 call to order this March 22nd meeting of the Popular Planning Commission. First thing we have to do is approve the agenda. Folks could take a look, get this in motion. Do we approve the minutes of March 8th, since it wasn't a quorum? If you remember, we had a few minutes of quorum. Oh yeah, a few minutes of quorum, I see. Okay, right. I'll move to approve the agenda. Okay, we have a motion from Barb. Do we have a second? Second from Stephanie. Okay, those in favor of approving the agenda, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, we'll proceed. First item on the agenda after that is comments from the chair. The only thing that I have to bring up, I think at the moment is that we will return to the density discussion maybe next week or next meeting in two weeks. So if folks have anything for that or to be ready for that. I also, I guess I would renew my invitation that if anyone has any similar issues that they'd like to bring up like the parking or the density discussions that were totally open for that sort of thing from anybody. I imagine we are going to return to the parking at some point, but not a big hurry there. Okay, the next thing is to consider the minutes from February 22nd and March 8th. I guess we'll take those one at a time and take a look at the February 22nd minutes first. I don't think I was there for that, but what's not. I think we're doing this now because we didn't end up approving any minutes last meeting because we didn't have the quorum for most of it. It sounds like I threw Montpelier under the bus in these minutes, but we don't need to make a edit based on that. Don't backpedal, it's true. Yeah, it's a reasonable point. And buying a comment. It's funny you guys were talking about the public art thing for this discussion because the one thing that we did last week was approve the resolution for the city to pursue the grant for the Riverside Park. And we brought up that hopefully that park installation will include some art. So yeah, I don't think it will, but hopefully. It'll be cool if it did. This is why the art council took our zoom. They read our minutes and they thought we were out. I want to see more strength maybe though. More strength from us in pushing art. Yeah, that reminds me, we had talked a lot about doing a chapter on it. We haven't talked about that in a while, but I think that's still our plan, right? Do a city plan chapter on what was it? Art and not culture. Well, now that everyone's seen it is, do we have a motion to approve the February 22nd minutes? I'll move to approve the minutes. One second. Okay, that was Marcella, right? Yeah, sorry. Okay, motion by Marcella, second by John. All in favor of approving the February 22nd minutes? Say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye, any opposed? Okay, minutes approved. And then moving on to the March 8th minutes. This should be, this looks like, it looks like there were the minutes were for a lot of our informal discussion. So just, I don't know if it needs a change, but I would just note that the approval of the resolution section is the only one that's like, actually formally our meeting. Yeah, we don't need to have, the only thing we need in the minutes is the core of formal set. I think the approval of the resolution happened last in the order of events. Right, I was thinking that too, if we move the order at least, that would make more sense, put that at the end and say that that's what Aaron joined, so it doesn't make it look like he was there for the rest of the meeting. Yeah, move that to the end and then have put a note of meeting opened. I want to say it was almost like 645, somewhere in that time range. Sounds right. I can check my emails. Could I emailed Aaron just before he jumped on? So, all right, yeah, so I'll make that move, move that down, change the meeting open. Yeah, I just checked. I texted him at 643 and a few minutes after that is when he joined. Okay, do we have a motion to approve with those changes? Does anyone need to hear Mike? So move. Second, Aaron. Yeah, we'll accept that as a proxy for Aaron. Okay, we have a motion from Aaron, second by Stephanie to approve the minutes with the discussed amendment. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Were there changes to the February 22nd? Sorry, I missed your discussion. No, okay. No, we had a little discussion, but no changes proposed. Okay, minutes approved. And with that, we're going to receive an update from the Transportation Subcommittee. Is this, yeah, so I guess my first question is, did you meet with them, Mike? Has there been movement since last meeting? There, we just scheduled the meeting for next Tuesday, the 30th. So we'll get that, get that going. I did finish today making a kind of a revised stab at reorganizing the transportation chapter. So I'm going to get that out probably later tonight or tomorrow morning. So that way everybody has it, or at least the Transportation Subcommittee has it to discuss. Just as an idea, again, it's just taking a different stab at reorganizing it and seeing if we can come up with a better way of putting those topics together. Mike, as a subcommittee, can we comment? Can we go back and forth on it? Is that what we determined? Yeah, we can do it because it's less than a quorum. I think what would probably make attorneys and everybody more comfortable is if we called them working groups and not subcommittees, I wasn't going to make a big whatever the fact that we use the word subcommittee for our subcommittees. Just the way open meetings law, all committees and subcommittees are supposed to have agendas and minutes and generally working groups do not. And these aren't standing subcommittees. So in some cases, some committees have standing subcommittees and those usually require agendas and minutes. You guys have no authority in these subcommittees to do anything. You're just kind of a working group, work stuff out and then come back to the planning commission to discuss what you guys have put together. Yeah, and just for the record, I think we all understand and we've understood all along that these are working groups. Yeah, okay. I just wanted to clarify that we could in fact have some email back and forth before that meeting on the 30th, once you send out your revision, okay? Yeah, great. So what do we have to discuss tonight? It seems that wouldn't be premature considering that upcoming meeting. Yeah, there's probably not a lot to talk about tonight until on the transportation chapter, unless people have been working on it and have some ideas really what I've tried to do, the subcommittee had gone through and kind of made more cuts and we can, and we talked a little bit at the last meeting about our expectations of what these working groups are doing and how much changing we were looking to do. What were we envisioning when this was going on? And I commented that I thought my impression was a lot of these would be kind of reviewing what's there and looking for things that were missed, things that edits and changes and not necessarily wholesale rewriting of chapters, but recognizing that the transportation chapter was one that when we got it from the transportation committee, we made comment that it really wasn't in the format of the rest of the chapters and probably was gonna need substantial work. So if we have some ideas about these other working groups, I don't know if we wanna have any touch on any of those for are we looking when we talk about the housing, are we looking to kind of go at a rewriting of the housing chapter or are we really just reviewing it for these areas of change, things that maybe were missed, a topic that we think ought to be emphasized more than it is that type of thing. I think it's also important to keep in mind that we do have the continuity and structure subcommittee that's working on making the structure consistent. So that's all the more reason to go more into the substantive looks. If you're not talking about that subcommittee, you've shown what the other ones, I said subcommittee. If you're not in that working group, if you're one of the more substantive ones, then yeah, all the more reason to stick to discussion and substance. I would add to what Mike said about the work being done though and that I think that it, I think we should feel freedom to add policy and substantive additions, especially additions, I mean, to what's there because it's just an opportunity, I think, for us to come up with more solutions beyond what was given to us. I feel like there's not any harm in trying to add some value. Cutting stuff out, I think would be more of a concern because then you're talking about contradicting what the cities committees that brought that work to us is we're doing, that's my thoughts. But yeah, let's try to stick to substance and do the rewriting with the way the continuity and structure tells us. What's your thoughts, Barb? Well, I mean, I think that, yeah, I agree with that. I just think that the redundancies need to be addressed and I think that was really a big piece of the transportation that we came up against. It's like, this is the same thing but said with slightly different words. But we can talk about that later after we look at Mike's revision. The only question I have about bringing in more substantive kind of changes such as the density one is I feel fine adding that in terms of using language like look at or consider but not with actually putting it forward because if we put that forward that has to be something that goes through the whole process and will substantially set back this city plan. So I'm certainly fine with, let's consider this. Is that what you meant? Well, to clarify, I mean, it's possible. There's different routes to take for different things. I mean, the density discussion that I'm hoping that we'll have is instead of putting it in the plan to plan to do it later, we go ahead and have the discussion now and possibly put forward something to city council because that's what we're always, there's always a batch of potential zoning changes coming along. So it would just, if we did something with that, it would be set aside probably until the next batch of things ends up at the city council should be later in the year, I'm sure. Yeah, my concern is that it could take over the whole city plan issue because it's going to be contentious. It's going to take a lot of attention, particularly attention from the public. And I think it deserves a time where we consider it carefully on its own merits outside of the city plan. Right, that's what I'm saying. This would be outside the city plan. So within the city plan then, our wording has to be such that we say consider it. We're not setting it aside. We're just saying the plans are directing us to consider it. And then we will consider it outside of the city plan. If we go ahead and do it, we don't need to put in the city plan. Yeah, but I don't, you know, if you want to take the next three months doing it, it's, you know, it's going to be a long process. You know what it was like last time, at least partially, it's going to be a long process. I just think it's two, you know, we're kind of working at cross purposes then. Especially because people don't even necessarily know that we're considering changing that. So to put that we're considering changes into the city plan, then they get alerted, even if we're still, I mean, concurrently working on it. But we can't wait on this, on finishing the city plan to have that complete. I mean, I don't think anyway. Yeah, I guess I think that it's possible for us to have simultaneous activities that we can work on in zoning improvements while also doing the city plan. Some improvements, yeah, yeah. The city plan is, you know, still a year off probably from a final form, or even a final proposal form, right? So, yeah, so I just figure we'll be doing other things. I do take your point about not letting it distract from the city plan. So any time that we have a full agenda city plan related, I agree that that should take priority over any other, you know, side projects like that. I just consider it like a side thing to talk about. Anybody else have thoughts about this? Does that make sense to you, Barb? Yeah, I mean, I just don't want us to try and push this through hastily. That's all. Right. And I think it's good, you know, you know how everyone always tells us, you know, well, you didn't tell me this was changing. I think it helps to give them a heads up, even if that heads up as part of the city plan, that these changes are under consideration. That's all. Yeah, we have actually, we've, we've heard from someone from the DRB, Mike and I have, about related things and he was asking about it and he seemed interested. Okay. So do we need to talk about the transportation plan anymore? Are we gonna wait to hear back? I think we can wait one more. Next meeting we'll have something on that. Okay. So then, so then we're going to have so that, so the next thing on the agenda is to take a look at the parks commission sub chapter. So you run us through that, Mike. So the parks is one piece of the community facilities and services chapter. Mostly I guess it's the community services chapter more than facilities. So parks is one of them. So you've got parks, you've got recreation. We have senior center. So there are a number of community facilities, community services that are gonna be in there for discussion. I worked with the parks commission to get their piece done. I haven't started with the other pieces yet, but I'll be starting to work with them. So you did get a copy of what they had come up with. And it's all kind of in one. One aspiration. Yep, they put them all into, no, there's two aspirations, there's a second one. It's just the first one is very long. Yes, the first one's very long, but they, most of the spirit of what they were trying to get at was they wanted the parks to be a vibrant part of everyday life. Every resident should be within a 10 minute walk and of a park or playground and 15 minute walk of a large protected area. And then a system of interconnected parks and greenways enhances opportunity for people of all ages and abilities to move throughout the city on safe routes that maintain our connection to nature ourselves and each other. Our residents, visitors and visitors understand the park's resources and understand how to act responsibly in order to protect them for future generations. Last year park system protects the city's natural integrity for future generations by owning and maintaining certain irreplaceable features in natural communities. So it is, you know, some of our chapters have had, you know, they'll break them into multiple aspirations and have four or five, six aspirations and they kind of put them all into one with a number of goals and strategies. And then their second aspiration was to be a destination for outdoor recreation with an expansive network of forest season outdoor recreation experiences from options in our downtown to opportunities in our park system and beyond these resources and their connection to our downtown form a pillar of our economic development strategy. So most of those kind of relate back to our economic development plan. And that's been a goal that they have been pushing for for the past couple of years is to kind of be, kind of make outdoor recreation one of our pillars of our economic development plan and the parks commission and parks director are working hard at trying to build those connections into the economic development plan. So big picture that those are the aspirations on a related note. Last week I finished the natural resources chapter with the conservation commission. So I do have that chapter as well, which is separate from community services. But obviously there's some overlap between the conservation commission and the parks commission. So I'll, as soon as I can get a copy of that it's in their Google drive and for whatever reason I had access to it. And then after they finished it, I lost access to it. So technology has not been my friend this week. And so I'm working with Alec to get a copy of that. So I can get that to you guys. So that conservation commission is all set. So we have natural resources done. That one's ready for your review. We have parks that's ready for your review. And hopefully after next week we'll have transportation wrapped up and we'll get that one back on your plate to review as well. I don't know if you want me to go through the parks or if you guys have reviewed it and have questions. Mike, is there a reason why they needed to put everything together in one aspiration? I guess it seems like each one of these sentences could result in sort of a different approach. So it does seem to me that there's somewhat different aspirations. I'll ask the continuity group, how does this fit in to how you imagine these going into the spreadsheet? I think one aspiration or consolidated aspiration is fine. I have a hard time. I keep asking the question, why we don't just have these put into the spreadsheet? Like I have a really hard time reading seven pages of strategies that seem keep going back. And then we're like, this is the same strategy. Like this could all be put on one page. It's like, let's update the green print, get a green pit print purchase program and like continue a bunch of the other great stuff that we're doing. That's exactly my read of it too. Is there's a couple of key things that come up over and over again that could really be, I think there's a lot of condensing that we could do. And I want to like take a pen out and cross off and move things. I don't like transportation. Yeah, but remember the census in this format and this format's really just for our development. And really, as I said, it's the opportunity to be able to read it in both directions to go through and say, okay, if I just read the aspirations and read the goals, the goals link back to the aspirations. And if we accomplish our goals, would we accomplish our aspirations? And then within those goals, these are all the ways, these are all the strategies to accomplish that goal. And yes, there are gonna be some redundancies. But once we take it out of this format, because nobody's gonna get this format in the final plan, but if you wanna go through and do that evaluation, then that's why I do it this way. It's the ability to go through and say, okay, this strategy, that green print plan comes up again here. It's important for this goal, it's important for this goal, it's important for this goal. And now when we put it into the document, then yeah, I think the way we've talked about it in the continuity group, I think it's gonna be the right way to do it, to go through and have that extra link in there that just goes and says, this strategy links to these five aspirations. And another part, I think, that we had discussed is for our goals, is they really need to be something that we can say definitively whether or not we've accomplished them, right? We should look at it and be able to say, yes, we've done this. And that sounds easy and obvious, but oftentimes it isn't when you read these, and when we go to our next plan or whenever, are we gonna be able, like are we gonna definitively be able to say that we've made our park some more vibrant part of city life? Like, I don't think so. You know, you could probably... So it's so subjective that way. Earlier chapters had more benchmarks, and we may still have to go back in a number of cases to go through and decide how to benchmark these. A lot of cases, the work I've done with the committees has kind of reached the point where, you know, I would meet with them for six or seven months and pretty much everybody gets a little bit burnt out on that, and I think we can go through afterwards and try to find good benchmarks that we can measure that, you know, if there is a good benchmark about more vibrant part of city life, and there may not be a benchmark for that one, but there certainly should be a benchmark for increased the number of neighborhoods and parks, such that every neighborhood is within a 10-minute walk of a high-quality park, but we should be able to measure that. How many neighborhoods do we have today that are within a 10-minute walk? And what would be our goal for the next eight years? How many neighborhoods are within a 15-minute walk of a large protected area? We already have a land use map that breaks our city into 54 neighborhoods, so we should very easily be able to just go and clunk out something with CVRPC to hit those boundaries and start to go through and say from the middle point of every one of these neighborhoods, how far is it to the large nature park? Oh, we have to then define what's in large nature park and say who's within that walking distance and who isn't. You're muted, John. Yeah, what is the large, the 15 minutes from a large natural protected area? It made me laugh or made me think like if it's a large protected natural area and we can't go there, is it sort of like the, everyone likes the idea of an art museum close by, they don't go, but they have that satisfaction of knowing that it's there. Like what was the thinking behind the 15 minutes to a large protected area? I think that goes back a little bit to some of the first one about trying to get nature and as a part of everyday life and they wanted to be able to have these resources close by is what the Parks Commission was looking at for those. I guess the, it's kind of like, why build bike lanes? Nobody's riding bikes. It's like, well, let's build the bike lanes and then we can start encouraging people to ride bikes more because it's safe. And I think their goal is, let's get large protected areas and let's get these parks and playgrounds and make sure they're close to neighborhoods. And I think in a little bit in their ways, it's also to identify what neighborhoods are not represented. And I can tell you that south of the river is one of the ones that always gets identified. So if you live on Berlin Street, Prospect Street, those areas over there, your access to parks is much more diminished than those folks who live in the downtown core. I think that it makes a whole lot of sense. And I think there are great reasons for large protected natural areas. I was just specifically looking at large protected natural areas in proximity to everyone, like 15 minutes like that. That was kind of like, I couldn't wrap my head around why we... But we can do the model and see just how unrealistic it is. If it turns out only 20% of the city meets that standard, then we may have to evaluate whether a 15 minute walk is really... Well, we may be there. I just don't know what we're trying to accomplish. I think accessibility is what it comes down to. So that all residents have a convenient access to it. But isn't it a protected area, natural area? I don't think they mean protected in the preservation sense. They mean it just is publicly owned, publicly accessed. So like a park? Yeah. I feel like that changes... Our large protected areas would probably be Hubbard Park and the... Statehouse. So the nature... Oh. North branch. North branch, thank you. Okay. But not Savings Pasture. No, not Savings Pasture because it's not public. Exactly, yeah. It could be one of those places that turns out. And I think if you were to look at the green print, a lot of the large areas that were proposed for purchase in the green print had been identified because they were close to those areas. So I think it's... There'll be a couple of questions with that for us to explore. One is that our goal is that our policy there'll be a question for us and the city council to decide because clearly taking... Getting access to a large chunk of land all over the city means that land is also then not available for other uses. And if we're trying to increase housing while at the same time competing with ourselves to make large, what is it? Large protected natural areas. I think there'll be a conflict there that we have to resolve at some point. But I think certainly their goal of a 10 minute walk to a high quality park, those could be much smaller. We've got a number of smaller parks. The college green up on VCFA may not be public in that sense, but they've considered that as one of those types of areas. The state house green, these are smaller areas that people have access to that are important to just having access to green space. So Mike, is a 10 minute walk a mile? That's a good question. We'll have to define what a 10 minute walk is. I mean, 10 minute walk for people is different. And we may just have to assign a distance to that instead of a time. Yeah, a lot of the walkable downtown chapters do do that. And it seems to me it was a mile, but I can't really remember. 10 minute walk would not be a mile, unless you're a pretty fast walker. I think that's like half a mile for the normal person. I walk much faster than that. Yeah, well, maybe 15 for a mile. I mean, yeah. I think a 20 minute mile for the normal human is so reasonable. So it would be a half mile at 10 minute radius. Okay. So each one of the parks, we could just draw a half mile radius around it and determine who's outside of those areas. That depends. I mean, you gotta look at routes too. I mean, obviously if your only route there is bushwhacking through somebody else's backyard, that's probably not meeting the spirit of a 10 minute walk to the park. If we could actually get to a point where we identify areas, and they don't have to be specific, but like areas in need and include those in the plan. The other thing that struck me when I read this is the main thing we will have accomplished with the exception of maybe this purchase program is that we're gonna end up with a lot more plans. Like this is planning for more plans. And so like, what will be different in 10 years? Well, we'll have a lot more plans. This doesn't actually like say that we're gonna do anything. And maybe that's okay if like the plan is like, well articulated and we have this purchase program, but maybe we can actually just put on a plan like, hey, we're gonna prioritize this area that doesn't have a park. Like if we know that. Yeah. I don't think necessarily all these plans need giant planning documents. Sometimes when I'm referring to plans, I'm just talking about doing that quick study to figure out what it is. And if we can get that, then that answers the question. But I think what we're trying to be, when we talk in city hall from a department head standpoint, we talk about trying to be deliberate and how can we best efficiently use our limited resources and having a plan, even if it's just a three or four page document that lays out, we have a goal of 15 minute walks. Here's what that would look like. Here's our neighborhoods. Here's our areas where we have deficiencies. We should be prioritizing something in these areas. I don't think these have to be $30,000 reports. So a couple of questions, Mike. Would you be able to give us some info so that we can put some things like what John's talking about directly into the plan, or do you think that we need a study or a plan to get there? Could we do it ourselves? I think if we highlight, I think as we go through these, if somebody sees one that says this would, if we just, this should be easy, we can go through as we start developing, could we have to write the chapters? And it may be something it's like, hey, when you work on the chapter, just see if we can get CVRPC to run this analysis real quick and see if it's something that we can come up with. Cause I can talk to Pam and Ashley and kind of gauge the resources to see what we can, which ones, cause I think like this one, I think that's a, I think this is one that would be really doable. I think some of some other studies that we propose, maybe one's just, they may even be fairly easy, but at the same time, just trying to be efficient about getting the plan done. If it's not a priority work item, maybe we don't prioritize putting it at the start, but I can do whatever you guys think, there's high value in doing this. It's a low cost, easy study. Let's see if we can do it during plan development rather than doing it after. And I can put that in my work. I think it sounds good for us to have that info. And I really do like the idea of having concrete things in there, like we will put a playground in this neighborhood. Is that what you're thinking, John, for the sorts of things that would be better to flesh it out? Yeah, like I try to think like, how would I explain our plan to like a neighbor that does not care about the city plan? Like if I go to them and say, hey, we're planning to put a park in this neighborhood, like that's something real to them. If I go to them and say, hey, we're gonna update our green print plan and like do these other studies, they'll be like, great, good luck. So when I'm reading these, I'm thinking like, how is this gonna, if I had to go explain like what we're doing, what's in this document, I try to think of things that will matter to people or that they'll understand. And again, being like, can we check a box thing like that we did that or not? I feel like is, if we tell them, we're gonna make parks a more vibrant part of the city, they'll be like, all right, yeah, that's great. You know, but yeah. Yeah, and I agree. I think we can do more in a number of places and see if we can clean up some of those. And I think a little bit, some of the issues, we're gonna have these need for plans a little bit come up more often than maybe we would like to see. And hopefully we don't have this in eight years. And one of the reasons is almost every committee that I've worked with, when I met with them, their whole thing was, I don't know, I just show up to meetings. We don't have a plan, we don't have a mission. We have meetings and things just happen and they like the fact that there's a discussion of, okay, well, what's your goal? It's like, all right, well, this is your goal, then how are we gonna get there? Well, if we're gonna get there, then we've gotta know a little more specifically, what's it gonna take? And in some chapters, like transportation, we've done Montpelier in motion, we've done a complete streets analysis, we've done the downtown master plan, we've done a lot of plans. You won't see a lot of stuff in transportation plans saying do more planning. We pretty much have the plans in the programs, we just have to prioritize them and get the funding to keep implementing them. But I think in some of the others, like conservation commission, which is natural resources, they've had a lot more of kind of getting in to say, what is it we're actually trying to do? Okay, we want a natural resource inventory, well, what's that gonna take? Well, it's gonna take doing a bunch of studies. But hopefully as we get through this version of the city plan will be in a little better position to go through and have more implementation and less planning as we go forward, or at least that would be my hope, my goal. That sounds like a great way to flush this chapter out a lot. As a side note, I would say that playgrounds are different than other parks. And I think it would be better if we pay, like if we actually distinguish those things when looking at it to make sure that the playgrounds are actually distributed evenly. So that your neighborhood doesn't determine your access to a playground. Yeah, I think that's a good point, Kirby, because the equipment that's present at a playground is significantly different. And also the question is whether it's actually an open public playground the whole time. Because technically the one at the elementary school is not open during off hours. So it's not available to the neighborhood. Are you saying maybe put it into a separate category, separate goal? If it weren't for trespassing on schools, kids wouldn't have many options in this town. That's true, yeah. My family's never cared about that. So we hit up a river, was it River Rock, and the elementary school, but no. So maybe we should address that so that we don't have to break the law all the time. Yeah, yeah. So when we have the discussion, when Mike comes back with some info about the distribution of things and how close different neighborhoods are to different places, we can look at playgrounds, we can look at natural areas, parks, and try to put in some concrete strategies of locating where some things need to go. And do we consider areas like the college green, a park area? Yeah, they would probably consider that one to be a park area. That's not a large natural area, but these are gonna be different depending on what may be good for certain ages as a park or a playground may not be good for another. I mean, you might be on Elm Street and be close to the rec fields, which would give you access to basketball hoops, or you might end up with another area in the meadow or you might end up with some playground equipment but wouldn't be good for teens. So I think there's just gonna be, there are gonna be some questions. And I think we're gonna also have to decide what is a park or playground. If you live in an apartment on Berry Street and you're on the bike path, are you within five minutes of a park or playground, would you consider the bike path to be something like that? We have turntable park, that's not really much for kids, but it's technically a park. So we'll have some, I think there's gonna be some gray area and areas for debate as to whether things have been met, but I guess we can sort through that. We could probably just make a list of places where we've all brought our kids and spent more than 20 minutes like watching them run around on stuff. That would probably be the most comprehensive somehow objective measure of kids defining spaces as parks. They like being there for more than 20 minutes. I think just seeing it. Going to the backyard of my house then. I think just seeing it on a map helps too. So even if you're highlighting the bike path and then seeing where the little squares are of parks, it's really easy to see from like a massive standpoint of their color differently. What areas are neglected? What areas don't have anything? And I think Berlin Street is definitely a big one. Where I was talking to one of my neighbors today up on the college green who lives on Berlin, but drove over to the college green, which is my neighborhood because there isn't a park by her house for her almost three year old to run around. So I think you can see pretty quickly on a map once we have it all down where the gaps are. Yeah, there's a playground out at Stonewall Meadows, but that's quite a ways out and works for that little area, but there isn't. Is that a public playground? Yep. Oh, I didn't realize that. Yeah. You've got to go down Isbell Circle and it's tucked down in there. Yeah. So there are probably parks out there that we don't know about. There's just the one as far as I know. Well, and the public access is, I think river, I don't, I know the school closed, but the river rock playground, if everyone is what I'm talking about on very street, the public access is that, but I don't know if it's like completely legitimate. But if not, maybe that could be something in the plan to get public access to probably the, yeah, that in elementary school, the better playgrounds in the city. Yeah. And I think the other piece just a little bit just, you know, as we kind of take a look at a 50,000 foot view, a little bit of this first city plan process. The other thing this is going to help us do is to identify the aspirations and goals, you know, the, the parks commission has said, and we may agree with their vision and goals, but it's really never been publicly, you know, vetted and blessed that these are the, the goals for each of these various, you know, departments. And so this, this is also an opportunity to kind of get those nailed down. And in the same way that the city zoning regulations, you know, I've always been a fan of get the zoning past and then keep working on it iteratively because that's how, you know, rather than wait 15 years and then do a giant revision. Let's, let's just keep working on it a couple of times. I would like to see us as we get through the city plan. Yes, this is going to be a big update. Yes, it's going to get through us, but I would also like us to start considering the city plan in that iterative mode as well. So we can take pieces because we've now accepted as a community, these are aspirations and goals. And we have a set of strategies that certain ones are going to float to the top of, we should spend a little bit more time doing a few of these studies, kick these things off and really revise our housing plan or our, our parks plan, because it happens to be timely with what's going on in the community. And to be able to go through and not let these just sit there. If we've got a plan that's not being, doing its job the way it should be by guiding our future development, then we really should be going through and revising that. And I think we're going to have better chapters and we're going to have worse chapters and we just have to. Work on them over time. Do we have any more comments about the specific parts of the parks implementation strategy. Chapter. There are working group that looks at this and the. Whatever falls into it as a public service, I think. What's that? Is there a working group. I'm trying to call them working groups and not subcommittees. I don't think there's anyone assigned. We have natural resources. We could, I feel like we could handle this as an entire group though. Like if, if Mike comes back, is this an info. I don't think we need a working group. Unless, unless folks feel differently. Any thoughts. This is a nice chapter in that it's a small. Discrete. Solvable. So Mike, are you hoping for us to address any other particular. Points strategies made in the. Plan. No, a lot of what we tried to do was to capture what they were already doing. So there are a number of programs that they already do. They already have a volunteer program and they already have. So it really was to try what I was trying to do at the parks commission was to connect them with their mission and their vision, what they were trying to do. And then to remind them that they're already doing a lot. And let's capture what you're already doing. And talk about where those gaps are. And a lot of what they were interested in doing was, it was really focusing on those, the, the green print. Where should we be purchasing more? Either trails. Or park land. Large conserved areas. You know, what, what should be our plan going forward? I think that reflects, you know, there's been. A change. In leadership in that department. So, so Jeff Beyer had been there for a long time and he focused a lot in. Kind of the recreation and kind of the, the service piece of it. With his work with youth. And I think Alec is a little bit, has a little different vision and he's working more towards. You know, Park expansion and really focusing on how can we. Get that green print and actually get it built. And so what I've been trying to do with them is to focus on, all right, if you want to have a program where you're purchasing land for either. Trail rights. So maybe they're not necessarily going to buy the property, but they're going to buy a right to put a trail across somebody's land. Or to buy land outright. And that was their focus and we've been, I tried to get them to kind of break it into steps where you get a plan, you identify the parcels that you're looking for. And you start to identify funding streams. So that's why they're, they're focusing on, you'll see those things that come up about the green print and making amendments to the green print. Coming up with a funding stream. And though that was really kind of where their focus. Their focus was. And then they've got a bunch of outreach programs because they do want to. Connect. You know, connect people to the parks. And connect our economic development strategy to the parks. So that way it's kind of more. You know, it's parks become a part of everybody's life. I mean, it's that really. You know, in the same way that the transportation plan talked about being able to live and work in Montpelier without a car. That, that, that theme. I think that really was the primary theme of what they were trying to do. This idea of having parks as a part of vibrant part of everybody's life was really their. You know, kind of their core mission there. They're guiding principle. And this will be interesting because there are other chapters and they're going to start being more related. So, you know, like the recreation department is clearly related to them. So the parks may be Hubbard Park, but that doesn't include the rec fields or the swimming pool. So, you know, I think it's going to be a little bit more. Or these other facilities that we have. So the, when I do the rec plan with Arnie. We'll end up with a, you know, a related piece of. Of information as well that deals with outdoor recreation, but it's dealing with. Outdoor recreation in a different way. So Mike, I have a question about. So it's. So next time. Next time we look at this, we'll plan to have some more information. And then we'll go ahead and go ahead and. Change some of the aspirational things into more concrete things. Should we go ahead and. Is it premature to, to go ahead and put it into the spreadsheet that the continuity and structure. Group created like. When we work on it. Should that be like our process? And of course I'm asking Mike, but I'm asking everyone like. We're going to do that. And then we'll start to work on these as the whole group. And try to put in more of a final proposed form. Should we do that then as well? Yeah, we can start working them into that because it's, that's going to probably be an iterative process as well, because we'll have some that are similar. And the question is, do we take two similar strategies. And make them into one strategy. Or do we keep them different? I think that's a little bit for continuity and. I think that's a little bit for continuity and structure to have a little bit of a conversation on as to whether or not these are two separate. Strategies or whether it's one strategy that was saying, you know, adopt the green print to do this to do X and adopt the green print to do why. Adopting the green print. You know, do we just say adopt the green print or do we say adopt the green print to do colon. Dot, dot. You know how. And I think that goes to continuity and. You know, I think that's a little bit for continuity. As to how we want to. So, you know, if we do it as the entire group, then those members will be, you know, present and be able to help guide us on it. Does that sound like a process that everyone's interested in pursuing when we do this? Or did people have other ideas? So you're talking specifically about the ones that don't have working groups, right? The chapters. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, if this would be our normal process, I think that's, I think this is where we've been heading, right? I just want to clarify and make sure we're on the same page. Are you saying out of future meeting, we would go through and do that together. Put it in the Excel file as a full group. I think so. I think so. I mean, unless it's like, I mean, if it's too big of a thing, if I'm being too ambitious about that, I mean, just please tell me. Okay. I mean, we can do it with people, but we can definitely try it. And if it doesn't work, we can. Reroute. Because it's, it's like, if you're already. Like, like, it just seems like it works is synergize as well to. Review. The goals and strategies. As you're decided, putting them into this thing so that they fit well. It seems like doing it at the same time. Makes sense. Could take a long time as well. Yeah. Maybe someone could do it and then we could all, we could go through it and review it as, as a group. Well, we want to, we want to review and, and change around some of the strategies with this chapter. As a group. Right. Right. So. I mean, it might be easier to see it in that in the format of the spreadsheet and then make those changes from there. But that means that somebody's got to take on putting it into. The spreadsheet format. And you changes may come up in that process that. Might be brought up before the whole group. I'm not volunteering. Yeah. I mean, more than anything, I mean, I'm asking like what, what people, what people would like to. Like what order of things would you like to pursue? Would you like for us to have the discussion first. And hand it off for someone to put into the spreadsheet. Do it at the same time together for a smaller chapter like this. That seems doable. But just whatever. I might suggest that maybe we take one, take it, take a chapter and do it before we start putting them all into it just so we can do. And I think we had started with historic resources. And so I think if we just finished up historic resources as a model and a mock up, we can then go through. And kind of say, yeah, that's, that's where we want to go. Then when we get a more complicated one, like a transportation plan or a housing plan, then, then it's like, all right, well, it's still the same concept. It's just going to be bigger rather than, and I think if the. Continuance subcommittee. Can put together, say historic. And that's what we're going to do. Which I think is a pretty concise. Plan. And kind of mock that one up, then we can come back and everyone can agree. Yep. We like how you did that. That works well. Let's. Repeat this process over and over for these other ones. And then. You can decide. How to do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's pretty much done. I thought it was done. I look at it again, but I thought it. Put everything in there. Maybe it makes sense for us all to go through that as a group, though. It sounds like that's the. What Mike's saying. Yeah. So it's already. I double check. Yeah. Yeah, but I don't know if we organize, if we presented the way John had put together some stuff, because I think that's what we kind of need to get to is that final. This is how it's going to be presented in the plan. Does everybody. Kind of like how this. Okay. Now what you're thinking, Barb. I have no idea. I think the, with the parks chapter, I think because it's simpler, I'm. I think it makes sense to have one person do it and then talk about it. Like, I guess I can be that person. To take it out of it and just track anything that I can. Present that back to you and say, here are the changes that I made while putting it into the format. You can agree or disagree with those. And then we can talk through it. I just, I think going through it as a group is going to be a little. With a full group. I'm also happy to do that with other people if we want to do like a separate working group for it. What do we think is the most appropriate. Order them for you to, for, for someone to, to put into the spreadsheet first, or for us to have the discussion with the, you know, The additional information that we were going to get from Mike. Well, this one is short enough. And, you know, that it's maybe simple enough. That we can do that. And still have the discussion afterwards, right? You imagine that the discussion is going to change things significantly. Kirby. That's, yeah. That's what I, that's based on what people have said in this meeting. It sounds like, um, For this chapter. Yeah. Like we're talking about instead of more aspirational things putting in. Like specifically putting in a playground in this neighborhood, a park in this neighborhood. Like that kind of stuff. So, so, so it sounds like pretty some, some pretty significant substantive changes. We also, I think have to rethink. The aspirational language that's there now in trying to see if we can improve on, on that too. So it seems like a lot of. Substantive policy thought. While they have a lot of stuff in their aspiration, each one of the goals. Links directly to the next sentence in the line. So they've, they've, they may have five sentences, but they also have the five goals, six goals that directly connect up to each one of those. So they've, I mean, theoretically can break it into six aspirations, but they felt it was. It worked for them to put into one paragraph. And then each aspiration would just have the one goal. Yeah. Each aspiration. Yeah. So there's the, the first sentence has its goal. A, the second sentence, every resident is within a 10 minute walk or a 15 minute walk is goal B. Yeah. Can we just connect the parts as goal C. As a group. Can't we decide that we were going to just rewrite that into one sentence that overaches all of those things. I can do, I can do the, the mapping part. I work with Stephanie and we try to come back to the group with something. Okay. And we can track anything that changes. And then I, Kirby, I think we can still at that point talk through those, some of those bigger picture things that you're talking about. As a group. That's all in the format. Yeah. No, that sounds, that sounds fabulous. I, I definitely didn't want to push work on it. I think it's, I think it's, I think it's a, I think it's a, I think it's a, I think it's a, I think it's a, I think it's a, I think it's a, I think it's a, I think it's a, I think it's a, I think it's a, I think it's a... I definitely didn't want to push work on anyone though. So. So, in order, in order to suggest that we come up with all the neighborhoods and parks that we want to build in the next eight years. So it's probably my fault for. Maybe pushing us in a. Into a place that's. Maybe premature, but. will you need a plan in order to be able to identify those areas that are without a park, for example? I mean, as Mike was saying before, is it possible to get that plan put together now, Mike? My thinking was just, I was curious, I can put all these maps, I can put all our parks on a map, buffer them, and then I'm wondering like, is it going to be so obvious that we can be like this neighborhood, we should probably get a park there. It might not turn out that way, and I might come back and say, this was kind of hard, we should probably come up with a detailed green print plan and, you know, if there's a decent chance that that's what happens, but at the same time, it won't be hard to just, you know, do a quick high pass and maybe it will be obvious, maybe it won't, I don't know. And I think that would answer the question really for just goal B. I mean, there's still the other five other goals that were in there. And each one is focusing on a different keyword, and I think that's why it's going to be difficult to take that aspiration and collapse it into a single sentence, because it's really trying to capture, you know, the proximity, the interconnected community understanding or appreciating. So the strategies for to get a community to understand and appreciate as park system is a completely different set of strategies than making a park system itself or making it accessible. Or so I think the reason why the keywords are the way they are and it's set up in different sentences is just because it's, it's focusing on those keywords so that way we could then have a very clear goal which we can evaluate. Are we maintaining evolving or transforming something in order to meet that aspiration? You know, here's our goal. And then what are our strategies? And are we creating new strategies? Are we continuing strategies that we're already doing or expanding or improving strategies we already have? That's what we were trying to look at through the strategies part is, all right? Well, now that we know what our goal is, our goal is to improve something, well, then we've got to be doing something different. If we're maintaining something, we may just be able to continue to do what we're doing, but if we want to improve something, we're not going to improve it if everything under it is continue to do this and continue to do this. So if we're going to improve it, we got to do something different. And what is it? So Mike, you're good with the plan of John and Stephanie taking a crack then. Yeah, if John certainly has more skills and knowledge on how to do these. I think the easy one is going to be the 15 minute walk. We define how far a walk is to the large conserved areas because they're only, you know, they're only a handful of those. I think the trickier one will be the parks and playgrounds because we'll have to define what's a park and a playground. Yeah, identifying the resources does sound challenging. John. Isn't there already a map somewhere that has parks on it that doesn't exist? No, there's probably, there is. There's a defined park, but there may be some things that aren't part of the parks department that we may consider as a park. But there's something we can start with, it's not. Yeah. There's not nothing. I'm looking at like, you know, some mobility, some mobile phone data right now, for example, in like Wrightsville showing up. It's like a, you know, very well used park and then. I think I see playground equipment outside your window behind you. That's very fitting. You do. I feel, I'm embarrassed. I feel like we can walk to like seven to eight different parks within like 10 minutes. So it blows my mind that our plan is to come up with more parks, but I understand that. Well, we could just tear down your house and build a giant, you know, apartment building so that everyone has access to what you do. I think it was this school board wants to turn it into a parking lot. I'm not sure, but let's not revisit that right now. Yeah. I think, I think you're right. I think what will hopefully we'll find something that's obvious and then we can, even if we don't identify where to put that park, even if all we say is, you know, if there's a, you know, we were talking about benchmarks. So even if we were able to benchmark it with John's study to go through and say, we've got, you know, ignoring the rural communities, the rural neighborhoods, these like Wrightsville neighborhood, which is this huge expanse in the north of the city, even if we were just to go through our more urban neighborhoods to go and say who's closest to these resources, we should be able to say, let's say we had 25 neighborhoods. Through John's analysis, we may be able to just at least benchmark that to go through and say 18 of them already meet our goal. And our goal for the next eight years is to identify parks for a percentage or a number of them. And I don't know what that would be. We can always go back to the parks commission and ask them what they would think would be an appropriate number to try to prioritize over the next eight years. So even if we don't locate where it's gonna be, we can at least go and have a, you know, we now have our arms around the issue. This is how big our problem is. Okay, sounds like we have a good plan in place there. So, John and Stephanie, let us know when you're ready to come back to the group. Well, and then we'll put it on the agenda then. For next time, should we plan to get an update on the historic preservation chapter and its new form? So we have that document, Marcella, you sent it out. Yeah, I can go back and yeah, it's within the Google Drive folder and I can go back and when I think of previous email for me links to it, but I can go back and make sure that I put everything in there and not just the sampling. And if it's not all in there, I'll add everything. Great. Yeah, I don't feel like we need to spend a ton of time on that, but yeah, it would be helpful for us to revisit it. So that we're all thinking the same way about how these are, you know, going to evolve and what we're gonna do with the chapters. Okay. Should have a transportation report by then. Okay. Yeah. So a lot of good city planning right now, which is great. Okay, does anybody have anything else on parks for now or should we move on? Because Mike has an update on zoning amendments for us. It's a pretty quick amendment or update. Do we have anything else on parks? Right, everyone's all set. So I just wanted to let everybody know that zoning, it's been a little while. We did go to city council. They did have their hearings and they did adopt the changes as presented. So those housing savings pasture and some other random changes, that package was all approved as presented. So that is, that's all done and the appeal period ended last week. So nobody appealed it. So that's good. We're on to bigger and better things. So. And those changes have already appeared. Are they still in draft form? I went on the website last week and I think that for example, the changes to the ADUs looked like they were in place. Is that not right? There should be a correct final version. Okay, yeah. I think that's what I found. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah, so there's a strikeout. There's probably a strikeout version in there somewhere, but there's some people could know what was changed if they wanted to appeal, but at this point it's just a version. Okay. That's great. Yeah. I don't think there was anything controversial in there. So I guess it's not a surprise. Could have been. Anything that says the word savings pasture is going to be threatening controversy. Well, it's really seems like that whole issue has settled down. A lot of neighbors didn't show up, but nobody really put up much of a argument or fight against it. So. Good. Whatever happened with the Russian bath, is that still going to happen? What? Do you remember the up on savings, one of the first like proposals that was starting to get momentum was to put in a bathhouse. Oh, the bathhouse. Yes. That was a Russian bathhouse. It was a Russian bathhouse. That's news to me. I think it was proposed. And the proposal was, it is still, it's not technically fully withdrawn, but obviously anything that's like a spot or a bathhouse and the application was going in February of last year. And pretty much with COVID, they kind of shelved everything and said, well, we're going to mothball everything until we see whether this is a one year pandemic or a three year pandemic. So they didn't want to go through and invest building a big project that was going to be shut down for multiple years. So probably good economic move on their part. I do hope that we'll hear from them. They are still in the area. So I do hope they'll still consider moving that forward once we're post COVID. Okay. And the parking garage litigation, is that, that has, what's the update on that? I haven't been in the meetings. My understanding is we're still waiting for a decision from the judge. So I think that's been, everything at the courts has been slowed down. So we're, it hasn't, it's not, it hasn't been, hasn't died. So nobody has come in to say, we're not doing it anymore. Okay, so the environmental court is writing a final decision right now though? I don't know. Okay. Because you're an attorney and I don't know the specific which decision, we're waiting for a decision. I don't know if it is the decision on this or if it's a preliminary decision before we make a motion. It's just a motion or something. Okay. Okay. Anybody have anything else before we adjourn? Well, do we, do we have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Send me by Barb, do you have a second? Second. Okay. Second by Erin. All those in favor of adjourning? The meeting, say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. We are adjourned. Everyone have a super night.