that we adopted as interim changes with respect to the street trees and with all trees is that we now require a certain amount of undisturbed area around every tree so even if we can't quantify it we do know qualitatively our new rules now are gonna be protecting you know if you've got a large tree you have to protect a hundred square feet around that tree and if it's a smaller tree it might be 64 and if it's just even smaller might be 25 square feet but there's where we didn't have rules before you might be able to put a sidewalk right up to a tree and leave it no root space well now we've got a requirement that you're gonna have to show us where that well yeah yeah preferably have a well of some type but if not it certainly just at least need to have the green space that's around it so we've got some qualitative rules that will help meet the third objective all right move on from tree board complete streets so complete streets is a little oh I'll let you read it they're a little bit of a confusing one because they're there's the transportation infrastructure committee which looks at the streets then there's complete streets which looks at more events well these goals are kind of they're grounded in actual infrastructure all right so goal one is for new pet bike transit projects goal two is to reduce surface parking lots see tear down the wreck building about it's your parking lot I would cry I would cry I do think that we need parking for Berry Street but not in not to destroy a historic building to do it but okay so goals three expand transportation alternatives so going back to the first goal new pet bike transit projects well we are on our way with that I mean we've got the bike path extension that's happening and eventually it'll be connected yes as soon as we get from Main Street to direct is it just so there it will be set that the work that they're doing now will be extended all the way to the rec center no okay no other than that gap which gap from Main Street to the rec center so from Main Street all the way out to the west is all gonna be complete and then from the rec center east to gals hill be all done but we'll have 600 feet in the how does this interface with the transportation or is there still a transportation there is and as I said initially the discussion was they didn't merge into a completely unified group because one was going to be one kept wanting to do events and one kept wanted to talk about doing projects and so they eventually split into a bunch group and project looks like now looking at this it sounds like both being project so we've always wanted to try to keep the same as a single transportation committee because we think it's more effective that way but the m-tick is currently considered the transportation committee that's the one that we staff yeah okay so what kind of events what are trying to do things like maybe shut down a neighborhood street on a Saturday so kids could ride their bikes in the street doing more neighborhood type events to get people out you know maybe organizing an event where we would shut down the parking on one side of a street put up cones that way people could use that as a as a bikeway for a weekend or for a week trying to set up those types of opportunities where we can try out new things on a temporary basis didn't they have some kind of guidelines they developed or some kind of a study was there a complete street study well there was but that was a street typology that okay so they're doing the street typology no I'm sorry this is a little bit of a side question but whatever I didn't end up getting the time to get to advance that it's still on our work list of possible things that hasn't gotten here we're gonna be forced to at some point because we've got certain streets that are not gonna be happy people are not gonna be happy but certain streets have run out of numbers okay and we need to fix it okay sorry for that okay so I mean these goals I think they're pretty easy to I don't know what expand transportation alternatives and conferences so maybe we should talk about that briefly I mean that's that's what the sustainable month for your coalition's been looking at so is this alternatives to cars yes I'm assuming so okay yes yeah so and and not necessarily relying or assuming that it's going to be more buses in the similar kind of format to what we're doing now that may be a new a different way of providing transportation so I've forgotten that that was actually part of one of theirs right so they should be working with the energy committee on this right well the energy committee sort of over watching what the system of doing okay so so it's the sustainable more pillar coalition that should be working with the complete streets yeah and maybe I'm not sure I'm not sure of everyone who was around the table but okay okay moving on I think I mean I think that we have one more which is the development review board so let's just talk about that quickly and try to get through our minutes and get out of here and the next five ten minutes because it's pretty hot in here and I feel everybody's I'm losing people so let's just try to be productive in the last few minutes meet myself included so development review board okay let me just rattle off what they have here and we can talk about them so provide consistent and fair review of projects so not really a city plan goal but good clear and flexible standards so yeah that's what we try for parking comprehensive slash realistic plan which has been identified again and again and the last pieces and advanced long-term sustainability goals so I think you know my take of their presentation was that they just they're trying to figure out how to interpret and apply the regulations with these goals in mind as the purpose so I don't think we need to talk too much about that their definition of sustainability yeah yeah well they'll get that in the rest of the city plan yeah yes we will inform that are they talking about yeah resilience or they talking yeah um I don't know because I mean we could go back and review but I'm not sure my sense is that it probably had to do with the sustainable month failure coalition ideas I mean it seems like everybody has a appreciation for the net zero competition and the team bridges proposal and the other proposals all these committees seem to appreciate different aspects of them so I think using some of those ideas from those proposals as anchors would be really useful sorry can I digress just a bit about that on the design competition because when you said that it reminded me when I went on to our Google Drive the only one that's on it is the bridges currently the bridges information I couldn't access the workbook because it wasn't functional okay and and the other ones are not on it and since we reviewed all five of them of the finalists it seems like it might be appropriate to have at least some information maybe they're they're overview board right we want to be taking a look at all of those Mike can you add those to that is it easy for you to add stuff to that Mike to our I think you can add them to drag and drop as far as okay so if you if you see something that you think should be on there you could and you have access to that document you should feel free to upload it I might just not have you know dug deep enough in the rabbit hole but it seems like there are lots of things like the greening of America's capitals plan I didn't see on you know the other plans that we have yeah I don't think yeah I think there are a number of things that aren't aren't there yet there yet yeah and somewhere on there I know that we have to draft for the energy section but I yeah what I saw didn't have a lot in it yeah I so I I've been trying to work on some stuff so I can meet with you at some point oh great okay because yeah I couldn't find when John was like oh yeah we worked on a whole bunch of stuff and it was and it's on there and I looked I'm like well it's no yeah there unless I'm just not finding it it could I didn't find it either okay now all right and he's more tech savvy yeah well he's also just busy so no I mean oh my oh yeah if you can't find it then maybe it really isn't there so anyway thanks sorry for the regression yeah it has it in there I just can't scroll it down okay all right because I couldn't get anything other than the cover to load all right I guess not everything related to bridges there were four documents all together right but the other teams yeah yeah or at least if not the whole workbooks that might be more difficult but at least the boards yeah right and that I think having all five of them would be helpful okay so as far as the visioning statement for the city plan is concerned I'm gonna compile all my notes and type them up and then the conversation can resume you know looking at all of these just see if try to tie it all together and come up with a visioning statement yeah I mean maybe if people want to try to come up with something that would be very helpful for the discussion and if you don't want to put together a sentence or two you can just start next to hear the key things that I'm seeing themes about and just do bullets how long are you imagining this visioning statement being no just a sentence or two that's what it gets hard yeah that people could actually remember I want to try to go and see if I can find it I thought we had a consultant do a visioning statement oh I can't remember where I got where it is but I'll try to see if I can find it okay but it was professionally developed and they're really good professionally written sentence well it's a paragraph we always we always chuckle I work I work in words for a living but I'm still that's still where I'm like but we think he's really there actually really he does it all around the country and it's it's remarkable that he'll sit down and talk to these guys and he'll write this whole thing up and you're just like oh that's good so that's really good but I can't remember that's a piece we want to see the rainbows and butterflies something better than I can put together but I remember when he also did it he's done it for a number of communities including Barry was Barry works so it was before you were here it well Barry was while I was there and then we came when we came here I'm pretty sure it was while Ashley was here just been trying to pick my brain it's your action item and our action item is to pull themes from the committee goals and put them in bullet points no and not too many barb I know so we each kind of bring them to the meeting in July okay but can we circulate them to the entire group sure just don't reply with substantive feedback right don't say nice nice job yeah don't do that no okay no comment received just reply to the one person yes all right do I have a motion to approve the meeting minutes from May 13 just from cross out from after goal our goal is for the city to eliminate their reliance on fossil fuels and just take out eventually because I mean these are goals right so this is to eliminate it's reliance on yep it's city is right okay people with good grammatical skills used to writing zoning regulations why do I'm avoiding the why do we have to hire somebody right make sure it's see the same word and in one sentence yeah all right any other clarifications okay the minutes with that edit are approved so the final item on our agenda which I've written all over it's to adjourn